Many people have been asking what direction to take / what to do as a new player so I will list a relative guide as what you should strive to aim for. Keep in mind that you are clearing content in days it took me weeks/months to reach so things may feel fast forwarded and frustrating at times as your account rank may eclipse your PAD knowledge and matching skills.  I highly recommend you take a look at my Community Resources Page to discover new mediums and sites to learn the ins and outs of Puzzle and Dragons.

Everyone plays Puzzle and Dragons for different reasons: some enjoy the puzzling aspect, others find joy in collecting. For myself, I wish to push end game content while still enjoying myself. However, for the purpose of this guide, the focus will be to begin clearing descends with 0 stones used. However, in order to get to that level, you will require a few things:

Get a strong starter / team that is viable in clearing descends.

There are many existing pages heavily covering this topic so you will need to do some of your own homework on what to aim for as this guide is going to assume you have passed that stage of the game. The most current one I could find comes from Reddit.

Rank UP!

You must keep ranking up not only to increase your maximum stamina, but to also increase team cost to be able to fit in all the subs you wish to bring. Unfortunately (or fortunately?) PAD is a very grindy game in that you are going to have to repeat dungeons over and over again whether it be for plus eggs, skill ups, team cost, or rank experience. When you first start out, your rank and thus max stamina and team cost will be your limiting factors. As such, I cannot stress enough that you are going to have to play dungeons over and over again. Thankfully, GungHo has been introducing new methods for quickly ranking up such as the Experience of a Lifetime (awards 200k rank experience) and Monday Dungeon. I go into further detail in my Monday Dungeon Review Post and how to optimize your stamina.

If those are not available, I would play the highest normal dungeon you are capable of clearing and only stopping when you feel you hit a ‘wall.’ A very important thing to note is that on Saturday and Sunday, Tower of Giants and most specifically Dragons of the Tower will be available for 3 stamina and thus providing ~500 exp / stamina. This may be boring but can be done infinitely for about the first 80 ranks. Lastly, always try to play normal dungeons that are affected by 1.5x experience provided you can reliable clear them.

Level up your monsters & evolve

Level up you monsters as high as possible and evolve them to their max evolution if you are fortunate to acquire the rare 50 stamina materials (eg. Keeper of gold, Jewel of Water, etc.). Even just reaching their second evolution is sufficient for early content. Research where their materials drop from and work towards acquiring them. It is also worth noting that monsters will gain diminishing returns on experience at higher levels Continue reading New Player Help Guide →