Hello fellas!
My name is Missin, and I’ve been playing PMU for 2 years. I started on January 17th, 2021, and I’m still playing to this day. My activity isn’t as high as it used to be, however. Over my time here, I made my own guild named Embers of Evolution, played through every single permanent dungeon in the game (excluding Archford Dojo), recruited many Pokémon, and collected a great deal of items. I of course, never missed any of the Holiday Cave events that went on during my time in the game, ethier. I’d like to talk about my experience with each of the holiday cave dungeons today, which are Easter, Summer, Halloween, and Winter. I managed to clear each dungeon of these holiday caves successfully, and here’s what I think of them! Starting with…
4.
Winter
Yeah, I’m sorry… but I think that Winter hc was the worst of the limited event dungeons. The two dungeons featured in Winter hc were Icicle Cave and Mt. Winter. Icicle Cave was 30 floors, while Mt. Winter was 50 floors. The worst thing about these dungeons was that teambuilding felt incredibly restrictive in them. If you were trying to have the most consistent run, your options were quite limited.
Icicle Cave wasthe easier of the two due to the fact that it was shorter, but freeze and darkness existed throughout the whole dungeon, as well as weather manipulating Pokémon coming later into the dungeon. It also lacked any sort end boxes, and is the only hc dungeon I know that lacked this. It had a boss, but the drops from it weren’t very good. Once you’ve recruited the exclusives to that dungeon, there was no reason to continue it outside of maybe shiny hunting.
Mt. Winter was the harder and longer dungeon of the duo. Unfortunately it had basically everything you wouldn’t want to see in a holiday cave dungeon! Crippling status conditions: Check. Darkness: Check. Enemies that spawn hazardous weather: Check. A boss with evasion boosts: CHECK! All of these factors harshly restricted teambuilding, so for consistency, I always ran Arctozolt to take advantage of the hazardous weather as well as an immunity to that awful freeze status condition. Other than that, I had Cofagrigus to get items in walls as well as hazing the boss to make it easier to hit, and Volbeat to flash. This didn’t feel normal to me. Yes, there are other ways around freeze like aspear scarf, but an A-Ninetales spawn would still be problematic, as hail still hurt you and many ice types there got their snow cloak active. Weather band didn’t feel as great as the only problem it prevented is hail damage. The rewards for Mt. W were definitely better than icicle cave, but they aren’t as great as other hc’s. Ice stones were great to get, but that’s the only good thing it has.
Overall, Winter hc is the only hc that was a bit more frustrating than fun to me, which is why it is the worst Holiday Cave in my opinion. One good thing about it, however, is that it led to a freeze nerf. Freeze can now no longer trigger in harsh sunlight. While this wasn’t really a problem in the late game when you have access to gems, it is a blessing to early and mid game players, as well as dungeons where you can’t bring items at all such as Tanren Chambers and Hoilday Cave.
3.
Summer
Now we’re getting into the Holiday Cave events that I actually enjoy. There was a summer hc in both 2021 and 2022, but I’ll be grouping them together here because they are very similar to each other. It consisted of three dungeons, each with 40 floors, and each representing the three starter types.
First up is Floral Jungle, a grass and bug themed dungeon with a few other types sprinkled in! The only annoying thing about it was status problems pretty much, specifically poison and sometimes paralysis. However, these two status problems are definitely not as deadly as Freeze is, as you could still attack and move around. There was darkness in the second half of the dungeon, but no hazardous weather to worry about. One of boss Pokémon on last floor also had the move ingrain, which made them pretty easy to kill. I primarily used Crobat for 2021, but switched to Hawlucha in 2022 mainly for faster attacks. One thing I won’t forgive in the 2022 version though, is adding Oranguru but not making it a recruitable. That was stupid, because in regular play you could only obtain it from the Archford Dojo, a co-op dungeon that nobody gives a rat about!
The second dungeon of the group was Kindle Mountain. A lot of players considered this dungeon the hardest of the summer dungeons partly due to Vulpix and Ninetales spawning, which both had the drought ability. This could’ve been an annoyance if you planned on using water types in the dungeon. The 2021 version was even worse because of Gigalith and Tyranitar in addition to the fire fox duo as you not only had to worry about sun, but sandstorm too. I mainly relied on Excadrill in 2021, but only if I was alone because many players can’t stand sandstorm. My second pick was Vaporeon mainly in parties cause that’s what most players preferred. 2022 removed the Sand Streamers leaving only Ninetales to mess up the weather. I shifted more towards Vaporeon at that point, though I also used Mantine so I could walk over the lava. Kindle Mountain was a rough deal weather wise, but has no darkness at all.
Tidewater Beach was the final dungeon of the three. To me it was the easiest of the three, as many grass types could utilize sun from a drought user to their advantage, while also making the long ranged water moves very weak. There were a couple of ice moves to worry about but there was nothing crazy like ice beam or blizzard. To my knowledge there was Pelipper in 2021 which could yeet your sun away and make water types a bit harder to handle, and pmu’s most infamous Pokémon Azumarill appeared in both years. Other than that, you had most of your typical water types, with a few flying types. Flying isn’t really one of the scariest weaknesses to have, though. There was also no darkness to worry about in the dungeon, so you wouldn’t need to be digging out that Volbeat or Morelull. My ace in the dungeon has always been Leafeon because of its decent moves at low levels, and some nice sun abusing abilities in Leaf Guard and Chlorophyll.
Beating the bosses in each dungeon gave you a Flower, Ember, and Wave pendant respectively. Collecting all three pendants gave you an event exclusive Pokémon of your choice, featuring the Galar Starters in 2021 and the Galar Fossils in 2022. I honestly didn’t like the fact that you could only get one of them in each hc, hence why I don’t have it ranked higher. At least teambuilding didn’t feel too restrictive and the rewards for beating the dungeons were decent at least. The fact that you were also able to sell pendants to Captain Kinger for doubloons was nice too as it reduced grinding. A decent hc, but not the best.
2.
Halloween
The 2021 Halloween Hoilday Cave came during the Christmas season, oddly. Despite the late opening, playing through this hc was one wild ride for me, since my first few runs all had a guildmate involved, as well as other crazy things that happened. There were two dungeons in this hc similar to the Winter one, with one being longer than the other. We’ll start talking about the shorter one first.
Exhibit A: Gravewhisper Woods. This dungeon was the 2nd shortest of the event exclusive dungeons in the past 2 years, being only 35 floors. Like Icicle Cave, there was darkness throughout the whole dungeon. The darkness does get pretty harsh on the final floors, too. There was a bit cloudy and foggy weather as well as some poison moves throughout the dungeon, though these status conditions and weather were definitely more manageable than hail and freeze. This also happened to be one of the few event dungeons that didn’t have any form of boss at the end. Instead, we had end boxes! The rewards for the end boxes weren’t game changing, but they existed at least. I used Excadrill during every run in this dungeon due to how utterly overpowered it was when paired with Gigalith. Finding Zorua eggs was nice too, as you have to use a specific move in a monster house to obtain it in normal play.
Exhibit B: Abandoned Arcade! This was the longest event dungeon over the last 2 years, with 60 floors, tied with one other that I’ll get to later. For an event exclusive dungeon, it sure was quite the challenge, hence why a few of my guildmates wanted to play the dungeon with me. Despite the fact that the dungeon had some darkness along with Pokémon that had the aftermath ability, the dungeon was completely void of any weather. This did make you think about what you should bring into the dungeon, but it didn’t restrict teambuilding too heavily. Paralysis was an annoying factor too, but once again, anything is more tolerable than Freeze. My ace in the Arcade was Swampert mainly due to its acceptable low level moves, along with damp to deny aftermath, and Ground moves to beat common Electric types. The Hoopa boss at the end was particularly scary because of Destiny Bond, but I’ve gotten pretty used to playing around counterattacks. While this dungeon was frustrating, I had two particularly great recruitment experiences. The first one was inkay because I had a Plusle ID, and eliminating something that’s annoying to get in regular play is always a plus for me. The second one was a shiny Duraludon, one of the rarest shinies in PMU to this day. The end boxes and secret room were also fun. The former had the possibility of a foggy rock, which is currently only obtainable by dropping 350 ekop in the undercity. The latter had candy in the abyss which was accessible if you used a ghost type, which was pretty cool. Overall, a nice roller coaster of a dungeon.
Completing one of the two Halloween dungeons got you a piece of a key. Collecting both pieces gave you access to a room which had a Dreepy egg. While Dragapult sucks in PvE, it’s a strong Pokémon in PvP that helped me score a win against the mighty GoomyZ. The currency was fun to collect because you could use it to get Pokémon plushes. Sure it was better to buy a Pokémon gift from the shop, but I like having a plush collection in the game just like I do in real life! Halloween hc may have not been the easiest, but I had a lot of fun with it.
1.
Easter
Of all the holiday caves that I talked about above, they all had one thing in common, that being that they all had Pokémon that were directly recruitable. Personally, I have never been a huge fan of that because you can’t use Pokémon gifts in them, so you always had a risk of shiny failure no matter what you did. It also gave you a chance of unwanted guild meetups if you were in a guild. This however, is not the case with the dungeon I’m about to talk about.
Easter holiday cave had one dungeon and one dungeon only: Eastern Grasslands. It had 60 floors in both 2021 and 2022. I will mostly be talking about the 2022 version as I was still fairly new to pmu during the 2021 release. The one feature that immediately set this dungeon apart from the other holiday cave dungeons was the fact that it had no direct recruits. Instead, you picked up eggs which were commonly found throughout the dungeon. Every 20 floors, there was a resting spot where you could use a shop, as well as hatching the eggs you have collected. Because you needed an open party slot to hatch eggs, I used a Rapidash as my leader to hatch eggs faster, as well as my main runner and Vileplume in case I got statused. Every 10 floors starting with the 25th floor, you would get a floor with a ton of Kecleon. Don’t worry though, these Kecleon were NOWHERE near as strong as the ones in the standard mystery dungeon games who attempt to kill you for stealing their items. You would want to defeat the Kecleon on these floors because they drop truffles, the currency for Easter hc. As for the regular enemies, they mainly consisted of starter types, which made me lean towards Dragon types for my main runner. Outrage was a must have for me, and luckily there are a few dragons that get Outrage by default. The confusion may be annoying, but Persim Bands did exist in the dungeon to negate it. My favorite Pokémon Sylveon was a fun Pokémon to pick as well due to the lack of Poison and Steel types. I also experimented with Pokémon who got echoed voice early in their learnset and had some fantastic success with them. The only particularly only thing in the dungeon was paralysis from the Pikachu line, but other than that, there was no darkness, damaging weather, or annoying boss fight. This was what motivated me to try so many different Pokémon in the dungeon. There were also 4 end boxes at the end of the dungeon which was quite a lot. I would never turn down an opportunity for additional currency.
While this single dungeon didn’t have any specific Pokémon to work towards, there was a partner egg system that could allow you to get an egg that is in the same family as your partner’s Pokémon. Although it didn’t work for every single Pokémon, it was still cool to see. Unlike other Hoilday Caves, the shop had an actually useful item in the form of an oval charm. The oval charm allows you to hatch eggs faster when held, and it even stacks with Flame Body and Magma Armor! Overall, due to being able to spam this single dungeon constantly without any annoyances felt really fun to me. Every shiny you found was all yours with a 0% chance of failure, which is why I consider Easter Hoilday Cave the best event dungeon of them all!
Conclusion
Well fellas, I hope you enjoyed my rankings of each of the Hoilday Cave dungeons. While I do find these event dungeons to be fun most of the time, I would also like to see more permanent dungeons so event exclusive Pokémon could get a proper release. We still have a fair number of Gen 7 Pokémon exclusive to events when we have a few Pokémon in Gen 8 given a permanent release! Even if it means losing a Hoilday Cave dungeon opening, I’m fine with it. Easter hc should never be skipped though, mainly due to its wonderful unique features. How would you rank the Hoilday Cave dungeons? Let me know below! I hope you had a great time reading this, and…
Missin Out!
