Cosmo Clock 21
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way too many other versions now
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Beginner's Guide
PAD is a deceptively massive game and trying to take all of it in can be intimidating. The collective playerbase has realized this and have written volumes of works about strategies for new and old players alike. Previous OTs had comprehensive guides in them but in recent months other places are more comprehensive and better up to date. I'm only keeping the most basic information in OT3 and am deferring to these other guides for more specifics.
4chan Guide
SomethingAwful Guide
Wikia Guide
A more quantitative approach to starter tiers
Your starter
After you complete the tutorial, you are given one free roll on the Rare Egg Machine. Unfortunately, as a for-profit game, not all rolls are made equal: your starter dragon is woefully inadequate as a leader to tackle content beyond the first couple of dungeons, and most of the monsters that come out of the REM also do not make the cut as a leader that will give you a pleasureable experience in late game and beyond.
Many players recommend you to reroll by redownloading the game (on iOS) or by going into the app's settings and selecting "clear data" (on Android), which generates a new account on GungHo's servers and gives you another shot of obtaining an "acceptable" starting roll. iOS and rooted Android players have another option: by using a program like iFunBox or Root Explorer, going into the app's files and deleting data048.bin also has the same effect.
At ~8 minutes a run, rerolling is unarguably the most frustrating portion of starting the game, and you may go days or even weeks before you finally get a good monster. Since the monotony of rerolling can mess with your brain, you can optionally decide to play the game normally until a Godfest occurs, typically around the 1st and 15th of each month. During these events, selected pantheons of God type monsters receive boosted pull rates, making it much easier for you to roll an acceptable starter. You can spend all your accrued stones then and hope for a good starter, and if you don't get one, reroll at that point to take advantage of the better rates.
You can always opt not to reroll and take whatever okay monster pops out of the REM, especially if you're planning on spending money on the game. You will roll an endgame leader eventually... it's just a matter of how long and/or how much money you spend before it happens.
The OT used to contain a tier list of acceptable starters, but the websites listed above have written much better detailed and up-to-date about what makes monsters good, so go there instead. Don't worry too much about the order the monsters are ranked as -- most players agree upon what monsters are good starters, but ask them about which tier they belong in and hoo boy watch out cause here comes long-form essays about why your tier list is shit.
I do not understand how to puzzle and I am dying to everything please help
You might think this game is a simple match-3 clone like Bejeweled, but one important difference creates an honest to god skill curve for puzzling: you can move the orb anywhere on the board for 4 seconds.
Learning how to make xX420NoTimeExtendProngShotXx combos is an acquired talent, so don't despair if you can barely eke out anything over a three combo at first. Your first step is to start recognizing groups of similarly-colored orbs and learning the patterns to "solve" them:
From there you can start combining patterns together and doing more advanced combos. Watching others play is also a good learning tool -- Paprika is widely considered to be a savant at board rearrangement.
Friends
Friends are one of the most important features of the game -- after choosing an Explorer from the helper screen, sending them a friend request, and having them accept it, you can keep bringing them into dungeons as long as they've logged in recently. More importantly, friend monsters also make their Leader Skill available for you, meaning two leaders that grant 3x to Fire attacks now creates a party with 9x Fire. Keeping a well-curated list of friends that complements your own monsters is key to success in PAD.
GAF players are generally happy to add you as a friend even if you're way underleveled compared to them. Since we play the game a lot most of our leader will help you completely mulch the first couple of dungeons. Just make sure you include the word GAF somewhere in your name so they know you're not just some random pubbie. The list of GAF players and their IDs can be found here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhOCApI3pSVRdC0wWHQ3X2F5MnB6LWNNQUJJWG9Tb0E#gid=4
You may have to force quit the app and restart before friend requests show up.
Resources
PADGuide is the essential companion app, providing schedules, monster stats, dungeon information, and more. Its primary benefit is allowing you to set alarms for guerilla dungeons. Android version
PADX is generally considered the go-to website for news and information for the English versions of the game.
The PAD Wikia has more up to date and slightly more accurate data by virtue of leeching content from its Chinese sister site.
PADF is the largest English message board dedicated to PAD.
The PAD Global Facebook group is "good" for schaudenfreude and drama about PAD.
GAF Fan Art (?!)
what
Previous Threads
Puzzle & Dragons |OT| Pokemon + Bejeweled + Dungeon RPG on iOS/Android
Puzzle & Dragons |OT2| Don't Ask, Just Reroll
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