Dragon Ball Z Dokkan Battle Tips, Hints And Strategies

Before we get into this, a confession: I was never a huge Dragon Ball Z fan. Even during it’s most popular period on American TV, I remember watching a few episodes with a few of my younger brothers, admiring some of the outrageous fight scenes but not having any clue as to what was going on.

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That being said, I absolutely admire the brand’s staying power, and I know just enough to get into Dragon Ball Z Dokkan Battle. In much the same way, Bandai Namco’s mobile game does just enough tinkering with some familiar gameplay mechanics to make it feel like a fun use of your smartphone or tablet time. And those crazy combat animations don’t hurt either.

It’s not a difficult game to pick up and play by any means, but there are a lot of different things going on. Thus, we’ve got our Dragon Ball Z Dokkan Battle Tips, Hints and Strategies to assist you along the way. They may not tell you what “Dokkan” means (I still don’t know), but they should help you put together a more formidable fighting team, since we all know power levels are only going to increase and be exceeded many times over before it’s all said and done.

Ki is the Key

Goku and company might have to train endlessly to become better fighters, but all you really need to do is understand how to launch the most powerful attacks possible. The best way to do that is by collecting the most Ki possible by tapping on the best of the glowing spheres in the bottom row of the main gameplay screen, nearest your character.

Which one is best? That depends on two things: which row will draw the longest line of like-colored Ki toward the enemy, as well as how many of the same colored spheres will “burst” along the way because they’re adjacent to your path. It’s also wise to seek the same color of Ki as your current fighter, because he or she will get double credit for any Ki of a like type.

Fill a character’s meter up in one shot and you’ll activate a Super Attack, which is always going to do more damage.

Order Matters

The three characters attacking in each round of combat are drawn randomly from your team, but you don’t have to keep them in their order. Characters attack from left to right (including your enemies!), and there are multiple reasons to consider moving them around.

The first is to play defense. The five different types/colors of characters have a rock-paper-scissors relationship you can see in the upper-right corner of the battle screen. Placing one of your characters of the trailing color in front of an attacker — for instance, sliding a red hero in front of an orange enemy — will ensure reduced damage when that enemy attacks.

Another consideration is that certain fighters share a bond that will boost both of their stats when they occupy adjacent positions. It’s called a Link Skill, and it can increase Attack, Defense or both. You can check out the available Link Skill combinations at the bottom of any character’s card.

Finally, you may want to move fighters around in the attack order just because the colors make sense to arrange them a certain way. If there’s an obvious long string of red Ki right off the bat, you’ll want a Strength-type character in the first position to take advantage of it.

Variety is (Usually) the Spice of Life

Due to the relationships between colors, you’ll want to have a diverse team for most battles, one that can do extra damage and blunt incoming attacks from different types of opponents. If your best team is lacking a certain color, you can always grab a friend or random player’s character with that in mind, since the game allows you to have one helper in each level.

On the other hand, there might be certain boss battles where you know loading up in a certain type is going to play to your advantage. Happily, you can save up to six “decks” to try out different combinations of fighters for specific circumstances. Just hit the “Team” button in the main bottom navigation screen and then the “Team Formation” button and you can swipe between your six available decks.

One thing to note is that every character has a cost related to its potential power. As you rank up, you’ll be able to utilize teams with greater total costs, but don’t expect to be fielding a team of all Super Rare characters early in the game. Speaking of which …

Get More and Better Fighters

At least at the time I write this, there are four tiers of fighters: N, R, SR and SSR, in ascending order of power. Obviously, you’ll want to grab rarer characters for a more powerful team, though you’ll have to be wary of their cost.

Hitting the “Summon” button in the main navigation will take you to a screen where you can either use friend points to draw a random character from the first three tiers or Dragon Stones to obtain a Rare or better fighter. Friend points are earned every time you tackle a mission — double if you choose an in-game friend as your seventh character — while Dragon Stones are earned mainly by clearing different zones for the first time.

Be sure to check out any Events that are running, because you can win powerful characters by successfully completing them. During the game’s global launch, you could nab both Rare Gohan and Goku cards from quests that weren’t all that difficult once you had a few characters sufficiently leveled up.

Train First, Awaken Later

Almost any mobile game with cards in it has some kind of “sacrifice to improve” mechanic, and Dragon Ball Z Dokkan Battle is no exception. You can supplement the experience your fighters earn in battle by selecting the “Training” option from the “Team” menu. As the graphic above shows, training is most effective when you choose the same type/color of characters to sacrifice, and the same goes for training items. You’ll also need some Zeni to complete the training process, but you’ll most likely be swimming in the stuff once you’ve been playing for a while.

Once you have a fighter at max level, you can use the “Awaken” option to bump them up a tier. The Z-Awakening process requires Awakening Medals that you can win in normal quests or from events specifically tailored to award them. Check each character’s card to see exactly what kind of Awakening Medals you’ll need, and be forewarned: some of them need 20 or more of multiple types.

Play the Board

You’ll notice quickly that the quests involve moving around something structured like a board game on your way to the boss battle. You’ll get to select one of several random numbers of spaces to move during each turn, and you’ll be able to see where you land by tapping and dragging to move the board.

Each space could be one of the following:

• A gray space, which does nothing.
• A red space with a crosshairs, which will inflict damage to your team.
• A question mark, which might inflict damage or award you with something good.
• A blue space, which could give you a capsule (with an item or an Awakening Medal, depending), Zeni or bonus Ki to one of your fighters.
• A red space with an enemy, indicating a battle. Some battles can be skipped by choosing a number of spaces that will get you past them, but enemies with a stop sign signify a battle you have to stop and win to advance.

Sometimes the random numbers will be against you and lead you somewhere you’d rather not land, but otherwise, there’s no reason you can’t control your own destiny. Early on, you might want to consider taking some of the optional fights because they’re easy and will help you level up your fighters faster. In quests with especially tough bosses, you probably want to avoid random battles and the crosshairs as much as possible, saving your health for the boss. Also remember that some items can be used while on the game board to help you recover health.