@ckd1 Paladin is the perfect class to use for Cave 9 since he rarely buffs and he heals on every attack. So pairing him with Seadog would be good. But, try that with Samurai instead and you will find your birds are dead by the 4th wave since Seadog’s attack will keep getting weaker and weaker and the health of both birds will just keep going down. That is what I mean that Cave 9 is not a general strategy, especially if you just use two birds. You have to have a class that heals on every attack (Paladin, Cleric), or one that buffs and heals a lot (Rainbird/Bard/Princess(Maybe? I would bet, however, she never buffs when playing Cave 9, same as Druid)). But if your Paladin or Rainbird or Bard are *already* at M70, then taking them along doesn’t make sense because you are losing a bird’s worth of mastery per run. It is far more efficient in terms of time to just run Cave 4-5 (over and over and over).
@coachmp I haven’t tested this, but I suspect on a mastery/minute/bird level, one of the three-wave Cave 9 levels might produce mastery on par with what you can get with Cave 4-5 (in terms of mastery per minute per bird) *and* let you play with any random combination of birds. I haven’t done a lot of testing, but in combinations that get smoked in a five-wave level (e.g., Seadog/Treasure Hunters), both birds seems to survive three levels most of the time and the runs are relatively fast. The mastery output is lower, maybe 75 or so, but that is still not bad considering it took
Finally, if you are going to run three birds in the cave, Cave 13-5 is the best without question. (I’m pretty sure this is what @smwforever45 found when he did his runs.) It plays relatively fast, any three relatively high level birds work on autoplay, and the mastery per run is always over 120. The issue there is that there is typically a limit to the number of friends with higher level birds (E60+/M60+) available and sometimes the friends classes don’t mesh well with what you need. So, for me, I get maybe 10-12 runs per day in on 13-5, then grind on 4-5 since my classes left to level up are not ones that heal when they attack or buff.
