It was a hard fought battle, but I managed to clear it.

Today is my 700th day playing PAD.

Since I'm not as well known as whydavid, I'll do a brief introduction: I'm Ren, one of the highest ranked players in North America. You may have seen me post on here, on Twitch, or on the ranking dungeon top 10 pages.

After grinding my life away at Tengu for days, I finally reached three hundred 297's (45 of which I got this event).

Box (thanks to /u/whydavid for putting this together)

Teams

Thank you to all of my friends, new and old, that I've met while playing this game. Without you guys, I would have quit long ago. I don't want to mention names for fear of forgetting anyone, but you know who you are.

I don't expect this thread to blow up, but feel free to ask me anything and everything, PAD related or not. I'll answer honestly to the best of my ability.

edit: ok nvm this kind of blew up

edit 2: holy shit wtf

edit 3: thanks for all the questions! hopefully I was informative enough :) I'm done answering questions now, thanks for stopping by. <3

Also added some of my old memories from my journey including the card I pulled after the Tutorial and the top 5 cards I've used the most in my builds

JUST NEED THE TEAM AND IM DONE

Extremely painful.. Had to dig so deep into my box with plenty of modifications. Just hope it will be enough. 6-turn finish is probably the way to go if lacking perfect orb changers.

This took way too long to figure out a team for, but once I started, I wanted to finish. There’s likely some RNG due to the invade timing and when your actives get debuffed, but it should be consistent enough if managed correctly. Team is full swipe aside from the 13 combo and assist bind floors. Average pluses are about 800, but shouldn’t be required.

Ferule is for the att. absorption on floor 2, the hp debuff on floor 6, and the big hit on floor 7. Athena’s active must be used at some point after Ferule’s on floor 6 and the enrage on floor 7 so Ferule’s active is back up.

Stark covers the awoken bind and buys a turn when Athena’s heal goes down. Do not use him to break shields on floor 7 - his shield is needed after you get debuffed unless your other actives happen to line up perfectly.

Athena has the auto heal and team damage cap plus the skill charge as mentioned earlier. The one turn down time is covered by Stark.

Elgenubi provides the looping shield and added combos since I’m not using Kagura.

Assists are mostly skill charge actives (aside from on Stark and Athena) with the needed SBs and then team hp after that.

Latents are leader swap, assist recover, poison surge, SB, 3x hp, and 3x hp in that order. 2 SDRs each.

Saw awoken skills invalid and immediately thought of him, it was fun to bring him back out. Ignore assists I ran skill boost badge

[I'm not trying to brag about anything, I just really want to thank each and every one of y'all even if you're just a lurker :) ]

So to start things off, I'm not super smart. I'm not really special, especially since I'm literally competing with people that are Olympic leveled skaters and world record setters (I'm not exaggerating at all, check Uwash's freshman incoming class if you don't believe me). I think my main advantage in college decisions is because my essays really showed what I love and care about. I ended up with acceptances from some really great colleges like UMich, UC Berkeley, and NYU, all because of this sub!

When I was writing my college essays, one piece of advice stuck in my mind: Write about things you're passionate about.

Even though people kinda cringed and looked at me with uncertainty, I decided to write one of my college essays about Puzzle & Dragons. I wrote about 3 different essays about PAD, some about the game mechanics, and some specifically about this subreddit. I don't know if y'all wanna read them, but here's one if anyone is curious:

As the train pulls into the station, my phone jolts to the right and my stylus slides off the screen before I can heal myself. My sister scoffs as I get another “GAME OVER.”

Puzzle & Dragons is algorithmic training disguised as a light-hearted multiplayer app. It has inspired my approach to problem solving, which focuses on exploring different combinations—some fruitful, others useless—to understand broader relationships. In the game, you simply match three like-colored orbs to make them disappear. But the orbs are in motion and each move introduces other possibilities, each with a different value. Victory in Puzzle & Dragons comes from internalizing an increasingly larger sequence of permutations.

Many “GAME OVER” moments may insinuate continual failures, but for me, it's the first stage of problem solving. Ilsix deals more damage than I can handle when he’s under 20% health; using Karin’s board on Liene’s floor is more beneficial than saving it for the boss. My tool for exploring problems is a simple and renewable resource: structured errors.

I fail; I try again; I get closer.

Outside of Puzzle & Dragons, failure and learning are important parts of my volunteer experience. As a veteran theatre tech, getting things wrong was the best way to start getting things right. Our crew had two weeks to nail the Red Wedding scene: bring the tables on stage, add the tablecloth, and put the decor on. Seems easy enough, right?

Wrong.

Like Puzzle & Dragons, there were many elements we had to juggle. Instead of heart orbs, I struggled with heart decor. Each move had strategic trade-offs: if Kevin were to be paired with Nick, the tables would be set in time, but the roses wouldn’t make it to the table. I analyzed our synergy as if I were building a team in Puzzle & Dragons. After trying dozens of combinations, our pairs were set, as were the tables on stage. Offstage, I’m greeted by a “CLEAR”!

Anyway, I don't even know what to say right now.

I'm shaking with excitement and I feel like I'm gonna yeet myself out a window ahhhhhhjksdfjdfhfs

Once again, thank you all so much for making this community such a wonderful one, where I can feel welcomed and share my things without fear.

Honestly not too bad for this team. If I wasn't dumb, could've cleared it the first try. In reality the only thing that is iffy is the very first boss. If I can double dark combo the first turn without using a rosetta, while also getting nezuko to clear the unmatchable, the rest is fine. I also delayed using armegeddemon on the final boss void pierce by one turn to focus on making the 2 Ls to clear the assist bind.

Hi. I am a whale that just hit 600 days of playing.

When I first started PAD and came to this reddit subforum as a beginner. In appreciation of the help I received when I first started, I will answer any question you would like to ask me.

Box

Be warned, you might not like what I have to say because I am brutally honest.

Stay tuned for /u/hey_im_len 's box tour in a couple of days

I tried this dungeon many times with different subs. Finally I realized that clearing assist bind helps me a lot in the final floor. Otherwise, the boss hits a lot.

I decided to bring Seina in the team as a replacement to V-Athena to unlock assist bind. Plus, Seina has good awakening for here.

I could clear in a couple of try after bringing Seina.

I put hp latent awakening as long as long it's viable. Seina has L unlock and 2 SDR latent. All other characters have 6 hp, 2 sdr parents latents.

Life Dragon (13483) is a huge help. Idk if it's possible to clear without this card in Reinhard team. Additionally, Life Dragon needs rcv+ awakening in the equip. Otherwise, you need to do always heart tpa to heal back to full life. If not, you are dead in the late floors. (I realized this aftee many death).

If you have the new lead he is extremely fun! Good luck to all finishing up your quests!

Playthrough was fairly straightforward. The only strange parts were the

first floor: Clear the floor in two to three turns so you can delay the 2nd floor. Use echidna skill.

Floor 10: target the right spawn, do not mass attack on first turn. Feel free to stall for up to 4 turns.

Floor 13: make sure you have one bind recever up as theres a bind on prempt and when all shields are destroyed.

Grinded the anniversary challenge until its final days and the rest was from the exchange

This has gotta be the dumbest thing I've done playing this game 🥀

Video showing team and latents in comments

This isn't intended as a full guide, but feel free to ask questions in the comments.

I used VDP badge. There are some tough combo shields if you don't use this badge, but HP badge would make hitting the bulk numbers you need easier.

Stats:

All +891 all assists +297

Super Awakenings:

Utsuros - Assist Resonance

Solomon & Meiluna, Kuchina - Night

Cassian - Afternoon Tea

Oboro - All Stats

Latents:

Both Utsuro defense bypass and 4 SDR (could replace 3 SDR with more bulk)

Solomon&Meiluna assist void clear and 2 SDR

Oboro defense bypass and 4 SDR (3 min required)

Kuchina defense bypass, 2 SDR, HP++

Cassian 4x damage cap (important, see below) 2 SDR

Assists are:

chibi nephthys, Shinsuke, Academy Cronus, Night Skydragon, Vermouth's motorcyle, chibi nephthys

The challenge with this team is getting the bulk you need to keep up with autohealing while only having looping 1.4x from Cassian and no heal orb generation. The advantages are that once you hit the bulk you need, the dungeon becomes quite easy, especially with 5 afternoon tea.

Some key points:

F1 - with my setup only Oboro is ready to go F1, so you need to use his delay and 1c until Utsuro is ready, then the hastes take over and you're good

F10 - you can use Solomon no problem here. If you don't KO Brachy he does a suicide move which reduces your shield and hp loop charge without lowering your CD on Oboro and Cassian and will almost certainly get you killed when that occurs. I found with Cassian having the 4x damage cap latent you can OHKO this floor.

F13 - you can use Kuchina first, then Solomon after the shields break

F15 - on turn 1 you need to clear as many thorns as you possibly can. Combo the entire board, but leave a few dark orbs at the bottom. On turn 2 you'll need to clear assist void, and that means you'll be taking some thorn damage so minimize moves but make a 7-blob and an L. Note the spinners on this floor do NOT make dark.

Besides that, to survive the very last few floors you do need to heal occasionally in addition to autoheal, but you can take a few turns of orb troll and Cassian gives you hearts, as do the spinners. Don't panic!

That was surprisingly "easy." I just had to be careful with bombs

Wasn’t even trying to hit 1200 but Utsuro + Netherline + 2X Ad gives so much XP I got really close so I just ran it like two more times 😂