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[PAD] Hyper Hexazeon-est
ElementWrath
Perplexingly SoftMichiganRegistered User regular
Perplexingly SoftMichiganRegistered User regular
It's actually more akin to Bejeweled + Pokemon + Gambling = Your Paycheck
Disclaimer: You may or may not regret spending real money on this game. Rates are visible in the premium egg machines now, so pull at your own risk. It is totally possible to play this game without paying a cent.
Hello and welcome to the Puzzle & Dragons thread. Puzzle & Dragons, or PAD for short, is a popular Match-3 mobile game with a twist for iOS and Android originating from Japan, where it is commonly referred to as Pazudora. Because of its origins it has a certain special flare common among Japanese games. It's quirky (read: strange), somewhat fanservice-y, and brutally difficult in the later game. It's the precursor to many many look-alike games (probably) because of its tremendous commercial success, and for good reason. The game is easily accessible to non-IAP (non In App Purchase) players, but has been monetized through Magic Stones, used to do everything from refill stamina to run more dungeons, buy continues when you die in dungeons, and pull on the Golden Dragon Rare Egg Machine or other Rare Egg Machines (REM Gacha). Fortunately, this means it isn't supported by more intrusive ads, and surprisingly it gives away plenty of free stones per month, in addition to one for every dungeon clear, and there are tons of dungeons. There is a North American version of the game that receives updates following their introduction in the Japanese version, but crossplay between versions (and devices) is included.
So, what is PAD?
Think of Bejeweled if you could move an orb as far as five seconds could get you, and make as many combos as you can. Colored orbs cause your monsters of the same color to attack when 3+ of that color is matched, and hearts restore damage you take from monsters attacking you. Make as many combos as possible on the 30 orb board to rack up the damage, with new orbs falling in from above. That's all well and good until you start progressing and enemy monsters' defense becomes occasionally noticable, or when they gain abilities to attack you or otherwise hinder you. Oh, and don't even get me started on monster skills and team building and awakenings and plus eggs and... actually this game gets absurdly complicated for a Match 3 game. Luckily the resources below have all the answers and if you can't find it there, there's no shortage of veterans here who can answer your questions, and provide you early game newbs with absurdly powerful max-level Ultimate Evolved monsters.
The game is constantly evolving and changing, and if you really want to dive in, the Puzzle and Dragons Reddit and associated Discord (not affiliated with our small little PA group) are both great places to get quick advice.
Reddit Beginner Guide
- Golden Rules For New Players -
- Don't roll outside of a Godfest
- Don't continue
- Don't spend stones to restore stamina (in early game)
- Favorite everything you want to keep
- When in doubt, check PDX*
*Special note for PDX, it's been a little slow on some updates recently, but it is for the most part an indispensable resource for finding dungeon or monster information.
Previous Threads
March 1, 2013 - June 13, 2013
Second PA Thread
Third PA Thread
Fourth PA Thread
Fifth PA Thread
Sixth PA Thread
Seventh PA Thread
Eighth PA Thread
Ninth PA Thread
FAQ:
How much does this cost?
The game is free to play, with a premium currency of magic stones. You can buy them for a dollar each in smaller packages, but they're less per stone when bought in bulk. Five stones is one pull on the Rare Egg Machine (REM), or other occasional collab machines.
How long before I hit the pay wall?
Luckily, the game distributes plenty of free stones per month through in game mail, and every dungeon clear is a stone as well. I'm living proof that you don't need to pay to clear end game content, non-IAP for almost over three years. However, if you're not planning to pay anything ever, it might help to get off to a good start.
Okay, so how do I get a good start?
I'm sure you noticed the fun tutorial? At the end it makes you pull the golden dragon and out pops an egg? Well here's the thing: that egg can be anything that comes out of the Golden Dragon. You could get the most powerful monster in the game, or you could get some trash that has no purpose except to make you weep. You can also delete the application and redownload it to get another run through the tutorial and another free roll on the Golden Dragon.
Do you see where I'm going with this? Depending on your tolerance for monotony (suffering), you can run through the tutorial over and over until you start with exactly what you want (or lose your mind). I wouldn't recommend it, it's more fun to just start and let the wonderful art and deep teambuilding and gameplay mechanics envelop you, but if you know you're in for the long-haul from the get-go, feel free, it's not a requirement.
What is a good starting monster, then?
If you are planning on spending money in the game, it doesn't matter as much what you start with as you can always buy more stones. If not, here are some recommendations (spoilered in case you'd rather find out for yourself):
If it's farmable, reroll. You can ask us about this.
If it's not a gold egg, reroll. Some gold eggs are still useless, once again, ask us.
Reddit Re-Rolling Guide
If it's not a gold egg, reroll. Some gold eggs are still useless, once again, ask us.
Reddit Re-Rolling Guide
Take these recommendations with a big grain of salt, the meta is constantly shifting, far faster than I update this OP. The largest obstacle to playing with an off-meta card is that it may be trouble to find someone with it up, however with the advent of multiplayer and the Discord chat for the PAD Reddit, you can eliminate that obstacle by finding someone who has exactly what you want. The users of this thread can also put monsters up on request, feel free to post your friend code and we will add you as a friend. If it's urgent, go to the PAD Discord chat linked through the Reddit.
What is the most important thing to know about this game?
If there isn't a Godfest Active *DO NOT PULL ON THE GOLDEN DRAGON*
Godfest? Golden Dragon?
The Golden Dragon/Rare Egg Machine/REM/Premium Gacha is a machine that eats 5 magic stones and barfs out a monster. This can be a farmable monster or an incredibly powerful God. Remember 5 stones= 5$, so unless you are willing to donate a lot of money you probably want to maximize your chances at getting a God, since you'll get the farmable monsters with a bit of effort, but Gods are only from the Golden Dragon. Every other week there will be a "Godfest" where you have an increased chance to hit a God when you roll. Only (usually) spend your stones to roll during Godfest. Its recommended to not roll at all until you get a good amount of box space and friends, but pulling is one of the fun parts of the game, so as long as you only pull during Godfest no one will yell at you. Probably.
I'm out of Box Space!
That's not a question, but it will be a common problem. The solution is to spend magic stones on increasing your box size. This should be where all of your early stones go. Try to get up to 100 boxes at least before you spend magic stones on *ANYTHING* else. Hope you like inventory management!
Which Monsters are Worth Keeping?
This article is a great resource on what to do with the monsters that drop as you go along.
How do I keep track of all these monsters?
Setup an account on Padherder. This site will keep track of what you need to evolve the monsters you get, and how much exp to get them to the next level.
If you are on Android and lazy you can use the Padherder listener app.
And if I'm on iOS?
Lucky you, you get to do the physical challenge!
Actually there is a way to get your data imported, but its work.
How do I play with other awesome Penny Arcade People?
Add yourself to the Penny Arcade Puzzle and Dragons User Database of Wonderment and Joy, and send friend invites to everyone on it. If people are full, then @ them in this thread and they will typically make room for a fellow forumer.
How do I know how what % Life a boss has/I have?
How does skilling up a monster work?
If you feed your monster another monster with *the exact same skill name*, you'll have a 10% chance to increase the skill level, which makes the skill charge one turn faster. During events the skillup rate is increased, so do not try to skillup outside of an event unless you hate your time/gold. Occasionally there is an increased skillup rate, so far we've seen up to 6x chance. You can also raise a monster to max evo, max level, then feed it to itself. This is called the colossal waste method. There are also little guys with horns who skill up monsters.
They are hard to come by usually only found in tough dungeons, or as challenge rewards. You can also buy them in the Monster Point Shop (not recommended). There are also monsters called "Tans" that when 6 of the same color are fused together will guarantee skillups on all materials involved in a power-up fusion when used on a monster of the same primary color.Does anyone know what the math is for combos vs. multi-orb matches?
Like, how much does a 2-combo multiply my attacks? How about a 4 or 5 orb match in one color? If I've got 6 orbs of one color in the grid, am I better off making a line of six or two 3-orb matches? If I've got two adjacent lines of 3 in the same color that are touching they clear as one match instead of a two combo. Does that count the same as matching six in a line?
Short Answer is making combos is better than making big clumps of orbs unless Awoken skills/orb enhancers are in play.
Long answer: Damage Calculation
Question
Aktn Bstrd wrote: »Is there a list that shows the best way to approach descends? Like in order by difficulty. I really wish I could do Athena descended but I know that would be me throwing away 50 stamina.
This is a great read.
http://www.reddit.com/r/PuzzleAndDragons/wiki/descendeddungeons
Obviously any list of difficulty depends on the monsters you have.
Hera is fairly unarguably the easiest, probably two heroes is next.
Below this line, much of the information is heavily outdated due to the amount of changes that have taken place since the start of the thread. Some time I will get around to editing it, and you are free to read it and see if it raises any questions you'd like to ask us. For now, it will stand as a monument to the past of the thread. Power creep is a heck of a thing.
How to beat most levels in challenge mode:
Make Ronia friends.
Get a Hera-Ur.
Use Hera-Ur as your leader, and fill up the rest of the team with fully awoken Ronias. Clear everything easily with the power of poor balancing.
Also Green/White Present Dragon and 5 Awoken Odins can clear some tricky tech dungeons.
How do I beat the Hardest Evo Material Dungeons?
Tuesday - Keeper of Gold. Wait until the pal egg machine runs rare evo materail and pull him there.
Wednesday - Blue/Green Masks (aka 99 turn skill bind fun) Get an autohealer and a friend Green Odin. Fill your team with dual attribute monsters, first few waves group attack as much as possible,
mystic mask round kill the red masks first, no group attacks.
Last wave, target the blue mask, combo/heal until skill bind lets up. Poison the blue mask and gravity if you have it. When blue mask is almost dead, start lowering the green masks' life.
Thursday - Dreaming Dragonfruit - Awoken Shiva/Hera Ur red teams work great here. Alternatively, Farm up 5 of this guy
and be immune to all damage.Friday - Funding Sky Prison ☺T╩♦•◘○♣♦☻ - There are many teams out there, all farmable monster version is ultimate zeus/ultimate zeus, Hera-Is, Poison/mystic mask/bane, Naga, something else (spread cats is good).
1st round make enough combos to kill all but one/two mythlits. If you start with no light orbs or you get too many combos, you just wasted 50 stamina! FUN!
2nd round you want to use poison to clear before the Dubs kill you. They hit very hard.
3rd round use naga, make a couple of mass attacks then kill the dubs leaving the tamadra. Let it bind you then move orbs until you get all skills up.
Round 4 35%gravity x 2 30% gravity, spread cats, delay, make as many combos as possible and hope you kill them.
This dungeon is very frustrating with any team that can't blow right through it. There are many that can now.
Also since you are playing this game and are not me you probably have ronia so why not just do it the easy way!
Twinlt super easy mode: lilith/echidna + enough skill awakenings to make lilith available on turn 2.
Sweep 1
Poison turn before damage from the dublits
Echidna on the next round.
Rest of your team just needs to be able to kill the actual twins
My team: beezelbub/ronia/ronia/echidna/lilith
There are options of course
I have too many coins, what's with these coin dungeons?
Also, I tried some more of the coin dungeons. My overall reviews:
Alt Castle of Satan in the Abyss - 1 million
Shrine of Green Water - 1 million
Challenging dungeons with quite good Exp and Coins per stamina. It also drops high level monsters that provide 10k-15k experience each. Overall a very efficient use of stamina if you have some to burn. Don't forget the free stone.
Warning - Watch out for the King Metal Dragon, he'll eat your face
Together At Last! Evo Rush!! - 3 million
Costs 35 stamina. Gives you a shot at a Dragon Fruit, a Dub-Mythlit, a Mystic Mask, and a Rainbow Keeper. Includes a guaranteed random Keeper. Worth doing once for the free stone, I'd avoid it otherwise.
Tamadra Village - 10 million
Awesome! Bring two poisons and you can't lose. The only downside is that at 99 stamina a run it'll almost certainly cost you a stone per try, but it's still worth it. At worst you'll get 4 Baby Tamadras a run, plus you have a shot at skillups for GrOdin and ROdin. If you run a lot of different teams and need a lot of awakenings, this is the perfect dungeon for you.
This now shows up without paying for it as a time sensitive dungeon.
Bonus Review: Weekend Dungeon - Legend
The individual waves of this dungeon are about as hard as the boss wave on Master difficulty. Watch out for wave 5 with the three Mystic Masks - bring poison or some massive burst to break their armor. If you don't have a Robin or Kushinada, grab a Poison Ivy while the DC Collab is still around.
Otherwise, wave 9 is fairly easy. Wave 10 is the same as the final wave of Two Heroes, so make sure you can survive a hit from Berserk and get past Highlander's armor,.
For fun, my team:
Watch at 1.5x speed!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLku-s20EBEThoth and Sopdet are god awful. Be aware.
Zeus Vulcan is pretty terrible too.
cantide what kinds of things are worth saving to sell for monster points?
If it's not REM, don't worry about it. If it is REM, the more stars the better: I think it's 3k for 4 stars. 5k for 5, 15k for 6. Only the stars of the initial evolution matter. If you take a 4 star card and evolve it into a 5 star, it will still be worth only 3k.
Technically you can sell non REM monsters too, but they're worthless. Most sell for 1 point, non descend bosses like biweekly dragons sell for 5, and descend bosses sell for 10. They had an event recently where certain difficult descend bosses were worth 100 instead, but it was still a trap: 50 stamina for 100 monster points means it would take 30 runs aka 1500 stamina just to buy a Tamadra.
For price perspective, the latent Tamadras all cost between 10k and 20k, the dragon series is 300k, and they introduced a new marionette trio this week for 250k each whose gimmick is changing the enemy's color.
I need to ask a totally basic question. What do you call the awakened skills that show up around the bottom of the frame of a character's info screen? Like you have all of the awakened skills along the right of the picture but there are ones on the bottom.
Latent Awakenings
Links:
Dungeon Bonus Timetable
Puzzledragonx Database Best pad site
pad.wikia.com
Puzzle & Dragons Global Wiki
Monsters Beginners Should Farm For
Efficient Power Up Fusions
Official Facebook Page
Puzzle & Dragon Simulator
Added September 4, 2013:
Skill up info with chart
Drop Rate info with chart
+Egg Farming Info
ElementWrath on
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Posts
Last edited 1/26/2015
Hera Strat
Have you seen him? Now you have
What information should I include in the thread OP? What should be removed?
Floor is yours.
Also, in case you don't get the reference in the new title (which I am quite proud of):
Have you seen him? Now you have
Twitch: akThera
Steam: Thera
*Absorbs Light*
*Absorbs Dark*
*one-shot pre-emptive hit*
Oh right.
A lot of these were from 38thDoe and it somewhat pains me to remove them but I agree.
Have you seen him? Now you have
You then have 4 or 5 turns to heal up and kill him, but Tardis was hardly tickling him. He really shouldn't need any awakenings, being able to hit 100x with just his own skill used each turn. UGH UGH UGH
Twitch: akThera
Steam: Thera
The King, he lives!
Have you seen him? Now you have
Wait she has 9 stars? That's MP dragon level isn't it?
Blue Sonia got one too, and yes they are both hella strong and rad now
Twitch: akThera
Steam: Thera
Twitch: akThera
Steam: Thera
This is special to me. I will cherish and protect this post.
I too, still have my Light Demon.
Have you seen him? Now you have
Did anyone buy the LP for that?
It came on a hexagon vinyl, and I can't quite remember whether I forked out for it or not.
Have you seen him? Now you have
maybe just dump the element resist ones on defensive subs
Streaming 8PST on weeknights
I think the only other game I've seen with worse inventory management is FFRK with how the average person's inventory is 80% accessories.
Currently sitting on 415 stones and waiting for mid year PCGF.
I dunno what latent ones you have sitting around, but...
Doing "rainbow resist" on commonly used monsters is a strategy. (for 6th slot, look at monster's highest stat and use one that boosts it, or just dump the auto-heal ones there.)
Awaken, enhance, redeemable "killers" on your button team (if you have one)
Other "killer" latents on your guys you take into Arenas 1 and 3. (Or trade them all to meeeee I neeeed them!)
Skill-delay resist (between 2 and 5) on any monster who's skill you NEED and will die if it's delayed. (Tardis, Fujin and friends, Odindragon, etc)
Cannot answer this question without a look at your current monsters.
Within the next month or two, we should be getting the update that will allow all evo materials to stack. That's gonna free up a gajillion spots in everyone's boxes.
Twitch: akThera
Steam: Thera
Have you seen him? Now you have
It's something that ought to have been done a long long time ago.
It can't, because some of those can be evo'd or leveled up. Only (all) evo mats are already max level with no evolutions themselves.
Twitch: akThera
Steam: Thera
But but all that money for stones to expand inventory.
Although to be fair ffrk used to be much worse. You know those upgrade materials you have thousands of? They used to count as inventory space and not stack. Yeah.
That is legitimately horrifying to remember, because yeah I do remember that now I think of it
are the four gentleman even worth evolving? I am struggling with the new descends they're putting out and am a little afraid of Arena 4. this coming from a guy who was able to beat Sunken Serpent Labyrinth and can farm Arena 3. at least hexa wasn't too bad.
I was wondering what Gungho was going to do to mitigate the stacking materials update since it'd make inventory less necessary.
Also 60 day deletion seems rough. What happened to 365 days? For that matter what happened to infinite time.
Diamond Fruits seem like they are only needed for Sonias that I have.
Ancient Tri God Mask, How do you even get to that zeus I can't read the chart. lol. Is super hera even worth making?
Jewel of Creation apparently can turn ronia into just a sword and shield. Is that a thing now?
Streaming 8PST on weeknights
Yeah the equip awakening the item will have basically means the awakenings will also be inherited in the assist
Though the item version will have far fewer awakenings, usually just the theme ones - without looking, probably rows for ronia?
Fuck me if I want that RagDrag from the monthly quest I'm gonna have to stone through Challenge 10 I think. Always fun when a pre-emptive kills you through a shield then after that floor it's goddamn Vishnu here to wreck your day.
Twitch: akThera
Steam: Thera
it was miserable
Time Zone: Eastern
I'm working on my finished Gronia team, gonna be Fio Fio RagDrag OdinDra Cotton, gonna replace RagDrag with Diablos if I ever roll an inheritable leader swap.