›PDX Academy

Lumon’s Guide To Novice Token Farming

| Jan. 8, 2023 | 1,325 views |   2    
Contents hide
1 Introduction
2 How Do Dungeon Boosts and Drop Rate Boosting Leads Work?
3 What Determines Build Quality?
4 General Team Template
5 Drop Rate Boosting Leads
6 Dungeon Boost Equips
7 Dungeon Boost Subs
7.1 4 Dungeon Boosts
7.2 3 Dungeon Boosts
7.3 2 Dungeon Boosts
7.4 1 Dungeon Boost
8 Buttons
9 Swipe Strategy
10 Conclusion

Introduction

Hello, I’m Lumon. While I’m probably best known for my videos on YouTube, I am also the admin of PAD Sabermetrics, a server on Discord dedicated to analyzing data in PAD so that players can make better informed decisions.

Recently, I released a report on Reddit analyzing optimal ticket yields from the new Super GungHo Collab Dungeon. After half a day, I took a look at the comments and saw a lot of different farming teams that functioned well but left room for optimization. I could just go case-by-case and mention potential improvements personalized for each player, but that would be extremely time-consuming, so instead, I decided to write a definitive guide on all the aspects of constructing an optimal farming team for future novice dungeons.

Please keep in mind that my ideas and opinions are all based on the game as of January 2023; if you read this a year or two later, it’s probably very unlikely that this article will remain a completely accurate resource.

How Do Dungeon Boosts and Drop Rate Boosting Leads Work?

What Determines Build Quality?

Obviously, the goal of any team is to clear the dungeon; however, because novice dungeons are relatively simple, farming teams for novice token farming are judged either on stamina or time efficiency. Stamina efficiency is based on expected drops per stamina, so an improvement in drop rates directly leads to an increase in stamina efficiency. On the other hand, time efficiency is more concerned with speed; faster runs are preferred, even at the cost of suboptimal drop rates.

In general, novice token farming builds skew towards stamina efficiency, mainly because co-op expert farming is more time efficient (as it burns stamina quicker). However, because expert dungeons have substantially risen in difficulty (which generally increases the time required to clear) and novice dungeons now cost five more stamina compared to their old int counterparts, the time efficiency gap between the two major token farming methodologies has narrowed significantly.

Theoretically, accessibility should also be a metric for build quality, but since novice farming is already restricted by dungeon boost scarcity, it’s not as much of a concern here. On that note, let’s go over all the different options available.

General Team Template

Assist Assist Assist Assist Assist Assist
DR Boost Lead DB Sub DB Sub DB Sub DB Sub DR Boost Lead

Pretty straightforward, but I thought it might be helpful to have a visual example (though it is very basic). The goal is to kill every floor conveniently with the highest possible drop rate, up to 100%.

While “DR Boost Lead” and “DB Sub” are pretty self-explanatory (DR = Drop Rate, DB = Dungeon Boost), I have labeled the assists vaguely as just “assists” because the desired assist archetype changes depending on the dungeon. For example, some novice dungeons have a low number of floors, so you can afford to run some dungeon boost equips as opposed to a full set of buttons. It all depends on the dungeon, which is why I labeled the assists very vaguely. Don’t worry, I will try to cover all the different types of inheritable actives relevant to novice token farming down below.

Drop Rate Boosting Leads

Currently, there are only three leads that boost drop rates, and all boost by the same multiplier of 1.3x Egg Drop Rate.

Great Witch of Darkness, Hello Kitty is the best option by far. It has the most , the shortest active cooldown, and an extremely convenient laser effect in its leader skill that activates simply by matching orbs.

Between the other two, I want to say that Knight Kisaragi is slightly better as the inherent button active easily enables a dungeon boost equip, but the number of animations is pretty atrocious. Veroah is technically more accessible and also has an easier leader skill to work with (though this is more important for non-novice dungeons).

Any of these three leaders is better than nothing in almost all cases of novice farming.

Dungeon Boost Equips

Currently, there are eight equips with the coveted .

The best equip is Red Saline Hat as it not only has a decently long cooldown, but also comes with the trademark full board and two-turn haste active that is key to enabling swipe builds for novice farming. However, the regular Saline Hat is a close second since it has basically the same active, just two turns longer. Saline Hat is also theoretically cheaper than its red counterpart. Saline Story Equip is also pretty good since it has a three-turn haste but the story limitation of one copy per account holds the equip back.

Yes, Saline is broken.

Veroah Story Equip is uniquely valuable as an equip with both and . Though it doesn’t have a button or a full board generator, the arrival of Camilla makes this equip much more appealing.

As for the rest, they all feel the same except for cooldown. Longer is better.

Dungeon Boost Subs

4 Dungeon Boosts

No comparisons here. Camilla is broken not only because she can have up to 4 but also because she carries a massive multi-hit button perfectly suited for modern-day novice dungeons.

Not much else to say as there’s only one option. Instead, I’ll digress a little bit into the importance of a 4 sub option.

Many past int dungeons and some current novice dungeons have base drop rates of 30% on non-boss floors. Assuming 2 Veroah (or equivalent drop rate boosting leader skill effect), the base drop rate rises to 50.7%. Since each additively increases the drop rate by 2%, an optimal team would need 25 to push drop rates to the golden standard of 100%. Unfortunately, 25 was not possible for the longest time because the maximum number was 24 , which would only boost drop rates to 98.7% per floor.

Thankfully, Camilla has arrived to save the fortunate players who roll her, as she now enables teams to reach the hallowed threshold of 25 . She has already made a difference as the optimal farming build for Christmas Novice uses her to reach the aforementioned “hallowed threshold”.

3 Dungeon Boosts

For the longest time, Christmas Saline and Rhamamoa were the only options available to us. I remember grinding out int dungeons with good ol’ full button builds packing a measly 14 . See below.

After more than a year, GungHo blessed all players with a historic rerun of Hello Kitty Collab out of the blue, adding five new cards with 3 , including Veroah Kitty, who is basically as perfect as it gets in terms of drop rate boosting leads. From there, GungHo added Kanegon from Ultraman Collab and Mimic from Dragon Quest Collab, buffed Christmas Grida, and just recently unveiled the most accessible sub option to date, Super Reincarnated Ganesha.

History aside, Zela Kitty is probably the best dungeon boost base after Camilla because of 4 . After that, I would probably consider Christmas Saline as the next best option because 4 and 3 are broken. All the other sub options with 3 only have 2 , so after Zela Kitty, the dungeon boost bases would be ranked by lowest cooldown.

2 Dungeon Boosts

Quite honestly, half of this list is irrelevant as the kitty evolutions are inferior dungeon boost subs when compared to their base forms. The only “real” options here are Beach Veroah, Bacon Gudetama, and Halloween Elia. However, the kitty evolutions aren’t entirely useless; Zela Kitty trades in a for a much higher attack stat, which can be invaluable for reaching certain damage thresholds, while Reeche Kitty also gains 2 in exchange for a (when compared to its base form).

Unfortunately, out of the three “real” options, Halloween Elia is basically unusable as her evolving active skill means she effectively has a 15T CD for buttoning purposes. The other two are perfectly serviceable but feel like they leave something to be desired. Is it too much to hope that Beach Veroah gains a boosted drop rate effect in her leader skill?

1 Dungeon Boost

While I’m not going to list out all the cards that have a measly , I do want to point out some options that are pretty serviceable in case you didn’t have anything from the above lists.

Buttons

A button is an active that directly deals a flat amount of damage to the enemy. Pretty convenient, eh? However, while the concept is simple, the variety of existing buttons and their applications are endless.

I think that the easiest way to understand the aforementioned variety and applications is to take a look at the different parameters used on the website Ilmina to categorize different types of buttons. While this section isn’t meant to be a comprehensive guide on buttons, I will try to briefly cover the important stuff as best as I can.

  • Target: Important when dealing with multiple enemies. Some buttons deal damage to only one enemy, so if you have a floor with three enemies, you would need three “single target” buttons to deal with the floor…or you could be smart and use a button that hits “all targets”.
  • Type: Probably the most important characteristic for any button. “Lasers” deal true damage to the enemy, which means it ignores defense, attribute properties, and enemy shields (damage reduction, fujin, void, color absorb). “Flat multiplier” buttons deal damage equal to the attack stat of the card using the button active (base or inherit) multiplied by a certain factor. However, flat multiplier buttons (and other types that aren’t lasers) have an attribute and are subject to enemy mechanics such as defense, attribute properties, and enemy shields. There are other types of buttons such as team multipliers and health-based multipliers, but lasers and flat multipliers are generally used for novice token farming.
  • Number Of Attacks/Pings: Some buttons attack more than one time; for example, Ra’s Necklace hits three times. This is useful for getting through resolves and super resolves, which occur rarely in novice dungeons but do show up from time to time.

While buttons aren’t seen in the popular endgame dungeons because the health thresholds are beyond the reach of any button active, they are integral to farming novice token dungeons which have relatively low health spawns. However, there are tons of buttons around. How can I tell if one is better than the other?

First, the button needs to kill the floor. If it can’t do that, then it’s basically worthless. After that, buttons can be judged based on the number of additional animations, which are basically just other effects in the active besides the button damage itself. While waiting through an extra animation might only take an extra one or two seconds for one run, that could become an extra ten or twenty seconds over ten runs. It adds up.

To put the above concept of additional animations into practice, let’s compare some existing buttons. On paper, Pixel Alex looks great; it can button the new-look novice dungeons with its massive single-target laser and is inheritable on a reasonable 12T CD. In practice, I would avoid Pixel Alex if I had an alternative option as it casts two additional animations; both the no skyfall effect and the defense break effect feel like they take forever. Take a look at Pixel Zangief; it is technically a better option if its lower damage suffices, as it only has one additional animation in its board lock effect.

Of course, the holy grail of buttons are those with zero additional animations. Unfortunately, some of those buttons are no longer serviceable due to the increases in enemy health values stemming from the token farming dungeon rework. (Thank you for your service, Grimmjow.) Let me try to list the zero-animation button inherits I use frequently for novice token farming.

Of course, a lot of these are limited to collabs, and some are rather expensive. Don’t worry too much about optimal low-animation buttons and just try to make do with what you got.

Swipe Strategy

When Christmas Saline was first released in 2019, players started introducing builds that completely eschewed the convenience of buttons for the sake of maximizing by running four copies plus at least two hats. Since Saline created full boards, no skyfall badge became a mandatory requirement for this new “palm swipe strategy” as skyfalls could potentially double the run time. Even with no skyfall badge, this was wildly inefficient as each swipe engendered a haste animation, four pings, and the orb clearing animation.

Then the kitties arrived. Veroah Kitty not only had more with a drop rate boost leader skill, but she also had a unique laser effect that would trigger just by matching orbs. Meanwhile, Zela Kitty was just a superior dungeon boost sub option who could inherit Saline Hats and, more importantly, reduce damage pings from swiping. Since Saline was 19T CD back then, the improved build needed 1 Christmas Saline.

Coincidentally, Saline got buffed to 17T CD right after the historic rerun of Sanrio Collab, which meant that the optimal swipe build could cut out Christmas Saline and achieve zero-ping palm swipes with the highest possible amount of 24 . Christmas Saline also got buffed to 17T CD when the seasonal rolled around at the end of the year.

Of course, 24 felt like a tease when 25 would guarantee the perfect drop rate of 100% for old int dungeons with their baseline drop rates of 30%, but then we received Camilla. Unfortunately, Camilla arrived as a result of the huge token farming change; the old int dungeons had very negligible enemy health values to deal with, but the new novice dungeons were far more menacing. Thankfully, the novice drop rate increased to 40% for most collabs, which require only 17 , but shockingly, seasonals still stayed at 30% despite the relatively massive spike in difficulty, so I guess swipe strats are here to say.

Conclusion

How do I start farming tokens in novice? While I can’t say exactly what you should do, I hope this article gives you an idea to work with. If you have any questions, you can ask here or at the Saber Server on Discord. Thanks for reading, and as always, good luck and have fun!

Published by Lumon

YouTube Content Creator, Tsubaki Admin, King, and Founder/Admin of PAD Sabermetrics. Always loyal to Saber. NA Main @ Rank 1K.

2 Replies to “Lumon’s Guide To Novice Token Farming”

Leave a Reply!