Tag Archives: Puzzle and Dragons

Videos

[Video] Solo Arena 1 vs Tsubaki System

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Introduction

In an attempt to showcase a wider variety of leaders and more solo content, here is my Arena 1 clear with Tsubaki Ult Tsubaki. I have been lucky/unlucky with the REM in that I tend to pull numerous duplicate cards; however, this ends up working in my favour as Tsubaki is an amazing sub on her own team. She comes with the ideal awakenings along with a 7-turn active that provides haste. This allows me to form a system and I could use 1 Tsubaki active every turn while simultaneously charging up two other cards. There is going to be a split evolution for Tsubaki in the future that makes her a stronger leader and sub so that is something to look forward to.

Video clear

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 Team set up

Team building was quite simple for me as I simply used all 4 of my Tsubaki and a single Gadius Gadius. Tsubaki is essentially the best sub for himself as he provides an ideal active and awakenings. Gadius was chosen for his recover bind (and bind immunity), but was otherwise of little lesser value. However, this team would have been unsuccessful without Skill Inheritance and this is where the customization comes into play:

Tsubaki Team
Card Inherit Comments
Ult Tsubaki –
Gadius Awoken Leilan
  • Saria Saria would be ideal
  • Synergy with Yamato Bankai Yamato
  • Bind Clear awakening for emergencies
Ult Tsubaki –
Ult Tsubaki Bankai Yamato Emergency heart generation
Ult Tsubaki Cao Cao Delay if needed
Ult Tsubaki Silk 5.5x ATK boost

Strong points and hurdles

Presently, Tsubaki is a 76.56x ATK leader with no defensive multipliers (will gain 2.25x RCV in the future). This can prove challenging to use as you are vulnerable to large preemptives (I was gambling on no DQ Hera spawn) and even stalling can be a challenge with the low base recovery. Thankfully, the +25% RCV badge is a lifesaver along with having every heart orb come enhanced. Damage is also not an issue outside of the Kali stage or perhaps Hera-Is (Water Hera). Gaining 5.5x ATK from Silk is simply amazing (0.15*30 + 1) and was able to one shot Kali through her shield.

On the other hand, the team is risky to play as you are vulnerable to mechanics and I was somewhat fortunate to not encounter anything too dangerous towards the end. I had a small heart attack on the Tamadra floor as my leader got bound twice and Gadius failed to produce 6 heart orbs.

Conclusion

Tsubaki is a fun and fast paced leader to play when you are able to utilize numerous duplicates. This allows you to have countless enhanced orbs along with ample access to haste to keep the actives flowing. I look forward to her split evolution and future buffs in the upcoming months.

Happy Puzzling!

Godfest

Early Harvest Godfest: Chinese Celestials, Japanese 2, Indian 2, and Mechanical 1 Review and Analysis

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Godfest basics

When making the decision to roll or save your magic stones, you need to determine if the featured pantheons can benefit or compliment your teams. Chasing for one specific monster is unwise as you will most likely be disappointed and should ideally have Godfests that overlap with many target cards. Remember all monsters that come out of the REM will qualify for Skill Inheritance so do not be too hasty when selling dupes. For a more detailed team building help, please refer to my full list Popular Leader’s and their Full Sub List Post. Lastly, to find more information about a specific pantheon or monster, refer to my Master List to better refine your search. If you are considering to purchase a Four Gentlemen card, please read my Review and Comparison HERE.

Introduction

The Early Harvest Godfest comes hard on the heels of the 10-Stone GFE REM . While Godfest Exclusives are tremendously powerful, you still need regular REM card support to excel and GungHo is presenting us with some of the stronger pantheons. In addition, many of these cards have received new ultimate evolutions in the past month that grant them even more viability.

Water Gala of Tides Carat
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Day 1		 Chinese Celestials Japanese 2
Awoken Leilan Awoken Karin MeiMei Sakuya Haku 2981 2982 2983 Awoken Izanagi 2985
GFE
rodin Blodin Green Odin Urd Skuld ult evo Verd Kali Dark Kali
Metatron dtron Fenrir Viz Fenrir Gremory Ronove 2991 Ryune
Saria Sylvie 2993 2997 Sherias Roots Sherias Balboa Baldin
Gadius Typhon
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Day 2		 Indian 2 Mechanical 1
3068 3069 3070 3071 3072 3054 3056 3058 3060 3062
GFE
Kali Dark Kali Ult Tsubaki Ult Sumire Ult Kaede Ryune Saria Sylvie
Kanna Baby Satsuki Ult Zuoh Ilm Sherias Roots Sherias Baldin Balboa
Sherias Roots Sherias Red Sonia Blue Sonia Green Sonia Eschamali Scheat Australis
Gadius Typhon

Video commentary

Day 1:

The Chinese Celestials are one of the oldest pantheons in Puzzle an Dragons and have begun to fall behind in the current meta. This is mostly due to the dominance of heart cross leaders require board changers that produce heart orbs. This leaves them in a somewhat awkward place as their board change will rarely be as strong as someone who produces 3 elements with one being hearts. However, if other leaders begin to follow similar patterns as Krishnia 3068, they may begin to see more viability. One thing to keep in mind is their ability to be inherited onto other mono-colour teams who may be better able to combo with their actives.

On the other hand, the Japanese 2 pantheon is relatively new and is home to five new and powerful awoken cards. None of them follow any sense of pattern and instead provide unique playstyles as leaders while harbouring interesting active skills. Due to their relative unique-ness, they are fun leaders to play and are capable of clearing some endgame content.

Day 1 is reasonably strong is you are looking to play non-heart cross leaders as they offer some of the stronger mono-colour subs along with unique leaders.

Continue reading Early Harvest Godfest: Chinese Celestials, Japanese 2, Indian 2, and Mechanical 1 Review and Analysis →

Videos

Awoken Kushinadahime and Umisachi & Yamasachi Sample Gameplay in Arena 1

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Introduction

Due to the high volume of new content being rapidly released in Puzzle and Dragons, I have not had a chance to do a full article for either Awoken Kushinadahime 2983 or Umisachi & Yamasachi 2982. In an attempt to quench your thirst, here is my two clears of Arena 1 using them on the first day of their release to give you a better understanding of their respective play styles. Guides will come soon and the teams used are most likely non-optimal.

Arena 1 is a nice place to test and showcase new leaders as there are enough mechanics to present a modest challenge along with highlighting different scenarios and how to overcome them.

Awoken Kushinadahime 2983

Awoken Kushinadahime is a purely skill based combo leader who is unable to gain benefits from skyfalls. In addition, her leader skill is directly tied to the number of combos she is able to form so she is not for the feint of heart. Maxes out at 169x for 10 combos.
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Umisachi & Yamasachi 2982

The wonder twins were Fantastic’s main leader back in the day and I was thrilled when they finally got the buff they deserved. They are still a rainbow based leader, but has the potential to achieve 400x with 3 water combos alongside their three other elements. They are still a glass cannon, but are able to dish out spectacular damage with relatively few orbs.
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Conclusion

Both Kushinadahime and Umisachi & Yamasachi are fun to play leaders with unique twists on current leader skills. Neither are able to form top tier leaders, but provide a breath of fresh air amidst all the rows and heart cross leaders.

Happy Puzzling!

Game Meta

9.5.2 Update Thoughts and Review

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Introduction

Version 9.5.2 was released today and brings numerous quality of life features along with additional quests, evolutions, 150/250 memorial pulls, and a Best Friend reset. This post will highlight the new changes as well as explaining how they work alongside their overall impact on Puzzle and Dragons.

Video commentary

New quests and badges

Version 9.5.2 introduces a new series of quests to complete along with more powerful badges. One major complaint about the first wave of quests was that they were too “easy” to obtain as many veteran players had already auto-completed them upon release. However, Maniac quests will challenge even the most seasoned players as the requirements are somewhat outrageous and will take a long time to complete.

maniac

The first two are relatively easy to complete as Special dungeons simply means you have to either played for a long time (to have seen all the niche limited time rotations) or able to clear every hard dungeon upon release. Total Monsters in Monster Book counts for both REM and farmable drops so simply go out and play more. You can also bolster your count by evolving cards as that will unlock additional progress.

On the other hand, you require 100 +297 monsters for the +35% RCV badge while total crowns is unobtainable at the moment (and not very feasible in general). Finally, the Total Awoken Skills refers to the number of awakenings you have unlocked. This means you require a huge number of Tamadras, but I also presume you can use farmable boss drops to unlock additional awakenings by feeding to themselves (eg. fusing a second form Tengu to another second form Tengu for a free awakenings unlock). Continue reading 9.5.2 Update Thoughts and Review →

New Player Help

Best Friend Guide

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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

Continue reading Best Friend Guide →

Challenge Dungeons

One Shot Challenge 4 Guide and How to deal with Gaia, Zeus, or Noah Dragon

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Important change

You will not face the same Radar Dragon as you did the first time through as these challenges rotate so everyone will eventually face all three.

Introduction

This set of One Shot Challenges will allow players to acquire a Radar Dragon outside of Arena 3. This is Fantastic for the general population as these dragons are required for the new evolutions for the original 5 Monster Point cards (Shiva, Neptune, Odin, Ra, and Yomi Dragon) as Arena 3 is out of reach for most teams. In addition, you have to encounter the correct dragon AND have it drop which can prove a frustrating experience. Conversely, this set of Challenges provides a fixed spawn and a guaranteed drop. However, you do not get to choose your encounter and are instead assigned one based on your starter dragon choice. This can be easily found as the coloured orb beside your in-game name. Finally, this challenge must be completed in solo mode, but you are able to stone to continue.

Just be aware that this is meant to be an end game challenge and many players will be unable to successfully clear it. With that being said, a wide variety of teams are capable of clearing this dungeon, but it is vital to be fully plussed, latented, and inherited where required.

If you wish to see my clears on Fantastic and Mantastic for Gaia and Zeus Dragon, check out my next post HERE to see the full team set up/latents/inherits.

For this set, I will be using Krishna on both accounts and will upload the videos when completed.

Video commentary

Which Radar Dragon do I fight?

Players are assigned a specific Radar Dragon to fight on floor 20 based on their starter dragon choice. This choice is indicated by the coloured icon beside your in-game name.

  • Fire fights Noah Dragon
  • Water fights Gaia Dragon
  • Wood fights Zeus Dragon

For example, Mantastic started with fire and will fight Noah (Fantastic has Gaia):

Crown rank feature

Hurdles of solo mode and no duplicates

This Challenge must be completed in solo mode along with imposing Continue reading One Shot Challenge 4 Guide and How to deal with Gaia, Zeus, or Noah Dragon →

Challenge Dungeons, Videos

Khepri Descended Snowglobe Challenge with Awoken Persephone

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Introduction

Khepri Descended is the newest dungeon to be released in Puzzle and Dragons and comes with the wonderful Snowglobe challenge component. In order to successfully clear the challenge, you will have to beat the dungeon in solo mode with no continues and have the Snowglobe as a sub on any difficulty. This can be a daunting task as you are essentially losing a sub slot. Thankfully, you are able to inherit a skill onto your Snowglobe as there are quite a few new mechanics you will need to overcome.

There will not be any indication you successfully cleared the challenge component and I do not know when you will have the additional Snowglobes distributed. It will probably happen a week or so after the challenge finishes.

Video clear

Dungeon overview

Khepri Descended imposes the unique restriction of 4 seconds to move orbs. This means all of your time extend awakenings, leader skills that add time, and time extension badge are all worthless. As such, players will have to be able to carefully plan their moves and be prepared for less combos as  you are not able to casually match orbs. Continue reading Khepri Descended Snowglobe Challenge with Awoken Persephone →

Godfest

10-Stone GFE Machine: Thoughts and Stats

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Introduction

As part of the 4 year Puzzle and Dragons Anniversary event, GungHo is giving their North American and European servers the magical 10-stone Godfest Exclusive Rare Egg Machine. This machine was released to great fanfare in Japan some time ago as it guarantees a GFE on every single roll for double the magic stones. This means you will be acquiring 15,000 Monster Points from the troll Light Metatrons Metatron instead of 3,000 from sad Silvers. Naturally, this presents the question: to roll or not to roll?

Video commentary

A sample video of an IAP-Friendly JP player:

Rare Egg Machine background

The Rare Egg Machine (REM) is one of the more frustrating and exhilarating aspects of Puzzle and Dragons as it is essentially a form of gambling. To use the REM, you have to pay 5 Magic Stones and then you will be allowed to shake the golden dragon’s hand. After doing a little foreplay of either tummy rubbing or head patting, you will be awarded a special monster that can range in value/rarity from pointless to awe-inspiring. Sadly, what you get is completely random with the stronger rolls being far more elusive than the mundane.

How the 10-stone GFE REM varies

By comparison, the 10-stone GFE REM has double the price tag, but will never produce a silver or pantheon gold egg and will instead only awarded with a Godfest Exclusive monster. Godfest Exclusive monsters are only available during Godfests and are harder to acquire than the regular REM cards. Continue reading 10-Stone GFE Machine: Thoughts and Stats →

Team Building Guides

Help! I do not have 2 Dark Kali for Ra Dragon

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Introduction

Super Ultimate Ra Dragon 3265 has been released in JP and will be released in North America shortly. The delay in release can be advantageous as we have adequate time to prepare for his challenging evolution along with deciding how to team build the spiciest of all the fried chicken. I go into detail examining Ra Dragon as a whole in my previous post and I encourage you to read it in conjunction with this article HERE.

As the title implies, this post will be dedicated into discussing how Ra Dragon functions if you do not own two Dark Kalis Dark Kali (or any of her seasonal variations) as well as helping you decide if it is worthwhile to spend 300,000 MP to purchase him.

Video commentary

—video goes here—-

How Ra Dragon works

Ra Dragon is a rainbow leader who utilizes all 6 elements to deal up to 144x ATK. Furthermore, God type cards benefit from 2.25x HP / RCV and it is this added bulk that makes him powerful and relevant in an era of heart crosses. If you choose to use a non-God card, that monster will only be benefiting from a lackluster 64x ATK.

Leader Skill:
2x ATK when matching 4 elements. 3x ATK for each additional orb type. 8x with all 6 elements. 1.5x HP/ATK/RCV for God types
2.25x HP / 144x ATK / 2.25x RCV

Ra Dragon Scaling Leader Skill
# Elements 4 5 6
Multiplier 9x 56.25x 144x

As such, you should do your best to use God type cards, even if they have irrelevant actives as you can correct them with Skill Inheritance. Continue reading Help! I do not have 2 Dark Kali for Ra Dragon →

Monster Analysis, New Evolutions

Ultimate Ra Dragon: Review and Analysis

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Introduction

The original 5 Monster Point Dragons were some of the most powerful cards in Puzzle and Dragons at the time of their release. However, Powercreep has not been kind to the majority of them with only Ra Dragon Ra Dragon staying relevant in today’s meta as a leader. Thankfully, GungHo has decided to release a new evolutions for all 5 of themi n hopes of resurrecting their viability. Unfortunately for North America, the evolution requirements for these MP Dragons will prove troublesome as the only way to currently acquire the Radar Dragons is to clear Arena 3 or the One Shot Challenges.

If you are considering the possibility of purchasing Ra Dragon or any other MP card, I strongly encourage you to refer to my MP Card Tier List for further explanation and analysis.

Video commentary

Evolution requirements

We still do not have the full details of any other card outside of Ra Dragon, but here are the current evolution requirements:

evo-req

Perhaps one of the main benefits of playing in North America is that we are given additional time to prepare for new evolutions as both of these require a large investment of resources.

Ultimate Evolution Ra Dragon

The Super-Ultimate Fried Chicken has now been electrified to even greater heights with his new evolution. Super Ra Dragon 3265 has had his leader skill and base stats buffed to allow him to better compete with the heart cross meta.

Ra Dragon
3265
God / Dragon
5,605 HP / 1,880 ATK / 340 RCV
1,050 Total
Bind Immune Bind Immune Skill Boost Skill Boost TPA TPA Time Extend Time Extend Skill Lock Resist

Active Skill:
+5s to orb movement for 1 turn
2 turns haste
13 turn CD

Leader Skill:
2x ATK when matching 4 elements. 3x ATK for each additional orb type. 8x with all 6 elements. 1.5x HP/ATK/RCV for God types
2.25x HP / 144x ATK / 2.25x RCV

Pros Cons
  • 2.25x HP / 144x ATK / 2.25x RCV
  • Very safe and consistent
  • Ample room for utility
  • Can build full bind immune team
  • Can overcome combo shields
  • Less ugly than before
  • Restrictive team building
  • Slow to play
  • Lackluster base active
  • No sub potential
  • Reliant on Gemstones
  • Still ugly
Ra Dragon Scaling Leader Skill
# Elements 4 5 6
Multiplier 9x 56.25x 144x

Continue reading Ultimate Ra Dragon: Review and Analysis →