Dragon Souls: When gemology just isn't enough
First off... dragonsouls are buggy as hell. They skip points, skip combos, plus you can get anything from a 10pt green soul to a topaz for 1,280 exp. I'll do my best here to explain it as simplely as possibly.
How does the dragonsoul minigame differ from gemology?
1) First off, orb color does matter. Each color is associated with one of the elements and dragons (brown can give you any). It let's you spend diamonds to change the board. I swear if I ever find out any of you used diamonds to lock or eliminate elements, I'm guild kicking you. Seriously. Don't make me prove it. Each class will have two elements associated with it, more on that later though.
2) The point cap is lower, clearing 6 at a time only gives you 20 points (50pts in gemology). Even clearing 9 at once only gives you 30 points. This means there's no reason to use two moves (one 0 pt) to clear 6 at a time... IF what you want are points.
3) Here's the thing ladies and gents, clearing more similiar colored souls at once increases (not guarentees) the chance of you getting a better level of soul. You can get a topaz soul from a 10pt move, but it's more likely your cat will start doing complex math. If you do 6 orb moves, you will get some greens and blues and a few purples. If you clear 8-9 orbs you will more likely get purples (and a better chance of a topaz), and if you can clear 10+ (usually weird cascades) you have about a 1-4 chance of a topaz.
4) Yes I see the conflicting points. I wrote them. On one hand I said don't set up moves, on the other I said set them up or suffer greens forever. Here's what I choose to do. Always try for the highest move you can without setting it up. Aim for 1k points without needing cards. This will be childs play if they ever fix the bugs. Pay more attention to cascades. make sure that any 10 point either cascades another 10 point or sets up a 4+ move next. If you do that, you should be able to get 1k easily, if you want to keep going for the hot event, go for it.
Now part one of what confuses the hell out of folks. You got 117 pages of raw level one dragon souls. What the heck do you do with them?
The goal is to use the dragonsouls to increase your stats/BR and unlock the DS skills. Each class has a radical and protect ability you unlock by increasing the two elements for your class. The abilities unlock at 24/24, they get better at 50/50, and then 80/80.
Warriors - Wind and fire - Radical (blocking or dodging drains 10 rage) - Protect (dying gives rage)
Mages - Wind and ice - Radical (Chance to rez with full rage) - Protect (reduce angel attack)
Rogues - Fire and Elctro - Radical (chance to damage back row) - Protect (chance to stun front row)
Hunters - Ice and Electro- Radical (chance to deflect an attack) - Protect (critting has a chance of stunning the angel)
Warriors, you rather got shafted here. If your main in a warrior you use the rage drain, because if you're dead the heros aren't lasting much longer. If it's a warrior hero then you can use either. The Infinate Rage build requires the protect skill.
Mages, I shouldn't even have to explain it. You want to rez with rage. Hero and main, both want to rez
Rogues, this one is more up to you. Personally I prefer to stun the front row over doing minor backrow AoE damage
Hunters, this is like the mage one, you want the shield that takes incoming damage and smashes it back into your enemies face.
Now it's time to actually level up souls to unlock those skills. Except for the first few days as a new level 70 you won't use green dragonsouls. You want to start with a mix of blue and purple. Frankly, use the 1-click option for at least the opal souls. Doesn't matter how high the blues are, a level 1 purple overwrites the effect and it will save you a ton of time. Wasted exp (say you end up with 1223/10442) gets fixed when you upgrade to topaz or ruby.
Just like with anything else, the main gets priority to 50/50, then the best hero, then the others to 24/24 to start. Sadly, if you want to activate the skills, you can't follow your gemming priority all the time. Here's what I use. Remember this is a great place to be flexible. So if you need a little more hit and it's an option, then go for it instead of wasting a gem slot. The following is just an example of how I do my DS, follow it or not as you please.
Warrior - 3 Wind (HP, Patk, pdef), 2 Fire (dodge & hit)
Mage - 2 Wind (HP & either pdef for support or Matk for main or dps), 3 Ice (agility, crit, end)
Rogue - 3 Fire (Agility, crit, hit), 2 Elctro (HP, Patk)
Hunter - 3 Ice (agility, crit, end) ), 2 Electro (HP, Patk
In order to get 80/80 I find I'm going to using two ruby/topaz up to 40 each and the others topaz and maybe even a purple\until you hit 80.
Leveling is now sooooo much less painful and prone to human error, and while still tedious, much better. Remember before we had devour and had to merge each one by hand and click approve? /shudder
Basically what you do now is unequip the dragonsoul you want to level (or buy it from the shop). Remember what is was, oddly I now find this the hardest part. Click the devour tab. If the dragonsoul you want to level isn't there, click the all tab, it should be right in the top row. move it over to the top bubble and drop it in. Helpfully, it now shows how much more exp you need on the left and how much experience sacrificing the souls you put below will give you.
Honestly, there are forums for the specifics of the "Optimal" times to switch over. And waaaay more details then I'm going into here. But for more information you can go to http://community.gtarcade.com/post/index/id/14924/ the new section with Ruby souls requires a bit of scrolling down.
