Getting Started (for new players)

Puzzle and Dragons can have a steep learning curve that isn't well explained unless you are in a support group that is willing to hold your hand answers questions or offers advice. This guide (I hope) should help out a few newer players in learning the basics of the game as well as a few things to help them along the way.

PART 1: Team Building

https://meosenpai.blogspot.com/2017/02/pad-team-building-and-you.html

Previously covered in an earlier article, it should explain a bit about the thinking process behind team choices. For a lot of newer players though, cards aren't readily available so often times farmables (cards you can get in game without spending magic stones or are readily available provided you can clear the dungeons) are the go to choice.

Some cards that aren't as well known are using evo materials and super dragons as stat sticks. For early game, you can get a lot done just by relying on your leader skill and having a decent hp pool to get through normal dungeons. Evo materials like EKMD, Rainbow Keeper, and Dub Mythlits have decent stats for early game, require no EXP to level, and can sometimes have a useful skill for the team; EKMD has a rotating skill and Dub Mythlit has an average CD dark orb create and enhance. The super dragons are a skillup for the Greco Roman series, which are a double orb change that can usually give you much needed orbs to push numbers on normal dungeon boss floors. There are also numerous skill up materials that hold skills of very good cards which can also be used and can also be skilled up (available during Rare Monster PAL Machine or Element Carnivals).

PART 2: Orb Matching

It is really hard to type out how to match orbs, so here is a video that explains a lot about learning how to make combos and improve your game. (its quite long, but I like it)

As always, practice, practice, and practice will help make you more comfortable in achieving higher combos and stepping up your game. Endless corridors are always available to help you practice making combos. Start off easy by just learning how to make a few easy matches, then branch out and start adding in little things.

A couple of things to start considering in improving your gameplay:

1. Learning strict color matches
Some leaders require a a couple of color matches to partially or fully activate their leader skill. Learning how to match those colors and moving on to off colors is an easy way to start learning matches. To make it easier...

2. Orb Clearing and Saving
Most leaders do not need all colors of orbs. Sometimes it is best to clear orbs your team doesn't need to make way for desirable ones. Getting good at orb clearing and saving can often help you in saving skill usage, stalling, keeping more orbs for bigger damage bursts or setting up a board for full leader skill activation.

3. Learning Cascades
Although a higher level of play, it doesn't hurt to start off learning a couple of cascading tricks. Cascading is where you set orbs to fall into matches after matching other orbs, resulting in more combos and being able to match orbs in otherwise hard to reach areas. Making many moves to reach one orb for a combo often makes you lose time, which leads into...

4. Moving Faster
Sonic would be proud. Orb movement time is limited, so learning how to make your matches in smaller amounts of time is crucial to high end gameplay, and increases your ability to spot combos more easily. It is easier to play with more time, and newer players have access to a few things to make it easier, but eventually you will want to move away from stacking time extends and learn how to spot combos and make efficient orb movement paths. Learning diagonals and having very precise and efficient movement go a long way.

PART 3: Stone Management

The IAP currency of the game, magic stones are given out occasionally, and are also rewards for completing dungeons for the first time or as parts of giveaways. For early game, knowing how to spend your stones and knowing what they are worth can make early game a lot easier. (planned IAP players can probably skip this part)

BOX SPACE: Having lots of extra box space is great. Early game players can skip capacity increases due to them not having a wide selection of cards to hold, and knowing which things to keep can help in managing box space. Some of the early quests require you to buy box space to complete them (130 box space) so investing a stone or so to complete the quest for badges can help. Otherwise, manage your box space so you can keep your space high for things you want to keep. Box space for tons of evo materials and fusion materials is often times a luxury. (at least it isnt 25 max at start anymore)

FRIEND SPACE: Skip it entirely. Chances are you won't be needing a wide variety of friends to choose from, and having a couple of frequent players can be all you need. As your box and leader use grow, you may want to make more friends, but not until much later.

STAMINA REFRESH: Skip it. Your early rank means you can refill your stamina quite often with ranking up, and will help in teaching you how to manage stamina usage for efficiency and maximize rank XP. Refreshing stamina becomes much better once you have higher stamina, so spending them at lower ranks for just one or two runs of super dragons or STTDs won't have much effect.

DUNGEON CONTINUE: Very often No. Unless you are being carried for a high level dungeon for a card you really REALLY REALLY need or for a very hard challenge that you are just inches away from completion, NO. The stone is better spent on a stamina refresh to attempt the dungeon again, and then the guidelines above will apply.

REM ROLLS: The bulk of your stone use. Manage restraint on rolling the REM unless it is during godfest or a very strong collab (like Final Fantasy or Bleach). If you need help on whether to roll in a collab, ask around for what is good and what it offers your box. Specialty REMS are often a trap for newer players, and are usually worth only one roll for fun. Rolling outside of godfest at very early ranks may help your team or give options to start working on a different box element, depending on what you already have, but in general always wait for godfests. pls no yolo roll

PART 4: Dungeon Research

A sub section on team building, knowing what to expect in dungeons may change what you bring on the team. Doing dungeons in coop will half your stamina cost, and opens up opportunities to be carried or have your weaknesses be covered by the other player. Often times not having five skill bind resist(SBR) or being vulnerable to being bound will often end runs for early game players, but having a coop partner to fix/help with those problems can greatly increase your clear rates. However, in my opinion it is best to start completing dungeons in solo just to git gud, but as long as you aren't being reliant on carries to get through the game you should be able to develop skills or knowledge as a player. A lot of my work is centered around solo gameplay, but don't let that stop you from doing coop. And of course, coop for farming dungeons is always the best for being stamina efficient.


PART EX: Terms

There are quite a few terms and abbreviations used in the PAD community, so I thought it would be helpful to know a few good ones.

SB: Skill boost. Decreases turns needed for a skill to be on start of a dungeon. Often good on coop for button farming.

Button: Often times a team that will only use card skills to clear dungeons. This ranges from doing dungeons like Tamadras and Metal Dragons using true damage skills, or having a team made specifically to do very little in terms of thinking, like the very basic STTD farming Goemon team. Button should not be confused with ALB swipe farming, but some button farming setups may involve a board swipe at the end.

ALB: Awoken Liu Bei. High end coop farming lead that makes a lot of dungeons trivial.

GaNazca: Ganesha/Nazca team for increased coins and rank XP farming.

EKMD: Extreme King Metal Dragon. Can refer to both the dungeon or the monster itself.

SKC: Super King Carnival. The best dungeon to farm card XP.

STTD: Star Thieves Treasure Den. A dungeon made specifically for farming + eggs to enhance your cards.

OE: Orb enhance. Does stuff with increased damage numbers.

TPA: Two prong attack. An awakening that lets individual cards do more damage when matching orbs in a set of four.

SBR: Skill bind resist. Stops blockage of skill usage, 20% per awakening and additive.

MP: Monster Points. Separate currency used to buy special cards or evo mats, shouldn't be too relevant for early game players and are often for mid-late or endgame players. DONT SPEND ON EVO MATS UNLESS WHALE

A1/2/3: Arena 1/2/3, or Bipolar Goddess. An endgame dungeon that possesses random spawns and offers challenge, with a random Py at the end as a reward for completion.

COOP/DC: Coop play with disconnect. For those of you who want to play a dungeon in solo but want to halve the stamina cost. (also involves not having your badge)

PAL: Pal egg machine. Rotates around in three different sets that gives either Enhance materials, Evo materials, or skillup(Rare) materials.

REM: Rare egg machine. Where you spend the bulk of your stones rolling for stuff.

Whale: someone who spends a lot of real world money on the game. Also goes by IAP, but as long as you have spent less than $100k on the game you aren't IAP. (source: broccoflowers)


This should cover a lot about getting into PAD. I have gotten a lot of enjoyment out of this game, and I want others to enjoy it at their own pace or for their own reasons.

Chibi Rem

This REM is pretty bad. These chibis may be decent inherits as long as you aren't using them for assist buffs, but then if you are you should have pulled in the real REM during godfest. It may be worth a fun (ONE) pull just to see if you get one of the real pulls, but otherwise you really shouldn't.

GOOD ROLLS

Isis - for prongs on your Radra team and Facet enhance. Otherwise, meh. At least it is unbindable as well.

Yomi - the active is somewhat useful for a few farming setups, or in general a board enhance with time extension.

Lilith - low CD inheritable poison (if you don't need then skip)

LValk - in a world of no quad prongs, chibi valk was actually a decent sub with triple prongs for high damage. Today though, she's less worth unless you don't have any light prong access.

DQ Hera - Its an inheritable 30% gravity that isn't Hades.

Aside from "needing" other inherits, there isn't really much to expect out of this REM.

Pantheon Review: Heroes

One of the best pantheons in the game regardless of where you are in the meta, the Heroes offer high strength to your box and there is always room for duplicates. While their leader skills are heavily unfavored in today's meta, they make for very sought after subs for any row based team. In addition, buffs to the pantheon are coming around, and if Revo Panda's buffs are indicative of relative strength, we can assume that the Revos for the rest of the pantheon can be equally useful. While the entire pantheon has a row heart bind clear, they are also bindable which makes them less reliable, but still helpful.

For my grading scale, I will use ABCD grades as follows:

A: This is really good, and is quite a strong addition to any box.
B: Has good applications where needed, and offers your box flexibility.
C: Primarily niche or very situational, but great where applicable.
D: Offers very little to your box, you'd have to scrape really hard to find a use.

Yamato Takeru

Yamato has been a staple for any fire row team. All of Yamato's awakenings are relevant to a fire row team, having 3 skill boosts, 3 fire rows, a SBR, and even a time extend. Yamato also has a row heart for bind clear if you need it as well. There are few teams that wouldn't take Yamato as a sub or as a skill inherit, and his typing of God, Dragon, and Attacker make him suitable for niche teams like Raoh or even Ronia, if you are still somehow running her in 2017. Other teams he would contribute heavily to are Split Rodin, Revo Minerva, Krishna, or even row-based Shivadra teams. Breaking wood to fire and dark to hearts is relatively safe for most fire teams, so his inherit becomes very useful for teams like Tsubaki or Dantalion as well. Can also be leader paired with Goemon swipe teams if necessary.

Skill Value: A

Lead Value: C+

Sub Value: A+

Awakenings: A+

Overall Value: A

Tomatoes.

Andromeda

Andromeda has become an instant staple for any water box, with her array of useful awakenings that are notably 3 water rows, 2 SBR, and a time extend. She also carries a random TPA awakening and a row heart, which can be useful from time to time. With the rise of Meri (and split Blodin to an extent) as a team needing double SBR, Andromeda is a must-have sub to hit 100% SBR. Her skill turns fire to water and lights to hearts, and like Yamato there are few teams that cannot use Andromeda, like Revo Hermes or Awoken Sun Quan. For the majority of other water based teams, her skill is an extremely useful double orb change that benefits teams like Summyr, Sumire, Sarasvati, and Meri/Blodin who could always use hearts to stay healthy.

Skill Value: A-

Lead Value: C+

Sub Value: A

Awakenings: A+

Overall Value: A-

Double SBR is a thing again.

Perseus

Perseus has been one of my staple slots on wood row teams for SBR and utility. While he only has 2 rows, he makes up for it for having 2 SBR, 2 SB, and 2 TE to balance your team out, and a utility row heart as well. With Revo Astaroth looking to be very strong, Perseus' skill is a no brainer for inheritance either as a skill enhance for Astaroth herself or attached to one her subs like GValk or Leeza. Since his skill breaks water to wood and fires to heal, he cannot be used for Artemis/Balboa and has reduced effectiveness for Acala, but the skill remains heavily useful for any other wood team, like Revo Parvati, Kaede, ALB, or Revo Meimei. In addition, ALB and Perseus make a wood heavy bicolor when used together, and is a must have for any ALB swipe team that needs SBR coverage. Can also make for a substitute leader pairing for ALB.

Skill Value: A-

Lead Value: B-

Sub Value: B

Awakenings: A+

Overall Value: B+

Since more wood teams are often TPA based, Perseus is not as desirable as a sub.

Sun Wukong

Wukong is one of the best investments I have kept from my early game, and has become a well balanced sub for my light teams with his double orb create. His awakenings include 3 SB, 2 light rows, and a TE, but also includes a row heart for bind clear and a TPA. Wukong breaks water to light and dark to heart, which rarely conflict with light teams, with the exception of Lightning and other light-based rainbow teams. His skill does share a lot of orbs, like DQXQ with dark to light and LAkechi for water to heart, so most likely you would use Wukong's skill on his own. The assortment of teams that would use Wukong as a sub include Tifa/Ilm, Myr, or Revo Venus, and his skill becomes useful for Paimon or Revo Izanagi as a double orb create. I use Wukong mostly on my Row/TPA mixed Myr team, to help with clearing lower floors with TPAs but still contributing well when I need rows for later.

Skill Value: A-

Lead Value: C

Sub Value: A-

Awakenings: A

Overall Value: B+

Wish I kept a dupe for inheritance over himself.

Pandora

Both of Pandora's evolutions are useful to any box, depending on what you need, but I prefer the Awoken version. Pandora is a strong sub for any dark row team, which has fallen off the meta quite a bit. Dark rows used to be very strong, and can still be utilized for players in the mid to pre endgame. The differences between Pandora's Awoken and ultimate evolution are minimal, namely that the Uvo gets a TPA and another TE, with lower HP and more RCV, and the Awoken getting another Row, a haste attached to her skill, and more HP and less RCV. Pandora's skill breaks wood to dark and lights to heal, which bar her from Revo Vritra and Zuoh(2017?) teams, but in general her skill is great for any dark team. While she contributes less to TPA based teams, she is always a solid choice for a row team. She is also the only Hero to receive a "passable" leader skill, but she has fallen from the meta since and remains a solid leader for newer to midrange players. 

Skill Value: A(U), A+(A)

Lead Value: B-(U), B(A)

Sub Value: A(U), A(A)

Awakenings: A(U), A-(A)

Overall Value: A

Cute.

Pantheon Total Value: A-

This pantheon is very strong. If this pantheon is also featured alongside another good pantheon during godfest, I would highly recommend pulling even if the featured GFEs aren't 100% favored to your liking.

New Weapon/Brave Series Opinions

These are all pretty good bases for button farming, with multiboost and stupidly high attack, and an SBR to boot. Only have 1 SB, but I think for where you want to use her for buttoning the teams should already have a high amount of SB anyways.
All of their awakenings consist of being unbindable, one SBR, one SB, a row heart, and a multiboost.

The skills look largely like Aizen's skill, with double orb change and an element flip, but they do not make on color orbs if used as a sub on teams, which makes the skill more useful while they are a leader.

Claíomh Solais

She will be the highest attack in the game with a multiboost. Should make buttoning Starden easier, and possibly even without having Grimmjow on both sides.

Skill: Water > Light, Dark > Heal. Change attribute to Light for 2 turns.
Wukong's skill, but without the heart enhance. 1 turn faster CD, so can be useful for any light teams if needed for SI.

Leader: Light Atk x 5, Fire Hp x 1.5. 1.5x Atk for 2 Light combos, 2x for 3+ Light combos
Having no preference for rows or TPAs means you can go in any direction. Largely, I can see an interesting pairing with Tifa or Ilmina for the enlarged board, and the added HP boost she provides will pair greatly. Ilm of course is a great sub, as well as any usual light power subs like Ariel, NY Kanna, or even split Hathor to utilize those 7c awakenings.

Grade: A

Arondight

Still impressive attack stats for a button base, and on color for Grimmjow inherit stat boost. Can also hold great water inherits like Isis or Orochi, if you really needed her typing or attribute coverage.

Skill: Fire > Light, Dark > Heal. Change attribute to Light for 2 turns.

A reverse DQXQ active. I guess you could combo this with a Gadius board if you wanted a more even split of orbs, or as a substitute for LAkechi/NYHanzo on a Saria board. 

Leader: Light 5x Attack, Water 1.5x HP. 2x Attack when 6+ connected Lights.

The leader skill definitely sounds like a row leader to me. You get access to A.DQXQ and L/B Apollo for orb changes, and A.Thor for a boost when considering light main attribute. For a water main attribute it doesn't look as good, since you will want to match light rows for your damage. You can skip water sub attribute if you don't want the HP boost, since the list of light/water row subs isn't the greatest. Raijin I guess is an ok but less than desirable sub, if you use her skill in conjunction with Arondight's for guaranteed 6 lights.

Grade: C

Caladbolg

A light cross leader that uses wood sub attribute for health. It is almost like playing a light version of Aizen, trading an RCV multiplier for an HP multiplier. Also, lowest attack of the series (but still high compared to everything else)

Skill: Water > Light, Fire > Heart. Change attribute to Light for 2 turns.

Pairs with Superman for a light favorable bicolor. Otherwise, only competes with Baal and Wukong for a water > light convert and DQXQ in light attribute for fire > heart. If you don't have them, this kind of orb convert is useful.

Leader: 5x Atk to Light, 1.5x HP to wood. 2x Atk for each light cross.

So many similarities to Aizen, but is only a 25x unconditional compared to 36x. You get access to Valkyrie(Ana and chibi as well), and Awoken Apollo for orb changers. You can also sub Athena Another if you have it, or regular Athena, and even Momiji is surprisingly decent here. NY Spica also can be pretty useful to cover SBR and create a column of lights for a guaranteed cross. Awoken Amaterasu and Awoken Indra give Caladbolg easy access to great utility as well. Could make an interesting pairing with Odindra to cover the low RCV, or Ma Chao for a 7x6 and RCV.

Grade: B

Gan Jiang and Mo Ye

I love me some dark row leads. However, the light/dark sub pool isn't the greatest, but if don't mind losing the HP multiplier you get access to really good row subs. On typing for Juza for buttons.

Skill: Water > Dark, Wood > Heal. Change attribute to Dark for 2 turns.

Water to dark is pretty rare, shared by Satsuki and Henry from the Pad Tourney collab series. Can pair with Karin's or Ryune's board for a dark heavy bicolor with hearts.

Leader: 5x Atk to Dark, 1.5x HP to Light. 2x Attack for 6+ connected Darks.
You get access to FA Luci, Escha, Castor, and Lead Akechi as pretty good subs. Sheena is an oncolor bicolor change you could use as a sub, or as a quality inherit. Otherwise, Dark has an abundance of row subs if you don't want the HP multiplier, and you could tap into the TPA side for the unconditional 25x with Sub Satsuki or DKanna. You could also use Dill Sirius system for old school style Shivadra farming, but its 2017. Can also pair with Diao Chan for 7x6 and RCV.

Grade: B

Mysteltainn(?)

Wood and dark funsies. I can see Revo Meimei system being really interesting here, with Gronia board being amazing. Also, the next highest attack with multiboost behind Claíomh Solais, and on typing for Vritra inherit for buttoning.

Skill: Fire > Wood, Light > Heart. Change attribute to Wood for 2 turns.

Fire to wood is decent, and can pair with Leilan or Zuoh/Romia for a wood heavy board. Losing fire/light means it misses out on being excellent for wood cross leads like Acala and Odindra, but its a pretty decent orb change to have.

Leader: 5x Atk to Wood, 1.5 HP to dark. 1.5x Atk for 2 Wood combos, 2x for 3+ Wood combos

I can see a potential in pairing with Romia for a 7x6, but it won't be as strong as Claíomh Solais pairing with Tifa or Ilmina. Revo Meimei system is definitely considered here for funsies. Aside from Meimei, you get Sub Ishida, Gronia, Ruel, Romia, Lead Spica, Ragdra, and Revo Astaroth for noticeable on color subs. A. Freyja, Revo Ceres, and Revo Susano supply decent utility to be considered for base subs as well.

Grade: A

Kind of an interesting series, but should be great for both button farming and as interesting leaders for mid to endgame.