Alright, I’ve been putting it off for a bit, but I wanted to do a write-up of my journeys through Dragon Warrior Monsters. Just to be clear, I’ve been running this game on and off for a year. I currently have a 3:07:23 JP timing (from New Game to the Save Prompt at the end) (http://twitch.tv/cleartonic/c/4929831), with not a ton of attempts (100 or so, I would guess.) I’ve done extensive research into this game, including data analysis of the game mechanics and the speedrun routes used.
To begin, the Japanese have a history with this game (like all Dragon Quest RTAs), however this entry is fairly unpopular. Currently there are 3 platforms that RTA’s are performed on, which are the GBC (Original release), the PSX (Dragon Quest Monsters 1+2), and the 3DS (Terry’s Wonderland remake.) The PSX version is the most popular in Japan.
The current world record for this game is under 2 hours by Itteru. (Leaderboards on Nico : http://www40.atwiki.jp/nicoamarta/pages/78.html ) In a game as random as this one, this time is extraordinarily impressive. I haven’t seen a video of this- the best video I’ve seen of Itteru’s was a 2:07, which was still amazing. It is incredibly challenging to get an optimized run and a good time in this game, for the main reason is that you need to have utter mastery of every statistic and mechanic to rely on your decision-making ability to influence clearing areas quickly. I’ll try to cover this a bit more later.
Do note that the Japanese version is indeed faster than the English version. I have not quantified it, and I don’t want to throw out a number that’s incorrect, but based on my experience with playing both, I would estimate between 5 and 10 minutes, which would vary with each playthrough.
Speedrun Route:
The ideas discussed in the previous thread were decent ideas and were noble (https://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/dragon_warrior_monsters_note_team_found.html) , but do not hold any significant weight to the commonly used Japanese strategies. I will explain the most commonly used route, which most of the times on the leaderboards use (or some variation on.)
General – Almost all fights are fought. Running away is both unreliable and costly. Additionally, you will most likely need the levels. If you don’t need to fight battles, which in the late game may be true, you should have bought Repellents.
Picking up items is one of the most (probably the most) complex areas of the game. In general, in the early game you pretty much pick up everything. Herbs are useful until about the 60% mark of the game, everything else is situational (WarpWings, LoveWaters, Antidotes, Staves, Meats, etc.) You need access to cash throughout the run, and selling items is the only way to do so. When you visit gate, the goal is rarely to just straight up finish a gate. You need to explore areas efficiently to look for items and proper encounters.
There will be information later on things like foreign trainers, recruiting monsters and items.
Traveler’s Gate (Healer) - Goals are to pick up a female Dracky, and an Anteater. Dracky is used for breeding later, Anteater is for early game damage. Dracky must be female, since it will breed with Dran, the Dragon. Hale is taken into party, replaces Slib.
Arena G – Easy.
Villager Gate (Golem) – Goal is to pick up a Picky on later floors (either here or the next gate). Gender does not matter- it will breed with a trainer. Dracky needs to learn Sleep while levelling up, which can occur between Lv5-7. Sleep is used constantly on the Golem fight, while Picky uses Sap, then all attack. Golem joins the party. Party becomes Dracky, Picky, Golem.
Talisman Gate (Dragon) – Goals are to get a Picky if one wasn’t picked up before, and get a Gremlin. Gremlin will be used to unlock the Bazaar #1 gate. Dragon goes down easily against Sleep + Picky/Golem physicals. Party becomes Dracky, Picky, Dragon.
GreatTree – Party becomes Gremlin, Dragon. Item shop is used to stock up on Herbs, roughly 9-10. Gremlin is given to Bazaar to unlock Bazaar Gate.
Bazaar Gate (MadKnight) – You will have two visits here. First, you will be alone with a Lv6 Dragon. Dragon must level to Level 9, which will occur much faster by himself (EXP is shared among party members. 1 party member is essentially 3x EXP.) Once Lv9 is achieved, WarpWing back, and pick up the Dracky and Picky. Re-enter the Bazaar Gate and level everyone to 10 (which is used for Breeding). Dragon needs to learn BlazeAir at Lv10, or you either eat the time and grind to 11 (which takes an eternity), or reset. MadKnight boss goes down with Sleep + attacks. Party becomes Dragon, Dracky, MadKnight.
Class E – You will skip Class F here. The main reason for this is that you unlock the ability to breed with Mick if you beat this class, which is vital. This is a very difficult fight to win first try. The reason you needed BlazeAir here was to be able to take out the final fight. The first fight is simple. The second fight is complicated – if the FairyDrak pulls off a Surround, you should reset and try again. By the time the third fight comes, you need to pull off a BlazeAir on the first turn and attempt to clear out 1 or 2 of the Snailys. MadKnight must be set to manual command, or he will start Massacre-ing the final fight, which could end poorly for your team. This is probably the worst part of the speedrun.
GreatTree – Breed Dracky with Dragon for Wyvern #1. Breed Picky with Mick’s LizardMan (who is located in the Queen’s room) for Wyvern #2. Wyverns are amazing at this point of the run- they level quickly, have great skills (Heal, Sleep, breath attacks.) Party becomes Wyvern, Wyvern.
Bewilder Gate (FaceTree) – Wyverns level to 12. Efficient play is to quickly get to the boss floor and fight the Stubsucks, which go down easily and give good EXP. Warpwing back, do not fight FaceTree. Party becomes Wyvern, Wyvern, Golem.
Class D – Fights are very easy here with two Wyverns. The last fight, 1 Wyvern should use SleepAll, then all out attack.
GreatTree - There is some clever breeding that occurs here, and it is important to follow. The Wyvern that came from Dracky x Dragon needs to breed with Teto’s IceMan to create a Blizzardy (this is to ensure StrongD is learned from IceMan.) The other Wyvern from Picky x LizardMan breeds with Mick’s DeadNite to create a MadGoose. MadGoose will learn StrongD later from Golem. This MadGoose must be female, since it will breed with Golem later, who is always male. If you did not choose the right combination of Wyverns to breed with, 1 of your later monsters will not have StrongD, which is not good.
MadGoose may seem like an odd choice, but its actually very good for a few reasons- high MP, access to Lose-A-Turn move (LureDance), PaniDance (crucial to the speedrun), and levels quickly. Blizzard has good stats and levels quickly too. The reason these two birds are bred are to breed into 2 Whipbirds, their final evolution. Party becomes Golem, MadGoose, Blizzardy.
Anger Gate (BattleRex) – This is where luck really starts to go in your favor. You need to scale the gate and level up your monsters, but because you enter the gate with MPs as of being level 1, you will need to somehow get MP back before you fight BattleRex. Getting a healer room or a foreign trainer solves most of your problems. You can’t fight BattleRex with low MP, worse case scenario is that you need to WarpWing back to recover. Both birds need to get to Level 14 before BattleRex, where you can fight the DragonKids in BattleRex’s room to level efficiently. BattleRex will be taken down with a combination of Defense, LureDance and PaniDance. BattleRex should be attempted to be debilitated every turn. Party becomes Blizzardy, MadGoose, BattleRex.
GreatTree – First, breed Blizzardy with May’s Rayburn (in the Arena’s bar) to create the first WhipBird. Then the second Goopi game must be beaten to unlock the Arena #1 gate. MadGoose is bred with Golem to create the 2nd WhipBird. Party becomes WhipBird, WhipBird, BattleRex.
WhipBirds are the ultimate team members for the speedrun. There’s many reasons. High HP carries them without needing to breed again. They have good skills (Healing ability, breath attacks, lose a turn and panic, StrongD.) They level up fairly fast (not as fast as other birds, but 5XP to Level 2, which is good.) Focusing your team around 2 powerhouses means time is saved in the early game by always having 1 other party member in your team. Another way to look at it is that if you were to breed 3 monsters, you’d have an issue shuffling around monsters in your party while you are hatching/breeding, which would definitely cost time. The last monster you get is caught, anyhow, and is crucial to the speedrun.
Item shops must be visited to sell goods (which occurs multiple times throughout the run up to this point,) and purchase a few bookmarks and repellents.
Arena #1 Gate (Digster) – This is where all hell breaks loose in the game. You have 2 goals here: Collect 10,000 gold to afford the S Class arena (thereby skipping all other arena battles), and level up WhipBirds to a level that you think you can beat the S Class. You can be as low as Lv16 (incredibly risky, which is what the record does) or up to around Lv20.
How you get 10,000 gold varies among speedrunners. At the end of the day, you are collecting items and hoping for secret shops to sell your goods at max value. You can take a few avenues of approaches:
1) Wander around floors and pick up items, looking for WorldDews, ElfWaters, WorldLeaves, and Staves. Staves can sell for the most. If you see random armored trainers, you would save before them with a BookMark and fight them. The item that is given to you would be checked for value- if it’s no good, reset and try again. Then you must find a secret shop and sell your goods.
2) Attempt to find a Merchant trainer. You will need to save before the Merchant, and after beating him, he will fill your inventory with meats. If you get between 3-4 Sirloins (which sell for 1000G in a secret shop each,) then you continue. Try to get a secret shop and sell goods.
You can use a combination of both strats, it doesn’t matter. Once the WhipBirds are leveled to 16-20, and the BattleRex is level 21 (learns Scorching + EvilSlash), warp back.
Class S – This is difficult. First fight is simple. Second fight, you need to leave the fight with almost max HP. You should use a combination of PaniDance, LureDance and StrongD, while healing intermittently, to slowly whittle down the enemy. Depending on how high you levelled Blizzardy, one of the WhipBirds may know Beat here, which may become handy.
The last fight is Metabble, Roboster and MetalDrak. The strat is that you need to StrongD with one WhipBird, LureDance with the other (which has a high chance of working on all enemies, even Metabble), and Charge setting on BattleRex. Alternate strat is to StrongD with everyone and wait out the MetalDrak to Massacre its team members, but of course, it’s very risky.
Gate of Reflection (Durran) – Two goals here. Mimic needs to join your team, which can be caught on any floor in this Gate. If you get to a special floor with 6 Chests, there’s a good likelihood you can save before the chest and fight the Mimic. Mimics are about 50/50 recruit with 1 Rib, which is not bad. Mimic is a Lv 38 monster with high HP and the skills Defeat and Blazemost. Expert level play will keep a Sirloin handy to reduce Mimics wild stat after recruiting it, to make it listen to commands against Terry/Durran. Party becomes WhipBird, WhipBird, Mimic.
Second goal is to get to the bottom of the dungeon ASAP. Fighting a Wizard trainer will advance you 20 floors. Once the Mimic joins, you want to get to Durran as quickly as possible. Save + heal if possible, and as always, that is depending on the circumstances.
Servant fight – Use LureDance while others use breath attacks / BlazeMost
Terry – Use Defense + LureDance/PaniDance, depending on your risk level.
Durran – Same as Terry. This guy can do 200+ dmg with BirdBlow, but he uses all his skills randomly (thank goodness.)
Tournament (Milayou) – This is one of the worst parts of the speedrun since you can’t control anything, really. It’s all up to personality and choosing Charge/Mixed/Cautious at the right times. The first two battles are simple, but as in Class S, you need to leave the 2nd fight with very high or max HP to stand a chance against Milayou.
Milayou has MetalKing, Coatal, RainHawk. RainHawk will more than likely (but not always, I have most definitely confirmed) use MegaMagic, which is why both WhipBirds need StrongD on first turn. If you aren’t near max HP entering the fight, then the WhipBirds will HealAll instead of StrongD, and you will likely die. After the RainHawk’s MP is gone, you need to stay at high HP, and slowly whittle the enemy. LureDance is effective on all three enemies, and you pretty much rely on and pray for Mimic to be alive and for Defeat to land. Defeat works on both Coatal and RainHawk, surprisingly, but it’s not a 100% success rate.
Timing ends when the save prompt shows. (Or really, when it tells you have saved the game and should reset.)
Afterword about the route: There are many things I don’t particularly like about this route. The first one is that the 2nd WhipBird, which doesn’t have the LureDance and PaniDance skills, feels useless. It has high HP and is great for turtling/healing, but otherwise doesn’t provide much. There are variations on this route where the 2nd WhipBird is replaced with another monster, including Unicorn (decent HP, great healing skills) and HornBeet (amazing stats (yes, it’s true), access to Increase skill), and Servant (honestly, I know very little about Servant route.)
In my PB run, I played it safe by foregoing breeding with Mick’s DeadNite and breeding with a Poisongon I caught instead. This gives the WhipBird access to SickLick, an amazing skill that renders Terry and Durran useless. However, setting up the Poisongon catch is time consuming, and I haven’t seen it used by Japanese runners.
In my opinion, the route pacing of which Arena battles you do and which gates you visit is set. It’s a very low amount of Gates and allows you enough experience + items to get through the game fast. I don’t think you can improve on that selection too much. However, the monsters you choose could definitely be improved or optimized. Birds are an obvious choice because they level up so fast and some of them (i.e. Wyvern + WhipBird) have great stats. We’ll see where it goes in time. I’ve tried MadHornet, Unicorn, HornBeet, Skeletor as an alternative to WhipBird, but nothing turned up.
Foreign Trainers:
Trainers can appear on one of the screens from the Gate of Bewilderness/Memories onwards for each floor. Essentially, the game checks 1) if a trainer spawns, then 2) what type of trainer it is. When you’re on Floor 1, you need to have certain criteria met. When you walk to Floor 2, that is where you may fight the trainer.
There are 5 trainer types:
Armored – Standard trainers. Defeating them will get you a random item, assuming space is available in your inventory. You will fight these trainers if no other trainer criteria is met.
Merchants - Found by walking 200 steps on one floor, then going to the next floor. Merchants will fill up your inventory with meats, from BadMeats to Sirloins. There is a rumor that spawning the Merchant is tied to not picking up any items on a floor. This is completely false, however read the Cleric’s explanation.
Bards – If the current floor you are on has two or less screens, the next floor you access has a chance of spawning a Bard. Bards will take your monsters’ lowest stat and increase it by 20 upon defeat.
Wizards – If the current floor you are on has 16 screens, and all sixteen have been visited (or shown on the map with MapMagic/MapHerb,) then the next floor has a chance of spawning the Wizard. Wizards will warp you 20 floors.
Clerics – These are the most complicated. More often than not, you will see Cleric trainers as foreign masters. There are two factors when a Cleric may spawn. The first is how many items have spawned on the floor you are currently on. If there is more than 1 item, then Cleric may show up. The second factor is based on how many items that you pick up. For instance, say 5 items are on a floor. For every item you pick up, the chance of finding the Cleric on the next floor increases. When you visit the next floor, the Cleric might arrive.
Something that is very important is that if you pick up at least one item on a floor, you have a chance of spawning a Cleric. Now if you were say trying to go for one of the other trainers, say Merchant for instance, and you meet the criteria for Merchant (walking 200 steps on the floor.) Because you have the potential of meeting the Cleric, if the game decides randomly that the Cleric criteria was met, then it supercedes the trainer criteria met for Merchant. Even if you save the game with a BookMark, go to the next floor and look for a trainer, and reset over and over trying again and again, that trainer will always be a Cleric. The lesson is that if you want any trainer besides Cleric, you want the floor you’re on to have a decent amount of items (3 or more should be safe,) and you need to not collect any of those items.
Stats:
I will explain this as briefly as possible. Every monster type (i.e., Roboster) has a value of 0-31 for each stat (sound familiar to another series?), which determines your growth for each one of those stats. No matter how much breeding you do, every monster that is currently a Roboster will gain the same stats every level. There are tables present on the spreadsheet (look at the end of this post) that show how much each level up will grant.
Roboster has the following stat values (“Monster Data” tab):
HP MP ATK DEF SPD INT
12 5 21 22 24 17
All monsters with a 12 HP stat value will gain HP at a certain rate. Refer to “Monster Stat Growth” tab. In Column P, you can see how the growth occurs. At level 1, Roboster’s HP will go up by 2. On Level 2, HP will go up by 1. And so forth.
The very, very important thing with stats is that they do not scale appropriately. Just because you have a higher value in a stat does not mean that it will be better than something with a smaller value. For example (refer back to “Monster Stat Growth” tab), WhipBird has a HP stat of 27. As you can see on Column AE, each level WhipBird gains a large amount of HP, between 15-20 on average per level. You can see at the bottom of the screenshot how much HP growth will occur from level 1 to 25, which is that WhipBird will gain 264 HP by Level 25.
Now, look at Divinegon’s attack stat, which is 28. One might think that 28 is better than 27, and you would expect Divinegon’s attack stat to grow faster than WhipBird’s HP. However, that is not the case. As you can see, under Column AF the growths are very bad (4-5 on average). For a speedrun, any monster with a stat value of 28 would be a terrible choice. If you are considering a monster based on its stats, you must check its stat growths to see if they will actually have good growths.
Final word:
I could probably teach a college course on the rest of this information. There are many other topics (items, monster recruiting, how breeding works with stats, combined skills, on and on...) at this rate, let’s just say that if you have other questions, just let me know.
My final word is that I want others to play this game. It’s fun, and my personal opinion is that this game would be a ton of fun for Bingo races (choose 5 monsters to breed). Races would be quite long but would demonstrate mastery over the game.
Ask me any question.
Detailed Spreadsheet of DWM information - bombch.us/rZp
To begin, the Japanese have a history with this game (like all Dragon Quest RTAs), however this entry is fairly unpopular. Currently there are 3 platforms that RTA’s are performed on, which are the GBC (Original release), the PSX (Dragon Quest Monsters 1+2), and the 3DS (Terry’s Wonderland remake.) The PSX version is the most popular in Japan.
The current world record for this game is under 2 hours by Itteru. (Leaderboards on Nico : http://www40.atwiki.jp/nicoamarta/pages/78.html ) In a game as random as this one, this time is extraordinarily impressive. I haven’t seen a video of this- the best video I’ve seen of Itteru’s was a 2:07, which was still amazing. It is incredibly challenging to get an optimized run and a good time in this game, for the main reason is that you need to have utter mastery of every statistic and mechanic to rely on your decision-making ability to influence clearing areas quickly. I’ll try to cover this a bit more later.
Do note that the Japanese version is indeed faster than the English version. I have not quantified it, and I don’t want to throw out a number that’s incorrect, but based on my experience with playing both, I would estimate between 5 and 10 minutes, which would vary with each playthrough.
Speedrun Route:
The ideas discussed in the previous thread were decent ideas and were noble (https://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/dragon_warrior_monsters_note_team_found.html) , but do not hold any significant weight to the commonly used Japanese strategies. I will explain the most commonly used route, which most of the times on the leaderboards use (or some variation on.)
General – Almost all fights are fought. Running away is both unreliable and costly. Additionally, you will most likely need the levels. If you don’t need to fight battles, which in the late game may be true, you should have bought Repellents.
Picking up items is one of the most (probably the most) complex areas of the game. In general, in the early game you pretty much pick up everything. Herbs are useful until about the 60% mark of the game, everything else is situational (WarpWings, LoveWaters, Antidotes, Staves, Meats, etc.) You need access to cash throughout the run, and selling items is the only way to do so. When you visit gate, the goal is rarely to just straight up finish a gate. You need to explore areas efficiently to look for items and proper encounters.
There will be information later on things like foreign trainers, recruiting monsters and items.
Traveler’s Gate (Healer) - Goals are to pick up a female Dracky, and an Anteater. Dracky is used for breeding later, Anteater is for early game damage. Dracky must be female, since it will breed with Dran, the Dragon. Hale is taken into party, replaces Slib.
Arena G – Easy.
Villager Gate (Golem) – Goal is to pick up a Picky on later floors (either here or the next gate). Gender does not matter- it will breed with a trainer. Dracky needs to learn Sleep while levelling up, which can occur between Lv5-7. Sleep is used constantly on the Golem fight, while Picky uses Sap, then all attack. Golem joins the party. Party becomes Dracky, Picky, Golem.
Talisman Gate (Dragon) – Goals are to get a Picky if one wasn’t picked up before, and get a Gremlin. Gremlin will be used to unlock the Bazaar #1 gate. Dragon goes down easily against Sleep + Picky/Golem physicals. Party becomes Dracky, Picky, Dragon.
GreatTree – Party becomes Gremlin, Dragon. Item shop is used to stock up on Herbs, roughly 9-10. Gremlin is given to Bazaar to unlock Bazaar Gate.
Bazaar Gate (MadKnight) – You will have two visits here. First, you will be alone with a Lv6 Dragon. Dragon must level to Level 9, which will occur much faster by himself (EXP is shared among party members. 1 party member is essentially 3x EXP.) Once Lv9 is achieved, WarpWing back, and pick up the Dracky and Picky. Re-enter the Bazaar Gate and level everyone to 10 (which is used for Breeding). Dragon needs to learn BlazeAir at Lv10, or you either eat the time and grind to 11 (which takes an eternity), or reset. MadKnight boss goes down with Sleep + attacks. Party becomes Dragon, Dracky, MadKnight.
Class E – You will skip Class F here. The main reason for this is that you unlock the ability to breed with Mick if you beat this class, which is vital. This is a very difficult fight to win first try. The reason you needed BlazeAir here was to be able to take out the final fight. The first fight is simple. The second fight is complicated – if the FairyDrak pulls off a Surround, you should reset and try again. By the time the third fight comes, you need to pull off a BlazeAir on the first turn and attempt to clear out 1 or 2 of the Snailys. MadKnight must be set to manual command, or he will start Massacre-ing the final fight, which could end poorly for your team. This is probably the worst part of the speedrun.
GreatTree – Breed Dracky with Dragon for Wyvern #1. Breed Picky with Mick’s LizardMan (who is located in the Queen’s room) for Wyvern #2. Wyverns are amazing at this point of the run- they level quickly, have great skills (Heal, Sleep, breath attacks.) Party becomes Wyvern, Wyvern.
Bewilder Gate (FaceTree) – Wyverns level to 12. Efficient play is to quickly get to the boss floor and fight the Stubsucks, which go down easily and give good EXP. Warpwing back, do not fight FaceTree. Party becomes Wyvern, Wyvern, Golem.
Class D – Fights are very easy here with two Wyverns. The last fight, 1 Wyvern should use SleepAll, then all out attack.
GreatTree - There is some clever breeding that occurs here, and it is important to follow. The Wyvern that came from Dracky x Dragon needs to breed with Teto’s IceMan to create a Blizzardy (this is to ensure StrongD is learned from IceMan.) The other Wyvern from Picky x LizardMan breeds with Mick’s DeadNite to create a MadGoose. MadGoose will learn StrongD later from Golem. This MadGoose must be female, since it will breed with Golem later, who is always male. If you did not choose the right combination of Wyverns to breed with, 1 of your later monsters will not have StrongD, which is not good.
MadGoose may seem like an odd choice, but its actually very good for a few reasons- high MP, access to Lose-A-Turn move (LureDance), PaniDance (crucial to the speedrun), and levels quickly. Blizzard has good stats and levels quickly too. The reason these two birds are bred are to breed into 2 Whipbirds, their final evolution. Party becomes Golem, MadGoose, Blizzardy.
Anger Gate (BattleRex) – This is where luck really starts to go in your favor. You need to scale the gate and level up your monsters, but because you enter the gate with MPs as of being level 1, you will need to somehow get MP back before you fight BattleRex. Getting a healer room or a foreign trainer solves most of your problems. You can’t fight BattleRex with low MP, worse case scenario is that you need to WarpWing back to recover. Both birds need to get to Level 14 before BattleRex, where you can fight the DragonKids in BattleRex’s room to level efficiently. BattleRex will be taken down with a combination of Defense, LureDance and PaniDance. BattleRex should be attempted to be debilitated every turn. Party becomes Blizzardy, MadGoose, BattleRex.
GreatTree – First, breed Blizzardy with May’s Rayburn (in the Arena’s bar) to create the first WhipBird. Then the second Goopi game must be beaten to unlock the Arena #1 gate. MadGoose is bred with Golem to create the 2nd WhipBird. Party becomes WhipBird, WhipBird, BattleRex.
WhipBirds are the ultimate team members for the speedrun. There’s many reasons. High HP carries them without needing to breed again. They have good skills (Healing ability, breath attacks, lose a turn and panic, StrongD.) They level up fairly fast (not as fast as other birds, but 5XP to Level 2, which is good.) Focusing your team around 2 powerhouses means time is saved in the early game by always having 1 other party member in your team. Another way to look at it is that if you were to breed 3 monsters, you’d have an issue shuffling around monsters in your party while you are hatching/breeding, which would definitely cost time. The last monster you get is caught, anyhow, and is crucial to the speedrun.
Item shops must be visited to sell goods (which occurs multiple times throughout the run up to this point,) and purchase a few bookmarks and repellents.
Arena #1 Gate (Digster) – This is where all hell breaks loose in the game. You have 2 goals here: Collect 10,000 gold to afford the S Class arena (thereby skipping all other arena battles), and level up WhipBirds to a level that you think you can beat the S Class. You can be as low as Lv16 (incredibly risky, which is what the record does) or up to around Lv20.
How you get 10,000 gold varies among speedrunners. At the end of the day, you are collecting items and hoping for secret shops to sell your goods at max value. You can take a few avenues of approaches:
1) Wander around floors and pick up items, looking for WorldDews, ElfWaters, WorldLeaves, and Staves. Staves can sell for the most. If you see random armored trainers, you would save before them with a BookMark and fight them. The item that is given to you would be checked for value- if it’s no good, reset and try again. Then you must find a secret shop and sell your goods.
2) Attempt to find a Merchant trainer. You will need to save before the Merchant, and after beating him, he will fill your inventory with meats. If you get between 3-4 Sirloins (which sell for 1000G in a secret shop each,) then you continue. Try to get a secret shop and sell goods.
You can use a combination of both strats, it doesn’t matter. Once the WhipBirds are leveled to 16-20, and the BattleRex is level 21 (learns Scorching + EvilSlash), warp back.
Class S – This is difficult. First fight is simple. Second fight, you need to leave the fight with almost max HP. You should use a combination of PaniDance, LureDance and StrongD, while healing intermittently, to slowly whittle down the enemy. Depending on how high you levelled Blizzardy, one of the WhipBirds may know Beat here, which may become handy.
The last fight is Metabble, Roboster and MetalDrak. The strat is that you need to StrongD with one WhipBird, LureDance with the other (which has a high chance of working on all enemies, even Metabble), and Charge setting on BattleRex. Alternate strat is to StrongD with everyone and wait out the MetalDrak to Massacre its team members, but of course, it’s very risky.
Gate of Reflection (Durran) – Two goals here. Mimic needs to join your team, which can be caught on any floor in this Gate. If you get to a special floor with 6 Chests, there’s a good likelihood you can save before the chest and fight the Mimic. Mimics are about 50/50 recruit with 1 Rib, which is not bad. Mimic is a Lv 38 monster with high HP and the skills Defeat and Blazemost. Expert level play will keep a Sirloin handy to reduce Mimics wild stat after recruiting it, to make it listen to commands against Terry/Durran. Party becomes WhipBird, WhipBird, Mimic.
Second goal is to get to the bottom of the dungeon ASAP. Fighting a Wizard trainer will advance you 20 floors. Once the Mimic joins, you want to get to Durran as quickly as possible. Save + heal if possible, and as always, that is depending on the circumstances.
Servant fight – Use LureDance while others use breath attacks / BlazeMost
Terry – Use Defense + LureDance/PaniDance, depending on your risk level.
Durran – Same as Terry. This guy can do 200+ dmg with BirdBlow, but he uses all his skills randomly (thank goodness.)
Tournament (Milayou) – This is one of the worst parts of the speedrun since you can’t control anything, really. It’s all up to personality and choosing Charge/Mixed/Cautious at the right times. The first two battles are simple, but as in Class S, you need to leave the 2nd fight with very high or max HP to stand a chance against Milayou.
Milayou has MetalKing, Coatal, RainHawk. RainHawk will more than likely (but not always, I have most definitely confirmed) use MegaMagic, which is why both WhipBirds need StrongD on first turn. If you aren’t near max HP entering the fight, then the WhipBirds will HealAll instead of StrongD, and you will likely die. After the RainHawk’s MP is gone, you need to stay at high HP, and slowly whittle the enemy. LureDance is effective on all three enemies, and you pretty much rely on and pray for Mimic to be alive and for Defeat to land. Defeat works on both Coatal and RainHawk, surprisingly, but it’s not a 100% success rate.
Timing ends when the save prompt shows. (Or really, when it tells you have saved the game and should reset.)
Afterword about the route: There are many things I don’t particularly like about this route. The first one is that the 2nd WhipBird, which doesn’t have the LureDance and PaniDance skills, feels useless. It has high HP and is great for turtling/healing, but otherwise doesn’t provide much. There are variations on this route where the 2nd WhipBird is replaced with another monster, including Unicorn (decent HP, great healing skills) and HornBeet (amazing stats (yes, it’s true), access to Increase skill), and Servant (honestly, I know very little about Servant route.)
In my PB run, I played it safe by foregoing breeding with Mick’s DeadNite and breeding with a Poisongon I caught instead. This gives the WhipBird access to SickLick, an amazing skill that renders Terry and Durran useless. However, setting up the Poisongon catch is time consuming, and I haven’t seen it used by Japanese runners.
In my opinion, the route pacing of which Arena battles you do and which gates you visit is set. It’s a very low amount of Gates and allows you enough experience + items to get through the game fast. I don’t think you can improve on that selection too much. However, the monsters you choose could definitely be improved or optimized. Birds are an obvious choice because they level up so fast and some of them (i.e. Wyvern + WhipBird) have great stats. We’ll see where it goes in time. I’ve tried MadHornet, Unicorn, HornBeet, Skeletor as an alternative to WhipBird, but nothing turned up.
Foreign Trainers:
Trainers can appear on one of the screens from the Gate of Bewilderness/Memories onwards for each floor. Essentially, the game checks 1) if a trainer spawns, then 2) what type of trainer it is. When you’re on Floor 1, you need to have certain criteria met. When you walk to Floor 2, that is where you may fight the trainer.
There are 5 trainer types:
Armored – Standard trainers. Defeating them will get you a random item, assuming space is available in your inventory. You will fight these trainers if no other trainer criteria is met.
Merchants - Found by walking 200 steps on one floor, then going to the next floor. Merchants will fill up your inventory with meats, from BadMeats to Sirloins. There is a rumor that spawning the Merchant is tied to not picking up any items on a floor. This is completely false, however read the Cleric’s explanation.
Bards – If the current floor you are on has two or less screens, the next floor you access has a chance of spawning a Bard. Bards will take your monsters’ lowest stat and increase it by 20 upon defeat.
Wizards – If the current floor you are on has 16 screens, and all sixteen have been visited (or shown on the map with MapMagic/MapHerb,) then the next floor has a chance of spawning the Wizard. Wizards will warp you 20 floors.
Clerics – These are the most complicated. More often than not, you will see Cleric trainers as foreign masters. There are two factors when a Cleric may spawn. The first is how many items have spawned on the floor you are currently on. If there is more than 1 item, then Cleric may show up. The second factor is based on how many items that you pick up. For instance, say 5 items are on a floor. For every item you pick up, the chance of finding the Cleric on the next floor increases. When you visit the next floor, the Cleric might arrive.
Something that is very important is that if you pick up at least one item on a floor, you have a chance of spawning a Cleric. Now if you were say trying to go for one of the other trainers, say Merchant for instance, and you meet the criteria for Merchant (walking 200 steps on the floor.) Because you have the potential of meeting the Cleric, if the game decides randomly that the Cleric criteria was met, then it supercedes the trainer criteria met for Merchant. Even if you save the game with a BookMark, go to the next floor and look for a trainer, and reset over and over trying again and again, that trainer will always be a Cleric. The lesson is that if you want any trainer besides Cleric, you want the floor you’re on to have a decent amount of items (3 or more should be safe,) and you need to not collect any of those items.
Stats:
I will explain this as briefly as possible. Every monster type (i.e., Roboster) has a value of 0-31 for each stat (sound familiar to another series?), which determines your growth for each one of those stats. No matter how much breeding you do, every monster that is currently a Roboster will gain the same stats every level. There are tables present on the spreadsheet (look at the end of this post) that show how much each level up will grant.
Roboster has the following stat values (“Monster Data” tab):
HP MP ATK DEF SPD INT
12 5 21 22 24 17
All monsters with a 12 HP stat value will gain HP at a certain rate. Refer to “Monster Stat Growth” tab. In Column P, you can see how the growth occurs. At level 1, Roboster’s HP will go up by 2. On Level 2, HP will go up by 1. And so forth.
The very, very important thing with stats is that they do not scale appropriately. Just because you have a higher value in a stat does not mean that it will be better than something with a smaller value. For example (refer back to “Monster Stat Growth” tab), WhipBird has a HP stat of 27. As you can see on Column AE, each level WhipBird gains a large amount of HP, between 15-20 on average per level. You can see at the bottom of the screenshot how much HP growth will occur from level 1 to 25, which is that WhipBird will gain 264 HP by Level 25.
Now, look at Divinegon’s attack stat, which is 28. One might think that 28 is better than 27, and you would expect Divinegon’s attack stat to grow faster than WhipBird’s HP. However, that is not the case. As you can see, under Column AF the growths are very bad (4-5 on average). For a speedrun, any monster with a stat value of 28 would be a terrible choice. If you are considering a monster based on its stats, you must check its stat growths to see if they will actually have good growths.
Final word:
I could probably teach a college course on the rest of this information. There are many other topics (items, monster recruiting, how breeding works with stats, combined skills, on and on...) at this rate, let’s just say that if you have other questions, just let me know.
My final word is that I want others to play this game. It’s fun, and my personal opinion is that this game would be a ton of fun for Bingo races (choose 5 monsters to breed). Races would be quite long but would demonstrate mastery over the game.
Ask me any question.
Detailed Spreadsheet of DWM information - bombch.us/rZp
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