[X] My Assistant

For monster lab, is there a 'best overall' creature to make when it comes to acquiring rewards? Or should I just get a variety of different types of monsters?

For monster lab, is there a 'best overall' creature to make when it comes to acquiring rewards? Or should I just get a variety of different types of monsters?

No, the type of monster has almost no measurable effect. On paper, you could argue that high health monsters are harder to kill, or that magic monsters hit melee harder... but best thing you can do is: choose the type of monster that makes the name funny:
Morbidly Obese Pony - that should be a giant, I'd say. Or a beast?
Late Knight - undead of course
Thomas the Spank Engine - mechanoid, I'd say
etc.

For monster lab, is there a 'best overall' creature to make when it comes to acquiring rewards? Or should I just get a variety of different types of monsters?

Depends how high you're raising them. If you're taking them to 1500+, refer to this part of my monster analysis. Personal experience: at 1500, giants give poorer gifts than other types due to oversaturation, but at 2250, it's outperforming my sprite slightly due to win rate.

At 1500, I'd recommend a general mix, preferably of the underutilized types. Below 1500, doesn't matter at all, pick whatever you like.

In addition to what lestion said here's what I'd add:

Oversaturation is a byproduct of what monsters the rich or high-level players in this game choose to make. Currently in this game the addition of one or two rich players can shift the balance a little, so what species are oversaturated can change.

The game chooses the randomized monsters you fight in such a way that the oversaturation need not be the same at all monster PL; there might be proportionately more or less giants at ~1500 PL than 2250 PL.

Giants having a higher win rate than sprite is also not a fixed thing; I'm fairly certain sprites are a powerful species against melee while giants are quite worthless; against mage it could be somewhat the reverse (though as long as the sprite is set to physical skills, it should be good against mage too).

Giants having better win rate than sprites probably reflects the fact that we have more mage players than melee players, or mage players being way more likely to die than melee players in general.

Players should try to make a variety of different monsters. There can't truly be a 'best overall' creature to keep making because if there were, everyone would make just that one type of monster, and oversaturation would occur making that creature worthless.

Giants having a higher win rate than sprite is also not a fixed thing; I'm fairly certain sprites are a powerful species against melee while giants are quite worthless; against mage it could be somewhat the reverse (though as long as the sprite is set to physical skills, it should be good against mage too).

Giants having better win rate than sprites probably reflects the fact that we have more mage players than melee players, or mage players being way more likely to die than melee players in general.

Players should try to make a variety of different monsters. There can't truly be a 'best overall' creature to keep making because if there were, everyone would make just that one type of monster, and oversaturation would occur making that creature worthless.

I made my first 2250 a sprite based on the theory that they should be pretty good against mages - they have a hard hitting basic attack, with the highest crit rate of all monsters, and their MP/SP attacks are pretty potent also.

It didn't work out that way. The giant is getting significantly more wins, despite slightly less appearances (you can compare the second table of monster classes to my own personal data in the third post, to see how saturation affects their appearance rates). It is worth noting that this translates to very, very few extra gifts, because the gift-rate algorithm is not a simple 1:1 with battle wins. It's (heavily) weighted by time since the last gift.

I think the success of giants is pretty much exactly as you said - there's more mages, and mages are vastly more likely to die in battle than 1H. That's just the nature of spirit shield evening things out - 1H players might get it triggered by celestial SP attacks, but those happen less often than literally any late-fest basic hit...

The other effect is the way hover-attack respects alerts, but button presses do not. A lot of 1H players are still non-imperil (the foreign-language communities especially), so they're not really in any danger, ever. Mages die pressing imperil a little too fast.

I agree with your final sentence. Refer to the monster analysis for numbers.

Is all equipment below magnificent basically bazaar/salvage tier?

Even at this low level my inventory is beginning to feel a bit bloated.

...

That was really interesting.

Do you have any data on how much Chaos Tokens matter? I suppose you can't tell how many tokens other people's monsters have been fed but you know the ones you've made. How much of a difference do they make?

Is all equipment below magnificent basically bazaar/salvage tier?

Even at this low level my inventory is beginning to feel a bit bloated.

at your level, I think exquisite can still have some use. Instructions from decondelite's low-level auction: Exquisite below Lvl250, prefixed rapier of slaughter.

But at <100, other melee stuff may be useful as well.

That was really interesting.

Do you have any data on how much Chaos Tokens matter? I suppose you can't tell how many tokens other people's monsters have been fed but you know the ones you've made. How much of a difference do they make?

I don't exactly have great data because all my own recorded monsters are full chaos (and I don't raise them unless I can do so), but I can compare my celestials with the average (since they're similar in PL) to see that there's not actually very much difference to how dangerous they are.

I think chaos tokens matter decently, the best way is to analyze the described way chaos tokens apply mathematically and theory fight in your imagination. In practice though, there may appear to be next to no return on them for two big reasons.

One, monsters are so weak anyway (at least to melee players) that death occurs so rarely that it's still highly a matter of the player messing up to die.

Two, seeing lestion's comment along with my previous action speed tests (which revealed that almost all encountered monsters are at least half chaosed in attack speed) makes me suspect that most recorded/encountered monsters are highly chaosed these days. So if you chaos your monster it's just getting it up to par with all the other monsters.

Also, if most encountered monsters are highly chaosed, then certain things change. Like Overpower might be the best 1H potency by a decent amount. Although I remember that lestion and others tested the average amount of parry/resist monsters have and it was still not quite to that point (but close, or maybe there already, since theoretical analyses of Overpower are difficult and dubious, while rigorous and recent practical 1H Overpower performance data haven't been done by anyone).

Also, if most encountered monsters are highly chaosed, then certain things change. Like Overpower might be the best 1H potency by a decent amount. Although I remember that lestion and others tested the average amount of parry/resist monsters have and it was still not quite to that point (but close, or maybe there already, since theoretical analyses of Overpower are difficult and dubious, while rigorous and recent practical 1H Overpower performance data haven't been done by anyone).

My estimate is that the average case by appearances is somewhere around 60% upgraded, but obviously this is not the case for the vast majority of the monsters - it's just distorted by high-levels, especially sssss2's 2250 series.

Big thanks to DJNoni, lestion, and BlueWaterSplash! You've all given me a lot to think about for my current and future selection.

On that note, would it be worth it to use my hath for Crystarium III, or should I invest them on Tokenizer II. I only have about 500 hath, but I'm planning on which perks I should invest in first.

Big thanks to DJNoni, lestion, and BlueWaterSplash! You've all given me a lot to think about for my current and future selection.

On that note, would it be worth it to use my hath for Crystarium III, or should I invest them on Tokenizer II. I only have about 500 hath, but I'm planning on which perks I should invest in first.

Cryst III is useful if you play grindfests regularly, otherwise it's a waste of credits. Tokenizer II may be a bit easier to pay back, I guess. But if you play a lot, both are excellent perks.

I don't exactly have great data because all my own recorded monsters are full chaos (and I don't raise them unless I can do so)...

So you have 43 monsters at full chaos? But only two at max P-Lvl? This implies its a lot easier for you to get Chaos Tokens than Crystals... which isn't nearly my experience. How does that work? Do Grindfests reward a lot more Chaos Tokens than the Arena or something?

So you have 43 monsters at full chaos? But only two at max P-Lvl? This implies its a lot easier for you to get Chaos Tokens than Crystals... which isn't nearly my experience. How does that work? Do Grindfests reward a lot more Chaos Tokens than the Arena or something?

If you play a lot, you get a lot of drops. Some players play several grindfests per day, every day. Also, there is one other source of chaos tokens - the lotteries. If you play in one of the big lotteries, for an item that everyone goes crazy about, and you win the chaos tokens, then that really adds up.

So you have 43 monsters at full chaos? But only two at max P-Lvl? This implies its a lot easier for you to get Chaos Tokens than Crystals... which isn't nearly my experience. How does that work? Do Grindfests reward a lot more Chaos Tokens than the Arena or something?

The exponential curve on crystal costs is crazy - it's 5600 packs to raise a monster to max. I find I get roughly enough crystals to raise a monster to ~1700 in the time it takes to get the 2520 tokens required to max one out. I don't buy any crystal packs, so my monlab strategy is built around getting the most bang for my buck out of those tokens.

If you play a lot, you get a lot of drops. Some players play several grindfests per day,

Like a certain Ion. And he doesnt do any Fest, he does PFest. Something i cant do with my mage set. Kids dont do drugs go holy.

I get roughly enough crystals to raise a monster to ~1700 in the time it takes to get the 2520 tokens required to max one out.

And just to put this into context, even without having the exact numbers at hand, you could get several 1700 with the crystals needed for a 2250.

So what are yalls favorite builds for end game arenas?

So what are yalls favorite builds for end game arenas?

99% who could would play mage.
masochist and poor blokes keep playing 1h-heavy.

99% who could would play mage.
masochist and poor blokes keep playing 1h-heavy.

Well I'm poor as fugg. What would be the best build to farm credits so as to not be poor lol?