Palace of the Dead

Tanks are all very strong - Warrior > Gunbreaker/Dark Knight > Paladin. The benefit of warrior is survival, gunbreaker/dark knight have damage, paladin has an easy 180 boss fight
- Pros
  - Can fight anything
  - Are more resilient to RNG due to being able to fight anything without needing specific pomanders (such as steel)
  - Use pomanders for time, not survival
  - Don't need to worry about farming potions
- Cons
  - Slow clear time due to lower damage
  - Will struggle with the instance timer (the real enrage) on the later floors (141+)
  - All tanks other than Paladin have a harder time with 180
Barrier Healers - Scholar and Sage are both very strong in Palace of the Dead due to the strong barriers. Which you will prefer largely comes down to whether you would prefer instant cast shields or fairy healing.
- Pros
  - Nearly infinite sustain
  - Can fight most thing
  - Are more resilient to bad floor debuffs
  - Easy floor 180 boss
  - Multipulling 2 or more mobs is a DPS gain
  - Can sleep mobs to disengage (such as in the event of a luring trap)
  - Don't need any sustaining potions until 150+
- Cons
  - Slow clear time like tanks
  - Will struggle with the instance timer
Ranged DPS - Machinist and Summoner - Machinist and Summoner are some of the most consistently performing DPS jobs in Palace of the Dead due to high damage and utility.
- Pros
  - Great burst DPS (don't have to worry about timing out)
  - Ability to fight on the run (kiting)
  - Great utility
- Cons
  - Less RNG resilient.
  - Needs pomanders for survival (such as Steel).
  - Need to explore efficiently and collect as many chests as possible.
  - Have a number of unfightable mobs in the later sets.
Melee DPS - Reaper
- Pros
  - Simple rotation
  - Very high damage(don't have to worry about timing out)
  - Extra Defensive utility
- Cons
  - Have to fight at melee
  - Needs to find sufficient steel to clear.
  - Need to explore efficiently and collect as many chests as possible.
  - Have a number of unfightable mobs in the later sets.

Solo Strategy

The poms you will need vary by the job you play. Generally speaking the following is true when solo:

Always aim to save your key pomanders (dread/lust/sights/resonating) for the hardest sets and specific boss fights.
Climbing higher is always more important than saving poms. Use what you need to safely climb.
Raisings are an extra life that will save your run if you die
- Can be used for any floorset or boss that you aren't confident on with your job (typically 151+)
- Raising do not drop after floor 179
Lust is usually best used on the boss.
Rage is used for time or when you need to kill very specific mobs, usually saved for 171+
Resolution is very strong against undead mobs which periodically show up throughout the dungeon.
- Nearly required for 100 boss mechanics
- Very powerful for 140 boss
- Practically a floor wipe on 191+ set
Flights are useful to help catch up on time
- Pair Flights with Affluences as lower mob counts usually make it easier to grab chests.
- Do not pair Flight with Alteration (it reduces the effectiveness of alteration)
Affluence, Fortune, should be used to get more chests whenever you are missing poms
- Fortunes pair well with floor wipes or on kill floors
Use Strength when you are behind on time.
Use Steel to help survive high damage mobs.

Floor 1-100 Strategy

These floors are the easy floors. Just about any job can climb fairly easily with minimal difficulty. You can practice all sets in this range regardless of deaths (though any deaths will prevent you from climbing beyond 100)

Most jobs can make it through to 100 using very few sustaining potions (usually fewer than 10).

Due to the length of PotD, it is not necessary to worry about (most) pomanders for the early sets. This means that it's a good idea to try to get used to using pomanders actively (try to identify efficient uses of them as you climb). Note: Experienced runners will bring pomanders down to 0 by floor 100 just to score a few more points, so it's completely acceptable to bring them to 1 or 2 for practice (you'll most likely get them back). There are a few you may want to hold onto during these first 10 sets.
- At least one resolution is required for the floor 100 boss.
- At least 1 to 2 lusts are recommended for the floor 100 boss.
- Raising is more useful beyond 100 as you can continue your run and practice up to floor 100 regardless of deaths.
Use the potions that drop on the floor for 1-40 as they are overall more effective than the max potions that start to drop later (higher % HP restored, lower cool down).
Be cautious in the 1-40, it's easy to forget that you are lacking a lot of your job's toolkit until you hit 60

Floor 101-140 Strategy

These sets are still pretty "easy" and mobs don't really hit too hard (outside of specific mechanics), this is the point where you will want to start being mindful of your pomanders in preparation "harder sets". These can all typically be done with minimal pomander usage.

Always raising 111-120 - This is a notorious set with a lot of potentially dangerous mobs that can one shot you due to various mechanics and send you back to start over.
Can start the sets with a strength to help with time.
Use Strength + Resolution for floor 140 boss to kill it in approximately 1 minute.
The spawn timer 1 minute 30 seconds, if you take your time, unlucky spawns can overwhelm you and slow you down substantially during these sets.
Time is rarely an issue here as long as you keep moving.

Floor 141-170 Strategy

These sets will start to test your time management. You should still be able to subsist off of the free poms provided by the set, but you need to be thoughtful of your time as the bosses start to take close to 10 minutes each.

Can use small poms like Strength for time early in a set
Lust can be used on bosses as needed (being sure to save at least one for the 171-180 set).

Until 151, the spawn timer is still 1 minute 30 seconds. From 151 onward, the spawn timer for mobs increases to 5 minutes for the rest of the set.

From 151, be sure to use all your intuitions to try to get as many hoards early on, it's going to get harder to chase after them later.

Floor 171-180 Strategy

This is the first of the "hard" sets. This is the last set where you will be aiming to conserve as many of your pomanders as possible.

IMPORTANT: Always use a raising on this set. This is also the last set that pomanders of raising spawn on.

Important: All jobs other than healers and red mage need to have at least one lust and one strength for behemoth.

Advanced option for tanks and healers: Floors 171, 172, and 173 all have a higher chance of spawning landmines. Tanks and healers can choose to make use of them by using a Sight pomander and intentionally stepping on them while having 3-6 mobs pulled to drastically speed up the set. If you do this well, you will reach 174 by about 52 minutes remaining providing you a massive headstart to the set and reduce the pomanders that you need. This is not necessary and you can opt to use a more traditional approach of using smaller pomanders for time.

(Progging Note): Behemoth is a unique boss and has a soft enrage mechanic where it repeatedly casts Ecliptic Meteor which requires a very specific rotation to do. If this is your first time, it can be a good idea to opt to aim to arrive at the boss room with more than 20 minutes remaining so you can attempt the boss twice.
- Note: This usually requires using a rage or two and may cause issues on the later set.
- Note 2: You should decide before you go into this set whether you want to go for the clear or make sure that you get extra practice.
Aim for 5 minutes per floor and aim to arrive at floor 180 with about 10-15 minutes (job dependent) and get ready to face the wall fight.

Behemoth Preparation - Aka The Push

Behemoth behaves similar to it's floor 80 counter part with one major exception, from 15% behemoth starts a soft-enrage where it repeatedly casts Ecliptic Meteor which deals 80% of your maximum HP in damage each cast. This is "the push", and each job will handle it differently due to how many meteors they can survive.

In order to kill behemoth, you will need to know what is the order of your abilities that you will be using during "the push".

Tip on How to keep your healing rotation straight: Once you know the abilities that you need to do the push, it is very useful to put them on a separate hotbar away from your normal abilities. If you want you can even remove them from your hotbar right before you start the fight.

In my case, I have them bound to numpad, so as soon as I start the push, I can just hit my numpad keys in the required order. You can also opt to click them. What matters is that this simplifies your push as much as possible.

General Approach

You need your strength to last until behemoth is dead, popping steel at 60% or when there is 8 minutes remaining on your instance timer, is a good time to do so.
Most jobs will want to have steel running up until during the push. (Steel does not reduce the damage of Ecliptic meteor, but it makes it easier to be at max HP when it starts).
From approximately 40%, start to pool your resources and healing/damage cooldowns in preparation for "the push".
At ~22% pop a Sustaining potion and use Lust to apply 5 vuln stacks to the boss, leave lust as soon as you get 5 stacks and the is at approximately 18%
Maintain any buffs for your job until the boss reaches 15% then stop all attacks
Try to position behemoth so that there are no AoEs that will mess up your survival strategy and you can avoid Behemoth's auto-attacks.
Once the boss begins casting a spell (usually Charybdis) start doing as much damage as you possibly can and move out of auto-attack range (either behind or away from behemoth).

The actual push is job dependent, but usually involves the following:

Use all of your burst as hard as possible
Keep your sustaining potion rolling
Press your survival/healing actions/use potions rotation between each meteor
Kill behemoth before you run out of resources.

Some examples of the push:

Finh's Machinist Push: https://youtu.be/PidvepDBEbQ?t=293

Finh's Warrior Push: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJvDq4tQpvc

Floor 181-190 Strategy

This set is the second of the three for the "hard sets" it has a lot of nasty monsters, far too many proximity patrols, and will test your decision making skills throughout. You can typically treat this as the "last set" with regards to using your poms (within reason, if you can bring more things into the final set it will make it easier, but don't be overly conservative).

This set starts off with the easier mobs and works it's way towards very scary mob in the last half. It is pretty much mandatory that you use timesaving poms and at least two rages during this set. It is absolutely fine to treat this set almost like it is your last. There is no set in stone as you need to react to the set based on the debuffs that you get and the poms that you pull.

Notorious Mobs

Proximity Patrols: Garms (Chimeras) and Vindthurs (orgres) are both patrols with proximity aggro type. Both are a priority target and Garms in particular you want to deal with early on your own terms. They are massive and can be hard to avoid. Even though they have 30% more HP than other mobs, trying to avoid them is dangerous and almost never worth the time.

Flood Dragons: These are viscious on DPS and can still catch you off guard on tank. You should always have steel if you want to fight them.

A typical approach

Aim to bring poms to 2 as soon as reasonable, so that picking up a pom doesn't overlap with existing effects.

For DPS: Attempt to conserve your steel for only the mobs that need it, while steel is up, fight the harder mobs to get them out of the way.
For Tanks: Nothing on this set requires steel, and steel trivializes flood dragons on tank. It is okay to bring steel to 1 if needed for the set.

Floors 181-185 - Use all of your flights to keep pace. Use strength to 1, in order to speed up the set.

Floors 186-189 - Use all your alterations (mimics are easier to fight than most things here) and plan to use rage as needed to get to the boss. The number of rages you use will be based largely on your time and whether you "double dip" or "full clear"

Fortune/Affluence: These are useful to save until you have used some poms

Fortunes pair well with floors affected by alteration or floors that you are planning to full clear rage to get more chests.
Affluences pair well with flights or on floors you plan to full clear with rage.

For DPS, you want to do your best to conserve your steel as much as possible in the set. It is very important that you know which mobs you can fight and which you need to avoid or witching.

Boss God Father

This boss requires strength and steel on all jobs. (Tanks, can fight without steel, but it is very spicy).

This is a good boss to use all your remaining lusts on as they aren't very useful on the last set. If you can get 3-5 stacks on the boss, you can maintain it by hitting him once when the buff is about to fall off.

There's a specific pattern that you need to follow with the rotation that you can find on the floor guide for DD compendium here: https://www.ddcompendium.com/potd_floorsets/181.html

The boss alternates spawning adds spawns "Remedy" and "Lava" in addition to a large number of smaller bombs.

Remedy bombs explode after godfather casts sap twice (about 15 seconds or so?) and deal 80% of your HP in damage and freeze you for four seconds
Lava bombs explode and can be used to stun godfather and interrupt "Massive Burst" which -- if let complete -- deals 99% of your HP in damage.

The typical fight is to kite the boss to preposition for the Lava bombs. For handling the remedy bombs there are two options.

Kill the remedy bombs before they explode, this is the standard "safe" strategy that any jobs can use.
Ignore the remedy bombs. This strategy is very unsafe on DPS jobs, but relatively safe on tanks and healers and gives you more damage on godfather while also reducing the mental load of dealing with the remedy bombs.

Ignore the Remedy bomb strategy

Remedy bomb spawns and godfather casts sap around the same time
Heal up
Godfather casts sap a second time
Sprint as far as possible away from godfather
Heal up after freeze wears off.

Here's two vods that demonstrate this technique:

GNB PoV (credit to Butters of the Deep Dungeon Discord): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wX-pq_EOP8

SGE PoV (from Aurora Moon's Guide which demonstrates both ways to do it) https://youtu.be/GKH2OJK9LdA?si=TFIuD3OPYB6ZSgAg&t=18222 (edited)

For all intents and purposes, you can treat this as your last set and use what you need to clear the set. You don't necessarily need to be stingy on poms and bring 3 of everything to the next set. A "clearable" holster at the end of the set contains something like the following:

3 Resonating (a given, there's no value in using these past about 145)
Zero alterations (not worth the risk of mimics in 191+)
Zero flights (unless you got lucky)
2-3 serenities
1-2 steel
3-4 sights/safety
Zero lust (you should use them on Godfather)
1-2 Raising (you should be using one raising for each set from 171, being at 1 or 2 is enough).
0-1 Strength
1-2 fortune/affluences
0 Rages (though, if you had the time/were able to fight later floors, the more you bring into 191 the more guaranteed your clear is).
As many Purity/Witching as you did not need to use during the set.

Note: This is not a holster you are necessarily aiming to get use (bringing more is always better), but the above is completely viable to clear with. Every poms of the above

Floor 191-200 Strategy

The final set. The most difficult part of this set is the sheer number of proximity aggro mobs that spawn throughout the set. It is not uncommon if you get bad key placements to have to fight an excessive number of mobs beyond what it takes to actually open the key.

Similar to the last two sets, the early floors have easier mobs that steadily get harder to fight as you go. If possible, it is best to save your strongest poms for later in the set.

Pomanders

The strategy for your pomanders is going to vary by how many of the "key pomanders" you have available.

Resonating: Turn into an angel that can kill any undead in three casts. Also stuns mobs (except those that are immune).

Rage: Every rage you have for this set, is one fewer floor you have to fight.

Serenity: Your lifeline for undoing the bad floors.
Steel (DPS jobs): As usual, there are some mobs that you cannot fight without these. For the earlier sets, try to hold onto these until you need to fight something (corse/mimic/etc)

When do should you use them?

Any remaining rages should be saved (if possible) for 96 onwards for a few reasons

97, 98, and 99 can never have the "No Knockback" enchantment which makes the rage useful
Further more, there are four potential floors to double dip a rage on.

- - Double dipping is the process of using a rage to clear the end of a floor then immediately hopping to the next floor for the remaining 30-50 seconds to get as many kills as possible.
Resonating can be used anytime there's a substantial number of undead mobs. Make sure to first scout out the key so that you can take out the proximity mobs that might aggro when you are trying to leave.
- IMPORTANT!: The Farchan patrol that spawns from 94-97 is very inconvenient for Resonating plays. Be very sure to scout ahead for Farshans and prioritize using your resonating when you do not see many.
Serenity should be saved for No Item floors or floors with horrifyingly unfightable enchantments when you do not have sufficient resources to otherwise clear.
Sight vs Safety: As a general rule of thumb, you will want to use these when you are using Resolution and Rage as an ill-timed landmine or luring can spell the death of your run. When choosing between the two, it's typically best to use a safety if you can find the key quickly and a sight if you cannot see