Non-IAP Player

Disclaimer: This is purely my opinion based off of my experiences with PAD and with my research.

I will separate this into a few different categories:
1. Intro
2. Rerolling
3. Gems and the best uses for them
4. Strong Farmable Monsters

Intro:
So I've been playing PAD for (as I write this) 62 days. I play on both my tablet and my phone when I have spare time between compiling, on bus rides, on the way to class, etc. My tablet started first, and has a horrible stone use record while my phone has been actually efficient in it's uses by learning from my tablet's mistakes.

Rerolling:
I didn't do this on my tablet and I stuck with an autohealer (Alraune), which made me form some bad habbits due to being able to heal more than my base HP for a long time. On my phone my first roll was a pierdrawn and I didn't want that so I rerolled and got a golem mark 3. I kept that one though because it was at least the final form of the golem and I wanted the guard break from experience with my tablet. In hindsight this made the game MUCH harder for me.

Gems:
Do not spend gems on stamina, nor on continues. Box space is the most important thing you can spend gems on. You should only roll the REM during godfests. Even during godfests you're pretty likely to get junk tier monsters, but your chance at non junk monsters is much higher.

I started out with the opinion the box should be of around 80 and that's all you need. Realistically if you're focusing on a single team that's all you need. Later I have come to the conclusion your box space should probably be closer to twice your rank. Why you may ask? The answer is simple; box space lets you waste less stamina running dungeons to get evo/power up materials. If you find something even remotely useful for a monster you MAY use in the future you can keep the material so you're not scrounging for the power up or evo materials when you need to evolve/level a monster for a certain descend dungeon you want to do. Also you may need to keep lots of materials in your box for awakening monsters by evoing the baby tier.

With that in mind think of 25 box spaces as 1 roll of the Golem and Mystic Knight Egg Machine. Now think of 5 rolls average for something good at a god fest (unless you're really lucky). You could have 125 box spaces for 1 god. If you started with a good leader monster (probably a god) you can easily farm up good teams without needing to roll the REM more. On the other hand if you started with something meh, you probably will need to roll the REM a few times in hopes for something decent. In my experience if you get 1 thing good from the REM you should stop rolling and either wait a while or just save those gems for the next godfest.

Monster Recommendations:

As I went over in the general info there's some simple meta builds you can do, but to get around easily as a f2p player you're going to want to look for and try to max skill some monsters in specific based on the team you want to try. Here's a short list of the most useful farmable monsters imo.

Ogre/Titan: These are the resolve team bread and butter. Ogre has the benefit of having it's ult have the subtype devil which is great for future uses as spike sub. Titan on the other hand is just good for having lots of base HP once you get it to Gigas. Either are really good for Gaia Descended teams (when they're maxed).

Naga/Echidna: Same monster, but whatever you want to call her, that active is just too good. It makes many teams viable for descends, hard to clear dungeons, etc. She is your go to panic button. Although her stats are really low, and she's a freaking snake (and I hate snakes), her active is so good she's worth running on most teams (even if she's not in your color).

Lilith: Her poison is perfect for clearing masks or spirits or mid ninjas, and the added damage spike on it is perfect for devil teams. Her first and last awakening is pretty good too, and her double black ult is pretty easy to get materials for. She makes going through dungeons much faster if the boss has high defense, and she's great for farming masks and such if you can stall until her ability comes up.

Nebradisk: This monster isn't around very often, but he's a great sub if you have auto heal awakenings or an auto healer friend. He basically makes a replacement green Odin and helps you clear many dungeons that would be very difficult to clear otherwise. He basically lets you have a higher hp/attack team than your standard resolve team for early parts of dungeons with multiple monsters then can switch over to be the leader and be a good resistance lead. The downside to this guy is his 25 cost, although that's a lot better than the 35 cost he was when I was using him a lot.

Black Knight: He's just really good for early game. Guard break for 50% with only 1 turn of downtime (once you max his skill, which is easy to do). His stats aren't that great, but he's a balanced type who has a great active and hits fairly hard. Good for any team where you don't have much damage and can't get through armor. He also only costs 6, so he's great when you don't have a very high team cost.

Vampire: Get him if you need to run a dark team. His active like Titan's is too good due to a short 5 turn cooldown when maxed. He's best used for mono dark spike teams imo. When he hits Vampire Lord and gets his leader skill he's a pretty good leader early, and a great sub for only 10 cost.

High Dark Ninja; Morning Star active. 300,000 dark damage in exchange for setting your life total to 1. It's a pretty good ability for finishing things like bosses.

Helldark Blood Demon/Hellray Harpie Demon: 5 turn 13k damage + guard break. Really high attack and decent recovery with acceptable HP for a 12 cost 4 star monster as well. The active is pretty easy to max, and it's very useful. The hellray is (as far as I'm aware) the only farmable main attribute light devil type which is pretty awesome. Gets pumped by Lilith poison, and deals great damage. Good sub to have if you're having a hard time dealing damage to things (I used Helldark to replace my Black Knight once I hit a decent enough team cost).

Siren/Alraune: If you're not planning on ulting either and you need a good autohealer I recommend one of these two. Siren has a good orb changing active that can either heal you or play right into a Vampire Lord's active to give you an extra damage spike. Alraune has 2 autoheal awakenings, decent stats, and imo a better active than Cupid and it's later forms. Alraune makes a better sub than Cupid's later forms imo, due to the slightly higher base damage and almost equal HP and recovery (plus both have the same awakenings) and, I find the active of good burst healing rather than the occasional mini heal is better. So in other words if you want the orb change and go Siren, otherwise go Alraune.

Mystic Knights: If you farm them up they can be decent, you just don't want this guys in your REM pulls. They're just good orb changing monsters to help out with certain tribals or color specific teams.

Drawn Joker: Good as a leader for certain dungeons, and is one of the few dark monsters who can make heal orbs. Low stats, but good active and leader skill. He's worth it if you're stuck on some hard dark dungeons.

To Be Continued.... someday....