Thanks to Cosmo Clock 21 for the formatting and hard work in the community.
Now with 10x the number of actual dragons.
Puzzle & Dragons is a free-to-play action puzzle RPG for smartphones. The game has an insane amount of depth considering how simple the game mechanics are, and is still going strong nearly five years after release. Download from the links below:
There are also versions for JP, KR, HK, and TW, but you probably aren't going to be downloading those if you are reading this.
No seriously, PAD is an insanely complex game, enough that you could call it an MMO. Players have written volumes about the game over the years.
The official website has a large number of video tutorials created by players to help you learn all the mechanics of the game. There are also a variety of written guides by the community if you prefer a text-based solution:
4chan Guide
SomethingAwful Guide
Wikia Guide
General Tips
Here's a few basic patterns for "solving" portions of the board for you to start learning. As you get more confident in your orb matching skills, you can chain techniques together for big combos and big damage.
At the end of the tutorial, you get one free pull on the Rare Egg Machine. If you are planning on playing the game for the long haul, some players recommend restarting your game until you get an "acceptable" rare monster. A good starter will help you bypass the early grindwall and help you launch into more interesting content sooner. "Rerolling" during Godfests, which typically occur at the start and middle of each month, can help cut the time spent not playing the game dramatically. The above guides cover what monsters you should reroll for. Most are out of date as the meta moves fast in this game. There's two thoughts to a good starter pull, either easy to use leads that just require matching blobs of orbs, or combo leads which help you get better at the puzzling aspect of the game but can take a while to learn. As of this posting the following leads (not a full list) are excellent starter pulls:
Simple
Norns (Verdandi, Urd, Skuld)
Amenominakanushi (Ameno for short)
Yog Sothoth
Saria, Sylvie, Ryune
Liu Bei, Cao Cao
Combo:
Shiva
Inahime, Nohime, Tachibana, Oichi, Nene
Bastet
Haku
Sakuya
It was once true that a good starting pull would be your ticket into endgame. This is no longer true: many catchup mechanics have been added to the game to help you reach the point where you can tackle new content as it releases; however endgame now requires teams consisted predominantly or solely of rare-egg-machine only monsters. Your first God is no longer an accurate predictor of the teams you'll be running months down the road, so don't sweat not having the best of the best. You'll gradually roll good monsters over time.
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
PadHerder helps you to manage and share your collection of monsters. Most of us prefer you link to your padherder when asking for advice rather than taking screenshots of your monster box. Android players can sometimes use PadListener (Does not work on the current version of Android!) to automatically sync your box instead of manually managing everything. iOS users... you're kinda shit outta luck unless you want to jump through a bunch of hoops with proxies and SSH certificates. On that note you can find instructions for those hoops here. It works for me but it's a pain so I don't do it often.
PuzzleAndDragonsX is the go-to website for news and information for the English versions of the game.
PADF is the largest English message board dedicated to PAD.
Dawnglare - A way to share tough boards and get help solving, or just trying a bunch of options before doing it on your mobile device.
Combo Master - an Android app similar to Dawnglare allows you to make any board and solve right on your device. I'm not sure of an iOS version.
Active Popular Streamers
Yukizgames - combo master, has made a habit of posting gimmick Arena 3 clears and has some good YouTube combo guides
dzydzydino - chill streamer, focuses mainly on "non-meta" teams to clear most content. Has a couple YouTube guides
MantasticPAD - a veritable fount of knowledge, his website is the most current comprehensive view of the current state of the game.
Friends List
We maintain a (somewhat up-to-date) list of players on this Google Doc. Add a tag somewhere in your ingame name and feel free to send friend requests to any of us: using our OP endgame monsters, you can often trivialize parts of the game you wouldn't be able to tackle with pubbies.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...nAZIcerDOAlFA/edit?pref=2&pli=1#gid=655390433
Now with 10x the number of actual dragons.
Puzzle & Dragons is a free-to-play action puzzle RPG for smartphones. The game has an insane amount of depth considering how simple the game mechanics are, and is still going strong nearly five years after release. Download from the links below:
There are also versions for JP, KR, HK, and TW, but you probably aren't going to be downloading those if you are reading this.
No seriously, PAD is an insanely complex game, enough that you could call it an MMO. Players have written volumes about the game over the years.
The official website has a large number of video tutorials created by players to help you learn all the mechanics of the game. There are also a variety of written guides by the community if you prefer a text-based solution:
4chan Guide
SomethingAwful Guide
Wikia Guide
General Tips
Here's a few basic patterns for "solving" portions of the board for you to start learning. As you get more confident in your orb matching skills, you can chain techniques together for big combos and big damage.
At the end of the tutorial, you get one free pull on the Rare Egg Machine. If you are planning on playing the game for the long haul, some players recommend restarting your game until you get an "acceptable" rare monster. A good starter will help you bypass the early grindwall and help you launch into more interesting content sooner. "Rerolling" during Godfests, which typically occur at the start and middle of each month, can help cut the time spent not playing the game dramatically. The above guides cover what monsters you should reroll for. Most are out of date as the meta moves fast in this game. There's two thoughts to a good starter pull, either easy to use leads that just require matching blobs of orbs, or combo leads which help you get better at the puzzling aspect of the game but can take a while to learn. As of this posting the following leads (not a full list) are excellent starter pulls:
Simple
Norns (Verdandi, Urd, Skuld)
Amenominakanushi (Ameno for short)
Yog Sothoth
Saria, Sylvie, Ryune
Liu Bei, Cao Cao
Combo:
Shiva
Inahime, Nohime, Tachibana, Oichi, Nene
Bastet
Haku
Sakuya
It was once true that a good starting pull would be your ticket into endgame. This is no longer true: many catchup mechanics have been added to the game to help you reach the point where you can tackle new content as it releases; however endgame now requires teams consisted predominantly or solely of rare-egg-machine only monsters. Your first God is no longer an accurate predictor of the teams you'll be running months down the road, so don't sweat not having the best of the best. You'll gradually roll good monsters over time.
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
PadHerder helps you to manage and share your collection of monsters. Most of us prefer you link to your padherder when asking for advice rather than taking screenshots of your monster box. Android players can sometimes use PadListener (Does not work on the current version of Android!) to automatically sync your box instead of manually managing everything. iOS users... you're kinda shit outta luck unless you want to jump through a bunch of hoops with proxies and SSH certificates. On that note you can find instructions for those hoops here. It works for me but it's a pain so I don't do it often.
PuzzleAndDragonsX is the go-to website for news and information for the English versions of the game.
PADF is the largest English message board dedicated to PAD.
Dawnglare - A way to share tough boards and get help solving, or just trying a bunch of options before doing it on your mobile device.
Combo Master - an Android app similar to Dawnglare allows you to make any board and solve right on your device. I'm not sure of an iOS version.
Active Popular Streamers
Yukizgames - combo master, has made a habit of posting gimmick Arena 3 clears and has some good YouTube combo guides
dzydzydino - chill streamer, focuses mainly on "non-meta" teams to clear most content. Has a couple YouTube guides
MantasticPAD - a veritable fount of knowledge, his website is the most current comprehensive view of the current state of the game.
Friends List
We maintain a (somewhat up-to-date) list of players on this Google Doc. Add a tag somewhere in your ingame name and feel free to send friend requests to any of us: using our OP endgame monsters, you can often trivialize parts of the game you wouldn't be able to tackle with pubbies.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...nAZIcerDOAlFA/edit?pref=2&pli=1#gid=655390433
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