Introduction

Puzzle and Dragons is my most played game as I have now surpassed 2,300 days which is around 6.3 years. This is a truly remarkable amount of time and it should come as no surprise that there will be slower periods from both a motivation and available content point of view.

While everyone has different goals/motivations for playing Puzzle and Dragons, it is important to avoid burnout due to excessive play or by feeling the need to always min-max stamina.

With this in mind, I wish to share what I do during slower periods of time in order to still enjoy playing PAD for the foreseeable future.

Video commentary/clear

–video coming soon–

480 stamina per day

We are now enjoying what is essentially a Golden Era for Stamina within Puzzle and Dragons due to a recharge rate of 1 every 3 minutes. As such, we will naturally recharge 480 stamina per day. Furthermore, the first 700 or so ranks also enjoy the ability to chain rank ups with relative ease.

As a result, especially for lower rank accounts, it is possible to have somewhat infinite stamina to play around with and the concept of optimizing it comes to light.

Optimizing your stamina is critical if you want to play as much as possible but doing so may result in premature burnout if done for prolong periods of time. Now I am not discouraging players from maximizing their play time, just be aware that PAD is still a game and it should be fun with the reasons for being fun varying from player to player.

Best things to play

As a general rule, any limited-time event such as the current Endurance Challenge or Monthly Quests tend to be the most valuable dungeons to play as they offer significantly better rewards for the amount of time required to play them. For example, players could acquire 3 Pys of a specific colour last month for clearing an older Descend for 50 stamina. No permanent dungeon can offer this big of a reward and these limited time events is what I tend to play first.

Of course, these are not always available and it is possible to clear the monthly dungeons within a few days or even faster through stamina saving in multiplayer.

Beyond these types of events, the most stamina efficient dungeons are the various Arenas as they can offer a hefty amount of Rank Experience, Latents, and various other benefits depending the difficulty selected. Generally speaking, the higher levels for each respective category are the best to play (A5, AA3, Training Arena 2/Extreme Challenge Arena).

What I find fun

Puzzle and Dragons is at its core a matching game and the process itself is almost therapeutic when you can match the entire board while incorporating cascades. For myself, a pure-match 3 play style feels almost relaxing and almost nostalgic as the PAD I played back in the day had significantly fewer mechanics and was mostly a game built around being able to efficiently clear an entire board.

As such, I often find myself drawn to Training Arena 2/Extreme Challenge Arena as it is an 11 floor dungeon with no actual mechanics, just 11 spawns with grossly inflated DEF/HP.

With this in mind, I do not have to worry about Resolve, Voids, or Absorbs, just simply bring a high multiplier leader and full clear each floor to collect a hefty chunk of Monster Experience along with 1 random Latent.

Now I know there are numerous efficient Farming teams that can trivialize the dungeon, but what I like to do is play with Orphen as he has the capacity to deal spectacular amounts of damage and all he has to do is match combos while being below 50% HP. Both these conditions are easy to achieve assuming you touch Zaerog Core every turn.

Extreme Challenge Arena – Orphen Mass Attack Badge
Card					??
SA
Inherit	(5190)	Any	(5417)	(5193)	(4964)	–
Latent			x5	x6

My team is essentially relying on the massive damage output potential of Zaerog Core along with Hiei whilst having Dark Skyfalls and excessive Orb Enhances to passively inflate my damage. Furthermore, the usage of Sagat’s Weapon Assist doubles as both a <50% and 100% DEF Break that is used on Floor 1.

Due to no preemptives, the 100% DEF Break carries over to the next floor assuming everything can be killed right away. Thankfully, just two Dark combos does the job for my team and I utilize Orphen’s active as required and they have a 2/3 turn up time between both leaders.

While there is more risk/thinking required here compared to the more streamlined farming builds, this play style of full comboing each board is fun for myself and I get to satisfy this craving along with leveling up a card of my choice as the 4th sub (??) is anything I want to bring up to level 110.

In essence, playing Extreme Challenge Arena with Orphen lets me use my Stamina in an efficient manner while also providing me with the match-3 game play I enjoy.

Conclusion

Puzzle and Dragons is my longest played game and burnout/boredom is always a risk if you always try to min-max every aspect of the game. As such, I sometimes like to return to a more nostalgic time of just full clearing a board via match-3 and not having to worry about all of the convoluted mechanics possible.

Thus, using Orphen for Extreme Challenge Arena satisfies this craving while still being useful for my Monster Box development.

Let me know what kind of dungeons you tend to play during slower periods of time or if you wish to avoid burnout in the comments below.

Happy Puzzling!

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