Quest 26-1: The start of the troll series of adventures

The quest series after set 25 was the original reason I started considering making a blog for Jewel Dragon: to record data for reference when planning out what I would need.  These quests are a massive jump in difficulty (more so than going from Level II to III in limited time quests).

I did this quest a while ago, but never got around to writing about it.  Since for now, for some odd reason the limited quests available to the US is only the Ice Mechbeast and the Thursday daily, I found time to look at it again.


Stages 1-5: Fire enemies of various assortments, doing considerable damage per attack.  Cooldowns vary from 2-4 rounds.  Their health is so-so.

Stage 6: Troll round 1.  3 Otso+.   After slogging through a bunch of fire enemies, JD throws in 3 lightning foes.  Each hits for over 5000 too.  3 round cooldown.

Stage 7: Troll round 2.  The lone Erinyes has 11000 defense and a 3 turn cooldown.  Damage is 11500 base.  I won by simply outlasting it, using ganon skills to do damage, along with a powerful healing ally and basic heart management.

The issue here was that I did this quest before the 7 star card nerf.  So if I had to do this again, I'm not entirely sure what I would use.  IIRC, I had:
Priestess++ as leader (50% fire reduction is nice)
Hakutaku+ (pre-nerf, he gave over 6000HP)
Erinyes++ (need that medusa eyes for Stage 6)
Forgot my other two, but probably cards that gave burst damage, like Baal+ pre-nerf.
Ciguapa+ ally (this particular one gave me 2500HP a round)
I remember my setup giving me around 17000+ HP, which of course is not possible now.

To appease the masses

So yeah, 50 gems for free happened.  Of course there was some bumbling going around with them: some didn't get them, some got multiples of them, whatever.  Rumor has it the CN servers just gave everyone an extra amount of gems (they got like 300 or something, since 1 US gem = 6 CN gems).  Could that happen here as well?  Wouldn't mind another 50 gems :P

Anyway, I did take advantage of the 11 golden summons for a guaranteed card.  I was fully expecting the other 10 cards to be garbage, but thankfully, only a couple of them were experience fodder.  Take a look:

Pastor Carl is pretty decent.  He can fill in as leader (for 50% water reduciton) or support (pestilence skill means I don't have to have banshee).  Picking up Mobel was pretty good too - she can help recover from the massive HP nerfs with her leader skill.  She came as level 1 for some reason though, and leveling her is gonna be a little tough (max level unevolved is 50, but it looks like she needs more exp than the 6 star cards).  Alice, Adeline, and Innes are ok.  Chimera is just another Fire Dragon God, and the rest are fodder for leveling/skills.

Card changes

Today JD changed some cards' attributes.  I can't list them all because I don't have all the cards obviously, but I can show what I've got:


- All 1000% attacks became 2000% attacks

- Cyclops, Lampades, and Cambion's evolved forms have the Soldier's Will leader skill

- The base stats of Bahamut, Hakutaku, Garuda, Targaryen, and Baal Zebub AND their evolved forms are nearly identical.  The growth pattern for the evolved forms seems to be HALF THE RATE OF THE UNEVOLVED FORMS.  The stat difference at similar levels is frightening (stat wise, all my evolved forms are worse than unevolved forms by a considerable margin).  The evolved forms do have a stronger skill that does 4000% damage with their respective element.  Which, unless you max'd out, probably ends up being even with the evolved forms.

- The mechbeasts have a more powerful attack; no data on how powerful yet

- Many cards with the ability to change diamonds have had their skill cooldown reduced

- Jotunn+ and Charbydis+ had their leader skill changed to heal 100% of their RCR (why not Thor+?)

- Someone on my friends list reported that his Lahair got nerfed, but I have no data to support this.


I hope there's a huge outcry regarding those evolved 7 star cards.  Unless you max them to 99, the vast majority of players are better off just with unevolved forms of them.  Cheaper to use and easier to max out as well.

Bahamut / Hakutaku / Garuda / Targaryen / Baal-Zebub Quests (6/7 star cards ahoy!)

I'm sort of clumping these guys together, but the bosses play out differently.

For Bahamut, Targaryen, and Baal, I use the same strat as the one in my previous posts: 50% damage reducer, strong healer, and whatever gives me good HP/attacks.

Hakutaku is a little different.  He features very high defense, but much lower HP than the others.  So there's two ways to go about this.  You can have a defense reducer card and time it with strong attack skills to kill.  50% defense reduction should be ok for Levels I and III, but you'll need 75% for Level III.  This quest has no special features, so you can skip out on auto-healing if your team can manage hearts well.  Hakutaku his for about 17000 base at Level III, so watch out for that.  Soldier's Will / Undead Soldier can help out vs that if your health isn't that high and don't have 50% damage reduction.  The other way to kill him is to stick with the defensive build and have a Banshee card for Pestilence.  If your healing is good, it doesn't take as long as you'd think.  While the number of turns is very long, since all you're doing is making small combos per turn, it will be over quicker than you'd imagine.

Garuda is also different.  He doesn't have that insane defense, but insane offense.  He attacks every 8 turns, but will always do fatal damage.  I don't know anyone who has survived it without the Undead Soldier / Soldier's Will leader ability, even with all the damage reduction and iron wall skills available.  So, I just listed one method to avoid death.  The other is to have a super-offensive team and just plow through the boss in eight turns.  Stacking damage bonuses, using diamond changers, etc.

These quest series' energy cost is the same as the quests in the previous post, but don't feature as much exp unfortunately.

Lahair / Hogle / Lancelot / Hector / Achilles Quests (7 star powerhouses)

I'm kind of lumping them all together because when I was going for these cards, I used the same strategy.  For all cases except Achilles, you have no heart diamonds, meaning to heal, you'd need either auto-healing or a skill to make hearts on the board.  I went with the former.

General setup:
Leader: 50% damage reduction of the element featured
Ally: Strong healer
(Of course you can swap the roles if you have the cards/allies)
The rest: whatever really.  RCR is irrelevant since auto-healing will cover health, not heart diamonds.  If going for Achilles, you can try to balance having some RCR.  You can have an Erinyes to buy time for auto-healing if it cannot cover the damage from attacks.  Cards with iron wall can help too.  Remember to consider what element does more/less damage if deciding to go with HP over damage.

Quick Notes:
- It's purely mono-elemental.
- Nothing should hit really hard with this setup.  This also means skills like surviving a strike with more than 40%/70% HP won't help.
- For level I and II you don't necessarily need 50% damage reduction.  30% should do fine.
- Level III damage is not tremendous, but those reduction cards do make a big difference
- Achilles' quest prevents dark diamonds, not heart diamonds, from appearing.  So this strat would still feature Dark Witch+++, though she can't do much except act as defense and occasionally throw her attack skill.  However this means you can heal with heart diamonds.
- If you are just getting your feet wet in this series (as in, you're new to this) and don't have access to strong damage reduction and healing cards, you can start with a regular Jotunn and use her skill to generate hearts when needed.  To prep for that, build combos not invovling fire diamonds, then use her skill to get lots of hearts from it.
- The cards themselves are powerful, but a little expensive on the cost (40).  Their stats at base don't seem too powerful for a 7 star, but they make amazing leader cards.  Their skill is a 500% damage attack, but on a short cooldown.  If you can stack another damage buff, it can get a little out of hand.  Plus you can increase the skill level to reduce the turns to only 5!

Quick facts about Lions

For Fire/Water/Thunder Lions:
- Level 1 lions normally have 5HP, 4000 defense, and attack for trivial damage every turn
- If there is a Level 2 lion, they will inherit its defense, bumping it to 8000, trivial damage
- If there is a Level 5 lion, they will inherit its defense, bumping it to 20000, trivial damage
- Level 2 lions have around 10HP; Level 5 lions have around 20HP
- 20 energy for 5 stages
- About 1000 exp and a small amount of gold; varies based on randomness of enemies

For Holy Lions
- Same applies as Fire/Water/Thunder lions with exceptions listed below
- 20 energy for 7 stages
- You gain a lot more gold

For Dark Lions
- Same as Fire/Water/Thunder lions, except it only costs 15 energy for 5 stages

For Super Dark Lions
- No Level 1 lions appear
- Guaranteed Level 6 lion at the final stage, and might appear in earlier stages
- Level 6 Dark Lions hit for 9999 damage and have 60000 defense, with a lot more HP (not in the double digits).  However, any Ganon skill with a 75% defense reduction skill will kill them instantly.  As a reference, an unevolved max level Baal can also instantly kill them with its skill under the same conditions.

Level 1 lions give 5000xp.
Level 2 lions give 10000xp.
Level 5 lions give 60000xp.
Level 6 lions give 100000xp.

Exiled Angel: Technical Quest

Heal spam, I should have known.  At least Erasmus only saved it for when he was below 33%.

Compared to other technical quests, the rest of the quest didn't seem as nasty.  Stages 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, and 9 feature random assortments of Kelpie/Otso/Atshen which don't have a lot of health.  Stage 5 and 9 have a long Kelpie+ that attacks every round.

The boss is of course, our cute little evil angel.  Except it's not cute when she can heal when under 66% life.  With a cooldown of only 2 and defense around 5000+, it's hard enough to get her to that 66%.  Each heal gives her about 25% of her life back.  My team was Saintess++, Baal+, Garuda+, Hakutaku, Erinyes++, and Ciguapa+ (ally).  Skill spam at 60% got her to about 25%, but that isn't enough.

I think this quest is definitely offensive minded.  My team setups are always more defensive oriented, focusing on damage reduction and auto-healing.  But I guess for this one I gotta switch it up.  Very strong dark teams could probably wreck this quest handily as long as they can manage hearts fairly well and have a decent amount of HP (over 11-12k I guess).

UPDATE: Here we go.  IPhone pics a plenty.

Death Strike: 3101 damage.  I don't know what is special about it.
Angry Wind: Barrage of attacks for 5000-6000.

Didn't know he could show up instead of Kelpie+ in stage 5/9.  Atshen+ may be a possibility with his own unique skills.
Heal Wounds (not shown): Recover 25% health.  Occurs when his life drops below a certain amount (66%?).  Really bad to deal with if you can't create some sort of burst damage.  Otso+ has zero defense though.
Hand of Doom: Changes an element into stone that does nothing except add to the chain combo.  If you get this, be sure to clear them all out - use 4 or 5 chains if necessary; you do not want to have only 1 or 2 on the board because then they cannot be removed and will eat space.

Evil Angel's basic attack.  Note I do have Saintess++ so without her, double the number for her true damage.

Angry Wind.  Again, double the damage listed if you don't have 50% holy damage reduction.
Soul Seal (not shown) taking out random cards out of the fight for 3 rounds.  You can see the numbers on my cards showing how much longer they are out of commission.

Heal wounds yuck.  Also, the second pic shows that Holy Ganon did 15852 damage.  So her defense is 4248.

Spoils of war.  Also, the team I used, plus a level 90 Witch Morgana. Almost ran into the Morgana Level I issue when coming up to the boss (where you could have 10 boxes before encountering her.  I already had Evil Angel, but still, that's annoying in a tech quest no less).

My boss strategy: save up all skills for about 60% (about where the right edge of her sword meets her health bar).  At around 75% try to manipulate the board so that when you reach that 60% part, you can make a decent combo that has 2+ dark chains.  Then use every skill at once, STARTING WITH DEFENSIVE RUIN.  All others can be in any order, but don't screw up and use the armor piercing skill last or something :P Morgana is perfect against her: any combo will do damage due to her leader skill.

With a definite strategy this is much easier than other tech quests I've tried.

Path of Fire (aka RNG is bad)

This quest series is about to expire, and I think I'm done with it.  I was originally trying to get 3 copies of the boss card so I could have one unevolved and one evolved version, but the quest is way too much of a pain for one reason.

Scott.

Wtf is this?  It's a thunder card that randomly appears in any stage except the final one.  He has only 20HP, but has incredible defense (75000? defense).  Which in itself isn't an issue, but when he appears, his defense is inherited to his allies for that round.  Which is bullcrap.  Some cards go from manageable to outright impossible.  It's also a "trap" that any setup without armor breaker or a pestilence type skill will half to quit.  If you are lucky he would appear with normal enemies.  Unlucky if Shirley (new holy card) appears with him - she hits hard, and every turn.

The "best" part is that this can happen at anytime, at ANY level of difficulty.  Lowbies trying to clear level I can run into him, and then will most likely stop at that point.

I do have one copy of the boss, which has the defensive ruin skill (quite nice, but cannot be leveled at all).  His evolved form isn't too much to write about though; it changes to the wheel skill, arguably the worst skill in the game due to its unpredictability (it used to be the best skill in the old days due to an exploit, but that was fixed).

My general setup?  I only completed Level II, but I went with Saintess++ as leader just to deal with the possibility of having to face Shirley with Scott in the same round.  My follower is a strong healer (Jotunn++ or Ciguapa+ or similar).  Banshee++ for slowly picking away at enemies that gain the 100000 defense, and the rest are the best cards I can fit (which doesn't really matter that much).  With this, rounds with Scott can be dealt with by using Pestilence until they die.  If the healing is strong enough this doesn't take as long as you'd think, because you can just make 1 combo per turn and auto-healing will prevent death.  The exception of course, is if Shirley is there; then you need to make heart combos occasionally to keep up.  The boss himself isn't strong at all - even with no fire damage reduction a good healer can nullify all his attacks.

Anatole: Ice mechbeast Level III woes

I'm a little phazed by this quest.

This boss has two skills that I am aware of: release potential and angry snow.  The former is sort of a charge up ability, tripling the damage of the next attack.  Angry snow is a barrage of attacks.  With 50% water reduction on, a normal attack backed up with release potential does about 15000 damage.  Angry snow I *think* does 7500 damage each attack, for 3 attacks.

This issue here is that the boss can use release potential and then angry snow, making what is most likely a very lethal attack, unless your setup can achieve well over 22000 health.  The best I can get is around 19000 health, so I have to look to another setup.

Normally I would go with auto-healing and water reduction leader skills, but this time I may have to go with water reduction and death prevention with 40% life.  Hopefully that can work out.

UPDATE: No it didn't work out. 16K HP with Antana was not enough to withstand Angry Snow with Release Potential combo'd.  This probably also means each attack hits for more than 8000.  It can happen anytime the boss is under 50% HP.

UPDATE 2:  One attempt at Level 2.  The difference in difficulty is astounding.  Also, I learned how to take screenshots of my iPhone.

Yeah.

BTW that bronze box is a Jotunn.

Other Weekly Quests: Farming gold and lesser materials

Tuesday: Fire/Water/Thunder Mask
25 energy / 10 levels.  Guaranteed drop off of boss.
Plays out mostly like a mid-level normal quest.  Stage 9 always has a holy and dark mask.  Note that these are the only quests where one can safely farm dark masks.


Wednesday: Spirit Tribe I
10 energy / 5 levels
For farming those low level enhancer cards (i.e. ones needed to evolve other cards).  Drop rates here are higher than normal quests.  This one has those winged freaky tentacle monsters and chaos (eggs).


Thursday: Giant Tribe I
10 energy / 5 levels
For farming goblin+ and holy chaos (eggs).


Friday: Spirit Palace
10 energy / 5 levels
For farming non-winged freaky tentacle monster evolution cards.  Also a holy mask at the end.


Weekend: The Heritage of Satan I, II, III
10/15/20 energy / 10 levels
For farming dark coins.  AFAIK, only dark coin cards can drop.  They have a high, but not guaranteed drop rate.  The other enemies seem to be random assortments of enemies you'd come across in normal questing, but of varying difficulty.  Dark coins sell for 5000 gold a piece.


Weekend: The Heritage of Satan IIII (fail at roman numerals lol)
25 energy / 10 levels
For farming dark coins (level 2 and 3).  It is not mentioned in the quest title, but HOLY OR DARK DIAMONDS CANNOT APPEAR, so keep that in mind when making a team.  This also means only 4 types of diamonds can appear, allowing some ludicrous combo chains (my personal best is a 25x combo that instantly cleared stage 9). A mono-elemental deck with stacked 200% damage may result in some hilarious damage counts.  Dark coin level 2 sells for 50000 I think, and level 3 is for 100k.

Thursday Quest: Giant Tribe II (for those Holy Flowers)

25 energy / 5 levels. Drop rate is decent.

Team Setup (for those without amazing cards):
Leader: Any card that reduces holy damage (I used Saintess+), or a card that prevents death if HP is above 40/70%
Erinyes+
Jotunn+
Banshee+ (needed for the final stage)
Askefure+ (or possibly any card with iron wall)
Follower: Holy damage reducer or live saving card (just like my other team's follower)

The info about the enemies from older posts are still accurate (each hits for about 3000-3500HP, so have around 7000+HP; I had something like 6950HP).  They don't have a ton of health, but you need to be smart with making combos to do initial kills quickly before slowing down.

Stage 1: Kill one Ettin ASAP with 3-chains.  Try to slowly kill the other one afterwards, but be mindful of your health.

Stage 2: Kill one Ljousafar ASAP since it can attack every round.  This is why I went with two shadow cards and a holy damage reducer.  Again, do as many 3-chain combos as possible.  Once they are dead, kill the lone enemy slowly again for skills.

Stage 3: This is probably where you'd use either Medusa Eyes (preferred), or Iron Wall.  It's just two Hestias that attack every round for 3444.  You need to kill one very quickly.  Then follow the usual strategy.

Stage 4: Again, use skills to help.  With my team I focused down the Kali enemy before dealing with the others; I have no lightning cards in my setup, and they are water enemies.  I would save my Saintess+ attack for this.

Stage 5: Poison and win by attrition basically.  Use iron wall when the flower's cooldown is at 1 so it will halve 2 of its attacks.  Save Jotunn's ability for when hearts are scarce.  Focus on combos to clear non heart/fire diamonds.  Takes a lot of rounds since most of the damage comes from Banshee's skill.  Occasionally if you get a very large chain of combos you can do small damage here and there (defense of 1500 isn't too hard to break if you have a stronger cards than what I used).

Wednesday Quest: Spirit Tribe II (for those elusive shadow bollas)

25 energy / 5 levels.  Drop rate is kind of bad.

Team Setup:
Leader: Any card that reduces shadow damage (I used Dark Witch++), or a card that prevents death with HP over 40/70%
Erinyes+ (her skill is invaluable)
Jotunn+ (safety measure; could be another erinyes+ for even more safety)
The last two cards could be lightning/holy so you can attack with all the diamonds.  I tried using armor piercing and a 1000% attack card pair, but they ended up doing 1 damage to the shadow bolla anyway.  I was still able to clear the quest with them.
Follower: Whatever will pair with your leader suggestions I posted above (e.g. if you went with Dark Witch, have a Yasha/Encantado/Cacus follower, or vice versa).

At a minimum I would try to have around 5000+ HP (NOT taking into account your ally) and a decent amount of RCR (1000+ total?)  Attack power is irrelevant for this strategy - infact, having too much may hurt!  It focuses more on how well you can manipulate the board more than going in guns blazing.

You will only face chaos and kawsa enemies.  What element they are is random each playthrough.

Stages 1 and 3: Take your time, and make only 1-2 combos per turn.  Once only one is remaining, so single chains to buy time for your skills to activate: namely, Medusa Eyes.  Each enemy has an 8 turn cooldown, so don't rush.  They also only do around 2400 damage each, so recovering from an attack is easy.

Stages 2 and 4: Use Medusa Eyes in these rounds.  They only have a 5 turn cooldown.  I primarily did as many 3-chains as possible.  Each enemy does 9999 damage, so the undead soldier/soldier's will skill is required.  Assuming my experience with how those skills work currently is still correct, you should be safe even if 2 of them remain when you are attacked.  Always look to make one chain that your target is weak against if possible.

Stage 5: Just give priority to keeping your HP above whatever is needed to survive from a fatal strike, then focus on combos to get all your cards to attack.  This is the sole reason I recommend a shadow damage reduction card as leader.  It attacks every turn for 4000, and it may be hard to keep up unless you have an amazing healer card.  With good timing of skills you can have Medusa Eyes up mid-fight to make it a lot less stressful.  It's actually one of the easier parts of the quest. 

Tuesday Quest: Endless Darkness (Ragnarok lite)

30 energy / 5 levels.  Strategy is just like Ragnarok, so just go over my previous post on general strategy and team setup.

The bolla in stage 4 is randomly holy/dark, and only attacks for 3000 (or 4000?) instead of insta-kill.  So it's much less daunting to get full health every three rounds.  It also has fairly weak defense and not a crapton of HP.

Stage 5 however plays out just like the random bolla in Ragnarok.  Fatal damage every 5 turns.  To be precise, the shadow bolla does 22000 damage with CD5.  Defense isn't much of an issue, but it still does have a lot of HP.

Tuesday Quest: Ragnarok (for those bollas)

30 energy / 5 rounds.  So-so drop rate, though which bollas you encounter are random.

My team (for those that do not have super-amazing cards):
Leader: Askafure+ (I actually got a Yasha from the Sleeping Oglier quest, but was not leveled, though it may have been good for this particular quest.  If you wanna be ballsy you can put a shadow damage enhancer card here - it may speed up stage 4 and 5 a little.)
Erinyes+ (safety precautions for stage 4)
Jotunn+ (another safety precaution for stage 4 and 5)
Banshee+ (required for stage 5, makes stage 4 much less painful)
Dark Witch+++ (or any high DPS card to get you through stages 1-3; since I already had 2 dark cards I figured why not 3.  If you are fortunate to have golem/lenanshe/some card that does a percentage of the target's HP as damage, that'd be ideal)
Follower: Encantado+ (Yasha would be ok if you are good with heart management).

Stages 1-3: I dunno if the enemies are random, but there are 2 enemies per round hitting for around 2000+ each.  I'd prefer to knock them out one at a time.  Don't have to be really slow about killing the second one on each round, but enough time to get Jotunn and Erinyes' skills ready for stage 4.  Having good DPS will soften how many hearts you need on the board initially.

Stage 4: The holy/dark bolla hits 12764 damage every 3 rounds.  It's much less nerve-racking if you have Encantado than Yasha.  Having really high HP may also be a hindrance since you are trying to maintain a certain HP threshold for those skills to activate.  This is actually the hardest round with this strategy.  Use Pestilence, get to 40/70% HP, and then make  combos each turn to get enough hearts on the board to recover after getting hit. While the bolla doesn't have much armor, it has a lot of HP (each Pestilence tick did around 11000 damage).  Just get to your needed HP and win the war of attrition with Banshee, Jotunn, and Erinyes' skills.

Stage 5: The same deal, just easier.  Also more annoying since this bolla has 1800 defense and even more HP, forcing you to rely solely on skills for damage (poison ticks for 20000+).  It does 22200 damage every 5 turns.  But with this strategy it just means 2 more turns to get to the HP you need to survive.  Note that this is currently the only time a fire bolla can appear, and I'm assuming it only has a 33% to show up.

Monday Quest: Holy Flower (some people call them crystal flowers)

13 energy / 7 rounds.  Drop rate is supposedly bad, but may have been increased a bit due to all the new evolutions requiring them.

Team setup: A good healer at leader or follower (Jotunn++, Thor++, Charbydis++, Ciguapa, etc).  Other than that, you have a couple of options - a strong one element team (dark would be best), or a team that can get your a lot of HP (like 10000+).  I would suggest favoring dark damage for stages 6 and 7 when considering allies.

Stage 1-5: Always seems to be a random mix of holy/dark enemies, varying between 2-3 turns to attack for 2500-3000 damage.  Can't say a whole lot except either burn them down with a strong team, or go at it one enemy at a time, and kill the last one slowly to recover skills/HP.  Due to this, all elements will do full damage (except the obvious weakness element).

Stage 6: Seems to be 3 Asten (holy type) every time.  They are tougher than the enemies in previous rounds, so I'd recommend taking them out one at a time.

Stage 7: I don't have much info on the holy flower itself.  Around 50000HP maybe?  My team has Leonidas and Dark Witch+++ with their skills saved up for this round, and I just kill it before it even attacks.  It has a 5 turn cooldown.  Defense may be around 400 or so?  Not sure, but I wouldn't dedicate an armor piercing skill for it.

Welcome!

This is my first attempt at making a blog, and since I think I'd become a rather annoying poster at the gamespot Jewel Dragon forums making ranting posts all the time, I've decided to make this.  I originally wanted to make this so I could spill my guts regarding high level questing, but I'll throw in lots of other stuff, like my strategy posts for the weekly material quests, and maybe other stuff.  We'll see.