Is this now what they call a "ded gaem?"

Seeing how the limited quests are no longer refreshing, the rare summons aren't rotating, and the disappointing "festival" that occurred some weeks ago, what happened?  Did the company just pick up and leave and left the servers on?

Filling the void for a while is Brave Frontier, which is sort of similar.  It has RPGish like elements, but still carries the whole "collectable unit" thing going on, along with energy, exp farming, $$$ farming, limited quests, rare summons for gems, etc.  It's just a heck of lot more active, but also more buggy (like, 99% of the events are delayed/bugged in some fashion).  But still fun.

Also filling the void is some Starcraft 2 :)  Honestly, I've played Blizzard games for a very long time (since the days of Diablo 1 and the original Starcraft).  Blizzard overall has produced some top-tier games.  People are probably dissing D3 as the worst game ever blah blah blah; it's not bad, but had a rocky start.  I would still trust them over most game companies to crank out quality products.

Back to JD - these days I'm just logging on for the daily rewards sadly.  No events come out = no posts to talk about them.  And that final normal quest?  If I do it, I get a gem. Wow.

Great mysteries of Jewel Dragon

This has been something that has been itching on my mind ever since I seriously got into JD.

Who is the girl on the lower right?  I can identify every other card in this picture.  Both the english and chinese wiki do not have any card information with her.
Fire Drake god or whatever the name given for the starter fire dragon is the top left.
Targaryen is the top right.
Hector is the middle left.
Achilles is the middle right without the faceguard.
Raphael is the lower left.

Yeah it's kinda slow right now.  Need more festivals that don't have insanely hard quests.

Quest 31-4: About darn time

Took me a while to figure out what team to use, and to use it right.  I'm sure a super-offensive team with a really good combo maker could work, but with my luck I always failed at stage 6.  So I went with a defensive team:

Leader: Holy Angel Amy (50% reduction against holy needed for stage 6 and boss stage)
Ally: Thunder Queen++ (an overpowered card, now ultimate evolved to be even more overpowered)
Erinyes++ (the other overpowered card fully max'd out level and skill wise)
Tainos (filler thunder damage with decent stats and usable skill on any stage needed)
Jotunn++ (heart changer needed when hearts eventually get low; Amy has this purpose too)
Night Witch Catherine (needed for stage 6 and boss stage)

Once Erinyes and Thunder Queen's skills are available getting to stage 6 isn't too bad.  Lots of enemies have 1000-2000 defense, and this team isn't that offensive oritented.

Stage 6's Kid Saintess has 7000 defense, hits for about 14000, and has around 700000 HP.  Constant spamming of medusa eyes and iron wall from here on out.  The Charybdis have about 3 million HP, hit for about 17000 each, but only have 500 defense or so each.  It's mostly just skill spamming with the exception of Amy and Jotunn when you get a bad break and hearts are in short supply.

The final quest is available now...I'll just post the pic of the final set of enemies you can face.  If I do clear this quest I'll move it to the post I will make when it happens.

Update 4.4

Small update to nerf full clears of diamonds :\

According to my sources it's like a 75% nerf to damage.  I guess JD didn't realize how powerful a full clear would be when you stack a mono-elemental team.  And you can't just not update since the game will not function if you try to sit on version 4.2 so we're short on luck.

Pandora's Box

Looks like another one of these 1v1 endurance series.  Getting info from the "super hell" difficulty; dunno if there is another lower difficulty.

Stage 1:
Healing Angel Bela
CD2
8212 normal attack
22176 special attack
942950 HP

Stage 2:
Cruel Angel Eugenia
CD3
40032 normal attack (yikes)
435450 HP

Stage 3:
Banshee
CD1
~12000 normal attack
Solar Eclipse (light --> stone)
Reborn (full heal)
Look around (do nothing)
677700 HP

Stage 4:
Achilles
CD2
8250 normal attack
Outbreak (increases damage by 20%?)
Reborn (full heal)
Dark Rules (blackens all diamonds)
302100 HP?

Stage 5:
Assassin Quinn
CD 6
144000 normal attack (top lelz)
1053000 HP

Stage 6:
Pandora
CD1
Preemptive strike 10116
21000 normal strike
40912 crazy strike
Ghost Seal (seals 1 card for 5 turns)
Hand of Doom (turns a random type of diamond to stone)
7.6 million HP


Yeah...it looks rough.  Oh, and it's a NO HEART quest.

Pandora is a water type card with an ultimate evolution to water/dark.  Active skill does 300X her damage, but leaves you with 1 HP.  Leader skill increases the damage of demon type cards by 350%.

I'm still around (UPDATE 4/1/14)

Since there's been a lack of new quests, there hasn't been much to post about.  The game is rotating those old quests every 2 weeks, and soon the ancient dragon series will come to a close.  My guides should still be applicable AFAIK.

I did see a slew of new cards, many dual elemental, which are supposedly of the new "demon" or "devil" type.  Of course most of them are lolis or whatnot, but I wonder how they will be introduced.  Probably golden summon only -_-

The old wiki was closed and if you try to go to it you get redirected to a hentai site haha.  Fortunately jeweldragon.tk set up another wiki which retains all the really old and somewhat outdated info, but has a more complete card list.

UPDATE April 1, 2014: Spring festival is among us.  Starting off with the Burning Scales quest, I got another opportunity at that smexy Flame Queen card.  First attempt I spent 2 gems with a Mobel/Sigurd team because of heart trolling at the boss stage.  Final attempt I was able to use an ally's new Thunder Queen++ which is ridiculous (max skill iron wall and 500% RCR recovery every round).  Stage 1 is definitely the hardest part with that team setup, but a lucky set of chains and the rest is all history.  And no April fool's joke here - finally got the queen herself :)

Erinyes + Thunder Queen at max skill is seriously overpowered.  You either take no damage for 3 rounds, or take half-damage for 2 rounds.  That was before the new ultimate evolution for Thunder Queen too.  Seriously, this is overpowered.

Tower of Frost Dragon - Prothero revisited

A while ago I struggled because I didn't have a Raphael available.  Things are a little different now, and with Raphael as an ally, I was all set to complete this series.  Top level pics below.

Team setup:
Leader: Thunder Naga (water reduction for the whole quest, lightning for stage 5)
Ally: Master Raphael (armor breaker needed for the boss)
Tainos (high stats, active skill needed for boss)
Prothero (high stats, active skill needed for boss; could be any of the dragons here really)
Peri (high stats, buffed by Raphael's passive skill)
Erinyes (medusa eyes is always welcome, and needed in stage 5 to buy time)

Stage 5 and 9 respectively.  The main reason I brought Thunder Naga and not Alice was precisely for stage 5, because that lightning enemy hits hard if you don't have any defense against him.  You can also notice I have more fire cards than any other element.  It's also the first time I used my Peri :P  For a Stamina card she has a very large RCR, along with a crazy amount of HP as expected and a decent attack - all buffed by Raphael.  As for the Erinyes in stage 9, you can see how hard she hits in the pic.  She also has the usual water --> stone skill, and look around.  One time full heal too.

Here's our boss.  I just had to make sure I could use both of my dragon's skills upon using Raphael's armor breaker and it's a free win.  I might try to farm him, based on what quest series we will get soon (if it's Lahair, I'm going to farm that hardcore for Erinyes).

Praise for Life - Gaia

Celebrating Chinese New Year with probably the hardest quest yet. 

Stage 1 Poseidon:
3521 x4 damage, CD2
7000+ defense AT LEAST
1117050 HP
Release Energy (x2 damage)
Soul Seal (random cards are sealed for 3 rounds)

Stage 1 Ganesa:
2045 x4 damage, CD1
????? defense
533920 HP
Quick Combo (3681 x4 damage)
Dark Rules (turn all diamonds black)

???? defense because 7000 damage was unable to break it


Stage 2 Gracious Angel Caroline:
3818 First Strike (attacks before you even do anything)
7637 x4 damage, CD2
340950 HP
Angry snow for ????? (more than 14141, maybe around 21000 x4?)


Stage 3 Charybdis:
11160 damage, CD1
647700 HP
Unknown abilities (maybe heal?)


Stage 4: Catherine:
10028 damage, CD1
2085486 HP
Release Fury (buff itself to do 3x damage for multiple rounds)


Boss Gaia:
18778 damage, CD1
5000? defense;
Heal if under 50%, I'm assuming she also has angry wind and release potential (either 2x damage or a barrage of attacks for 1.75x damage total).

Information from stage 3, 4, and the boss are speculation I got from the CN forums.  I went with a dual Thunder Naga setup to see how long I could last, and got only to stage 2.  Even then, stage 1 is scary if you don't have any heart changers.  I had two of them and it was still kind of close.

I think I'll pass on this one and try to get Ayesha

Quest 31-3: Defense wins again

Another defense setup wins the day again.

Team: Rozen Maiden Alice, Catherine, Carl, Mobel, Erinyes, Holy Angel Amy.
75% lightning damage reduction, 50% fire & light damage reduction covers all enemies in this quest.

I think all the enemies behave like they did in older quests.  The Charmer has 7000 defense, and hits for about 8000.  Meanwhile, the Thor only has 2000 defense, 900000HP, and hits for about 6500.  Both have CD3, which makes the encounters pretty easy.

I've noticed that quite a few enemies in this quest series has at least 1000 defense, if not 2000, but most don't have a lot of HP to back it up.

Erasmus - Dark Mechbeast

We are at the final leg of the mechbeast series now.  The quest series is in line with the other mechbeast series, so no surprises here.  Like usual, don't forget that I have double dark damage reduction, so I'm taking 75% less damage than normal.  Most stages have a Jack-In-Irons that can seal light cards, which is annoying since he also attacks every turn.  There's also magic dolls than can do double attacks.

 

Pics of stage 5 and 9.  I think the cursed doll also has double attack and soul seal.  The twin Dark Mars didn't do anything special, though I'm assuming they can heal.  They do have a little bit of defense and a lot of HP.  The damage shown in the Dark Mars pic is total damage.

Here is Erasmus with his normal and double attack damage.  Nothing really scary, though with my setup it takes a while to whittle down his HP.  He can heal 50% of his HP when he is really low, so save up skills for around 30% or a little less, then go all out.

Now that I'm done with this I may do some weekend treasure chest hunting - need some coin :P

Quest 31-2: EZ

Less elements to worry about = super-defensive team works out again.

Team: Thunder Naga, Mobel, Carl, Catherine, Erinyes, Deep Sea Banshee.

Everything acts like how they did in previous quests.  The centaur were the biggest threat since I have no defense against them, and only have CD2 as well as my low HP.  After that, the masks can be dealt with my Erinyes, and the Ettin still hit as hard as before, but with thunder naga the damage is mitigated nicely. 

The Jotunn is exactly the same as the previous quest too. 19000 damage base, 900000HP, CD2.   Doesn't even have really high defense (2000 to be exact).

Quest 31-1: Unfinished business

The final quest series has started.

 

First Attempt Team Setup: Mobel, Catherine, Sigurd, Carl, Erinyes, Deep Sea Banshee

Second Attempt Team Setup: Alice, Mobel, Catherine, Carl, Erinyes, Deep Sea Banshee

Every enemy has at least 2000 defense.  The Erinyes at the end have way more (over 7000 at least; my team was unable to penetrate their defenses).  They all hit kind of hard too.  The Ettins hit for 14000 each, but are not too high on HP, and have CD4.  The Jotunn has 90000HP unfortunately and hits for 9500 on CD2.  The Erinyes only have 33000HP and hit for 6500 each on CD1, but also have super high defense.

Since I don't know how much defense the bosses have, I dunno if a dual Anna or Sigurd team can actually beat them.  However, a highly defensive team was able to win the day for me.  With 50% reduction in water/lightning damage, 75% reduction in fire damage, and Mobel's shield to help in a pinch, I was able to outlast the final stages and kill them with skills mostly.