Tower of Golden Dragon: A different kind of tricolor (UPDATE 3/7/14)

UPDATE: The boss is actually tough now.

Instead of lightning, we get a holy dragon.

No light or fire diamonds.  So all you get are water, lightning, dark, and heart diamonds.  I didn't see a single non-light enemy strangely enough - usually there's one or two troll enemies that just mess you up because you don't prep for it.

Anyway, the boss has a weak normal attack, but can apparently do good damage in top-level.  I'll try it out later if I think my team is good enough to handle it.

Quick notes about level 2: stage 5 has a holy dragon, and stage 9 has 3 Charybdis.  I don't know what they do exactly, because I took a Njord ally and just wrecked them before they did anything.

For level 3, stage 5 has a pair of wild sleepnir, each hitting fairly hard, and can seal cards (forgot if it was a soul or dark seal), and double attack.  The typical skill set for the mid-boss stage.  The single Charybdis in stage 9 is like the other stage 9 encounters - look around or resurrect (one time only), and seal cards.  She hits for 11160 base damage, CD1.

The boss still doesn't hit that hard, but has a double attack and more card sealing.  CD1 though.  I played it safe as you can see with my team setup.

I opted not to go with a full dark team because I was sure any time a dark seal was used I'd be shut down for 3 turns.  I could try it out anyway since the chance of not getting a decent combo with at least a single dark chain is so small with a tricolor technical mission.  But I did have it happen a couple of times in previous tricolor missions.

The level 3 boss has the following properties:
2318 base attack
0 defense
3300480 HP (found out via toxic attack)
3244 from Double Attack (strange since it's not 2x his normal attack; maybe my holy damage reduction factored strangely into this)
Dark Seal (inactivate all dark cards for 3 turns)
Divine Burst (increases damage by 5X FOR THE REST OF THE FIGHT)


Top level finally brings in some non-light enemies to the battle.  There's a few Jack-In-Irons sprinkled around some stages, a Jack-In-Irons++ in stage 5 (along with a Centaur++), and a Banshee in stage 9.  They are just like what you expect from the other iterations of this quest line from the other dragons.  The Jack-In-Irons++ can use Light Seal which is almost useless, unless you brought in light cards for defense (in which you'd just be unable to use its skill).  The banshee has the usual skills as well - look around, 1 time full heal, etc.  It may have a dark-->stone skill as well, but I didn't see it.

The boss?  It hits even weaker than Wales top level.  You can see with the pics.  I thought it could do a focus ability as well, but I never saw it.  Just double attack, and dark seal.

 I just showed a pic of stage 2 (the trio of dark masks) to show my main strategy for this quest - get to stage 5 with Erinyes's skill available, more skills if possible.  I can stall for time with this setup - all that HP lets me survive that.  My RCR is around 1800+, but I need a good combo of hearts and a fairly long combo chain to recover in stage 5.  Once I get to stage 5, I immediately burn all skills and just burst down the centaur ASAP.  This is the only truly stressful part, as each can do a quick combo skill that does a lot of damage (around 15000 each!).

Stage 9 was a little worrisome since each attack is for around 12k.  However there's no scare of a combo strike, and I could stall a bit by focusing on healing until medusa eyes was available again.  Then just burst her down.

The main boss has a buff that will dramatically increase his damage for the rest of the fight (17k normal attack, 24k double attack).  I thought the boss would activate it upon reaching a certain HP threshold, but that isn't the case.  I'd bet on getting the boss to use the buff before unloading any survival skills (i.e. Medusa Eyes, Shield, etc).

Quest 28-2: I has the power

Since I couldn't figure out what defensive ally to put in for this, I decided to go offensive for this one.

The enemies at stage 6 had a fair amount of defense.  Unfortunately I don't know how hard they hit since I killed them before they attacked.  Basically, because of my team:

Charmer++ (leader)
Erinyes++
Pastor Carl
Nature Mobel
Night Witch Catherine
Warlord Sigurd

As long as I entered each stage at full HP, I could tear into every stage quite easily, except stage 4, since those masks have crazy defense.  The twin Nymph bosses are just like the twin Banshee+ and Super Queen from their respective stages.  CD3 and a fair amount of attack, but not too much trouble.

Abou 15K is needed to survive a full attack from 3 masks with 50% lightning reduction (each would do 4444).

Quest 28-1: Apparently I'm a slow learner

So right after kicking myself for not bringing in a staple card, Pastor Carl, to these missions, I go on ahead and do this quest without Pastor Carl AND Night Witch Catherine.  And of course, the boss's got high defense to chew through.

You can make the comparisons of the lightning enemies to their fire/water counterparts.  The Cambion+ are the dark versions of Cyclops+ as they hit hard (10K+ damage each), and need to be bursted down quickly.  I brought multiple holy cards for this battle solely for them.

The three troll Yasha+ do a little over 10700 damage in total, and have CD2, so burning skills here is recommended.

The boss has 11400 defense, and attacks for 7834 every turn.  Thank god I had multiple skills that could break that defense.  Thor doesn't have a ton of HP, but my skills were pretty much my only source of damage in the fight.

Team:
Charmer++ (leader)
Erinyes++
Bahamut
Leonidas
Nature Mobel
Ciguapa+ (ally)

I think a Shadow Archer would be ideal for this series; either that or Thunder Naga.

Quest 27-5: I FORGOT PASTOR CARL

For some odd reason I forgot to put in Pastor Carl, a staple in my team for these quests.  And of course, the boss has high defense.

Again, that Ifrit+ in this pic was only a regular Ifrit in game.

The masks in stage 6 do 8888 base damage each.
The lions in stage 7 do about 2500 base damage each.  They also have more HP than the lions you find in the hourly quest.  Strangely they also have the appearance of level 1 lions.
That troll fire dragon does 10000 base damage.
The cyclops is just like the other one in the previous mission (about 40k base damage)

The boss is basically Hakutaku from the limited quest series - just a lot cuter.  My thunder gannon could  not penetrate her defenses, and from my title, I had no pestilence skill.  Fortunately, I did not forget Catherine, but I still had to use her skill a LOT of times, to the point where it did 24 damage on the last usage.  Not a lot of HP, but if you have a Raphael, I'd highly suggest bringing it.  I don't know the actual defense though - it's just more than 25000.

Team:
Deep-Sea Banshee (leader and ally)
Erinyes++
Nature Mobel
Night Witch Catherine
Charmer++

75% water reduction saves the day again.  This setup gives me about 12000+ HP.

The next series is the lightning series, but seems to sub in quite a few dark enemies than fire/water.  Gonna have to prepare a little differently perhaps.

Quest 27-4: Water cyclops ahoy

Back again doing the normal quests after the festival.  I was able to get a 3-star water banshee, which I quickly evolved to a deep-sea banshee which proved to be quite useful here.

Note that on stage 5, I fought an Ifrit, not an Ifrit+ (if that makes any difference).  It fell pretty quickly.

Given I had 75% reduction to fire and water damage going into this, the enemies in stage 6 and 7 still hit me hard (8121 and 9894 respectively; multiply that by 4 for base damage!).

Team:
Deep-Sea Banshee (leader)
Erinyes++
Pastor Carl
Charmer++
Night Witch Catherine
Deep-Sea Banshee (ally)

If you can't go with double banshee either have around 20k HP and decent RCR, or have a 40%/70% life survival card.

Quest 27-3: Twice the trolling

Typical fire trolling in a water level.  Extra points for putting high defense on the bosses.  Now I'm really, really glad I got Carl way back when.  The twin Ifrits don't have a lot of HP; I was able to kill them before they even attacked.

The Erinyes is a little troubling though since it has CD1.  7000 damage base too and a good amount of HP.

The twin Jotunn's have very high defense (dunno how high, but I didn't have any defense reducer cards and I was doing 1 damage normally).  Each does 7020 damage, CD1 too.

Team: Pastor Carl (leader), Erinyes++, Night Witch Catherine, Nature Mobel, Baal+ (I've been buffing him a lot lately), Ocean Banshee (ally).  No lightning cards used in this water theme'd quest - I don't have anything really notable except Garuda and Calisto.

Tower of Blue Dragon

I think we all know what to expect from this one, and I'll try to farm it, though my setup may not be as safe as before (Alice + Banshee gave me reduction against everything, but I wonder what I can go with this time).

The Myrmcoleon evolution is available - it may have been earlier, but I figured it was unlocked when this series was released.  I wonder when Centaur and Jack-in-Irons evolutions will be available; holy/dark diamonds are not included in this new dragon quest series so far, so when would they pop up?

There's also another festival on the way.  That will stall my questing a bit too.  Another chance for Sigurd and Morgana for me.

NEWER UPDATE: Did another Level 2 run, and got the boss to drop :)  Don't have to worry so much about missing out on 1 gem for not completing the quest series.

I was able to clear Level 1 and 2.  Level 1 is the usual intro level, but level 2 is definitely a trap quest.  For starters, the boss is a fusion of Hakutaku and Garuda - insane damage, insane defense, but fairly low HP.

Used Hesperides to cut defense by 75%
Garuda did 8072 damage base (x2 multiplier doesn't factor before determining this)
Garuda's skill did 1348 * 2000% = 26960 damage
26960 - 8072 = 18888 defense to punch through
But factoring in defensive ruin, x4 that value for a total defense of 75552.

Yikes.

That was on my 2nd attempt; 1st attempt I didn't know about this, came in doing 1 damage.  Carl was doing 154 damage per tick, so that's 7700 health total.  The dragon had a CD6, but used quick combo and killed me outright - and I had Carl as leader (he gives 50% water reduction).  I had around 13000+HP too.

Now I'm really curious as to what to go with for the upper levels.  Based on what I heard, Raphael is all but required to kill the boss at level 3 and top-level: its defense is unruly high (400k at level 3 and 600k at top level!).  The CD is always 6, but when it attacks it is basically guaranteed death.  For completeness, level 3 HP is 37000 and top-level is around 54000 HP.  Basically, have Raphael or die.  There are a couple of exceptions where you could get away with Hesperides or Elf: notably, being able to do over 100K or 150K damage in one turn with one card (not a sum of your attack).

There's also some fire enemies sprinkled in the stages, along with Erinyes.  Basically, find a way to survive till the boss encounter with your armor breaker and a super-high attack skill available.

I also just remembered that the goblins need 5112xp  to be at max level, which is nice to know unless you can farm top level where they come at max level already.

Quest 27-2: Powering through

Decided to be a little more offensive this time.

Team: Pastor Carl, Erinyes++, Night Witch Catherine, Nature Mobel, Garuda, Witch Morgana.

Still unsure how hard the masks hit for, I use Medusa Eyes and clear them before they can attack.

The twin Asimans in stage 6 hit for 5368 each, but have CD2.  Morgana's leader skill really eats into their health though.

As for the bosses, with CD3 and Carl as leader, they weren't much of a threat.  Damage is 8358 base.

Quest 27-1: Water based trolling

It's the first high-level water based quest, modeled just like the first fire quest.  A bunch of water monsters with comparable stats/damage/defense as their fire counterparts.  Stage 6 has the troll fire enemies, which decent defense and good HP, along with a strong attack.  The Jotunn at the end has 11400 defense (about twice as much as Erinyes in 26-1) and hits for 7022 every round.

Team: Nature Mobel, Erinyes++, Pastor Carl, Night Witch Catherine, Charmer++, Deep Sea Banshee.  A lot of HP, plus damage reduction against water and fire.  Pretty safe composition, but needed to use skills constantly in stage 6 and 7.

Quest 26-5 Origins of annoyance

The end of the fire-themed hard quest line.  As the ultimate fire quest, it's got troll like qualities from all parts troll.  The pic shows the breakdown of the stages, and I'll go over some specifics of the latter 2/3 of it.  You will either need armor breakers, toxic attacks, or poison attacks.

Stages 1-4 feature enemies just like before, with the same stats and all.
Stage 5 is where it gets trolly.  The Myrmcoleon's insane defense is inherited by the Hestia, just like how Scott shares his defense with the enemies he accompanies in the Path of Fire quest series.
Stage 6 has three masks that should be treated like bollas.
Stage 7 has tree lions that hit for 2488 each.  Note they have a CD1.  They're not your average farmable lions :P
Stage 8 is the lightning troll level - 2 thunder dragons.  Each hit for 13584, but have CD5.  They have a fair amount of health.
Stage 9 has 2 chimera that are just like the chimera from 26-4.  Each hits for 10000, CD2.
Stage 10 has our priestess+. CD2, hits for 15876.  High defense (around 5200), like the Erinyes from 26-1.


How did I complete this?  By having my Rozen Maide Alice as a leader, and another Rozen Maide Alice as an ally.  Reducing all damage in this quest by 75% effectively quadruples my health (and my effective healing).  Plus each of them can generate hearts when I'm low on them.

The rest of my team:
Erinyes (always a staple; extra turns always helps when I need them)
Catherine (cuts down time in some stages, particularly 5, 8, 9, and 10)
Carl (I usually go with pestilence over defensive ruin since he also has very good stats, and is water)
Mobel (shield is very useful in a pinch, and has very good stats)
These 4 may become my go-to followers for all of these quest series.  They all fill a role nicely.

Got my gem, and am never doing this quest series ever again unless it gets nerfed :P

Quest 26-4: A brief lapse in difficulty

Probably the easiest quest of this series so far.

Again, stage 6 has the token non-fire enemy - it's just like a bolla, but hits for 8484 with CD2.  The boss is similar, but hits for 10000 with CD2.  My Alice was able to mitigate all sources of damage for this quest.  The stats for the normal mobs don't seem to change.

Almost forgot to mention: the enemies in stage 6 and 7 have high defense but low HP, so an armor breaker isn't really necessary unless your have Raphael to clear them instantly.

Team: Rozen Maide Alice, Pastor Carl, Night Witch Catherine, Nature Mobel, Erinyes++, Ciguapa+.

Quest 26-3: Surprise water bosses!

Yeah, I found some time to do this one.

Again, trolling occuring at the end.  3 Thors that have very low HP.  Low enough such that I don't know how hard they hit, but they had a CD2.

The boss?  A pair of Jotunns.  Yeah, a water boss in a fire themed quest series.  Each does 5000 damage and a CD1.  This is a sick joke.  Anyway, I was able to complete this stage with a Witch++ and a Deep Sea Banshee ally.

Team used: Saintess++, Mobel+, Pastor Carl, Night Witch Catherine, Erinyes++, Deep-Sea Banshee.

Catherine - dark QT (UPDATE 11/27/13)

I did this quest a while ago, but I'll copy and paste what I wrote on the Gamespot forums in case anyone is preparing for it:

"I think I just got incredibly lucky with my setup.  Some of the stages may use random enemies.  My first stage had Atshen and Atshen+ (the thread on CN had Yasha+ and Kali).  Stage 3 and 5 have four enemies that attack every turn for 16k total I believe.  For each stage, I just happen to have either Grauda or Hakutaku ready (they are around level 50+) to smack them, leaving them with just enough HP so that a simple combo could kill off a couple of them.

Every enemy has decent defense except Catherine (a little less defensive, but her HP is nuts) and Carl (who has insane defense but low HP compared to the other duelists).  This really is a quest where you just gotta know beforehand what to bring.  As long as you have a good healer, Banshee++ (or anything else with pestilence or the like), and Encantado stages 6-9 aren't too tough.  For stage 6 and 7 I did have to make a heart combo one between attacks (Senas and Izzard), and for stage 8-9 I could just goof off (Carl and Quinn).

Catherine is a total beast though.  12354 damage every single turn.  Given I had around 16000HP or so, I needed around 6500 HP for Encantado to save me.  My Jotunn++ is around level 45; giving me only around 1500HP per round.  Every turn I needed to make a 4-chain combo, one of them needing to be a heart chain.  Imagine doing that about 80+ turns.  To ease the pain, skills gave me some buffer.  Even with her defense not up to par as the others, my pestilence damage ticked for like 50000.  Extreme amounts of planning at each turn and timely usage of Heart Change and Medusa Eyes is what saved me countless times. Unless you somehow got to this part using a low HP team, Yasha as leader would probably be too much - it would have to be Encantado/Cacus/Lava Tauren/Antana.

In the end, all I got was one card - Catherine.  Good lord.  It took me TWO HOURS to do this quest.  Mainly because half of the quest was me using Banshee++ to kill them all.  That's about 500 turns.  If you are/were lucky enough to have a golem/lenanshe/quinn/etc with that coveted poison/toxic attack it would save a lot of turns."

...

It's a little dated since this is before the nerf to the 7 star attack cards (which may have been dragon cards before).  I do remember that stages 1-5 featured normal enemies, though stages 3 and 5 featured enemies with CD1 that needed to be burned down ASAP.  Still, I would use stages 1, 2, and 4 to get your attack skills ready for stages 3 and 5.  Once you get to stages 6 it's all single enemies that can pretty much 1-shot you if you don't have the soldier's will or undead soldier skill.

IIRC I had Jotunn++ as leader and Encantado as my ally.  Like I stated above, Antana would have been better than Encantado.  High RCR and only around 10000HP would have been ideal against Catherine herself.  I think Lava Tauren has the 70% life save instead of 40%, making him not as useful. As usual, Erinyes has her spot, and you'll either need something to break defense or pestilence (I chose the latter route since I didn't know exact defense values for Carl).

Update: Some on the stages...

Stage 1: 2 random enemies.  They could hit for ither 5000+ or 10000+ each. CD of 2 or 3.
Stage 2: 3 random enemies with varying damage as well, anywhere from 3000-6000.  CD of 1-3.
Stage 3: 4 random enemies with CD1.  3600 damage each?
Stage 4: Similar to stage 2
Stage 5: Similar to stage 3.
Stage 6: Senas, CD3, hits for 11000+
Stage 7: Izzard, CD3, hits for 10100
Stage 8: Carl, CD5, ????? (very high) damage, VERY HIGH DEFENSE
Stage 9: Quinn, CD5, ????? (very high) damage
Stage 10: Catherine, CD1, 12324? damage.

Cervo - Morgana Troll, the Holy version!

Holy Land is a 3 normal quest series structured similar to the 6/7 star card series.  However it is much more difficult and needs proper preparing for level 2 and 3.


Level 1 is just 5 stages.  Stages 1, 2, and 4 have holy enemies to deal with.  Stage 3 has a long christmas candy to fight :P  Stage 5 is Cervo itself, doing a moderate amount of damage every turn.  Again, Level 1 is always that intro level with a minute chance for the boss to drop.


Level 2 is pretty tough for its position.  Here's the breakdown:


(Note: All damage I list is WITH A 50% HOLY DAMAGE REDUCER)
Stage 1: 5 unicorn CD1.  In total they hit for around 14000+.  You'll need to burst a couple of them down ASAP.
Stage 2: 4 princesses, CD2.  Nothing really special.
Stage 3: 2 baby holy dragons, CD3, 4541 damage total.  Again nothing really special.
Stage 4: 2 Christmas treats.  Treat them like bollas.
Stage 5: Saintess, CD2 5022 damage.
Stage 6: 2 unicorns, 2 princesses.  The princess are easier to kill IIRC.
Stage 7: 2 princesses, 2 baby holy dragons.  The dragons are easier to kill here as well.
Stage 8: 2 Christmas treats again.
Stage 9: 2 Hydra+, CD is either 1 or 2 (can't remember), 3000+ each.
Stage 10: Cervo,  CD1, 2879 damage.

The Christmas treats have a 100% drop rate, which is good and bad.  Good because they are enhancer cards for selling or exp.  Bad because it presents the whole "10 box problem" I kept running into when I was farming Morgana's Level 1 quest.  If you noticed, all of the other cards you face are 1 and 2 star cards, making them a fairly common drop, except for Hydra.  In my lone run, I did get 10 boxes by stage 9.


Level 3 is very tough.  Breakdown is as follows:
(Note: Damage listed is ACTUAL damage)
Stage 1: 4 Askafure; CD3, 6660 damage each.
Stage 2: 4 baby holy dragons; CD2, around 7890 damage each.
Stage 3: 5 unicorn; CD1, 5500 damage each (this one is rough)
Stage 4: 4 Christmas Candies; CD4, 9999 damage each.
Stage 5: Saintess; CD2, 14820 damage.  Has a lot of HP.
Stage 6: 4 baby holy dragons.
Stage 7: 4 more baby holy dragons
Stage 8: 4 Christmas Treats
Stage 9: 3 Hydra+ CD2, 12084 damage total each
Stage 10: Cervo, CD1, 8888 damage.

First Attempt: I got to stage 9 and got promptly stomped.  Stage 3 required luck too, as that's 27500 every turn.  The only reason I survived was due to Erinyes and Mobel buying me time, but that wasn't enough for the Hydras - they have way too much HP to burn down with my holy team (Mobel leader, Leonidas, Saintess, Ciguapa, Erinyes, and Ciguapa ally).

Second Attempt: Chose a Saintess++ instead of Ciguapa+ for an ally, and it paid off.  Thankfully Saintess is a dragon type so her HP was doubled (Ciguapa is also dragon, but halving all holy damage effectively doubles your HP against holy enemies).  With good uses of skills and heart management I was able to win the day and the boss card :)  Saving up Mobel's shield skill for the christmas treats rounds was key as one time I had three of them still alive when they attacked.  If you use it just when they have a CD1 it will effect two of their attacks!

Glad that series is over.

Morgana (both the trolly and top level type)

This is one of the most frustrating series I've done.  And still I do not have her card. 

Level 1 (The TROLL level) is a 10 stage gauntlet of weak enemies and Morgana at the end.  There is nothing special about anything except that Morgana attacks every round for a little over 5000.  You can bring a dark damage reducer to help, even if there are no dark cards.  What sucks about this is that all the other stages are filled with 3-4 enemies that are mostly worthless other than selling.  Many times, you will have 10 boxes before reaching Morgana, effectively wasting your attempt at her.

Level 2 (the TOP LEVEL type) is a completely different story.  Pics courtesy of Zangetsu.

 

 

 

Pics should be in order.
Stage 1: 5 Chiatuli.  Each hits for 3500. CD1. Defense of around 1000.  A gateway stage really.
Stage 2: 1 shadow bolla, 2 dark lions. Bolla hits for 4000 with CD1. Lions hit for 6666(?) with CD2.  I presume they are the "normal" type that has low HP and high defense.
Stage 3,5,6: Normal enemies.  Various cooldowns, hit around 3000(?)
Stage 4,7: 5 bollas, one of each flavor.  CD6.  You know how they are at this point.
Stage 8: Ala. Probably hits very hard, but has a CD3.
Stage 9: Huldra, Encantado, and Harpy (2 of the 3 appear).  CD1.  Hit very hard (9000? each).
Stage 10: Morgana. CD1. 17K damage. Tons of HP.

It looks like you need a strong and balanced team to tackle this.  Good skills that are leveled up will help (cough Medusa Eyes).  I think it could be done with zero gems with some luck, but everyone I know had to use 1-2 at least at some point.

For me, I just tried farming level 1 again.  No dice.  Oh well, I'll have to wait until another festival I suppose.