Palace of the Dead – Some Hints

I’ve been having more fun in the Palace of the Dead. While you can find lots of detailed guides online for the PoD, here’s a few hints that may organize your experience.

Palace of the Dead is way more fun than the normal dungeons. Killing goes much faster. You’re not just standing there wailing on trash mobs over and over. A few hits and they are down and you are moving on. Stuff is always popping up and changing. Floor to floor and within a floor. Normal dungeons don’t have re-spawns. Once the mobs appear and you kill them that’s it for those mobs. That area is cleared. You kill the mobs and move on. But in Palace of the Dead, stuff re-spawns all the time. Way more interesting.

Rewards

The XP rewards are the primary reason you are here. You have lots of classes / jobs to level and this is the way to do it. Forget leves. Do your roulette’s once per day, but you can grind PoD all day long and there are no limits. Your mileage will vary based on your “Rested” status and whether you have “Road to 60” but typically each run of 10 floors will get you 20% – 30% of a level, and maybe a lot more. So you can put on a level in less than an hour typically. While the Main Scenario Roulette gives more, along with a lot of Tomestones but that’s only available once per day above level 50. But PoD is all day all the time and it starts at level 1 once you enable it with a battle class at level 17.

Here are some examples for an Archer at level 1-10, 11-20 and 21-30.

Dress for the Part

Dress for the experience. Your gear doesn’t matter, so you can use those fashion items or level 1 gear here if you like. I recently got an email with a set of cosmetic gear in leather with a fur collar. So I’m wearing that for all my folks in PoD. I’ve made a special gear entry for each class / job with that armor and the correct weapon / soul crystal. And that’s all. No jewelry, or anything else. It works fine, since in PoD your armor is standard and doesn’t show and your weapon is replaced, and can show. And it’s good to show it so others can see what class you are. So set this gear entry up to show the weapon. Not to show off, but it’s good if folks know what you are.

Set up your Screen

Here are some suggestions for how to set up your screen while in PoD. Once you set it up, it will be this way each time you enter.

On the left, right click on header of a window to scale it. I use 110%, but your monitor size may need something else. I fit the the replaced “Character” panel – type “C” to see it – below the party list and above the chat window.

On the right top I resize the floor map to fit.

On the bottom right are some extra panels that hold class / job switching buttons and some emotes to say Welcome, Cheer and so forth. I have two buttons for each job. One with full gear for use outside of PoD and one with cosmetic gear for inside PoD. Don’t forget to switch to the real gear before doing quests or dungeons outside of PoD where Gear Matters. I recently ran a Trial Roulette as a Dark Knight with PoD cosmetic gear. I lived through it, but the healer would have had an easier time if I had real gear.

Follow the Leader

It’s a lot easier to learn the ropes if you just follow along. Don’t split up and go it alone. There are rooms full of stuff, and spawns happen all the time so you can get cut off. Stay together and avoid a wipe.

Use the buffs as you go. If you are near the end of the 10 levels, save Rage and Succubus for the boss fight at the end. I’ve seen boss fights with 2 Succubi stacking debuffs on the boss. Strength and Steel buffs are useful, but Witcher and most others have no use in the boss fight.

Starting Classes?

Archer or Bard is a great class / job to start PoD. High rate of fire from a distance and very mobile. Folks are going to like that you have Peleton to keep them moving even when the floor has a “No Sprint” debuff. And don’t forget to pull Peleton in the boss fights when the boss begins a big cast. Folks can more easily run out of the way.

Thalmaturge or Black Mage is ok, but the long cast times are a bit of a pain. Not my first choice to learn Palace of the Dead. Take something that’s quicker to learn the ropes.

Conjurer / White Mage and Scholar are fine choices and folks appreciate a healer. Note that groups are formed without regard to the Holy Trinity of classes, so any four folks will be grouped up and frequent pot drops and a resurrection shrine on each floor make it reasonable to have no healer along.

Everybody pulls aggro in PoD, so tanks aren’t needed, but they work to some extent and have better armor as you’d expect. As a tank, you operate as another DPS, not as the leader necessarily.

Rinse and Repeat

Repeat PoD a lot. And don’t think you can just run through the whole thing from top to bottom in one go. That’s not going to work. You need to repeat floor sets, especially when you start. 1-10 a few times, and then 11-20 a couple of times and then 21-30, etc. If you don’t repeat them your gear won’t be good enough to progress and you’ll die a lot or your whole group will wipe and you’ll lose all your progress. Not a good thing.

Who Knows What the Colors Mean?

I have no idea what the colors of your weapon mean. The weapons start as Padjali glowing weapons. They start greenish and then turn white. Some look reddish or orangeish. Dark Red weapons are the Kinna weapon and the person has cleared floor 100 and can pull a copy of the weapon to use in the real world – well outside PoD anyway. Also, apparently you have to start over to get a weapon for another job. Also we don’t see many glowing weapons out there in the world, so I don’t think these weapons are that good, or it’s no longer stylish to use these weapons, even for Glamour. I never see them outside of PoD.

Great Way to Learn Your Class / Job

Running PoD is a great way to learn your class /job skills. Load up your action bars with skills you don’t have yet since you’ll reach a higher level inside PoD than you have out here. You can practice your skills and be ready to use them. Things move fast and you don’t need to worry about screwing up as you learn, esp in the lower level floors – things are pretty easy up to level 40. I’ve not been beyond that yet. But you’ll have had plenty of practice by that time.

Turn in your Sacks of Loot

There are not a lot of drops in the dungeon. What you get is bronze trimmed sacks, which give mostly fireworks, but there are some cosmetic clothing items, and some minions.