I mostly did the change for speed because of wind equip was really bad. Some high end players who do d3 said that their level 90+ assassin with all t3 wind equip S-SSS + 10 or better wasn't able to kill the boss in 50 turns, which was especially bad in mountain. Often their attack did nothing and they only did speed damage which was not enough to go through all the hp of some d3 bosses. And the dragon fire mage with similar equip and levels but fire instead could kill them easily. Now with the extra actions with more speed, wind equip makes much more sense to use. It is still worse than fire equip, but at least it is not useless anymore. Also mages are not really useless like some people here said. A pretty common strategy for high level players who do d3 dungeons is to level up one mage higher than all other pets and this is their main dd. Phoenix feathers also exist. So you can bring them back if they die. Rogues are only there for items, their damage is basically neglitible later on. So you can either choose assasin or mages as dds. Assassins do less damage, especially are worse vs multiple enemies and mages die more easily. That basically means with mages you can defeat harder bosses and dungeon difficulties / depths sooner but you need more phoenix feathers. But it also depends on the dungeon. In the mountain dungeon you basically need 2 defenders to survive, so a mage makes much more sense to use than an assassin. In forest on the other hand you rather want 2 assassins instead.

Mages can carry D3

Granted, I'm not doing depth 3 with my level ~55 pets. But how much does depth 3 really matter? Because, for example, I'm looking at a depth 3 dungeon boss with a party with no rogues, and seeing that 82.5% drop rate on a tier 3 drop...for which I'd have to do what, an 8 hour dungeon run to even see that boss to have a chance of maybe beating him? And now after a couple mouseclicks I'm looking at a depth 2 boss with my party with 3 rogues...and it becomes an 83.14% drop rate for a trip that takes only 4 hours and is vastly easier to do. I get a better chance of a T3 drop in only four hours with rogues than I would in eight hours with mages. Even if you were to hand me level-a-billion mages that can effortlessly solo depth 3....I would get better results by _not using them_ and using my rogues in an easier dungeon instead. Potentially more than _double_ the drops, because I can run depth 2 twice in 8 hours vs depth 3 only once. So I'm just asking myself, what's the benefit of suffering through a tougher climb with squishy pets for months just to get worse loot and take longer to upgrade my gear? Hey...maybe someday I'll want that mage...maybe someday when Im fully kitted out in gear that I'm done upgrading because I'm buried in loot...maybe at that point I'll say *shucks* I wish I went with mages instead. And if and when that happens I'll simply dump my bonus xp onto some pet and *bam* I'll have a mage without any of the nuisance of having to put up with having had one for the past six months. In the meantime, I'm just not seeing it, guys. I'll stick with my previous assertions: mages are a _valid_ strategy, but the people who insist they're completely awesome are really just not seeing the bigger picture. They're _valid_, and if you want a make a mage, hey sure go for it. But they're definitely overrated and if you completely skip them you probably won't regret it much and you'll save yourself a bunch of hassle.

You probably shouldn't try d3 before you have level 90 pets with good equip. But if mages can carry d3, they definitely can also carry d2. You might be able to do higher difficulties sooner with a higher leveled mage which is the main dd, especially in dungeons where there are summoners like Water Tempel (where you also need 2 supporters). My bunny mage carries that for me: http://prntscr.com/okqgju penguin assassin vs rabbit mage. Rabbit has elemental advantage so his damage is better of course, but still the difference is big. An earth assassin would probably still do quite a bit less than the mage. But the main reason why mages are better dds is that they multi target. If an assassin does 1000 hp to a enemy with 250 hp it kills it. If a mage does 3 x 300 damage instead and so kill 3 enemies with 250 hp. So even with less total damage a mage would be more effective to use. But yes assassins might be better vs bosses. It is valid and possible to do everything without mages and you use assassins instead. They do well vs most enemies, just not as well vs multiple targets, especially summoners. As for drops in d3, it is defenitly worth it to go for it if your pets are strong enough. You are forgetting that in d3 are 2 bosses so you get more t3 drops and normal enemies drop t2 mats. So you get many times as much t2 mats. Example: (I used d8 for d2 and 0 for d0 because you probably need to be at least able to beat d2 with difficulty 8 to have a chance at d3, maybe you need even 9 op 10). Rogue with 52% bonus: Volcano d2 / difficulty 10/8/0: Magic Fire Stone drop chance 88.85% > You get 0.22 per hour. You also find 0.44 t2 mats per hour. Volcano d3 / difficulty 10/8/0: Magic Fire Stone drop chance 88.85% + 68.35% + 113.91% > You get 0.34 per hour. You also find 5.44 t2 mats per hour (12 times as much).

I currently have two dungeon parties with levels in their mid 30s to 40s who are currently doing Depth 1 Scrapyard and Water Temple at difficulty 6-7, and i'm considering pushing to Depth 2. This seemed like a good time to take stock of my long term plans, so i put together a spreadsheet combining the Campaign and Dungeon attributes of each pet (grabbing some info from LordBucket's spreadsheet, some info from the wiki, and some info directly from the game.) https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1nTLWQMl9ag8GFBqBcBuph_9EPfPjoKFYO6PJMLjyZBE/edit?usp=sharing I created two additional sheets to sort them by "ideal" Campaign distribution and by Bonus Class. I think that everyone agrees that the Growth and Item campaigns are critical and you should be running them most of the time. I feel that the Food campaign is also very important, especially if you have the Gold Dragon and doubly so if you also have the Pumpkin. It also seems like the GP campaign might be worth doing if you have pets with good bonuses and nothing else to do with them, but defintiely isn't critical. And of course Divinity, Level, and Multiplier campaigns can be entirely discounted except in very limited circumstances that aren't going to apply most of the time. As such, i feel like in the moderate-long term my ideal Campaign disposition would probably be: Growth: Robot, Shark, Ape, Pandora's Box, Otter, Afky Clone, Valkyrie, Whale, Hedgehog Item: Goat, Flying Cloud, Eagle, Dog, Fairy, Rudolph, Hydra, Slime, Chocobear Food: Pumpkin, Octopus, Doughnut, Question? GP: Nightmare, Camel, Cat, Question? But figuring out what to do with the rest of the pets is a lot harder, and i had some questions. I'm planning on going with balanced party compositions when possible (Blacksmith, Defender, Supporter, Assassin, Mage, Rogue) but i'm having difficulty figuring out who to designate as Defenders. Ghost is already one of my dungeon pets, and it was suggested early on that despite having a Rogue bonus it might be better to make them a Defender, since Ghost can't do any damage and wouldn't get any benefit from the Rogue's increased damage and wouldn't be harmed by the Defender's decreased damage. Does anyone have more thoughts on this now that Dungeons have been out for awhile? And overall is it better to have a Defender that matches the Dungeon's element but doesn't have a Class Bonus, or a Neutral pet that has the Defender Class Bonus and has been equipped with matching elemental armor? And how much better are those options than a Neutral pet with no bonus but elemental armor? In summation, given that i'm already using Question as an Alchemist and all the other Neutral pets either have good campaign bonuses or very high evolution requirements, would it be a bad idea to make my Cat into a Defender and just buff them with elemental armor? Alternately I could turn Snake into a Defender to cover Water and use a token to get Elephant as a Defender and have them cover Fire (with a bonus) and Earth and Wind (as neutral.) However we reportedly need 2 defenders for Mountain in the long run, so if i go with Snake and Elephant i'd need a third defender to cover the Mountain along with Elephant. I've already evolved Mouse, Mole, and Rabbit, and i have Panda earmarked for Supporter, so i would need a Fire or Wind defender instead. Every Wind pet i've got is either already evolved or earmarked for a Campaign, so i'd have to give up Camel's moderately useful bonus to GP Campaigns or Dragon's Mage class bonus. Any thoughts?

> *Originally posted by **[daetrin](/forums/2874/topics/1790910?page=4#13272728)**:* > > Ghost is already one of my dungeon pets, and it was suggested early on that despite having a Rogue bonus it might be better to make them a Defender, since Ghost can't do any damage and wouldn't get any benefit from the Rogue's increased damage and wouldn't be harmed by the Defender's decreased damage. Does anyone have more thoughts on this now that Dungeons have been out for awhile? > From the Ghost's tooltip, describing its unique special ability that it has even without evolving: "causes fear to enemies. reduces their attack and defense depending on its attack compared to the target's defense" So the Ghost as a Defender would have reduced effectiveness in that unique special ability that it has. The reduced attack stat would translate into smaller reductions to the enemies. But making it a Rogue feeds into that special ability. The enhanced attack stat would translate into bigger reductions to the enemies. Unless I'm misunderstanding that, somehow?

> *Originally posted by **[MuljoStpho](/forums/2874/topics/1790910?page=4#13275653)**:* > > From the Ghost's tooltip, describing its unique special ability that it has even without evolving: > "causes fear to enemies. reduces their attack and defense depending on its attack compared to the target's defense" That's a good point, and i don't know if that was taken into account with the original suggestion. It's also not clear what exactly the mechanic is. Does the difference in Ghost's attack vs monster's defense affect the success rate of the effect, the amount by which the monster's stats are reduced, or both?

> *Originally posted by **[daetrin](/forums/2874/topics/1790910?page=4#13272728)**:* > I currently have two dungeon parties with levels in their mid 30s to 40s who are currently doing Depth 1 Scrapyard and Water Temple at difficulty 6-7, and i'm considering pushing to Depth 2. > > This seemed like a good time to take stock of my long term plans, so i put together a spreadsheet combining the Campaign and Dungeon attributes of each pet (grabbing some info from LordBucket's spreadsheet, some info from the wiki, and some info directly from the game.) > > https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1nTLWQMl9ag8GFBqBcBuph_9EPfPjoKFYO6PJMLjyZBE/edit?usp=sharing > > I created two additional sheets to sort them by "ideal" Campaign distribution and by Bonus Class. > > I think that everyone agrees that the Growth and Item campaigns are critical and you should be running them most of the time. I feel that the Food campaign is also very important, especially if you have the Gold Dragon and doubly so if you also have the Pumpkin. It also seems like the GP campaign might be worth doing if you have pets with good bonuses and nothing else to do with them, but defintiely isn't critical. And of course Divinity, Level, and Multiplier campaigns can be entirely discounted except in very limited circumstances that aren't going to apply most of the time. > > As such, i feel like in the moderate-long term my ideal Campaign disposition would probably be: > > Growth: Robot, Shark, Ape, Pandora's Box, Otter, Afky Clone, Valkyrie, Whale, Hedgehog > > Item: Goat, Flying Cloud, Eagle, Dog, Fairy, Rudolph, Hydra, Slime, Chocobear > > Food: Pumpkin, Octopus, Doughnut, Question? > > GP: Nightmare, Camel, Cat, Question? > > But figuring out what to do with the rest of the pets is a lot harder, and i had some questions. I'm planning on going with balanced party compositions when possible (Blacksmith, Defender, Supporter, Assassin, Mage, Rogue) but i'm having difficulty figuring out who to designate as Defenders. > > Ghost is already one of my dungeon pets, and it was suggested early on that despite having a Rogue bonus it might be better to make them a Defender, since Ghost can't do any damage and wouldn't get any benefit from the Rogue's increased damage and wouldn't be harmed by the Defender's decreased damage. Does anyone have more thoughts on this now that Dungeons have been out for awhile? > > And overall is it better to have a Defender that matches the Dungeon's element but doesn't have a Class Bonus, or a Neutral pet that has the Defender Class Bonus and has been equipped with matching elemental armor? And how much better are those options than a Neutral pet with no bonus but elemental armor? > > In summation, given that i'm already using Question as an Alchemist and all the other Neutral pets either have good campaign bonuses or very high evolution requirements, would it be a bad idea to make my Cat into a Defender and just buff them with elemental armor? > > Alternately I could turn Snake into a Defender to cover Water and use a token to get Elephant as a Defender and have them cover Fire (with a bonus) and Earth and Wind (as neutral.) However we reportedly need 2 defenders for Mountain in the long run, so if i go with Snake and Elephant i'd need a third defender to cover the Mountain along with Elephant. I've already evolved Mouse, Mole, and Rabbit, and i have Panda earmarked for Supporter, so i would need a Fire or Wind defender instead. Every Wind pet i've got is either already evolved or earmarked for a Campaign, so i'd have to give up Camel's moderately useful bonus to GP Campaigns or Dragon's Mage class bonus. > > Any thoughts? Don't forget to add FSM to GP campaign! It doubles gp rewards of all campaign members.

The info seems to be all over the thread after the specific guide portion, so just to make sure: I need to level up my pets to ludicrous heights to do something other than depth 1, right? Lv 35+ for depth 2? Depth 3 would be 80+? Equipment is better than nothing, but is it really mandatory? I didn't see and real description as to how to get high level pets, do I understand correctly that soloing will get that specific pet all the exp? Can I syphon all the exp from my adventurers and give that to others? I haven't tried it so far because I was afraid it would be immediate.

Equipment if very important. My team ith an average lv of 34, is getting beat hard in volcanoe 1, difficulty of 6. That's weaker than depth 2, but they can't yet do it, on account of subpar equipment.