Hi Tamers,
You may have noticed there was no patch last week, that's because last week's patch spiraled out of control and now rivals some content packs. That being said, the next content pack will arrive after the holidays and this isn't a true one, but there's definitely plenty to sink your teeth into!
Side Quests
This patch contains several new side-quests, a few of which offer brand new exclusive monsters that could not be obtained before. Some are also tucked away or quite tough to win. I think you're gonna have fun with them :)
Balancing
The currently playable content has been combed over with an eye to balancing and pacing, so a new play-through with the new content will offer more hours of play than ever before, at a much smoother pacing and challenge level.
Monster Respect System
Maybe you've heard about our new Monster Respect system, it's a cool new system that adds a little more challenge and much better pacing to Monster Crown. First thing you need to know is that Monsters will not level up in a way that exceeds your current respect level.
You start the game at certification level 0, which means your monsters cannot exceed level 9. Level 1 means you can reach 19, 2 is 29 limit, and so on. This may sound like it slows things down but due to the implementation, it won't. This new system is very loose, and isn't restrictive at all to the average player.
See, there is a type of player that likes to grind and level up as much as they can, or to tame a boss that isn't meant to be tamed until much later in the game, and then they wish that the rest of the game was more challenging. Most players play naturally, levelling up in a pretty predictable way, for those players, you will never hit this wall before unlocking the next level.
However, if you are the sort of person that has reached level 70 before meeting Beth (you know who you are! ;) ) this change is for you, and will ensure that even if you go all out, you will feel challenged by the game, without making it completely punishing to new and casual players. As you may remember from a previous update Bosses no longer care about your level, and unlike wild monsters, the biggest factor is the level of HP remaining. You can still tame them, but it'll be much harder, and if you tame a monster that exceeds your current level, they will be scaled down.
You may be wondering if when you load your file all your monsters will be scaled down, no, they won't (unless they exceed level 200, in which case they will scale down as that's the final game's limit).
Additionally, as you fight tamers and level up you will earn monster respect points, which are consumed when you breed monsters. Monsters are interested in growing strong, so there's a limit to how long they want to sit around making WEAK BABIES (Yuck!) and want to get back to growing strong. This also sounds limiting but trust me, due to the implementation only min-maxers are going to run into a situation where they have to go intentionally earn points.
All of these mechanisms are primarily for players that want to grind, min-max and still be challenged. Casual players will rarely be reminded they even exist.
Chief Tamer Certification
Do you remember Vyrnia from Empathy who helps you get Gyn? She mentioned she's a chief tamer right? Rodney from Frobec is the same. These chief tamers in each town will offer you a high stakes battle - beating them earns you the next respect certification level and a free monster (some have never been available before today!) but if you lose, they will take one of your monsters! For these battles I recommend saving and reloading if you lose, or turning on Easy Mode to remove the penalty for losing (see below), but if you're hardcore, feel free to subject yourself to this all-stakes battle!
Only one of these chief battles are required, and if you like the current level of challenge, or would like to auto-adjust a "hard mode" on yourself, feel free to skip them, they are optional and can be done in any order.
Easy Mode
Long requested Easy Mode is here! It offers:
- Free Healing
- No Item Loss
- 100% flee chance
- Chiefs do not take your Monster
- Lowered Foe AI
- Increased EXP gain
So if you're interested in a more easy-going Monster Crown experience, give this option a whirl! You'll find it under Settings > Difficulty
Quick display buffs/debuffs
Enemy Rodask's DEF dropped 10%
Enemy Rodask's ATK dropped 10%
Enemy Rodask's SPD increased 5%
Enemy Rodask's RES increased 5%
...
...
That's a lot of reading, a lot of clicking, and sure slows down battle! From now on, these messages will be batched into a quick display so no matter how stat crazy you get, it won't slow down your battles.
Other Miscellaneous fixes
EA v1.537
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+Monster respect system added
+Breeding now requires enough monster respect built up
+Can now only battle wild tamers once
+Defeating a tamer awards monster respect
+Defeating a chief tamer awards a new tamer level
+Can only level up monsters to the attained respect level
+Newly tamed monsters scaled to max respect level if exceeding
+Store door color adjustments
+Orphan shadow in the intro removed
+Raining rate reduced
+Gaps where EXP would not increase fixed
+Party EXP boost
+Ambient Shoreyu added to Mill Town
+Gems to find and sell added to Dew Cave
+Campfire log icon added
+Gualop Cowboy added
+Drangus, Hyna and Gualop nerfs
+Party experience boosted
+Easy mode added, free healing, 100% flee chance, no item loss
+Domigon killing sidequest
+Humanism kingdom visual revamp
+Ambient Madis added to Humanism
+"Spore" overworld sprite added
+Crawkaedga nerfed
As you can see there's never been a better time to start over and try out the game from the beginning again. This build is currently in EA-Beta branch but it's so involved that we're going to wait until Sunday to push it to the main branch, this one touched so many systems and grew so big that the extra week to do some more play-throughs and have our lovely publisher Soedesco give it a spin is something I really felt we needed. Scattered around are new items, NPCs, moves and monsters, have fun catching up on Monster Crown and tune in next Friday for the special holiday-colored Echelk :)
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Are you a player with a lot of super-grind level 200+ monsters? Never hurts to do a save backup, you can find your saves here:
C:\Users\YOURNAME\AppData\LocalLow\Studio Aurum\Monster Crown\Resources\Saves
#Please note that we want to keep the primary EA build stable so new builds will be uploaded to the EA-BETA branch for several days before being moved to the main stream. Anyone can access this branch, just right-click Monster Crown in Steam, go to properties and select the EA-BETA branch to have the up to the minute, bleeding edge updates.