Initial Element Bonus
When you start your adventure, you will be asked to pick one of three elemental dragons. The element you initially choose becomes your player element. This element can be found at the upper-left corner of your game screen. Whenever you place a card that has the same element in the Leader position, (borrowed Follower cards do not work!), you will gain an extra 15% attack bonus that applies to any other cards in the team that shares the element as well.
Combos and Diamond Elimination Tips
A Combo specifically indicates a timed sequence of moves that produce a cohesive series of eliminations. A combo is performed when two or more groups of diamonds are eliminated in succession. Each combo performed increases your ATK PWR, therefore, the more combos you make the faster you can defeat your opponents. Combos may be performed as soon as the battle starts and your diamonds have been placed. The key to performing a combo is by making short impactful moves that eliminate two or more sets of diamonds in succession. A player can move a diamond as long as the player's finger is still touching it. Thus, you can move the same diamond left, right, up, down and diagonally for a few seconds to complete as many sets of diamonds as you like before times runs out. A set of diamonds containing 5 or more jewels will result in a single attack being launched against each enemy in the opposing group by every card of the same element, rather than a single attack against one enemy. The 5 diamonds can be in a single row, a T shape, a L shape, a + shape, or any shape that connects at least 5 diamonds with 3 or more diamonds next to each other in each direction. To maximize the power of an attack, create two sets of 3 diamonds for that element rather than stringing them together in a 6-diamond string. Each additional diamond in an elemental set will boost the attack power a little for cards of that element, but each separate set will boost the attack power by a great deal. Ex: putting 6 fire diamonds into a line, cross or T formation might boost the fire card's attack from 2,000 to 2,200, but by forming two sets of 3-diamond lines instead, the fire card's attack power can jump from 2,000 to 4,000.
Gaining Experience
Exp gained from completing quests counts as Player Exp. All Player Exp goes to leveling up the player rather than any of the cards that took place in the quest. As the player levels up, you gain increased Magical Energy (this determines which cards you can have in your party depending on the magical energy costs of each card), increased Quest Energy (the pool of energy from which you pay the cost of undertaking each quest), and increased capacity for Followers (online friends whose cards you borrow to fill the 6th position in your questing party). The most effective method to gain experience for enhancing your cards is the daily Mission Stand-by!, wherein the Proud Lion quest can be started. The 5 stages of this quest contain lion cards that are very weak by themselves, but offer tremendous experience when used to enhance your cards. Try to form a party with a high RCR value, since recovering your health is key to passing the 3rd stage of this quest. Choosing a Fire card as your follower card will be helpful too in attacking the two lightning enemies in stage 3. Attack value does not matter much, since all your attacks will only deliver 1 point of damage, unless it is an opposing element, in which case it will deal 2 points of damage. The drop rates are a bit low, but in the 3rd stage there are two Thunder EXP Lvl 3 enemies along with a Dark EXP Lvl 5. The Thunder EXPs are both guaranteed to drop, so any other cards you pick up during this quest (especially the Dark EXP), are a bonus. Stages 4 and 5 are easy after getting through stage 3, especially if you have card skills that attack the entire enemy party with elemental attacks. Skills such as Thunderball or Sea of Fire can destroy the entire stage 4 and 5 enemy groups in one shot. Lesser elemental skills like Water Surge can also destroy the enemy groups if you have first weakened them with a defense reduction skill like Armour. Since the Proud Lion quest costs 20 Quest Energy to start, and is only available for 1 hour each day, is is best to adventure until you need fewer than 860 points of Player Exp to level up. This means you will level up after finishing one run of Proud Lion, and thus have all your energy restored. You can then make another run right away to pick up at least two more Thunder Exp cards. Higher level players with at least 38 or 39 energy can adventure until their required Player Exp is between 860 and 1,720, and thus get four runs in per day. While your Quest Energy is under 40, you have to time it carefully so that you get enough energy restored (1 point per 10 minutes) to launch the 2nd and 4th runs. NOTE: Proud Lion is currently not available every day. Keep an eye on the Notices section in the game for dates they make it available. If it does become available, you might not see it on the first page, but you might instead have to scroll to the last page to see if they changed the dates without bumping the notice to the front. They have been known to do that. For a list of experience needed per level, please see the Experience page.
Enhancing Cards
Cards gain levels by being enhanced with other cards. The cards used to enhance the base card are then lost. The cost in gold you must pay to enhance a card depends on the base card's level. At level 1, the cost is 100 gold per sacrificial card. At level 4, the cost is 400 gold, ect... This means it is much more cost effective to enhance a card with the maximum possible number of sacrificial cards at once, (10 is the maximum number of cards you can use in a single enhancement). At level 1, 10 cards would cost 100x10=1,000 gold. Enhancing the card with those same sacrificial cards one at a time would give the exact same amount of total experience, but could easily cost over 5,000 gold instead. When enhancing a card, there is a 50% elemental bonus for using sacrificial cards of the same element. This means that when enhancing a base fire card with a 500 exp fire card, the base fire card will actually receive 750exp. Any non-fire cards would only receive the normal 500exp. Once the enhancement has been started, there is a chance that the player will receive a Highly Enhanced bonus, which will bestow an additional 50% of experience on the base card. This is a random occurrence, and might happen more often if the base card was being enhanced with sacrificial cards of the same element. However, Highly Enhanced bonuses are also bestowed even when none of the sacrificial cards are the same element as the base card.
Card Evolution
Many cards can be evolved into more powerful versions. Cards that are greyed out in the Evolution screen cannot be evolved. For a list of evolution cards and the levels to find them, please see the Evolution page. To evolve a card, that card must first be raised to its maximum level (view each card's details to see what its maximum level is). Once it is at its maximum level, use the evolve command to check which evolutionary cards are required. If the player has encountered those required enemy cards before, the picture of that card will be displayed even if the player does not own any of that card. Each slot in the evolution display requires only 1 of that card. The numbers shown on each slot tells you how many of that required card you currently have in your inventory. A red 0 on the display means you do not have enough copies of that card in your inventory to complete the evolution, and you thus must go adventuring or summoning until you acquire the missing evolutionary requirements.
Card Skills
Cards can come with two types of skills. Combat Skills and Leader Skills. Combat Skills are skills which a card can unleash in battle after a pre-determined number of player rounds. Combat Skills actively affect the battle in progress. They can do such things as deliver extra damage on enemy card groups, or weaken enemy defenses, effect the diamond layout by changing one diamond type to another or by extending the time the player has to rearrange the diamonds into sets. Leader Skills are passive skills that are in affect in the background from the start of battle to the finish. These skills can do such things as provide increased defense again specific elemental damage, prevent deathblows depending on your HP levels or heal certain amounts of damage automatically per round. The player can only have two Leader Skills active per quest. Only the card in the leader position will have its Leader Skill activated, and a card borrowed from a Follower will also have its Leader Skill activated. Combat Skills can be leveled up during the Enhancing process. If a sacrificial card used to enhance a base card has the EXACT same skill as the base card, there is a random chance the base card's skill will be leveled up by 1-3 levels. Each additional level a Combat Skill gains reduces the number of turns that are required in order for that skill to be available for use. Even if a card reaches its maximum level, the skill can still be leveled up further if it has not reached its own maximum level yet. Enhancing a card with 2-5 sacrificial cards bearing the same Combat Skill usually does not increase the chance of leveling up the skill. The chance a card will gain a skill level seems to be about 1 in 3. However, if you enhance a card with 6 or more sacrificial cards at once with the exact same skill, the odds that the skill will be enhanced seems to go up. With 10 sacrificial cards, it seems the skill almost always levels up. Also, when using this many sacrificial cards at once, the levels that a skill can obtain instantly rises from 1-3 to 1-8. Once a Combat Skill reaches lvl 9 or lvl 10, it becomes much more difficult to get it to level up further. In this case, it might be smarter to save your cards until you can try leveling it with 10 sacrificial cards at once. In most cases, a Combat Skill's maximum level is half of its base level rounded up. If a skill originally required 10 rounds before it could be used, it can be leveled up until it only requires 5 rounds (half the original). If a skill required 9 rounds, then half would be 4.5, which would then be rounded up to 5. In special cases, a Combat Skill can be Over-Leveled so the required number of rounds is even less than half the original. When a card evolves, its Combat Skill can evolve into a more powerful form as well. Ex: Cockatrice starts with Medusa Eyes I, but Cockatrice+ gains Medusa Eyes II. When this happens, the maximum level that a skill can be enhanced to is based on the required levels of the card's un-enhanced form. This means that Cockatrice+ can have its skill level raised up to 15, and can use its stronger skill extremely often. Other cards with the same skill, such as Jialong+, can only raise that same skill to lvl 10. When a card is evolved into a higher form, the Combat Skill is reset to level 1, even if the new card has the exact same card skill as the original. Additional information on card skills, including which skills can be Over-Leveled, can now be found in the Card Skills page.
Missions
Missions are a collection of quests, each of which must be completed in order for the mission to be considered completed. Common Missions can be undertaken at any time. Common Missions usually contain 3 or 5 quests with a common elemental theme. Each quest within a Mission will usually offer 5-10 enemies which appear in various combinations at each stage within the quest and mission structure. Limited Missions are accessed by tapping the Limited button at the top right of the Common Mission screen. Limited missions are a rotating series of advanced Missions offering a much higher degree of challenge. Once their time limit expires, they are replaced by different Missions and the player must wait for them to rotate around again. Completing these Missions can earn the player rare cards with high star levels. The Notices section will tell a player which rare cards are available for completing the newest offered Limited Mission. Limited Missions also include a Daily Mission, which changes depending on the day of the week. These Missions are designed to allow the player an easier chance at collecting specific enhancer cards or large numbers of Dark Coin cards to be sold for gold. Check the Enemies page to see which daily Mission offers which opportunities. Missions can randomly offer bonuses to the player for certain periods of time. On the Mission page listing all the Missions currently available, you might see words in blue along with a time limit counter to the right of the Mission name. This will tell you how many hours or minutes are remaining before the bonus currently being applied to the quests within that Mission expire. Bonuses in blue include: Coins x 2 (money earned for doing each quest within the Mission is doubled), Energy x 1/2 (the Quest Energy costs of the quests within this Mission are reduced by half), Box x 1.5 (the drop rate for the enemy cards within this Mission are increased by 50%).
Party Stats
On the My Page menu, the player can see the stats of the currently assembled party. Cost - This shows the current total Magical Energy cost of the cards in the assembled party, and the current maximum Magical Energy of the player. If the player has a maximum Magical Energy level of 25, then five cards that cost 5 Magical Energy each would use all 25. If the player wants to switch one card out for a card that costs 7 Magical Energy, then the player either needs to substitute a lower cost card in another position, or else raise the Player Level until the maximum Magical Energy reaches 27. The maximum level of the player's Magical Energy goes up with additional levels. HP - This is the total Health a player has in battle. In battle, the cards do not possess individual HP. Each card in the assembled party contributes its HP to a single Health bar. If that Health bar drops to zero in battle, the player must either spend one gem to restore their Health or return to the menu screens after losing the amount of Quest Energy it took to begin that quest, as well as any prizes that had been earned thus far during that quest. ATK - This is the total Attacking Power of the cards in the assembled party. This stat is actually a bit less useful than it first appears since it is difficult to create a combo that allows all the cards to deliver an attack at once. In battle, each individual card will attack according to its own level of Attacking Power + Combo Powerups, if the player included a diamond set of the same element as that card. RCR PWR - RCR is the Recovery Power of the currently assembled party. The higher this stat, the more Health is recovered when the player puts together a set of red heart diamonds. Currently, the maximum stats a player can reach are as follows: Player Level - 150. Quest Energy - 91. Magical Energy - 164.
Gems
Gems are items that have four purposes in the game. 1.) A player can spend one to recover all his Quest Energy if the player does not possess enough to start a desired quest. 2.) A player can spend one to recover all health if the player has been overwhelmed in the middle of a quest. Thus, the player can continue the battle without having to start over. 3.) A player can spend set amounts of gems to perform a Golden Summoning. Golden Summoning gives the player rarer cards, and can either give the player one random card at the cost of 5 gems, or 11 random cards at the cost of 50 gems. 4.) A player can spend one gem to expand the maximum number of cards that can be held in the card inventory by 5. Gems are obtained in one of four ways. 1.) Completing all the quests within a single Mission will give a player 1 gem for the first time it is completed. 2.) Players can earn bundles of gems as a gift for logging on every day during a month-long gift campaign. 3.) Players can earn bundles of gems as a gift when X amount of players download and play Jewel Dragon (Ex: All players received 5 gems after 150,000 players created accounts on the server). 4.) Players can spend real-world money to purchase gems in various amounts from the online store offered by the game.
Gifts
A player can earn gifts from the online servers by logging in at least once a day. Gift packages are arranged in 10-day bundles. Daily gifts include bonus money and bonus interact points used for low-level summoning. On the 5th day in a row, the player usually earns a Dark Coin card, intended to be sold for several thousand gold. On the 10th day in a row, the player usually earns a lion EXP card, which gives a lot of exp when used to enhance other cards. The online server usually also runs month-long reward campaigns. If a player logs on at least once a day for all the days in a month (about the 1st through the 30th), then the player will earn a huge gift reward. This can include hundreds of thousands in gold, rare cards, and multiple gems. Players can also receive gifts by putting in another player's referral ID# into the referral box, or by having other players input their ID#. Putting another player's ID in immediately gains yourself a Dark Coin card that can be sold for several thousand gold. The gifts gained by having others put your number in include multiple lion EXP cards and Dark Coin cards. Currently the server seems to stop rewarding a player with gifts once they reach 20 referrals. If a player is only interested in gaining the immediate Dark Coin card, feel free to use this ID#: 327337. Gifts that are received must then be redeemed, (or opened), on the social page before they are part of your inventory.
Social and Interact Points
The social page allows you to manage the online Followers you have recruited to be part of your social circle within Jewel Dragon. When another player has been recruited into your circle as a Follower, that player's current leader card will be available for selection at the start of a quest in addition to the three randomly chosen online players' cards. This random selection can include players from the entire range of first-timer to experienced veteran. Recruiting more and more players to be your Followers greatly expands the choices of available cards at the start of a quest. When starting a quest, choosing a random player's leader card will earn you 5 interact points, whereas a Follower player will earn you 10 interact points. Conversely, if a Follower or random player selects your leader card to be part of their quest, you will earn 5 or 10 interact points even if you are not currently playing. Putting your strongest card into your leader position before logging off for a day will make it more likely you will find a nice pile of interact points waiting for you when you return. Follower leader cards are only available for quests if that Follower has logged in during the past 13 hours. Also, once you use a Follower card, it will not give you additional interact points for the rest of the day. Interact points will be reset and available again the day after. At the end of a quest, you can send the random player whose card you borrowed an invitation to become a Follower. If accepted, you are each considered to be the Follower of the other. A second way to recruit Followers is on the social page where you can select the Add Player option. The server will present you with a list of current players and you can send invitations to any you like, until the number of open invitations reaches your Follower Limit. A third way to recruit is under the Add Player option, where you can tap the Condition Change button. This will allow you to type in a specific player name or player ID# and send a request to that friend or person. The Follow Request option on the social page shows you any invitations to become a Follower you have received. If you do not wish to become that person's Follower, you can decline without being offensive because the server will not tell that person their request was declined. The invitation will simply remain open in that player's Sent Invitations list until they delete it. The Follow List shows you the players who are in your social circle as Followers. You can remove old Followers to make way for new ones if you are at your Follower Limit. Raise your player level to increase your Follower Limit. On each menu page you can see a pair of gold upward arrows in a blue circle. This opens a chat board in which you can exchange quick messages with the Followers within your social circle. To close the chat board, tap the dark (almost invisible) box at the top of the chat board page. Gifts that have been received are claimed here on the social page.
Summoning and Acquiring Cards
You can get new cards in two ways; getting an enemy to drop an unevolved version of itself or by summoning random cards in Interact Points Summons and Golden Summons. Interacts Points Summons, (along with the daily Free Summons), will provide you with low-level cards up to star-rank 3. If you are lucky you can get rank-3 cards that can be evolved up as far as rank 5, but mostly you will get random chaff, elemental enhancer cards, some Dark Coin cards and the rare lion EXP card. Golden Summons requires you to spend precious gems in exchange for the 'chance' to get a good high level card. Even with 11 Golden Summons though, you mostly get hoards of rank-4 cards with the occasional rank-5 mixed in just to keep hope alive. The appearance of high level cards appears to be as low as 3-5%. Even when the server sends out notices that the chances of acquiring a specific card are increased by 300%, that only brings the odds of getting it up to about 9-15% in exchange for 50 gems. Any card that appears in a Mission can be acquired by having that enemy drop a treasure box. The most powerful cards show up in the special Time Limit Quests. The drop rates are low, but they will drop eventually. The Boss Card in an 'easy' Lvl(I) quest seems to drop at about 1%. The Boss Card in a 'medium' Lvl(II) quest seems to drop at about 3-5%. The Boss Card in a 'hard' Lvl(III) quest seems to drop at about 20%. Some cards only show up during special holiday missions or during restricted special offers for a few hours during one day only. These eventually show up again after you wait long enough. Other cards are currently only available through Golden Summons, but new quests are being designed and offered, so eventually all cards will likely show up during at least one quest. Don't forget that Jewel Dragon is a game designed to make money for the company that created it and runs the servers. Think carefully before you decide if you want to risk your gems in the hope of acquiring a specific card that has higher odds on any particular day.