Puzzle and Dragons 13: Always evolving to ensure you're always screwed over

[Chaore]

It's a descent boss, 0 rcv is their fav way to hold something back.

There is one thing going for him over genbu. Fire->wood is too common and light/dark-> is very rare.

Astaroth even changes it herself, which is useful.

[commandercool]

Wow, Cauchemar is very, very interesting. Love that design space. The friend leader system is very elegant, this plays with that in a way with a lot of potential.

At some point I'd love to see a Valkyrie's flying horse monster with an active that enhances orbs of whatever color Valkyrie you have with it. It seems weird that she doesn't have a flying horse yet. And maybe a Zeus Uvo that cares about Hera and does different things depending on which Heras you bring with him. Lots of cool stuff that can be done with this.

[hyorinryu]

Wow, Cauchemar is very, very interesting. Love that design space. The friend leader system is very elegant, this plays with that in a way with a lot of potential.

At some point I'd love to see a Valkyrie's flying horse monster with an active that enhances orbs of whatever color Valkyrie you have with it. It seems weird that she doesn't have a flying horse yet. And maybe a Zeus Uvo that cares about Hera and does different things depending on which Heras you bring with him. Lots of cool stuff that can be done with this.

Sounds like something Izanagi could have been, though that would be breaking gatcha law I think.

[The Greatest Dog]

waaait back up two pages
Green Guan Yu is being changed from Physical to Physical+Dragon?
so doesn't that encompass everything Red Guan Yu does, too?

[Chaore]

waaait back up two pages
Green Guan Yu is being changed from Physical to Physical+Dragon?
so doesn't that encompass everything Red Guan Yu does, too?

Who knows what RGY might get to compensate!!! (Besides being blatantly better because Red is a better dragon color)

[hyorinryu]

waaait back up two pages
Green Guan Yu is being changed from Physical to Physical+Dragon?
so doesn't that encompass everything Red Guan Yu does, too?

His leader skill encompasses dragons, but he himself isn't.  I wouldn't say he obsoletes him. He misses out of a bunch of the fun dragon stuff like Shiryuu. Gungho gave up because no one wanted their green stuff to get  physical to make him slightly less garbage.  Wish he was dragon type. I'd actually want him then.

[OverlordChirei]

0/7 on flame chaser encounters

What was the invade rate for Legend again, something dumb like 4%???

[hyorinryu]

0/7 on flame chaser encounters

What was the invade rate for Legend again, something dumb like 4%???

We don't know, but I have heard things in the range of 4 and 10.

[OverlordChirei]

We don't know, but I have heard things in the range of 4 and 10.

Huh... Noted. I've heard 10% for Legend Chinagirls, so that might be where.

Hopefully I run into some during 3x invade rate. At least the exp is nice!

[Jq1790]

■① Daily Log-in Bonuses10/9 - 10/13 - 1 free Magic Stone & 1 free TAMADRA10/14 - 10/15 - 1 free Magic Stone
*Bonuses will be distributed as late as 3:59 AM (PDT) the following day.

■② Gifts Aplenty
New gift dungeons are always a treat! The monsters in these dungeons may not enjoy being gift-wrapped though, so don?t be surprised if these dungeons are unexpectedly difficult!

10/9 - 10/15 - A Gift from the Holy Beasts
*Please note that ?A Gift from the Holy Beasts? has a stamina cost of 50. If you do not meet the stamina requirements this dungeon will not display in the client.

■③ Wealth and Splendor
How do you like your Jewel and Metal dragons? We like them widely available for all, so this event offers an extended duration of Tower of Jewels!
10/13 - 10/17 - Tower of Jewels

■④ Special Event Dungeon Schedule
*The Spirit Jewels are active from 10/13 to 10/22! See here for details: http://on.fb.me/1swdWlb
10/9 - Dragon Zombie
10/10 - Beelzebub Descended!
10/11 - RO ACE Collab
10/11 - The Goddess Descended!
10/12 - Zeus-Dios Descended!
10/13 - Hera-Ur Descended!
10/14 - Hera-Is Descended!
10/15 - Hera-Sowilo Descended!

■⑤Awesome Daily Bonuses 
Pal Egg Event:10/9 - 10/15 - Jewel/Metal King Dragons
1.5x Drops for Normal Dungeons- Use this bonus to clear the Normal dungeons and aim for Divine Queen?s Sleepless Castle!
1.5x chance for 'GREAT!' or 'SUPER!!' EXP Gain
2x King appearance rates for the Metal and Jewel Dragons
2x Skill Up rate
2x Drops for the Daily Special Dungeons
2x Coins for the Weekend Dungeon

So uh...hype much?  Something new for NA and cool bolded for emphasis.  Don't forget the Chinese girls like to fight back, hard!

[MatsuriSakuragi]

Hmm. Which is typically harder to get, green or gold jewels? This is important.

EDIT: Hmm. Should I try for Zeus-Dios or is the dungeon harder than it looks?

[Mr. Sacchi]

Okay so, gift from the holy beasts, I should probably just get whatever comes first because I have no real use for any of the orb-related evolutions right now.

Then, there's Hera-Is, I don't know if I can do it but if I manage to that's another staple monster for my Horus Team.

Meanwhile, Tower of Jewels. I HOPE I GET A DECENT AMOUNT OF PLUS EGGS.

Also, today I learned that if I spend more than 5 seconds looking at each screen, I can reliably activate Horus's x4 multiplier, and sometimes even his x5 through sheer pattern recognition, so I guess I don't suck at this game, yay?

[Zerviscos]

Wat? No Rare Evo materials at PEM? Welp, what am I gonna do with my 30 PEM Pulls?

[Jq1790]

Hmm. Which is typically harder to get, green or gold jewels? This is important.

EDIT: Hmm. Should I try for Zeus-Dios or is the dungeon harder than it looks?

Well, I seem to recall people saying his dungeon is really hard, like one of the harder Mythicals, so...take that as you will, I suppose.

Looking at the numbers, it looks pretty ridiculous, not gonna lie.  Then again, I'm not a real Mythical player at ALL, so it could just be that talking in my case.

Fakeedit:
En:  I guess I forgot to pastte it in, but this is only part 1 of the event.

[Mr. Sacchi]

En:  I guess I forgot to pastte it in, but this is only part 1 of the event.

Wonder what part 2 will be.

Aren't Thoth & Sopdet supposed to be the next Descended? Maybe we'll get them once the next part rolls around.

And since part 1 has the gift from the Holy Beasts thing, maybe we'll get the Fruit Dragon gift dungeon in part 2?

[OverlordChirei]

Also, today I learned that if I spend more than 5 seconds looking at each screen, I can reliably activate Horus's x4 multiplier, and sometimes even his x5 through sheer pattern recognition, so I guess I don't suck at this game, yay?

Good. You're learning very important things.

It's not odd for me to spend 5-10 minutes looking at a board before making a move. This is how I'm able to reliably bastet/dqxq Shingen so far without dying on any run. Just remember to slow down, and you'll see that Horus's LS isn't that intimidating to activate. Over time, this WILL become second-nature to you.

I also recommend playing with other FL combos if you want to mix it up even harder(within reasonable bounds, of course - don't take a weird combo you've never used before into a descend). This is pretty much how I practiced/graduated from just matching R/G/L with Leilan.

[MatsuriSakuragi]

Ahahahahah I don't have the patience to look at a board for more than a minute or two.

Here's my typical MO for Kirin, which can also apply for Horus:

1. Check the board. Is there at least 3 of every color you need?
--- If yes, go to step 2.
--- If no, stall by comboing off all hearts and dark (since Kirin teams don't need it) or do some orb changing if you have it (I run Apollo but only ever use him on bosses or desperate situations. All I need to safely use him is 3 red, green, and blue orbs. The rest is simple.) Go back to Step 1.

2. Look for the easy combos first. If you have time, set some up. Do some risk/reward assessment: Will you survive the next hit? You may wanna go for it anyway if you won't.

3. Are there orbs you need that are far apart? Yes, there probably are. The farthest orb is the one you will use to move.

4. Use that orb to quickly pair off the easy combos. Especially good if the easy combos are in proximity of the farthest separated orb you need.

5. Obviously, use your orb for the last combo.

6. Cross your fingers and pray for the best.

If you practice it you can do this whole process very quickly.

[Zerviscos]

I don't even have an orb + orb multiplier leader, and I can still do a normal 8 - 12 combo on the board, considering it can be done ofc.
I just practice even if I don't have one, just so I could deal massive dmg of course. Two 3 connected orb combo of the same color, is particularly better than a Single 6 connected orb of the same color, unless it has row enhance x2.

[MatsuriSakuragi]

I don't even have an orb + orb multiplier leader, and I can still do a normal 8 - 12 combo on the board, considering it can be done ofc.

Pretty impressive considering it's pretty fucking hard to do an 8 combo without Tsukuyomi and not even possible to do a 12 combo on one board without skyfalls :v

Anyway I just made an example of what I explained in my last post:

-- I noted that blue was the most separated combo and also the least common color of the ones I needed. Naturally, I started with that.

1. I saw that green was in my immediate proximity. Put that together first.
2. Red and yellow were clustered together. Pulling the red into a horizontal line and following through downward would cause the yellow orb on top to fall onto the others when canceled.
3. Finished the combo by matching the blue.

Basically you just go from easiest to hardest combo. What I do, at least.

[OverlordChirei]

Starting with an uncommon orb is a really good and often-used idea, yeah. There are sometimes boards where you get more than one of these loner orbs, and sometimes they may both equal out to the same number of combos, even. It's really good practice to figure out where to start drawing the line first. Everything will naturally fall into place after.

EDIT: I remembered that I found this neat tool a while back.

http://pad.dawnglare.com/?patt=BGLRBRDLGBLHHRDLBDRDRDLGDRBDGH

You can practice with Matsy's exact board up there. Follow the line if you need to and you can visually see how it plays out. Try to beat that combo, even.

(Note: Click the stopwatch at the top to enable the 4 second timer you'd normally find in-game. You can increase this to 5 because of double horus/double kirin time extends.)

[Yukarin]

http://pad.dawnglare.com/?patt=BGLRBRDLGBLHHRDLBDRDRDLGDRBDGH

http://pad.dawnglare.com/?patt=BGLRBRDLGBLHHRDLBDRDRDLGDRBDGH&replay=26|25|24|18|19|25|26|20|14|8|9|15|16|22|23|17|16|15|14|8|9|10|16|15|14|13|12|6|7|8|9|10|4|3

Here's what I'd do in 15 seconds of looking at the board.

...I'm way too used to rainbows. I could probably pop the rest of the red orbs if I thought about it hard enough.

[Thaws]

On the topic of combo-ing, one thing to note about distance between orbs is that vertical distance is easier to cover than horizontal distance.
So the orbs you'd choose to pick up would usually be one that's horizontally distant from the other 2 of the same colour than vertically distant ones.
This is because you can plan for combos to fall into place after the first "layer" of combos are cleared.

In Matsy's board for example, the four green orbs are kinda far horizontally and vertically, the 4th red orb is vertically far from the 5th and 6th ones (counting from left), and but the heart orbs has the furthest distance. So if I were to choose an orb to pick up when trying to maximize combos, I'd choose the heart orb. (Only if you're playing Bastet, Kushi or Anubis you'd try that though :V)

There are times where I'd spent half an hour staring at a board during a critical moment in a descent :V

http://pad.dawnglare.com/?patt=BGLRBRDLGBLHHRDLBDRDRDLGDRBDGH

8 combos in 44 moves. This is the best I could think of, since the green and 2nd red combo was kinda tricky to set up, but this illustrates my point about how the vertical distance of the green and red orbs can be covered but the heart combo is almost impossible unless you pick up the leftmost heart.
(Needed the practice for making 8 combos for using moonstet lols)

Edit:
Hahahaha people reports that lv10 of challenge dungeons is crazy hard as expected, but this is ridiculous.
Battle 1 Ult Hera hits you for 31k pre-emptively. So not even kushinada can save you. Either get a full 297-ed team, use 1.35/3/1 team leaders, or just give up a stone and continue so you can actually play on and get crushed by the insanity that follows.
P.S. Beelzebub use pre-emp full board poison orbs for your battle 2. lmao

Editedit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkAtMuz8AP0
Sasuke's blind playthrough. Even an all 297 Kali party struggles this badly. Though he did make some mistakes here and there and it's a blind playthrough. I laughed when he mistakenly thought Light Zeus was the last boss.

[Mr. Sacchi]

Just ran the new Hera dungeon while completely forgetting that Neptune was a thing... Naturally I couldn't break his defense so that's 40 stam down the drain.

Meh, I'll bring lucifer next time. He has an autoheal which means that friend GOdin + Uriel + Luci = happy me

[Zerviscos]

Pretty impressive considering it's pretty fucking hard to do an 8 combo without Tsukuyomi and not even possible to do a 12 combo on one board without skyfalls :v

Preparing to practice for when I get an Anubis. :V
Ofc the up to the 12 are heavily reliant on skyfalls(WHICH I AM LUCKY in most runs). So I guess I can go up far to 8 atleast, but my average is around 6-7 from what I noticed(depending if the board even has the right orbs that can do that).
I won't really have a problem matchmaking orbs up to 8, if it wasn't for my phone's small screen.
TBH, I only do vertical and horizontal slides, since diagonal ones won't work for mine, 'cause it sometimes slides straight-up. Which actually makes me infuriated.

Edit: This is what I meant by straight line sliding. Ofc my hand needs to be faaaast. Which I'm quite used to.
pad orb simulator replay

Edit2: Makes me want to switch devices to a tablet, just so I could diagonally slide.

[Mr. Sacchi]

I always wanted to do this silly combo.

Hey, it's a stylish way to get Anubis going!

(As if that would ever actually happen in a real environment.)

[trancehime]

Challenge Dungeon 10 DATA

F1 - DQ Hera
4.1M HP, 1 ct, 15K atk
Pre-emptive attack for deals 31,584 damages
Black Nightmare - 14,213 damages AND turns Light orbs to Jammer
Empress Deity's Breath - Bind all God-types for 5 turns, use only once below 50% H
Giga Gravity - Deals 99% of your HP in damages. Uses once below 30% HP
Giga Gravity Bomb - 78,960 damages. Uses it right after Giga Gravity. If you somehow survive this she keeps using this

F2 - Beelzebub
5.3M HP, 1 ct
Pre-emptive attack for deals 2,036 damages AND turns your whole board to Poison
Hell's Charge - 20,375 damages AND turns a random orbs color to Jammer
Oraoraoraoraora!! - Deals 5 hits for a total of 30,565 damages
Sleep with the fishes!! - Deals 2,036 damages AND turns your whole board to Poison
Hell's Rage - Deals 25,469 damages and turns 6 random orbs to Poison. He alternates this and the attack above at below 50% HPs

F3 - Awoken Zeus Dios
3.2M HP, 1 ct, 17,385 atk
Pre-emptive attack for deals 22,601 damages
God Protection - For 999 turns resist all the status
Flame-erasing Squall - Deals 13,908 damages AND turns all Fire orb to Jammer - at below 50% HP he use this if you got any Fire orbs on board
Demon-exorcising Light - 15,647 damages AND turns all Dark orb to Jammer - at below 50% HP he use this if you got any Dark orbs on board
Jupiter Genesis - Deals 34,770 damages, uses below 30% HP

F4 - Awoken Zeus Stratios
6.08M HP, 1 ct
Black Dimension - For 999 turns, erects a 5-hit Combo Shield
Black Hole - Deals 15,469 damages, AND changes a random orb colors to Jammer
Deity's Glare - Binds all the God-types for 2~4 turns
Super Nova - Deals 10 hits for a total of 48,340 damages

F5 - Awoken Zeus Olympios
4.1M HP, 1 ct, 19336 ATK
God Thunder - Deals 29,004 damages
Deity's Glare - Binds all the God-types for 2~4 turns
Super Nova - Deals 10 hits for a total of 48,340 damages

Spoiler:

F6 - Awoken Dancing Queen Hera-Ur
6.1M HP, 1 ct
Pre-emptively, for 99 turns, Fire and Jammer orbs have higher chances to drop
Dublit-Mirror - For 999 turns, erects a 5-hit combo shield. Uses at <50%HP
Sweet Devil - Deals 21,252 damages and changes Water orb to Jammers
Heartful Arrow - Deals 21,252 damages and changes a random orb colors to Fire
Ur-Fever - Deals 3 hits for a total of 31,878 damages. 75% chance to use at <50%HP

[OverlordChirei]

Looks like regular chinagirl invades are back for this part. Guess I need to find a way to farm Sol.

[trancehime]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY1CfLWKAMw

Rijicho doing LV10 Challenge dungeon with D/L Anubis party.

Dem Grape Dragons doing WORK

[OverlordChirei]

0/11 flame chasers encountered... good thing there's 2x skillups tomorrow because these 11 shingens are destroying my box.

[Edible]

https://i.imgur.com/ih7B5lw.jpg

What the fuck.

Spoiler:

DC Comics collab.