PDX Database – The Recent Updates & Perspectives
It may seem weird for me to be talking about PDX on my site, but this PDX Academy after all. I figured it’s a good opportunity to talk about the recent positive changes on Puzzle Dragon X (PDX)!
Featured art source: @Jual_3930
Preface
We all know that for a while, PDX lacked updates. There was no dungeons added immediately, nor monsters added to database. It felt like an abandoned project because it wasn’t updating as fast as it did.
Thinking about the progression of the game though, it’s not surprising that updating becomes harder when dungeons become more complex, enemies do a million more conditional things, and new mechanics are constantly added. Now I’m not literate at coding or anything, but I know it’s not something I can easily do myself (otherwise I would’ve rebuilt a database here).
That also means it hurts to see the words people use to describe the situation. “PDX is dead”, “PDX sucks”, etc. As a little minion on the site, those comments demotivate me from doing anything. I cannot imagine how the site admins feel when seeing all the public comments.
That also means I, along with the rest of the team, really treasure the supportive comments out there. I cannot represent Beta or the site itself, but as a minion I thank you all for not trashing the site on hard times.
The Updates
Now with the feels taken care of, here are some changes we’ve seen in the past month on PDX! Some of which are things we’ve always wanted!
That search bar
…is now much, much faster!
However, select keywords actually become frustrating to work with, or still lags. Ea and Eir are the most prominent ones, but we’re sure there’s more…
Gotta say I’d pick this over a slow search anyways.
Design changes
Arguably the biggest change since comma addition on the site! The abilities section was moved to directly beside the profile section.
After that, more quality of life changes were made! You know how sometimes you can barely see the card of the Gem? The icon is now zoomed way in, and displayed with the 
Evo Material icon, so that you know it’s an Evo Material.
The zoomed icons appear in places where smaller icons appear, including evolution chart and active skill display.
It’s a lot easier to see the difference, when you compare before and after. It’s a great change for my poor eyesight…
Series display changes
We finally gave up waiting for GungHo to do anything about the old GFE (the 5* ones), so admins gave them a new home – their own series on the site. (lol)
Our admins later improved the display to a full page-width list for all series. It’s great for those long series like Descended loots below, and Fes. exclusive cards!
Monster Book updates: Awakenings & Orb Changers
Do you recall the Monster Book that used to load every single monster that exist in game, and maybe your browser crashes before it loads? I totally remember and I know everyone wanted it fixed. Well, here it is, with new search filters!
Awakenings and Super Awakenings are now available for filtering, and you can even choose the number of Awakenings/Super Awakenings to filter. It’s great for searching for that one specific card you need for your team!
A later update gave options to find that orb changer you want!
Though we gotta note that “Change Orbs (Full Board)” section prioritizes over the “Change Orb” section, so pick one or the other if possible. The “Enhance Orbs” section is independent and shouldn’t interfere with results.
Most of the options under “Change Orbs” are pretty straight forward. The interesting one though is Pattern, which are orb changers that give a set pattern (like a 3×3 block or cross). Similar idea for Column / Row.
Example of orb changer search
If I wanted to find a pattern changer that gives Light orbs, I’d select “Pattern” and “Light”. This loads all the cards that spawn Light orbs in some pattern (3×3 orbs, cross, etc.).
EXP & Coin amounts added to select dungeons
Well, to the descended dungeons and arenas anyways.
The number aren’t easy to get since sometimes they are spawn-dependent. In fact some Japanese sites contradict with each other for select dungeons. Skyozora hasn’t listed them for a while either.
Final thoughts
I can confidently say that the site’s back in better shape – probably best I’ve seen in the past 2 years. As the official slave monkey/cheerleader of PDX (I update the guerrilla and some event schedule), I’m really happy to see the changes made!
Monsters are updated within a week now, and dungeons are up in time for NA server. Things are rolling again.
It’s even more amazing when realizing that the site owner doesn’t even play PAD anymore, but still maintains this for us crazy bunch. (Seriously, thanks Beta.)
Well I can’t say what the next site update will be – But there are more sweet updates coming soon! 🙂 Stay tuned and love PDX – Perhaps spread the word that PDX is not dead!
While i am thrilled by most of the things in the update, i do feel that what with the monster book being not only a great resource for looking atuff up, but also a good way of viewing the art and just browsing through the monsters easily, i enjoyed having it load all the monsters, and can imagine it being equally good if while still only showing up to 200 monsters at a time, it was paginated, so that you can still look through all the monsters without having to know what you are looking for in particular.
The other thing i am unhappy about with some of the changes on padx, though this one less recent, is that the home page (and as far as i can tell, the site as a whole) no longer shows the descended dungeon schedule, which makes it annoying when i am wanting to know if a specific descended is going to be happening soon or if i need to resort to trade begging or the whims of the descended rush spawn distribution.
Thank you and the entire team for providing the resources that you do, and keep up the great work
Descended Dungeon list is added manually, on top of guerrilla schedule and taking care of 3 blogs here, there is almost no way I’d have time to make it happen. Thanks for the support though. 🙂