Puzzle and Dragons is by far my favorite mobile game, and is perhaps one of my biggest gaming vices ever. I’ve been at it for over a year and a half now and there’s no end to the puzzles nor the dragons in sight, and there are a lot of people who have been playing for way longer than I have.
There are a lot of bad decisions I made in-game in my first few months that I look back on and wish someone had slapped the phone out of my hand.
Puzzle and Dragons is a complicated game no matter how you look at it. You spend months toiling away on your teams because of the importance of team synergy and can spend anywhere from a second to several minutes plotting out a move in a difficult dungeon.
It is not a game for the impatient nor does it give you any sort of real idea of what you’re getting into at the beginning. At the start you’re like a newborn babe addicted to that sweet, sweet puzzling with no context.
There are some pieces of advice I always give my friends when they start out that I simply wish I had when I was new to the game. So many opportunities wasted. Don’t let it happen to you!
Plus eggs should be used carefully
Plus.. eggs? What are plus eggs?
See this? This is a plus egg, and from it will hatch a unit with a stat bonus that can save your team’s life.
Plus eggs boost an individual stat each, giving either +10 HP, +5 attack, or +3 recovery.
From early to later ranks, you get these babies mostly from trash units dropped in dungeons. At later ranks you end up farming for these specifically because you want the extra stats on your primary units (usually leaders), but early on they don’t seem to be all that useful.
There are a number of dungeons you can run at specific times for an extra chance at plus eggs, but we’re not going to get into all that. Do know that you have a higher chance of getting plus eggs from technical dungeons on Mondays.
You want to save those pluses, even if you don’t know which units you want to feed them to yet. One way to do this is to feed all your plused units to a single useless unit until you know what you want to feed them to. This way you don’t waste Monster Box space and can use your pluses on a unit you’re going to get a lot of mileage with.
Don’t bother rolling for units outside of Godfests
Man, I just love getting new units. I used to love getting new units so much I pulled whenever I could. And you know what I got? Garbage.
Garbage.
Garbage.
This happened a lot. (And thank goodness golems aren’t in REM anymore.)
Eventually I, like anyone not making in-app purchases and with half a brain, stopped pulling like my stones were on fire and would burn my account to the ground and learned some semblance of patience.
Any experienced Puzzle and Dragons player will tell you to hold off on pulling until a Godfest rolls around and as of seven or eight months ago, I do agree. I wish I saw the wisdom of that advice earlier.
During Godfests, you have a higher chance of pulling actually rare and really (and truly) good units from the Rare Egg Machine (REM). This is crucial for non-IAP players because of how slowly stones end up trickling onto your account later on. Every pull counts.
Now, I’m not going to say for you to always roll during every Godfest. At early ranks, do what you want. But as you get higher up, you’re going to want certain units to add to your teams. This means being picky with which Godfests you should pull on — and my next tip will help you with just that.
Puzzle Dragon X is your best friend
Every popular game has some sort of fan wiki and Puzzle & Dragons is no different. Except the biggest one it has is pretty much amazing.
There are multiple fan wikis for the game, but Puzzle Dragon X is by far the most active, comprehensive, and helpful for players of all skill levels. It’s absolute heaven if you have a Puzzle & Dragons addiction.
This site keeps tracks of events, daily dungeons, Godfests, North American and Japanese releases and events, and the North American Facebook. Not only that but its unit pages are second to none; there’s a friend finder, and tools for theorycrafting your teams.
It’s the most amazing resource you could possibly hope for if you want to keep at the game for a long time or just want to poke around and look at units.
Hold on to your evolution materials! As best you can, anyway
If you have never touched a free to play mobile RPG before, the concept of evolution materials (evo mats) can be foreign. You need units to evolve your units into better units, that will probably need to be evolved into even better units. It’s a cycle and it takes a heavy toll on your Monster Box.
Some evo mats are harder to come by than others, and you are going to want to hold onto them, especially at early ranks.
These are all tough to get at early ranks. Somewhere between ranks 50 and 150 (depending on your skill and roll luck), you’ll start being able to get Keeper of the Rainbow (first column, second row), Mystic Mask (third column, third row), and Dub Mythlits (second column, third row) from their respective dungeons regularly.
If you’re super low rank and somehow get any of the above, hold onto them. If you’re only sort of low rank (pre-100) you probably only need to hold onto all of them but the ones with their names bolded above.
You never know when new evolutions are coming nor do you know what the REM has in store for you down the line. Stockpile your rare evo mats, you won’t regret the convenience down the line.
Keep track of your daily metal dungeon schedule.. or else
So now you have a link to Puzzle Dragon X (if you didn’t have one before). What’s the biggest benefit to the site?
How about an accurate daily metal dungeon tracker?
Daily metal dungeons give metal dragons of their respective colors, which are your biggest source of unit EXP. Pop a metal dragon into a unit of its own color and you will get 1.5x EXP for that fusion. Not bad, right?
Metal dungeons are different from daily dungeons and from scheduled event and defended dungeons. They come about at random times each day, which you can see on Puzzle Dragon X, and are absolutely crucial to your progress.
I always check my metal schedule in the mornings when I wake up, but I’m an addict. If you’re not an addict (yet), just check it out per day to wander in and grab up some metals. The EXP you get is a must for making any progress.
I wish someone had given me these tips outright when I first started playing Puzzle & Dragons. It’s my own fault for not thinking I’d be playing for so long and not caring at the start, but heed this advice if you have a feeling you’ll be playing a while. Your PAD life will be that much easier for it.
Published: Jan 4, 2016 03:41 pm