Introduction

This Best Friend Guide will help you find more friends, explain how the process works, helping you improve your friends list, along with what you can use Pal Points for. Building up a strong friend base will allow you to choose from a variety of powerful leaders, have constant access to your favourite monsters, and passively generate pal points to spend on the Pal Egg Machine (PEM).

Even with the introduction of coop, it is still advantageous to have best friends as you may play in solo mode and best friends provide more pal points when used in multiplayer.

Video commentary

Finding Friends

The first step to Pal Point domination is to find friends to populate your list. As you rank up, your friends list will max out at 50 players. You can add 5 additional friend slots for 1 magic stone, up to a maximum of 300 friends. In all honesty, the sooner you add space and expand your friend list, the more pal points you will be rolling in. You can view this as an opportunity cost as for each day you have more friends, the more pal points you will generate in future days. Because PAD is very much a patience game, the sooner you invest, the more you will be rewarded. Thankfully, making friends in PAD is quite easy and I have found the community to be incredibly warm and welcoming. We can find friends via:

• Posting your ID on various forums, Reddit threads,  and Facebook groups (@PG, @US, @HG)
• Typing in a player’s ID under Friends -> ID search
• Choosing Users from the helper selection list

For further reading on where to connect within the community, please refer to my Community Corner posting.

When you first start your PAD journey, you want to add as many friends as possible and constantly delete inactive low-level players (as they have most likely quit/rerolled) to maximize your pal point generation by having a list of friends to choose from when entering dungeons. If you post your ID on the various fan pages, players will send you invites, and many high-rank players will offer their leads. As you progress, you are going to become more choosy with whom you keep on your friends list as space may become an issue.

Best way to display your ID

It is best to not post a picture of your entire box as you only want to highlight your most common leads. Showing numerous hypermaxed cards will cause intimidation and fear that you will rotate between too many leaders to be a stable best friend. I prefer to edit my team to show my favourite leads from left to right along with my ID as the team name. This condenses your information to 1 picture and shows stability in those highlighted leads.

Keys to success

The key to building and maintaining your friends list after the early game is based on several factors:

• Popular leader(s): if you are fortunate and have a popular leader, you will generate far more pal points than the more niche ones. Even if you are unable to effectively use that leader, still have it visible, especially when you take a break for stamina/sanity etc
• Account activity: log in for the daily bonuses at the bare minimum. Logging in will also refresh your last activity status on your friends list and will lessen your chances of being deleted
• Consistent leader display: your number of friends is strongly based around what leaders you have visible, so always try to keep a consistent showing of your ideal leads.
• Invested leaders: this may be a long stretch for some players, but it is generally best practice to place your pluses on your favourite leader as you will show up higher on your friends list if you are +297. Latents and inherits can also make a difference in being selected so think carefully when developing your card. This could mean the difference between being selected, or being skipped over during friend selection.
  • Building off this, try to use a powerful/rare inherit if possible. For example, using Wedding Akechi on your Myr will make you very popular and desired.
• Farming and descend leader: I try to cycle between my 2 descend leads and 2 farming leads to maximize the ease with which my friends can bring me. The key is to have at least one of each visible at all times as not everyone is playing the descends 24/7
• Avoid duplicate leader display: your team slots determine which monster your friends can see and take. Slot 1 and current team selected display to your entire friends list. Slot 2 is only visible to best friends (BFF). Try to avoid showing the same leader in any of these team slots.

Best Friend selection

After you have done all that and have passed rank 50, it’s time to make a best friend selection! Choosing a best friend is a large commitment by PAD standards and once the selection is made, it cannot be undone. If for some reason you are deleted or you delete your BFF, you will lose all the benefits even if you re-friend at a later date. There have been a few BFF renewals that allow you to select a new BFF in addition to your already existing friendships. This may or may not happen every X number of months so please choose wisely.

Best friend benefits

Establishing Best friend link grants bonuses to both players every time you choose each other to take into a dungeon (whether coop or solo mode). Both players gain 100 instead of 10 pal points per day along with being able to see leaders in team slots 1, 2, and active/current as well as remain visible for up to 24 hours without a login refresh. This is especially important for low level players who wish to simply use a powerful friend repeatedly for faster and safer clears. With this in mind, when you are making a BFF decision, you should seek out players who:

• Have farming and descend lead(s) suitable to your box and team
• Established a certain tenure of playing in hopes they do not suddenly quit the game
• Ideally have a hyper-maxed descend/progression leader
• Have some sort of communication established
• In an ideal world, you best friend your alternate account

Newer account best friending

There is some controversy as to what a new player should do with their BFF token. Some people argue that the pal points through a triangle are more valuable, while others claim that having a high-rank BFF will allow more content to be cleared. I am personally in favour of best friending a high-ranking player at the cost of losing out on a triangle. This is because having access to leads far stronger than what you are capable of is far more important than up to 200 pal points per day. Stamina is still a more valuable currency than pal points as it could mean the difference between victory or losing 50 stamina for a failed descend. There is still risk in choosing higher level players as they may rotate between many leads and could restrict your access to what is ideal for you. As such, please message/contact your intended recipient and establish some sort of communication.

Triangles

Best Friend selection is only needed from one party for both players to benefit. This allows three players want to make a best friend triangle:

• A -> B
• B -> C
• C -> A

Doing this successfully will enable everyone to have two new best friends with only one selection.

How to spend Pal Points

Now that you are hopefully rolling in pal points, what should you do with them? Well first off, do not spin the pal egg machine (PEM) unless there is some sort of event active that grants a bonus of some sorts. You are able to store up to 25,000 (50 rolls) worth of pal points, so do not pull outside of an event unless you are hitting the limit.

Currently, we have three different types of events that cost 500 pal points per roll:

• Enhance Carnival (monster experience)
• Evo Carnival (evolution materials including the rare spirit jewels)
• Skill Up Carnival (largely useless for the most part)

You do not need to spend your pal points as soon as you receive them and it is best to wait for the carnival that can benefit you the most. Furthermore, the various challenges award varying number of Pal Points and can be competed relatively easily and should be sought after whenever available. In addition, these pal points can be saved in your mailbox (along with other challenge rewards and daily Tamadra ) to prevent premature event capping and to save for your desired pal event.

Which carnival to roll in

When it comes to either enhance or evolution materials, you should always roll for what you need most. If you are just starting out, the enhance materials (monster experience) will be the most beneficial as you can quickly level up your cards to level 50. Afterwards, you should save for the evolution materials as there is a chance (albeit small) to roll the coveted jewels or the other mythical weekday dungeon drops. In addition, many of these evolution materials can make low-cost subs or as a way to gain active skills you would normally not have access to.

However, after the early game, it comes down to personal preference and what you are in need of at that particular time. The evolution materials can translate into direct stamina saving as you do not need to divert time to farming specific materials as many do not spawn in commonly played dungeons. On the other hand,  I do not wish to undervalue the kings that pop out of the enhance carnivals. With all that being said, you should still roll for what can benefit you most, but also exert patience and wait for a desirable event.

Conclusion

Best friends are a valuable feature in Puzzle and Dragons and it is wise to take advantage of the additional Pal Points generated.

Here is a song to get you into the Best Friend mood:

Best friending Mantastic & Fantastic

If you wish to use your Best Friend token on Mantastic or Fantastic, please leave a comment below with your ID/In game name as I usually sit at 300/300 friends and maximum invites. I clean my list out regularly by deleting regular friends after 7 days of inactivity and best friends at around 45 days. Despite my best efforts, I cannot accept everyone. For heavy Myr  users, Mantastic has Saria  inherited while Fantastic uses Wedding Akechi .

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Happy Puzzling!