Challenge Dungeons

Daily Dungeon Challenges are similar to dungeons where you send a team of pets into the challenge and get rewards based on how well they did. They are very important, as they give you a currency (Gems) that allows you to craft T3 materials and strengthen your dungeon teams. You should start doing Challenge Dungeons the moment you unlock them. However, there are some differences compared to regular dungeons:

Starting Out

The Challenge Dungeons do not take any time to run — they will complete instantly. Pets assigned to the Challenge Dungeon team are not removed from the main dungeon team — pets can be doing anything else while also participating in the Challenge Dungeon.

The Challenge Dungeon team does not conflict with Dungeon parties, campaigns, UBv4 teams, RTI, etc. The pets you assign to the Challenge Dungeons may do other tasks as well.

Pets will not gain experience, and you will not get any items, but you will gain Gems. The amount of Gems you get depends on the amount of damage done and the number of enemies killed in the Challenge Dungeon.

• Instead of items, you will obtain gems depending on how well you did in the challenge.
• You are limited to 3 tries a day, which can accumulate to a maximum of 10. This limit of 10, as well as amounts of tries per day, can be increased with Challenge Points.
• Some special effects of pets (Undine or Elephant for example) won't work in Challenge dungeons. Lucky Coin's ability to deal bonus damage does still work.
• Each challenge has a different boss to fight with different perks.
• Each challenge has a limit of 100 turns.

There are 6 types of Challenge Dungeons:

• Elemental Challenge: Gives gems from the 5 elements through 5 different rooms where you will fight the 5 bosses. This challenge gives you all 5 types of gems, but you earn them at a lower rate than the other challenge dungeons.
• Neutral Challenge: Gives neutral gems. Boss: Seiryuu. Perk: 1 billion health, 50 def, 100 resistance to each element, reflect 5% of the damage you do to him, the reflect damage increases by 5% every turn.
• Water Challenge: Gives water gems. Boss: Queen Slime. Perk: 1 billion health, summon 5 monsters every turn, the monster becomes stronger every turn. Your pets will be constantly at half speed.
• Fire Challenge: Gives fire gems. Boss: Suzaku. Perk: 1 billion health, 50 def, 500 resistance to fire and 0 resistance to other elements. Hits 2 pets per action and his attack and fire increases every turn. Your pets will also constantly burn, changing their attack to fire and losing 10% health every turn.
• Wind Challenge: Gives wind gems. Boss: Byakko. Perk: 1 billion health, 50 def, 500 wind resistance and 0 resistance to other elements. Hits all your pets with every action. His defense and speed increase every turn and his defense can't be reduced.
• Earth Challenge: Gives earth gems. Boss: Genbu. Perk: 1 billion health, 99999 def, 500 earth resistance and 0 resistance to other elements. Will hit all your pets every turn. His attack and earth resistance increase every turn. Your pets will have their speed reduced by half if their health falls below 50%.

There is an Overflow Points perk that improve the Gem Gain for each Challenge Dungeon done.

Gems have three purposes:

- The first is that you can trade 2k of each gem type for a dungeon party slot. This is important as your progression speeds up significantly if you can send more than one party into the dungeon.

- The second purpose is to obtain the Alchemist cape. Pets are not capable of crafting T3 materials without this item. It also makes a good piece of T3 equipment for dungeon pets. Like the dungeon party slot, it also costs 2k gems of each type.

- Lastly, gems can be attached to equipment to improve it depending on the gems. Note that a gem can be combined with other gems of the same element to form higher level gems, up to level 15 gems. This level cap can be increased through Overflow Points, although it is not advised due to how expensive the upgrade is. (You can unlock this upgrade at no cost through UCC).

• Neutral gems increases all of the pet's element stats by (1 * Gem Level * Equipment Tier).
• Water gems increases the pet's health stat by (1% * Gem Level * Equipment Tier).
• Fire gems increases the pet's attack stat by (1% * Gem Level * Equipment Tier).
• Wind gems increases the pet's speed stat by (1% * Gem Level * Equipment Tier).
• Earth gems increases the pet's defense stat by (1% * Gem Level * Equipment Tier).

Guide to Gems

Gems provide an easy way to vastly improve the gear of your pets. At the highest end, which is generally level 15 until endgame, a gem can end up giving a piece of T3 gear 45% of any stat (or +45 to all elemental stats), regardless of its rank or upgrade level. With this in mind, it isn't wise to just create only level 15 gems or only attack gems. Knowing what gems to create and where to use them can result in a more balanced team.

Upgrading Your Gems

Level 10 is the ideal level for the initial gems of all your equipment. While you miss out on 5-15% stats, you gain the ability to make 32 gems instead of 1, which is a pretty good deal all things considered.

The goal should be to get all your teams gear level 10 gems. By doing this, it should significantly boost your dungeon progress. As for what kind of gems you should use, this widely varies on the pet.

Generally, your damage dealers and supports want attack gems. However, when you go into D3, you want some health gems on them, since they will always take damage from ambushes.

Besides attack and health, neutral gems are a good middle-ground gem. They provide defensive and offensive stats if your pet has elemental advantage. It's something to consider over health gems if you want to still increase damage without sacrificing that much protecting. Of course, end game the attack gem still provides more damage. Neutral gems are also important when fighting the Mimic enemy in D3 dungeons, along with other bosses which tend to be Neutral element.

The defense gem are comparable to health gems, but have a different purpose. Certain fights value defense more, like v4s or certain bosses. Other times, health offers more overall survivability. They not only result in pets taking more damage before dying, but they also improve the heals of your support, as healing is based on the target's max health.

The wind gem give a bonus to pet speed, increasing the number of actions a pet has per turn, up to 3 max (1500 speed), improving the odds the pet acts first (minus ambushes), and giving defense piercing damage if it has more speed than the defending pet. While all of this sounds good, pets generally reach the speed cap without any gems, so their value is just for improving turn order and defense piercing damage. Both of these don't hold as much value and generally, you won't see many pets with speed gems being used except in the Infinity Tower, mainly for the Wind Tower and the Earth Tower, were they are almost mandatory.

Once all your gear has level 10 gems, then it's time to consider merging them and creating higher level gems. Having the challenge point purchase to prevent those gems that are being removed from losing a level will save you a lot of gems, so it's suggested not to remove gems until then. As long as you have the challenge point purchase, increasing your gem levels in increments of 1 or 2 is best as waiting to jump from level 10 to level 15 will take some time.

Note: You can replace a current gem with a new gem to skip the removal of gem process. It will save you a lot of time if you do this.

What To Gem Each Class

For those who just need to know what to gem everyone at a glance, you can refer to the following. Note, this is a basic guideline and will change depending on the gear you have for your pets and how far you are into dungeons. Gems are often used to make up for equipment/class weaknesses. So if your Mage is more defensively geared, you may not need the 2 Water gems that are suggested.

It doesn't matter where you put your attack and def/health gems, so generally try to keep them on the same type of equip to make swapping easier (ex. most weapons have fire, most accessories have water or earth) when you are reforging/upgrading.

• Mages: 1 Fire, 2 Water. Swap a Water for Neutral if more Elements is needed.
• Defenders: All Earth (v4's)/ All Water (dungeons). More defense benefits v4's, but more water benefits dungeons. Which gear they are on doesn't matter. A mix of earth/water can be good if you don't want to re-gear for v4's/dungeons.
• Supporters: 1 Fire, 1 Water, and either 1 Wind or Neutral depending what you need. Using 2 or 3 Fire gems can be helpful for low level Supporters who aren't yet able to heal a pet fully.
• Rogue: 1 Fire, 1 Water, and either another Fire or a Wind gem for more attacks. Rogues usually have Knives as their weapon, and additional speed will help with more defense reduction.
• Assassin: 2 Fire, 1 Water. If low speed, swap a Fire for a Wind gem. Swap Fire for a Neutral gem to help for later dungeons if needed.
• Blacksmith: Very flexible class. 1 Fire, 1 Earth, 1 Water for defensive. Swap the Earth for Wind for more offensive.
• Wind or Neutral gems: Generally used to help with a speed problem or elemental problem. Since neutral gems are both offensive and defensive, they can replace either one of the water or fire gems you have on your pet. The gems will often be replaced by Fire/Water gems as the pet levels up and you enchant your equipment. They do still have uses after higher level pets, however, so be sure to have a stockpile for when needed.