Latents for the Ra Dragon Arena Farming Team

(12/18/2015) There was recently a stat buff to Isis that can change this math a bit, check out the implications here.

For those few looking to run Ra Dragon to farm the Ultimate Arena, you should start planning out your latents now. While the easiest path is seven dark latents and five light latents to survive either Kali’s nuke, not everyone can afford all those, especially after just dropping 300k MP on Ra Dragon. Outside of NA someday being able to farm resist latents, the only alternative to conserve MP is farming HP latents. However, when HP latents are brought into the picture, the calculations get complicated since the amount of HP gained depends on the monster you give the latents to. Things get further complicated when factor surviving other large hits like DQ Hera or Parvati. This post will look into possible latent set ups for a Ra Dragon team.

Thank You, Dacho

Luckily, dacho has done the work of figuring which latent setups we can use for us. Unfortunately, his chart doesn’t mean anything for those that can’t read Japanese:

My Japanese is poor, but here’s what I can decipher:

• The assumed party is the standard Ra Dragon / DKali / DKali / God Indra / Isis / Ra Dragon. Of course, they’re hypermaxed.
• The goals of the given latent set ups are to survive specific attacks under certain conditions at full HP:
  • DKali’s nuke with Indra’s 75% damage shield
  • LKali’s nuke with Indra’s 75% damage shield
  • DQ Hera’s preemptive with Isis’s 15% damage shield
  • Parvati’s nuke with no damage shield
• The table shows how many latents you need of each type to survive the above listed attacks. The columns left to right are: Party HP, # HP latents, # wood resist latents, # light resist latents, and # dark resist latents.
• HP latents are first applied to you and your friend’s Ra Dragons then to Indra, as they provide the biggest HP bonuses.
• Since resist latents are a flat bonus, it doesn’t matter where they are put as long as the total latent count is under 30.
• Thanks to glue for this info:
  • No matter how you divide the latents there should be no problem.
  • The easiest way to split them is 15/3/2/10.
  • For extra latent slots you can use 10/4/3/10 (3 slots left) or 0/6/5/13 (6 slots left).

I’m sure there’s more to it than that, but that’s all I could make out myself. If you can read Japanese and I missed anything important, please let me know in the comments.

Taking a quick look at the chart, adding the ability to survive DQ Hera and Parvati attacks in addition to the Kalis adds a hefty amount to the overall MP cost, bringing the total amount to ranges that can even surpass the 300k cost for Ra Dragon himself. Consistency comes at no small price, but you can save a significant amount of MP if you’re willing to sacrifice some.

Well, this is good and all, but to double check my understanding of dacho’s image, I decided to recreate the table myself.

My Spreadsheet

The disclaimer is right there in the embedded sheet, but I’ll reiterate to be clear: I don’t guarantee the calculations in this sheet, so only use it as a guideline. MP is extremely valuable so be sure to do your own calculations to double check or just use dacho’s numbers.

Here’s a link to the spreadsheet so you can make a copy and play with it yourself. If you find any errors, please let me know in the comments and I’ll try to fix it ASAP.

I created the spreadsheet using the same criteria as dacho (I’m just going to defer to his wisdom and assume that he has most important points of the dungeon covered) and I verified it by comparing the results. I’m still a bit unsure how PAD does its rounding — searching popular PAD sites and Google resulted in nothing definite — so there’s definitely room for error. I feel the numbers pass superficial sanity checks and generally make sense though. Disclaimers out of the way, here are the significant benchmarks:

If Your Friend Has Five Dark Resist Latents

• Ignoring DQ Hera and Parvati:
  • The lowest overall MP cost is 130,000: 3 HP, 6 dark resists and 4 light resists.
  • The fewest latent slots you can use is 12: 7 dark resists and 5 light resists.
  • The most HP latents you can use is 25. You don’t need to provide any resist latents. If you farm all your HP latents, you don’t have to spend any MP. The drawback is you have no latent slots to use on anything else.
• Including both DQ Hera and Parvati:
  • The lowest overall MP cost is 350,000: 5 HP, 11 dark resists, 4 light resists, and 5 wood resists and four other configurations that I won’t list.
  • The fewest latent slots you can use is 24: 13 dark resists, 5 light resists and 6 wood resists or 1 HP, 12 dark resists, 5 light resists, and 6 wood resists.
  • The most HP latents you can use is 14: 10 dark resists, 2 light resists and 4 wood resists are still required. If you farm all your HP latents, you still have to spend 220,000 MP. The drawback is you have no latent slots to use on anything else.

If Your Friend has Five HP Latents

• Ignoring DQ Hera and Parvati:
  • The lowest overall MP cost is 180,000: 2 HP, 5 dark resists and 3 light resists.
  • The fewest latent slots you can use is 12: 7 dark resists and 5 light resists.
  • The most HP latents you can use is 28: 2 dark resists are still required. If you farm all your HP latents, you only have to spend 40,000 MP. The drawback is you have no latent slots to use on anything else.
• Including both DQ Hera and Parvati:
  • The lowest overall MP cost is 380,000: 6 HP, 10 dark resists, 2 light resists, and 4 wood resists or 12 HP, 9 dark resists, 1 light resist, and 3 wood resists.
  • The fewest latent slots you can use is 24: 13 dark resist, 5 light resist and 6 wood resist.
  • The most HP latents you can use is 17: 9 dark resist, 1 light resist and 3 wood resists are still required. If you farm all your HP latents, you still have to spend 260,000 MP. The drawback is you have no latent slots to use on anything else.

What Is the Best Latent Setup?

Who knows, there’s way too many variables at play. I’m guessing whales would want to use the fewest latents slots possible while also keeping relevant latents on the monsters they would use the most elsewhere. Those looking to be more conservative in their MP use would want to farm as may HP latents as possible.

Coordinate with Your Friends

It looks like it’s a good idea to put either five HP or five dark resist latents on your Ra Dragon, but some people may not know better and do something else. It’s probably a good idea to coordinate with some of your friends so you both can have usable setups for whenever the Ultimate Arena comes around. This will also give you and your friends time to farm HP latents, should you chose to go that route.

My Plans

Even after all that research, I’m probably just going to copy what dacho has in this video. I think the distribution makes a lot of sense as it isolates the less useful latents to the subs that are least likely to be used elsewhere. I was thinking that I might like to put a few time extend latents in the mix, but considering that the team has Ra Dragon’s active in addition to 10 time extend awakenings there’s really no need.

Ra Dragon Arena Farming Latent Setup
Monster	Latents	MP
		0
		100,000
		100,000
		100,000
		100,000
		100,000
Total MP (not including friend)		400,000

This setup is banking on having a friend with an HP Ra Dragon. I’m going to have to take my own advice and look into making sure I have a compatible friend.

Ugh, including Ra Dragon that’s 700,000 MP for an arena farming team. That’s rough. There’s still Yomi Dragon that I’m almost certainly buying and I wouldn’t mind a Courage Machina either. I’m not too keen on getting Halloween Kali, but there’s still Christmas to worry about. So, I’m thinking I’ll start off the team with the bare minimum latents to survive the Kalis and I’ll take the next step if I feel it’s worth it to do so.

Well, at least I’m done with one part the equation:

All the subs are hypermaxed, of course. I also have the Shynpys for Ra Dragon and I already farmed his five HP latents. I’m praying that they introduce the 5×4 coin dungeons soon; these MP costs are devastating otherwise.

Skill Delay Resist Latents

This is something I didn’t really consider while writing this post. I’m not sure how relevant they are for Ra Dragon as his RCV multiplier allows him to stall out most skill delays and he can still reach his full multiplier without an active use, but it’s certainly worth considering. As an extension, there is the possibility of other powerful latents being released which makes minimizing the amount of latent slots you occupy a greater consideration. Playing on NA gives us an advantage in being able to better prepare for such things, but there will certainly come a point where you’ll have to start overwriting latents. Which will be painful, for sure.