While you're exploring the fields, you may encounter a green stealth chest in a hidden room, a hard-to-get-to cavern, or an underwater air pocket. In the chest is one of 5 Color Fondues, of one of 5 different colors. The Fondue will thank you for rescuing it, and then blink out. If you go to Woodpark, the hut in the Chapter One field, you'll see the ones you've rescued. If you get all five, they will thank you, then split up to different parts of the building. They will give you hints about using the Color Palette for customizing the colors of the monsters you make, then ask for a bunch of rare Red, Green, Blue, etc. jewels. These jewels are hard to get, and can be used to make accessories. So far, I've donated jewels to them several times and got nothing back. The only upside to going to the hut at all (other than that's where the S-Class monolith is located) is that the Black Fondue sells stat buffs that apply to the entire party (other shops sell buffs and debuffs that only affect one monster at a time).
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Estark:
Also when you're exploring, you may find numbered cards that read something like "Hell Demon 3" or "Hell Demon 2". There are five of these. Three can be found in out of the way stealth chests, one is in a chest under the wreckage used for Point Zero, and the final card you get as a reward for beating round 3 of the event battles. When you have all five cards, visit Ace, and he'll tell you that you need to get some more Madulite. Use Ruler to teleport to floor 3 of the Cyborg tower, and inspect the control console there. You'll hear a huge roar from the roof. Teleport up there, and you'll find Estark, a giga monster, sleeping in the caged enclosure. Save your game. Approach him and he'll wake up and attack. If you can beat him in 10 rounds or less, he'll join you. Estark has AI3, letting him take 3 actions per round. His skill spells include multi-attack meteor showers that can take out your party pretty fast. You can either use a two 2-slot monster party approach, putting elemental guard skills on them and play it safe, or use four 1-slot monsters with nothing but AI2-3, Renzoku-5, Tension Vampire, and Party Healing skills, and go for broke. Once you defeat him, Estark is not that strong or useful. I bred him to make a Cyborg Estark, but that's still not all that great. I think the best use for him is as fodder to assign the AI3 ability to a different monster, or to spawn his Estark skills book for use by monsters that have high Mnd stats.
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Breeding:
Basics:
After you have restored power to the Central Building, the one Nocho-ra, Ace, will let you start breeding monsters. The only requirement is that both parents have to be at least exp. Level 10. Talk to Ace and choose the first menu item - Breed. Press A to select the first monster, and scroll through your inventory until you find the one you want. Press A to confirm the monster, then Scroll down one line, press A to select the second monster, scroll through your inventory, and press A again to confirm the monster. You will now see the list of potential offspring - 3 different monsters, plus one slot for each parent (this lets you breed a lizardman to create a lizardman offspring). If both parents are the same type, you'll only get three + one options. Use the cross controller down button to step through the offspring to see what the stats are for each one. Press B to cancel the selection; press A to continue to make the desired offspring.
Fondues:
When you first start the game, your scouted monsters will be Rank F, and the offspring will probably become F+2 (or maybe F+6, depending on what level you've reached). This is called the Rank+number. This number will continue increasing as you keep breeding offsprings to make new offspring. If the +number is under 25, your offspring will not be able to level up above exp. level 50. If the +number is 50 or over, the offspring can level up to 75. You really want to get to +99 on all of your party member monsters as fast as you can. The easiest way to do this is to use the Scout Master Q quests to get the ability to make "mutated" monsters (hunt them until they get angry and turn black, then scout them). Breed the mutated monster to free out a Color Fondue. Then just keep breeding the Color Fondue to make a Color Fondue offspring until it hits +99. Finally, breed the SS+99 Color Fondue with your monsters to bring them to SS+99 fast. Note that whenever you breed a monster with a Color Fondue, a clone of the original Fondue is born along with whatever monster you're trying to create. This way, you never run out of fondues no matter how often you use them for breeding, unlike for all the other monsters.
SS+100:
After finishing the first story scenario, Ace will be able to breed monsters up to SS+100. When the offspring are SS+100, you can customize their innate abilities as part of the breeding process, which are also inherited from the parents. Say that one parent has AI2-3 (can take two or three actions per round), and the other has Renzoku-3 (each attack hits three times). And further that the offspring normally has Lovely (can paralyze the enemy at the beginning of the turn). If the offspring is SS+100, then you can choose for it to have AI2-3, Renzoku-3 AND Lovely. This is the only way to create super-powerful monsters that can survive the Arena Event Battles at the end of the game.
Caps:
When you look at a potential offspring, the stat numbers you're looking at are absolute caps that class of monsters can reach for their projected Rank+number. While you can apply skills that increase those stats (Atk+10) above the caps, as you're leveling up, the monster will not be able to level over it. That is, say the cap on Atk is 900. You level up to level 40, and Atk is at 899. You will get the message Atk+1, and the character will freeze at 900, even if you manage to reach exp. level 100. However, if you have the AtkUp-1 skill and max that out for skill points, that skill will give you +40 points, and your monster will go to Atk 940. But, when you breed that monster with something else, the skill bonuses will not be included in the breeding calculations, and the offspring will again be capped at Atk 900, maximum.
Drawbacks:
If the offspring is Rank+100, you can customize its size as well as its abilities. Normal monsters are 1-slot, Mega are 2-slot and Giga are 3-slot. (4-slot monsters are "cho-giga" (super big)). If the parents have different body sizes than the offspring, you can change the offspring's size based on the size of the parents. So, you can take a 1-slot slime and make it 3-slot if one of the parents was 3-slot. This can increase the slime's HP and MP caps by 50% to 100%, but the other stat caps (Atk, Def, Spd and Mnd) can either remain unchanged or even decrease somewhat. The same thing happens if you assign AI1-2, AI2, AI2-3 or AI3 to the monster - all of the stats go down 10%-20%. This sucks, because one 2-slot monster that can attack twice per round is fundamentally weaker and slower than two 1-slot monsters that can attack once each per round. The reason you'd want a larger monster is that they can equip more skills and abilities at one time that could potentially build on each other to make a customized behemoth that's harder to defeat.
Scouting:
On the plus side, if you have four 1-slot monsters with AI2-3 each, they can take 8 to 12 swings when trying to scout enemy monsters. This is what I did for my initial scouting party and it worked pretty well. But, this party did not last long in the Arena Event Battles and I bred AI2-3 out of them to use them for battle purposes.
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The Disk System:
You get the Disk System (kind of like a holodeck) on the B1 floor of the Central building relatively soon after restoring power. Initially, you only have one "fun" disk, where you can do a quest to defeat a scout master to get experience. When you're about done with Chapter 3, you can find the Metal Area disk in the Ice field village. This lets you hunt metal slimes for 10-15 minutes at a time (required for leveling up). When you get to Point Zero, the disk system is upgraded so you can make your own disks (your own fields) using three code words. That's what I'll talk about here.
Code Words:
As mentioned previously, if you look at the main menu screen, you'll see a gold, a silver and a bronze star, followed by a number. These are the levels and numbers of the accomplishments you've unlocked (scout 10% of the zombie family, beat a boss monster, beat a round of the Arena Event battles, save 100,000 gold in the bank, etc.) Accomplish more in the game, you get bigger numbers after the stars in the main menu, and more code words for the disk system.
The Disk Menu:
1: Use an Existing Disk
2: Create a New Disk
3: Throw Away a Disk
4: Add More Energy to the Disk System
Energy:
When you start the game, the energy bar only goes up to 50 units (when the battle arena opens up, the bar can go to 200). Using a disk burns up as many units of the energy bar as the level of the disk. So, a level 29 disk uses 29 units to play. The system recharges energy at a rate of about 50 units in 4 hours real time (the 3DS can be off during this). You can recharge the system up to max from its current level by spending money. In general, 1,000 gold per unit. Using a level 29 disk will burn 29 units. And this will cost about 29,000 gp to recharge if you do it immediately afterward.
1-Day Free Pass:
If you select option 4, you can either recharge the disk one time, or pay a fixed 100,000 gold for unlimited plays of the disk system for 24 hours. I've found that running through the Metal Slime Area a few times will eventually earn me my 100,000 gold back. It's actually much better than break-even.
Use an Existing Disk:
Select this option. If you have enough energy on the bar to pay for the level of the disk, then just say "Yes" when you're asked if you want to play. You will also be asked if you want Quest mode or to just explore the disk freely for disks you create (there's no quest mode for the Metal or Golden Area disks). Pick the mode you want. When you finish Quest mode, the level of the disk will increase depending on how well you did. The energy bar will drop the number of units equal to the starting level of the disk.
Throw Away a Disk:
When you use Code Words to create a disk, you can't use them again to make another disk until the first one is deleted. You can't delete the Metal Area or Golden Area disks once they're installed. This is good, to avoid accidents. Just select the disk to delete, press A, and confirm to delete.
Create a New Disk:
This is a requirement for getting past Point Zero in the storyline. Afterward, you can delete the disks you made to get the accessories, and create new disks as desired.
You are asked to enter three code words. The first one selects the types of monsters that may appear in the disk (zombies, slimes, dragons, unknown, cyborgs, etc.) The lower the color of the medallion next to the word (bronze or silver), the more types that will be chosen from, and the harder it is to get the specific type, or specific monster you want. The fewer types associated with the color (silver or gold) the better.
The second code word selects the type of quest. You can have battles, races, and other stuff. Most of these types are designed to prevent you from getting S-Rank endings when you finish. If you're trying to win a specific monster or item, I suggest picking a 競争 (relay chase) type. In this type, you go from one checkpoint to the next, trying to avoid getting into battles (0-1 battles gives you an S-Rank rating). A silver quest is 8 checkpoints, and gold is 5 checkpoints (but there may be more monsters around the check points during the quest).
The third code word selects the reward type (items, experience, gold, monsters, or one of the three fixed accessories). Gold code words will give you SS-Rank monsters.
After you've entered the code words, select the level you want to start at. You don't know what the specific reward will be until you click "create", so if there's one monster you want, starting at level 40, for a cost of 40,000 gold to make a disk that has the wrong monster is dangerous. I always chose to start at level 1 for 20 gold, create the disk, and if I didn't want the monster, I'd simply delete the disk and try again. If you do choose to keep the disk, then at level 1 and an S-Rank ending, there's a 0.01% chance of winning the promised award (you get a Ko Genki-Dama as consolation). Up to about level 28, all of the monsters will run away from you when you approach. Above that, they start attacking. Ground-based monsters can be easily avoided - just fly over them. Fliers are much harder, especially if they hang right around the checkpoint in the race games. Fortunately, the quest route layout is kind of random, and you can get lucky occasionally with a route that has no or few fliers. You get about 25% on winning the prize at level 70 at S-Rank. At level 100, it's 50% for an S-Rank ending. A- and B-Rank endings drop the percentage of getting the award drastically, and C-Rank makes it almost 1% even at level 100.
When you finish the quest, the level increases by a certain amount - a couple levels for a bad ending, 4-8 levels for a good ending (less if you're just starting out the quest at level 1).
If you start the disk at level 1, it can take 1-2 hours to get up to level 50, and have any realistic hope of winning anything at all. But, this is much, much better than having to breed ultra rare monsters through scouting and breeding (which can take days to weeks for one).
You can't get Unknown monsters until late in the game, but once you have the right word list for Code One, you can try to win all the chapter bosses, and weird monsters you'd never know were in the game.
Continued...
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