Introduction

The concept of trading has been one of the most highly desired and debated topics within the Puzzle and Dragons community since the game launched. However, it has the chance to run awry if restrictions and limitations are not put in place. Many players would love to have the opportunity to trade REM cards, but that would simply result in players creating numerous alternate accounts, hoarding stones, then trading away to their main.

As such, GungHo has forbidden the trading of REM cards as well as any card with a sale price of 100 Monster Points or above. Furthermore, you must also be at least rank 110 and your trading partner must have been on your friends list for at least 30 days. Finally, traded cards must be of the same rarity/stars.

This article will explain how the trading process works, provide guidance on what are desired items, establish a baseline value for commonly traded cards, and advice on how to add value, improve your own desirability, and how to make the most of trading with multiple accounts.

Video commentary

–video coming soon–



Trading in Puzzle and Dragons checklist

Trading is a phenomenal aspect to come to Puzzle and Dragons as it will allow players to round out their Monster Boxes, even out poor drop distributions, as well as acquiring specific evolution materials. Furthermore, it can also help empower your favourite monsters by being able to trade Pys, pluses, and Snowglobes.

While all of this is amazing, there will be some key points to bear in mind:

Must be rank 110 or higher

Must be friends for at least 30 days

Tradeable cards must be worth 99 MP or below

Trades will cost 100,000 gold

Traded cards must be of the same rarity/stars

All pluses and latents will be transferred over through the trade

Note that many Descend Bosses have had their costs adjusted; however, you can still trade their base forms, just do not evolve to the higher evolution(s).

Setting up trades

Trading has two different players: the host and searcher. The host is the player who creates the trade by showcasing what cards they wish to trade away and what they expect in return. The searcher is the player who browses through all the possible hosts on their friends list to find a trade that looks appealing to them.

Hosting process

You can imagine hosting a trade as setting up a virtual shop in that you are displaying goods you are willing to part with for specific cards in return. You can share these trades with all or specific friends. As a host you control the parameters of the trade and you should use it in several different ways:

To even out colour distribution of various drops (Pys, Kingtans, Snowglobes, etc.)

Trade away excessive materials for something you do not actively farm or have in excess

Trading away value added cards (explained below) for other resources

Hosting is the best way to acquire exactly what you desire, but you may end up in a situation where you have cards that you wish to trade away, but have too restrictive demands. As such, you may have to either broaden your horizons or go into the searching tab to see what your friends have to offer.

Searching process

By comparison, the searching process works in the opposite manner: you get to go shopping and browse through what your friends have to offer. This can be an exciting time as it is always interesting to see what other players have in excess as well as the chance to score a truly sweet deal.

When searching for a trade, it is highly recommended you do not have the commonly traded cards favourited as it can result in you appearing to not have the required items.

How will trading benefit the player base?

Trading will enable players to acquire common or challenging evolutions materials with relative ease. It also means you are able to trade Snow Globes, Pys, Kingtans, Latents, Orpharion parts, and +297s. This will also help even out poorly distributed colour Pys/Jewels/Tans etc.

As such, extra +297’s or sets of +99 of a particular stat will become tremendously valuable. However, +99 of a specific stat will have possibly more pull, especially if it is ATK.

Furthermore, rare/older Collab drops can be of tremendous value such as Monster Hunter parts of useful farmables such as Anji .

Setting up baselines for trading

Stamina cost will be the currency used to measure trading between players and the following table will not take into consideration the difficulty or time required.

As such, i wish to establish a baseline for each popular trading currency. All stamina values are calculated in coop mode and assumes their most common medium for acquiring and ignores gifts/challenge dungeons or special limited time events. Thus, Arena 1 will be used to calculate the stamina for a Py, Star Den for plus eggs, etc.

If a drop does not have a viable way to acquire and thus stamina cost, it will either be estimated compared to the baseline of a +297.

**These values are for their most commonly found places, specific events may result in better rates**

Take these numbers with a grain of salt

Trading Baselines Item Stamina Points (stamina/5) +297 750 150 Specific +99 50 Py 50 10 Kingtan 37.5 7.5 Generic Descend Boss

(unskilled/no evo) 25 5 Spirit Jewels 16.7 3 Specific Ideal Killers**

450 90 SDR 400 80 1 Orpharion part**

(excluding head) 100 20 Snowglobes Estimate 20-50 Tamadras Estimate 2.5

** denotes challenging to acquire drop

This chart does not take into consideration your own personal situation where certain items or colours have more meaning/value for yourself.

Furthermore, with events such as the monthly Time Limit Descends (awards +99 for 25 stamina), the value of Plus Eggs will diminish. This can be applied to essentially any item if there are long lasting/repeating events.

Finally, you have to take into consideration Supply and Demand as well as the actual difficulty in acquiring these drops.

Supply and demand

Supply and Demand is a basic economics principle that helps govern pricing for various commodities. In essence, if there is ample supply but little demand, that item will have a lower market value. On the flip side, if the demand is exceptionally high while the supply is low, prices will go up.

Applying this to Puzzle and Dragons, we can use the baseline value from the above chart and then apply the concept of Supply and Demand while also having to take into consideration the difficulty required to actually acquire the drop.

At this exact point in time, we are enjoying Kingtans as guaranteed spawns in Descend dungeons. This results in them being bountiful, easy to acquire, and significantly lower stamina. As such, their value will be lower for the duration of the event and possibly for a period of time afterwards. However, this is not to say that Kingtans are worthless, they still have meaning and an intelligent player will bide their time by stocking up now and offering to trade at a later point in time.

This thought process can be applied to all other commonly featured items that are often enhanced during special events.

Another thing to take into consideration is the timing of various evolution releases. Due to the fact that we are several months behind JP, we not only have time to plan out and acquire the drops, but you can also farm a few extra for other players. This will result in greater negotiation power as there will always be eager players who want to get their hands on a new toy. Furthermore, going through various evolution hoops can be seen as Adding Value (explained below).

Adding value

The above chart is a good baseline for building appropriate trades, but you do not always have to follow it on a 1:1 ratio as it does not take into consideration the difficulty in acquiring the drop or the effects of Supply and Demand

However, you are able to add value onto a generic card through evolutions or skill ups. For example, there are several highly desired farmable cards that only function well when max skilled.

Take for example Zeus Dios . Zeus Dios is perhaps one of the most desired cards in the game while being easy to acquire. However, he requires 15 Skill Ups in total otherwise he has little value. Thus, if we were to follow the above chart, it would cost 15 Zeus Dioses (base +14) and 4 Kingtans to max skill. This results in 105 points total but you did add significant value by going through the entire process. You could even throw in all the evolutions and Tamadras for good measure. All of this taken into consideration can lead you to charge more for as you added value which is why you may not always have to follow the chart 1:1.

Building upon this, you can also take the time to acquire rare/annoying drops for specific evolutions. For example, the Ripper Dragons are a frustrating experience to evolve and if you have some to spare, you can demand higher prices from players, especially if a popular evolution comes out that requires them.

Trading with alternate accounts

Owning multiple accounts has always been advantageous, but the benefits extend even further with trading. This is because you will not have identical Monster Boxes which results in different overall needs. Furthermore, you are able to trade more loosely with yourself as the goal is to benefit one side. Thus, you can make poor trades from one account to propel the other.

From my vantage point, there are two types of alternate accounts: those that are on par with your main or those that are significantly less developed.

Just remember that with two accounts, you have potentially double the number of friends to trade with and you can easily trade cards between yourself at will.

Equal footing

If your two accounts are on even footing like Mantastic and Fantastic, you are able to clear the same level of content and usually want to try and keep them relatively even in terms of power/progression. However, you will still have disparities in REM cards along with the need for Skill Ups, pluses, and evolution materials. As such, you can use trading to help even out any disparities you may have.

However, what I want you to consider is determining what kind of content can you clear/farm. For myself, I am able to clear any dungeon in the game and this results in the ability to acquire any drop of my choosing. This means I can always have the rarer/harder cards and if there is a higher demand for a particular item, I can ensure I am well prepared.

What this also means is the potential lack of stamina to acquire the easier, but potentially more tedious drops. Tedious drops can also be viewed as inefficient dungeons to run as they result in minimal collateral benefits. For example, a descend with no bonuses occurring awards little merit, but is accessible for the average player. As such, I would be more willing to trade with someone who has that descend drop (ideally evolved once) for items that they may find hard to acquire, but I have in excess. For example, I would gladly trade a Py for an evolved Thoth as Arena is easy for me and i would rather spend my stamina to gain the collateral perks than use in a low-level descend.

Accounts with a larger gap

I was fortunate in that I had two active accounts prior to the introduction of coop so I had only a small gap between the two. However, this is not the case for many players and they may find themselves with a large rank/Monster Box gap between the two.

Now, everyone has different goals/uses for their alternate accounts so only you can determine how you use their stamina and what you want in the long run. However, I feel that we can loosely group second accounts into two categories with a middling ground between these two extremes.

The first category is an account that you wish to propel as fast as possible and ideally catch up to your main. If this is the case, you are probably using your main account’s stamina to provide as much benefit as possible and you will probably find yourself also donating various cards to your second account to hasten the process.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have players who have made an alternate account to help act as a stamina-saving medium for your main account. You use this second account to have additional guerilla dungeon times as well as overall stamina savings when playing through less challenging content. While this is great and all, you can further propel your main account’s success by using the second account’s stamina to acquire the tedious drops.

For example, you may not wish to play Monday Dungeon on your main account as pure rank experience is not worthwhile, but you badly need an evolved Red Golem. You could use your alternate account to abuse Monday Dungeon (while potentially chaining rank ups with a friend in coop) and transfer over the Red Golem at the end of the day. This would result in a stamina-free drop for your main account and you can direct your own attention to the content you actually want to play.

Conclusion

Trading is one of the most exciting mechanics to come to Puzzle and Dragons. Not only will it strengthen the community as a whole, but it will help you round out your Monster Box with greater ease by acquiring drops that are either too hard to acquire or tedious to play. Furthermore, you can help balance the disparities between Pys or pluses.

Let me know what you think about Trading in the comments below as well as how you plan to make the most of it.

Finally, I also have a well populated Discord channel that also has a dedicated Trade Chat which I encourage you to join as it can help facilitate easier trading as well as finding more friends for the future.

Happy Puzzling!