Dragon Quest Monsters Joker 2

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Legal Information:
This guide is being written exclusively for the GameFAQs FAQ Bounty system. If 
you wish to host this guide on your website, please contact me at 
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guide.

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About Me:
My name is Toaster J. Forkington. My parents were hippies. I hate J-RPGs to 
the core, especially poor rip-offs of Pokemon, so this should be a fun guide!

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About this Guide:
This is a blind guide, I'm writing it as I go along. If you have questions and 
concerns, feel free to e-mail me and I'll update and credit you with whatever 
I use.

This guide will cover the game from Start to Finish. It will include limited 
sidequest material and little to no in depth pokemon information. Wait, did I 
say pokemon? I meant monsters. There's already guides up on GameFAQs 
concerning that.

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Basics:
Fight will use monster AI to automatically choose what to do based on 4 
settings, show no mercy (does anything offensive), don't use magic (will only 
attack), mix it up (can sometimes use supporting and healing magic) and focus 
on healing (it'll heal if an ally is in critical condition).

Order is usable to choose what you want a monster to use. Fight should only be 
used when farming content or Scout Challenges.

Scout, basically you serve some monsters. It's based on the damage that you 
would have done, if you would have oneshot a monster, it'd be somewhere around 
40% on the scout meter. Psyche ups increase chance of scouting, and if a scout 
attempt fails the monster might take offense, psyche up and not be scoutable.

Small, Medium and Giant monsters. They take up 1, 2 and 3 monster slots 
repsectively. You've got three monster spots to fill and 3 substitute slots to 
fill. 

Most equipment has a secondary affect, be sure to check it out with the Y 
button.

Machine Parts increase items in the vending machine. You stick them in the box 
next to the machine.

Dying causes you to lose half of your on hand gold, you can shove it all in 
the ATM without any drawbacks, so do that often.

Red chests are one time only, Blue chests, rock outcroppings and leaves are 
multiple use. Blue chests sometimes have a set in stone first time guaranteed 
loot, and next time it can be b c or d. Example, Machine Parts the first time 
you loot, then the next time it can be a Medicinal Herb, Seed of Skill, ultra 
phat l00tz. Blue chests and leaves refill when you leave a zone.

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Table of Contents
The Walkthrough..................................[TeWak]
Treepidation.....................................[Treep]
Doubtback........................................[Doubt]
Iceolation.......................................[Isola]
Cragravation.....................................[Agriv]
Unshore..........................................[Unsur]
Bemusoleum.......................................[bemus]
Necropolis.......................................[necro]
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
Post Game........................................[PostG]
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
Metal Menagerie..................................[metal]
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
Synthesis........................................[Synth]
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
Marsha's Scout Challenge.........................[Marsh]
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
Frequently Asked Questions.......................[FAQ]
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
Credits..........................................[Credit]
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
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The Walkthrough [Tewak]

It starts off kinda silly. Some prissy girl is being a stuck up brat, and some 
guy calls her fat. Or he's making some comment about her ego being a burden, 
probably some joke lost in translation.

After a lack of story exposition, you finally get to meet your character! Some 
little twerp stowing away. All I can think is, "When the hell am I going to 
get my Slimemander!?"

The nearby trunks are locked, ignore them you little thief. If you head down 
the ladder, you'll be forced back up. If you head up the stairs, you'll be 
told to hide in the box again.

After returning to the safety of your home away from home, a Furby will come 
down the stairs. A little bit of facerage and it begins dry humping your box. 
Somebody should neuter this "Countess" furball.

You'll be made a slave by the illiterate captain, your first task is to go 
talk to five different people. Yes'sa mas'sa.

In the first room, you'll meet three people. Melonie, the bunny eared brittish 
twit. Lily Gilder is the owner of the rape-frenzy furby, stuck up as the ego-
chick from the start, but oh well. Eugene Poole, a little ole tub o' lard that 
you should gladly use as a cushion in case of emergency crash landing. Eugene 
will also introduce you to the pokemon storage, er.. the monster pen.

Head downstairs and you'll meet Archie Logg. Apparently he's an archaeologist. 
Never would have guessed. Head down the ladder to meet the scotch, Rory 
Bellows. In the back of the room, you can climb up the ventilation shaft to 
get back up to the cap'n to get your next job, but of course you'll be 
interrupted by a rage mode Furby and screaming little miss prissy pants.

The captain will reveal that he doesn't know what in the world is going on, so 
hit up the ventilation shaft and report to Rory Bellows. The engines start to 
explode, and for some reason you can't go back up the duct so you have to run 
the long way around, takes a whole extra 15 seconds.

!Spoiler!Alert!
Ship crashes.

You're then prompted to save the game, only to wake up to Furby giving you the 
good ole rape eye again. Somebody really needs to get this thing neutered.

Start heading east and you'll be able to pick up a pretty pebble and learn 
what these blue stones do. They give you skills. You'll learn Zoom, which 
allows you to teleport to previously visited regions. Never have to ride on 
rusty airships ever again, yay!

Head to the north and climb up this ladder that looks strangely like purple 
flowers climbing up the rock face. Head into the ship for a massive surprise.

!Spoiler!Alert!
The interior of the ship is a mess.

I think we've all seen Alien before, and we all know what not to do. Leave the 
ship, go down to the scout stone and wait to be rescued.

If you're an adventurous fool, head into the monster pen to meet the lone 
monster. Uh-oh, the Aliens have escaped their cage to leave, only BJ is left 
over. (Barney the purple dinosaur reference for the win) There's nothing below 
deck, and nobody is in the helm. Everybody either flew out of the broken 
windows or left after you did. Head back outside and you'll get some story 
exposition, finally.

Off in the distance there'll be loud noises followed by dust clouds. Your 
brave partner, Rory will suggest that we heroicly sleep until daylight. In the 
morrow, Rory will heroicly suggest that you do all the leg work while he 
chills in the ship, heroicly. Rory will then take you to the Monster Pen and 
introduce you to your first Dragon Quest-ke-mon, BJ the yellow dinosaur. Also 
as a side note, apparently you can get other monsters as your starting 
monster. Save before entering this room in the case you didn't get a Komodo.

Monster Pen Computermajigg.
Here you can add or remove monsters. Pretty simple, right?
- Switch Monsters
 * Red Pennant: Your active team.
 * Blue Chevrons: Substitutes to accompany your active team.
 * Green Arrow: Monsters in storage.

- Member List
 * It's a list of all Quest-ke-mons you've captured.
 
- Library
 * Monsters
  ~ Contains a list of all monsters and their respective families. BJ the 
yellow dinosaur belongs to the Dragon Family.
 * Skills
  ~ Contains a list of all skills you've come across. BJ has Defender and 
Attack Boost. Which I don't fully understand, but I assume the 9 skills listed 
underneath those sub categories are skills they get at specific levels
 * Traits
  ~ List of all traits and which families they belong to. Crafty Fire Breather 
is all you've gotten access to in the resistance +/- category, which belongs 
to the Komodo, Firebird and Etc., the mighty Etc. family.

Anyways, stick BJ into your party and get ready to rock. Let's head out and OH 
MY GOD, RORY HAS BEEN STARING AT US THIS ENTIRE TIME. Jesus. Anyways, he tells 
us to go into his trunk to get some tools. If I learned anything from my 
childhood, it's that if an older gent tells you to go into his room when 
nobody else is around and reach into his trunk, you should do it. Within the 
trunk you'll whip out a cypress staff. Oh, lordy, this game is so hilarious.

Anyways, time to open up the menu! Within the menu, hit up equipment and give 
Fang (Formerly known as BJ) the Cypress Staff for an impressive +4 to attack. 
As long as we're in this area, I'll go over the two important things. The 
first is the bottom left, it'll be displayed with a "New", the scout's 
handbook. It'll go over junk that I wont! yay! Then the open book with feather 
pen is the save feature. You don't need a save point, you just need to open up 
the menu to save.

When all is said and done, it's time to head outside and start our pitiful 
adventure to save a bunch of passengers, while Rory heroicly stays behind to 
heroicly cower in the heroic engine room.

You'll learn the basics of combat. Touch an enemy to start a battle. Then, 
select fight to destroy them. You'll then be introduced to the scout command, 
where you can hit the scout button to display a show of machismo and recruit 
the villainous enemies. At this point, any scouting attempt will be a 48% 
chance to recruit, so either destroy them to level 2 or try to scout once per 
battle to fill your menagerie with Slime-chus. If only you could use the DS 
bottom screen to press letters. Graaagh.

After you catch your first Slime, Rory will have a change of heart and decide 
to romp through the jungle with you. Treepidation is unlocked, but I suggest 
wasting time and effort destroying slimes or mass recruiting more for a team 
of full on Slime-mons. Experience is split, so you might want to just stick to 
one slime and Fang for now, however. Slimes seem to have a much lower exp to 
next level ratio than this dragon majigger over there. With these slime-
ponents, you'll get 3 exp for one monster, 2 for 2 and 1 for 3.

So after your team is set in stone, be sure to grind on these slimes for about 
six hours. When you're ready to proceed with a full team of level 4s, refer to 
the next section.

!Six!Hours!Later!
I really hope you didn't grind for six hours... and think you're ready. grind 
for another four hours and then come back to the next section.

!Another!Four!Hours!Later!
Alright, now you're up to level 6 and you're ready to go over the log into 
Treepidation! Before you head over the log though, and before you grind for 10 
hours, head up the slight incline in the northwest corner to pick up a 
medicinal herb. Then, without grtinding pointlessly for 10 hours, zoom back to 
the Albatross to heal and follow Rory into Treepidation.

!Treepidation! [treep]
Very linear first map. There are three medicinal herbs, two are in the form of 
little leaves that will re-appear if you leave the zone and come back, and one 
in a trunk hidden out of the way.

The map also introduces a new type of enemy Stump Chump, has about 12 or less 
hp (will be one shot by a level 2 Fang). It's level 2 and rewards 4 exp 
(divided to two, so 8~9 max exp) and 5 gold. I suggest scouting one, make an 
attempt and if he weighs it up or takes offence, just kill it and try to scout 
the other.

The blue stone only restores HP, so save it for when you drop low, then 
proceed into the next area. Leaving the area will also restore the blue stone.

The next map you'll be face to face with a giant Tapeworm. Seriously, the 
mountain excretes it. Fortunately enough, it's a worm so it has no eyes. It 
just slithers on by you. Score.

Alright, if you wait in the map for about half a minute, a Stump Chump will 
pop out of nowhere and the screen starts shaking and the worm starts 
slithering. Wait near the Stump and he'll open a hole to drop down into a 
chamber of batsy watsies.

The bats are Dracky, level 1 and come in sets of 1 or 2. It's also an 
interesting development, if you scout any monster and kill the other, you 
don't get any experience. Score! There's no way across the gap, and no way to 
get up the branch at this point, so it leads me to believe you can fall in 
different areas, but who cares about a single trunk, just zoom back here later 
if you ever get a vine climbing skill. Head southwest to get the heck out of 
this joint.

You'll resurface to the west of the area you met the tapeworm, head north to 
proceed. This area has Muddy Hands, gotta catch 'em all, right? Worth 6exp for 
a group of 2 with a group of 3. Some muddy fellow is guarding the ladder that 
also mysteriously looks like purple flowers. He then tells you that the muddy 
hands straight up jacked his stuff. He also then tells you that they're 
cowards and drop their phat l00tz whenever the tape worm comes slithering 
through. Wait around for a few moments to get the heart of mud, then hug the 
wall as to avoid being omnommed by a tapeworm. Putting together the Muddy 
Mannequin will leave you with an important tip - monsters all drop loots or 
holes when scared of tapeworms.

Exiting through the northwest will bring you to Rory and Archie. The worm 
approaches once again, and Rory decides to get eatten. Archie gains a 
conscience, lights go out, time to follow him blindly! In here there are 
Swarmtroops, little legions that attack weakly in multiples. I suggest 
scouting one and farming the rest for a few minutes, 10 exp per kill which is 
probably still going to be worth 20% of a level if not more for your guys. 
I've been using Fang, Slimechu and Devimon the Dracky. I'd also suggest 
putting all skill points into your first few skills, Frizzle and Zam 
respectively. 

Sometimes while encountering Swarmtroops you'll also encounter Lips, a sluggy 
little joe. General suggestion time, scout one of every enemy. If you're 
lucky, you'll also loot cypress staves from these guys. If you taught your 
Slime Frizz (which you should have, so he can learn Heal), pass the Staff to 
Dracky > Slime, since Slimes will waste all of their MP on Frizz unless you 
tell them not to. Even then, Draacky should be about 10 attack ahead of Slime 
anyways, so better usage.

Anyways, head over the bridge. I suggest keeping Muddy Hands, Swarmtroop and 
Lips as your substitutes at this time. No real reason, I just hate hippies and 
trees. Not much to do, talk to Archie, get some bronze bits, head through the 
tunnel. No way to reach those sexy black slimes yet!

Outside of the tunnel it's a pretty confusing looking map, but linear path. 
Stumpies and Dracky as far as the eye can see. Northward exit leads to Hell 
Hornets, well worth scouting one for substitution. These babies hit like 
bricks, and they paralyze with regular attacks. I'd replace your Lips on your 
bench with this guy, since they have low att, defense and mp. On the other 
hand, you might want to throw this hornet in instead of Fang, since Dragons 
apparently just level extremely slow. The only usefulness I found in Fang is 
that he learns Buff and Heal.

At level 8 you get more skill points, Get your Slime and Komodo up to Heal 
then start raising their attributes. With my Dracky, I decided to exclusively 
focus on Ability points because he doesn't have much for MP or decent skills, 
he has high base agility and two attribute based traits, sweet.

North exit again leads you to some more Dracky and a pretty pebble. Nothing 
else this way besides awesome exp. Head back south and take the southwest exit 
at the first split. Also before leaving, you can pick up a Meddle Slime if 
you're lucky. Most scouting attempts wont even add to the meter.

After you take the southwest exit, a tree falls down to the second map into 
this zone. Sweet, now you can heal and take a shortcut back. Alright, now 
since your MP is full, and your Slime (if using one, which you should be, 
because slimes are awesome) should be full on MP. First things first, change 
his tactic to focus on healing. It'll leave him a bit useless in battle, 
especially if he chooses to heal at poor points, but it also means that he'll 
be your designated white mage! yay!

Anyways, at this point backtrack to good old Archibald. It's a circle! Yay! 
this part confused me at first, and made me kick myself in the ass afterwards. 
Remember how the north path lead to nothing? Well there's a purple flowery 
ladder just sitting there waiting to be climbed. Night blindness ftw. It leads 
to a blue stone that only heals, left exit leads to a center area with a warpy 
lookin symbol, and right leads underground. Let's go underground first!

Not much this way, a stone to pick up and a chest with Stone Claws. Hand them 
to anything that can equip them. Meddle Slimes will chill out and wait for you 
to attack them if you sneak up, but run off if they catch wind of you. Quite 
curious these fellows. After a bit of googling, I learned that the Metal Slime 
enemies are the high exp enemies in Dragon Quest games. Who'da thunk it. Toss 
pretty pebbles to slaughter them in the face. Rezoning and killing other 
enemies wont respawn them, so be warned. They only have 2 hp, and are worth 
around 76 exp to a group of 3.

Western path time. To your immediate left is a Zip Portal. I'm guessing it'll 
take you to the other side of Treepidation, zippity split! After activating 
the portal, a lovely looking lady in a pink dress appears. Let's go slaughter 
her. Oh, also, don't. The Boss Troll hits for 72 damage a single strike.

Stand on the fallen log in the river and climb the purpley flowers of 
ladderishness. This gives you a second Seed of Skill and leads you the safe 
way to the cave mouth.

In the mouth, you can head east to get a pretty pebble. The blue stone teaches 
you Zip. It's like Zoom, it takes you to the nearest Zip portal instead, 
though. Head to the mouth of the tapeworm for the most epic battle you'll ever 
face. The battle with the logical choice and the vore ending. I chose the safe 
choice and saved, turned off my game and called it a great game.

I then came back an hour later and figured the Scott needed some help. Linear 
path with muddy hands and lips. No big deal. Chest halfway through contains a 
seed of defence. I suggest not using any of these seeds yet, since I'm sure 
they wont carry any meaning once you start synthesizing monsters (DNA 
Digivolving, baby.)

When you have your fill of tape worming a tape worm, head down to the end to 
find Rory sleeping on the job. Also what to appears to be your first boss 
battle against Hyper Heyedra. He's not that big of a deal, all he does is Zam, 
and every third turn Shade Slash, which is a multi-hit attack for about 5~6 a 
hit, for 15~18 overall damage. If you're having problems, set your Slime to 
Show No Mercy or Don't Use Magic until you need some healing, when he'll be in 
reserve.

After that, the Tapeworm will expel you, giving him the literal name of 
Wormonger. But not before you lay little fuzzy punk eggs in his bowels, 
bwahahaha. You'll obtain a mysterious medal once outside. Archie will jack 
your stuff. Some more story exposition.

!Spoiler!Alert!
That Medal belonged to some powerful guy.

After this, we can now travel to the plains, the Doubtback. But before that, 
the ATM and the Vending Machine are now up and running. If you're overleveled 
(See: 10 or above) grab the highest attack item you can find. If you're 
underleveled, you might want to get a few Stone Claws since they raise 
Agility, but not as much attack. Whips also deal damage to all enemies, but at 
this point in the game my Slime was slower than my Dracky, and my Komodo was 
either slower or faster, not always both, so it was kinda pointless.

Also before proceeding, you might want to go try to scout a Meddle Slime 
(turns into Metal Slime). It should be easier at this point with higher 
levels, but the chance for him to evade one of your scouting attempts is still 
high. Best bet is to save in the room with two and reload in case of failure. 
I got two with a 2% chance, so. Now the decision to use him is entirely up to 
you. It has massive defense (130 at level 1) but extremely low HP, and low 
Attack. Wisdom and Agility are fairly high.

If you come back during the rain, there's a chance for a new enemy, Frogface 
to spawn. It hits pretty hard and is pretty sexy. Get one immediately. 
Furthermore, the rain introduces Funghoul and a way to access the item across 
the river in the hornet map. What's this Mentalpitcher? Might as well Scout 
it. It has a low scoutable chance, but still worth it.

!Doubtback! [Doubt]
As soon as you arrive, some big old jerk comes in and decides to make life 
hell for you. So avoid his incoming attacks and follow a moleman down or move 
to the tunnel. There's a pretty pebble in the tunnel, as well as more 
spoilers.

!Spoiler!Alert!
Some ghost is screwing with you. Or not, I don't know yet, but he's a jerk.

Leave through the only connecting tunnel to the northwest, catch some Molemen, 
Platypunks and Healslimes. The Platypunks are 3 hitters, Molemen are scouters 
and Healslimes are almost always a guaranteed 100% scout.

There's a healing stone to the immediate south, ignore it until you need it to 
make things easier. The exit is to the northeast, but might as well go around 
slaughtering moles and slimes. The cave path to the far southeast contains a 
few Meddle Slime including a trunk containing an iron lance. It hurts slimes. 
Saves you 300g. I'm using the same Komodo, Slimechu and Dracky setup, Slime is 
useful with a Whip, but if Komodo outspeeds him then it's time to give him 
that lance instead.

Southwest offshoot has a rock outcropping and a fall in from above ground with 
a surprise moleman. Avoid it like the 20 healslimes floating around. Northwest 
offshoot has another pretty pebble outcropping. The north offshoot has another 
rock outcropping, so more waste of time. Head northeast and go back to the 
plains.

Up here there's some ember witches flying around. Don't know their names and 
I'll probably forget to edit it, yay! The exit on this map isn't easy to see, 
they're the little off-shoots on the southwest side that don't have the 
connecting area marks on the minimap. The big guy is hard to track, but 
whatever, I sat still for five minutes and he didn't aggro me.

If you entered from the north side, there's a sign pointing north, "The Hades 
condor who live son the hill hides lots of things in its nest." Wonder what 
that could mean. Assuming that large flying thing is a Hades condor, if you go 
up the hill you can find some Machine Parts in the trunk. Grab 'em and ditch 
the hill for some smooth thief..ification.. Whatever. Head southwards and 
you'll see some baby terror birds. I hate these things. ;__;

Down south there's a sign, super secret moles den. Must be Area 52. Talk to 
the slime and he'll give you a goo deal. He tells you to head west (probably 
meant northwest) then south, then follow the path clockwise heading north 
until you reach the Lynx's Den with a moleman guarding.

In the next map, lots of enemies that the big ole jerky mc jerkyton scares 
off. There's a trunk with a medicinal herb that will most likely get you 
ganked by him, so ignore it. Hit up the Zippity Splittity Portal and continue 
on. Nothing here besides some Mole you need to speak with and a moonwort bulb. 
The Moleman tells you to go back to the slime and check out the rare monster. 
He also gives you a seed of agility. Pretty cool guy, this moleman. He also 
tells you to not go down the lynx den, since you'll just get slaughtered. Good 
man. Zip back to the portal and run back to the Mole's Den. Hate backtracking. 
It's also a good time to leave and heal since you'll be zipping anyways. This 
time around you might meet some Satyr, might as well capture it. He can put 
characters to sleep, and hits fairly hard, good times.

Addendum, the big flying jerk is the Missing Lynx, so you should have just 
went down there anyways. I however don't feel like running back, so!

Back in the Molecave. We'll meet with Goopy Mc Goopington. The moleman gives 
you some great advice, the orange slime is just chillin'. Time to meet up with 
the rare monster, apparently it's some fat dude that should seem at least a 
bit familiar. These jive joes are givin' tons of love some bad time, man. both 
tiem!

Maniacal Mole
Mischievous Mole x2

Not like there's anything to strategize about, just hit fight. You might want 
to switch in any healer that should be equipping a whip until the Mischievous 
moles are down. After that, switch it out with a harder hitter until you need 
healing.

The mischievous moles are about 3 and four times stronger than usual. And by 
stronger I mean they just have more HP. Maniacal only hits one targer for 
about 10 damage or three for 2, 6 and 11. Oddly enough, the Maniacal mole has 
a lot less HP than the both.

Holy WOW. I mean, we all know moles are blind, so the mistakes are awesome, 
but that massive mole is just freaky deaky my brother. The Don Mole spies out 
your Medallion. You're some foretold about legend, yada, yada, yada. Anyways, 
follow him down and learn about the monster scout challenge down here. Dr. 
Lump is on the scene. I'm strangely repulsed and attracted to this little guy. 
Wonder what that says about me. Speak with Dr. Lump and he'll unlock synthesis 
on the ship. Speak to Eugene to go back, then refer to the scout challenges 
subsection that I'll add later. *wink*

Down the hall, the Mud Mannequin starts the scout tests with you, just catch 
and bring a monster and she'll give you prizes. First is the Healerslime, 
everything after that is ridiculous.

Synthesis, the basics from what I understand.
You combine two monsters. Half of their skillpoints are passed on, used and 
unused. They both have to be level 10. Now, there's Male and Female (kinda) in 
the form of Positively Charged and Negatively charged. Then there's the 
hermaphrodites that are both! For now, I wouldn't suggest any sythesizing. 
You've got a lot of monsters, but I don't know much about it, so that's the 
only advice I've got. It's a whole lot of Digimon World 2 up in here.

Now, this wouldn't be a JRPG if it didn't have annoyingly high amounts of 
backtracking and grinding involved. Time to run all the way back through the 
Doubtback!

Did you believe me? LOL! Luckily enough, the Arena becomes available on the 
world map if you walk to the exit of the Albatross. When you're ready, go talk 
to the Don Mole to begin the challenge! There's a battle for each rank between 
F and S. I'm assuming like most Japonaise games it goes from;
F -> D -> C -> B -> A -> S

Since S comes before A in the alphabet, and there's never an E rank.

Anyways, Monster Scout Challenges involve 3 battles, you can use your six 
Dragon-Quest-Kemons. Items aren't banned, so it's time to faceroll.

Rank F
Round 1, Slime and Stump Chump.
Round 2, Swarmtroop, Dracky, Hell Hornet.
Round 3, Lips, Frogface, Mental pitcher.

As you can see, these are just standard fights from Treepidation. Snorefest. 
You'll earn G but no Exp. After you clear Rank F, it's time to progress with 
the storyline, daddy-o. Iceolation is unlocked and we get a most righteous 
stone axe. Also there is a Rank E. I take back what I earlier said about the 
grading system.

Rank E
Round 1, Platypunk, Slime, Healslime.
Round 2, Mischievous Mole x2, Hammerhood.
Round 3, Cheeky Tiki x2, Heedoovoodoo

Alright, the challenge just got serious. Not very serious, but just about 
serious enough to keep up a good working environment. The first round features 
monsters we all know and love with about twice as much hp as normal, mostly 
because they're all at an equal level instead of level 1 and 2. Round 2 is 
much like the boss fight in the Mole's Den, except the Molemen are much weaker 
and the Hammerhood hits harder single targets. Round 3's tikis feature high 
physical attacks as well as status and AoE magic damage. Still not hard around 
level 12.

For completing rank E, you're awarded with the Battle Whip. Also, he doesn't 
open up a road here, but tells you if you win rank D, he'll tell you about the 
next one! So let's get to Rank D already. Wait, no? My sponsors are telling us 
to take a short commercial break.

Okay, on a serious note it's time to go to Iceolation. But before that, be 
sure to head out of the Mole's Den to recruit a few new monsters during 
daytime doubtbreak. New enemies include Chimaera, Komodos and Hades Condor. 
The Hades Condor will probably be a problem to scout now, aside from it's low 
scout chance, it tends to do 25 damage a hit.

!Iceolation! [isola]
Be sure to bundle up before heading out here! As soon as you enter, you'll be 
faced with an Ogre that doesn't look friendly. The first area contains 
Jailcats and Hammerhoods. Not much to do or see in this area besides Jailcats 
pouncing and intimidating Ogre in the distance. As you progress, you'll meet 
up with Polly Prissy Pants harassing some Hellhounds. Boss tiem.

Bosstiembosstiembosstiem!@#
Hellhound x2

They're fairly fast, so you might want to change your team to your highest 
attackers, regardless of agility, you wont outspeed them anyways. They have 20 
damage physical strikes and Warcry, a single turn binding move that can affect 
all three of your units.

After the battle, Polly Prissy Pants looks as old and haggard as ever. She 
tells you that she's not going back to the rust bucket, which I'm fine with, 
but Furby is lost in the mountains, which I'm also fine with. Lily then 
demands you help her futile search, bringing up the late captain's name. How 
heartless. I say we let her go get eaten by Jailcats, who's with me? This room 
is healing stone adjacent, but I'd leave it for now since you'll need it in a 
bit to avoid backtracking even further.

Next map up ahead is a long stretch, introducing Spiked Hare. These guys 
aren't all that hard to deal with, but they star tto hit like Jackhammers when 
they take offence. Low agility, decent attack and sky high wisdom, interesting 
units. Behind the circle to the right is a blue chest with machine parts. If 
you weren't paying attention to these, they mysteriously share the same logo 
as the vending machine on the Albatross. Gee, I sure wonder if they unlock new 
items to be boughten.

Anyways, Lily is hanging out by the massive ice wall and unlit campfire that's 
mysteriously ogre sized. Might as well head over and greet her. She'll lay 
claim to the bonfire and suggest you build your own. I wont feel bad when the 
ogre eats her. Luckily enough when the giant monster music starts a-playin', 
she bails. You're then greeted by a giant minotaur with three eyes and wings. 
Wonderful. He headbutts the ice wall in a display of force in an attempt to 
scout all of your monsters. Luckily they're not impressed, so time to proceed!

You can screw around with the Minotaur, but he knocked himself out cold. Mama 
always told me that if you're going to screw around with giants, make sure 
they're out cold first.

Up in the next zone we're faced with yet another ice wall and unlit bonfire. I 
ponder what the best course of action would very well be. That's right, head 
up the ramp into the cave system and leave Lily to be eaten by monsters. 
Inside this cave are Wild Slime, pretty sexy little fellows with their Mohawks 
and Sideburns. There's multiple exits in this zone, as well as possibly some 
Metal Slime. These guys are pretty terrifying with their 4 hp, lower chance of 
running and 1000 exp pay out. The southern path leads to about eight Jailcats 
ready to pounce, with two Medicinal Herbs and a Strong Medicine up the 
chameleon's tail path. Oh, also, that Ogre is about to gank you, so look out.

The northwest offshoot has a Silver silver, which is like bronze bits and can 
only really be sold. The north exit leads to the overlooking bit of land we 
couldn't access before. Snowbirds await scouting. Beware, though, even when 
they hit for a low amount, they crit for much higher. Going down the slide 
takes you back to map 2 and that wonderful healing stone.

Head back north to be faced with an enormous crater (possibly nest) with more 
snowbirds and a southeast exit. This path leads to an aility stone to unlock 
Heal All! It heals your entire team, it uses monster MP, but not that much 
apparently! Use it sparingly, though.

Time to head back to Polly Prissy Pants. She'll gleefully inform you that she 
dropped her lighter somewhere. Sweet. What this means is that we have to go 
visit our good friend, the Ogre with his mighty camp fire. Now, you have to be 
polite and be sure to speak to the Ogre while he's facing you.

Didn't fall for it? good. Just check the fire. Grab a torch. If you enter into 
three battles, it goes out. Simple enough! We all know the rules to avoid 
fights, run in a straight line and nobody will bother with you. When ready, 
light the bonfire and the minotaur will attempt to scout your monsters again 
to no avail. Be sure to screw with the minotard for a moment before heading 
forward. Up the ramp to the south there's two pretty pebble nodes.

In this map, there's an exit to the northwest, the north and the east. Let's 
start with the east, that's where we saw an ogre earlier. As we go down the 
hill we notice an ice wall and unlit bonfire, makes sense if you think about 
it.

To the right, there's a ladder and a slide. Should pretty much ignore it since 
it just forces backtracking. There's a metal slime just chilling, might as 
well slaughter it. Now if you're following my directions, you should probably 
smack yourself. I flunk geography. Head back after getting your pretty pebble 
up the ramp!

The north exit leads to another Ogre (at least from what the footprints tell 
me). Luckily enough there's no Ogre, but three Hellhounds being harassed by 
Lily once again. Women. BOTH TIEMMMM

Baby bosses at best.
Hellhound x3.

Fortunately enough it's not has hard as the first baby boss. In fact, that one 
wasn't hard either. You've got potentially 30 damage going out with a warcry 
each turn, or just 45 over all. Heal all before this fight and face roll your 
DS. Lily goes on about how a century ago, when she was a lass, she was 
actually a scout and not a prissy twit. Anyways, after the fight, heal up, 
grab the blue chest with more machine parts then grab a torch and head back to 
the ice wall.

When you get back to the last room, you'll be greeted by the Minotard pacing 
back and forth. This time though, you'll stare him down and tell him, "You're 
not going to impress my Slimechu, buddy." He'll charge you, and then a most 
epic battle begins. A battle of chicken, where you run away at the last 
second. Proceed down the path, grab the antidotal herb along the way and zone 
out to the north.

In the next area there's a classic ice climber moment where you have to 
scootch across the rock face. There's a medicinal herb and a Snowbird that 
likes to guard it right ahead of you, ignore it or get minimal amounts of exp. 
There's a jailcat taunting you along your next scootchin' path, along with 
some new enemies, the Frou-fry. These psychotic looking bunny wabbits start at 
level 9 with 45~48 attack, speed and defense, the only flaw is lower wisdom, 
which surely doesn't matter. Be sure to nab one. There's seriously like 50 
just loitering around. Down the north offshoot is a blue chest with a leather 
whip. Head through the cave when ready.

Also as a sidenote, I didn't notice it until now, but Heal All costs about 
4mp, but it'll prioritize using your highest MP character that knows Heal, and 
will use substitutes before main party. Thus, if you keep a Healslime or Metal 
Slime on the bench, it'll serve an out of combat healing purpose. 

In the cave, there'll be one more healing stone (come on zip portal, where you 
hiding?) as well as a cutscene involving Furby. Also, the zip portal is in 
this room. You might want to consider going back to Albatross to cash in any 
Metal Tickets you've got or just getting better gear if you need it.

There's a red chest with a Yggdrasil Leaf hiding in the cubby in the 
northwest. The southwest J only has some Frau-Fries, hit up the healing stone 
and exit to the north. 

Now in this large open room, Lily is hugging Furby in front of a campfire. 
Thankfully before the scene gets too sappy, the Minotard is back on the scene. 
Apparently skullbashing an ice wall does less damage than skullbashing a rock 
mountain, since he doesn't knock himself out. Boss time!@#

Boss fight
Baby Bjorn

Really, this is a baby? No wonder it's so stupid. It hits everything twice a 
round, 12~16 a piece. Not a huge deal, if you need to then supplement some 
Medicinal Herbs and Strong Medicine - he's slow as all hell, so his attacks 
will almost always be at the end of a round. His other attack is a single 
target hit for about 40 damage, boulder dash. He's also capable of Flame 
Breaths that hit everything. This is also the fight I came to the realization 
that you can force them to do what you want by selecting Order!

You might consider using Buff on all allies besides potential slimes, since 
they honestly don't need the extra defense. After everything is buffed, his 
attacks will do between 1 and 5 damage a strike. I didn't count his hp, but 
I'd assume somewhere around 400~500.

Winning nets you a bag of Dimium and 620 exp, 650 g.

Now after all is said and done, Lily will take you back to the S.S. 
Rustbucket. Here it's time to restock on items, deposit money, maybe synth off 
a healslime to complete Marsha's request level 2. Items to consider buying 
include Pitchforks, which deal enhanced damage to naturalists and more 
importantly, makes critical hits easier to land. Upgraded claws for higher 
attack and agility and divine daggers deal increased damage to undead once we 
meet some.

Now, when you return there's the standard two Metal Slime spawns that I 
pointed out earlier, as well as the rock outcroppings often returning pinballs 
and rockbombs.  But during night it introduces Imps and Shadows, both decent 
new recruits of the pitchfork family. Yeah, yeah, I know they're demons. Also 
a new set of machine parts that will add Rapiers, kinda nice and helps with 
the final battle in Rank D scout challenge.

After all is said and done, head back to the Arena to complete Rank D.

Rank D
Round 1, Drohl Drone x2, Chimaera.
Round 2, Firespirit x2, Bad egg.
Round 3, Dragonthorn x2, Mannequin.

Round 1 is kinda difficult. The Drones hit fairly hard and have high Agility. 
The Chimaera can put to sleep, too bad you can't order around in these 
challenges. Round 2 is a bit hard as well, Firespirits will firebreath often, 
but spend more turns defending when damaged. Round 3 things just got all kinds 
of real. Dragonthorn hit hard and are fairly bulky, while the mannequin will 
be debuffing you all the while. For winning you recieve some Metal Claws. It 
then unlocks Cragravation!

If you're having problems, it might be the time to start synthesizing. (You 
should have done it sooner, why are you listening to everything I say!) Just 
make sure you Synth a monster at level 11, so it gets it's third set of skill 
points instead of level 10 when it's first available. Most of your monsters in 
the pen should be around level 10 or 11 by now. If not, farm Wild Slime until 
you've got a few Metal Tickets then go to town there.

After you finish this battle, I suggest finishing level 2, 3 and 4 of Marsha's 
Challenge. I'm not a fan of two slot monsters, but go make a Boreal Serpent 
and give it the Metal Claw for some ultra-metal-slime-farming. You'll offset 
the lower exp tnl on the dragons since you'll be able to drop them 
efficiently. I had turned my Komodo into a Jargon and my Dracky into a 
Thorndragon, and I tell you what, dragons suck. High stats don't matter when 
they're five levels behind everything else and their stats are just the same 
as the quicker leveling units.

!Cragravation! [agriv]
Alright, this place is pretty cool. New enemies, finally. There's Mecha-Mynah, 
Scorpions, Dancing Flames, Dancing Devils, Rubble Slime aaaand, that's all in 
the first area. Scout them all. If you followed my advice and created a Boreal 
Serpent, he'll be nearly oneshotting everything around level 5, which makes it 
easier to scout specific enemies. By level 8, he should oneshot everything.

We've got two choices, we go up both paths, but we gotta choose between left 
and right. Let's start going left. This path leads to a few Hades Condors that 
are much easier to scout than in Droubtback. This path is a dead end, so take 
the right next.

In this map, the far west ledge has a blue chest. The dead end to the right 
has a Rockbomb outcropping. The exit is to the northeast. There's one more 
rockbomb outcropping, then head on to the next map.

Not much here, some flying Dragon Slime that likes to get close but is 
terrible at agroing you, head through the east exit and oh my lord, Rory got 
himself killed while we were out. Great. Red chest with a metal ticket, head 
back out and down for some rocks, up to proceed. Through the cave entrance, 
you'll have a short cutscene. Some gryphon is attempting to mate with Bunny-
girl. Amazingly the Captain is also alive for some strange reason.

Inside the cave there are Night Emperors and Shadows ready for the scouting. 
The emperors are just about Bjorns that decided to stop eating after the 
fourth meal. Middle cave exit leads to a long icey path, pinball node for the 
taking. Walk around the right path to get to a blue chest, then take the north 
exit. 

This map has the Zip Portal, so be sure to activate it. Also, Angel Slime. So. 
Freaking. Cute. Catch 20, no 30. Hell, go for 40. Machine parts in the blue 
chest in the right path, take the path around clockwise. Flying Monkeys, 
Silvapithecus are also in this area. Enter the north cave to get to the blue 
stone to learn Nose for Treasure. It tells you how many items are nearby. Also 
make note of the frozen giant. Yeah, he's about to destroy you. Why do you 
follow my advice?

Okay, I lied, I've been doing that a lot. Rock node straight ahead of you, 
keep going eastward to proceed. In front of the ladder, you'll notice the same 
Gryphon trying to mate with the Captain this time. What a skank, and what 
makes it worse is that he's not a gentle lover. Boss(ish) time!

Boss
Jamirus

He's not that tough. He strikes for about 20~35 damage a hit, and only once a 
turn. When he gets low on life (around 700~800 damage) he'll start to Frizzle 
after melee strikes. At this point keep your attackers attacking and your 
healer healing. Sounds simple, right? He'll die at around 1,000 damage. If you 
followed my advice and are using a two slotter, you'll net 1390 exp and 530g 
as well as another set of Machine Parts.

After you defeat Jamirus, a little bit of story exposition followed by Captain 
Tentacle Tongue (god damned japanese) wishes you luck in finding the giant 
bird. I think he was being a jerk, but whatever.

Exit to the north for another long path. No ways to take a wrong turn, just 
follow the map and deal with Silvapitechus. To my wonderful surprise, they can 
drop a book titled Brawn over Brains, which bestows the attack boost skill. 
Luckily down the ladder and Melonie is hanging out in front of a rock 
outcropping. Nothing happens, we all go home without event. Really? Nope, 
Jamirus comes back with his daddy, Gemon. God damned JRPGs I tell you what. 
Let's continue on through this long map.

After the long map, we've got a bit of clockwork to deal with. The second 
ladder to your right takes you up to the nest. Here rest some large eggs, so 
we might as well roll them off the cliff since they're just in our way. The 
captain shows up and decides to guard your back. Way2Bro. You made me fight 
your battles earlier, but at least we don't have to fight two at once. Boss 
time!

Boss
Gemon

He's a jerk. He strikes twice a round often for 44 physical each hit. It's not 
as bad if you're using the two slotter like I suggested, he'll be able to 
support 80 damage a round while you can keep a healer up and repeating. 
Luckily enough beyond that, Gemon uses Ice breaths which the Boreal Serpent 
will absorb and turn into hp. Near death he'll use Bounce, hwhich buffs him in 
some way. He has around 800 hp. 1640 exp and 820g.

More story time unfolds after. Mayday asks if they're the birds, and then 
suddenly they flee like cowards. Suddenly Ho-Oh descends! Oh, wait, it's just 
a typical phoenix? Guess we shouldn't have rolled her eggs down the cliff face 
earlier. Empyrea doesn't look happy, at least that's what I take from the 
generic giant pressence music in the background.

Well, she's pretty friendly after all. She refuses to take you away from this 
island, okay. Then she spots your medallion and says that everything just 
changed. Okay we're leaving, right? No? good luck on our journey finding the 
great one? Jesus, J-freaking-RPGs. I'm really hoping there's no in depth 
content after this island. If this turns out to be some typical starting zone, 
gonna have to break some skulls.

Story exposure and the Unshore is unlocked. Alright, this isn't shaping out to 
be too bad. We've now got to deal with a behemoth of the sea.

Before taking off, though, we've gotta figure out what to do. First of all, 
get caught up on Marsha's quests. At this point, your bro-fists in arms are 
probably somewhere between level 15~25. Yeah, time to get some synthesizing 
done again. Oh how I love Pinballs and Metal Tickets.

!Unshore! [unsur]
Oh, Unshore. I love how you're on the complete other side of the island from 
the Mountains that we found the Captain.

As soon as you go in, head to the right to find Furby wasting time. After 
that, the national symbol of Japan will attack, a tentacle monster. Well it's 
a monster, but it's just a tentacle. It's a baby-boss, takes about four turns 
to down. Sag it if you're unsure of yourself then go all out.

There are Shellslime, and Barracuda in the area. There's some phat l00tz on 
the east side. Otherwise exit through the west side. Two blue chests, one 
somewhat hidden, and another two leaves.

In this area, Furby screws off again. Great. Some tentacles are just chilling, 
with See Urchins, Khalamari Kids, Cureslimes and Octavian Sentries. Gotta 
catch 'em all. When you pass the Tentacle, it's time to fight again. 400 hp 
later and it's a nice sum of experience. Far north cubby there's a rock 
outcropping. Red chest to the far south. Exit to the west when ready.

Nothing new here, destroy some more Tentickles. This area also introduces 
Paws, which are fun land sharks. There's a rock outrcropping straight ahead of 
you as well. Head northeast when you're ready to rock.

There's a healing stone straight ahead. Have the uncanny feeling that we 
should use it, so instead let's go straight down the ladder that oddly looks 
like pink flowers. Also, you can encounter King Kelp in this area. Furby is 
about to get tickled, but fortunately enough you get attacked instead. Follow 
the path around and exit through the east - but you might want to kill the 
metal slime first! There's also a blue chest due north of the rock 
outcropping.

This next area is full of Bona Constrictors. Look like little Darth Vaders 
attached to spines. Pretty creepy. They're worth 560 exp a group, so it's a 
nice little power leveling area. Exit to the northeast when ready. Also as a 
note, there's a little ledge you can sit on that they can't reach. Nice to 
torture the little bastards.

Next up we're faced with some Dangler Fish and Crabids. Pretty ugly bastards. 
Not really threatening, but they've all got more than 100 hp. Crabids however 
are annoying because of Close Scraper, which seems to kick in every round. So 
you'll have to hit it twice in the same round to actually kill it. Exit to the 
northwest!

In here we've got our Zip Portal as well as some new type of Shelled Slime, 
the Snail Slime! Only one outcropping on the upper shelf, so head on down to 
finally deal some effective destruction. Wait, just another Tentickle? I guess 
I can't complain, machine parts are machine parts. The area ahead of you now 
introduces a couple new monsters, Yabby and Merman. Yabby can drain MP, which 
can lead to not having a good time, Mermen are just weak. Exit through the 
northeast ladder on the lower shelf.

There's a healing stone on the far southeast offshoot, hit it up and get ready 
to roll. Furby is all up in the center, floating like a champ when the boss 
finally surfaces. He looks pretty mad since we've killed four of his arms. 
Furby gets backhanded like the fist of the north star, now it's time for him 
to take out his rage on you for disturbing his beauty sleep.

Boss Time!
Khalamari
You can try to Sag him, but I don't suggest wasting your time. He hits for 
about 51 with Water Spout, twice with melee attacks for about 18 a piece. He 
only has about 1400 HP and hits for the same as Baby Bjorn, snoresville. 3600 
exp and 1615g for winning as well as a metal ticket. It's synthesizing time~

If you return to Unshore, sometimes it'll begin raining and some pedophile 
named Cap'n Crow - Ruler o' the seven seas will descend. It's a fight with two 
Orcs and one Skeleton. Basically there to rob you of gold coins. Thankfully 
he's a weakling.

If you return again after that, you'll be faced with Two Skeletons and one </pre><pre id="faqspan-2">
Crossbones. They aren't much stronger than last time, and it's faster to grind 
Bona Serpents inside for exp.

Lo and behold, if you return a third time things get serious. This time we've 
gotta deal with two Cross bones and Captain Crow himself and they don't play 
around. Captain crow hits twice a round for about 60 a hit. I used a rockbomb 
shard on each crossbones then attacked and burned the good captain that way. 
The crossbones have 292 hp in this fight. If you're unlucky,. Captain Crow 
will double Psyche up. Then triple PSyche up and then it's just about game 
over. Not really though, stay above 200 hp and you'll be fine. For winning the 
third match, you gain 2696 exp and 1480g and a rapier. Chumpsalotus vows to 
come back once again.

After the fight, your accomplishment of defeating an ultrasquid is noted, as 
well as Furby's motives not bein revealed, but hey, at least we get a seed of 
agility. Head westward to be greeted by Rory's ghost, the south offshoot has a 
rock node, the north has a red cehst containing Plus Sceptre, sweet. Zoom on 
out, and I'm pretty sure it's time to go back to the rustbucket, Rory is 
waiting on the bridge. After a mighty long conversation and backstory, he 
tells you to hit up the mole's den and talk to Archie. God damnit, JRPGs.

So once back in the Mole's Den, all Archie tells you is that you need to win 
Rank A of the scout challenge to beat the game. Simple enough. So let's get to 
it.

Rank C
Round 1, Bag o' Laughs, Demonrider, Goodybag.
Round 2, Angel slime, Slime Knight, Behemoth Slime.
Round 3, Fencing Fox, Erazor blade x2

Alright, not too much going on here. You can't control kill order all that 
easily aside from focusing tactics on AoE. Behemoth Slime Acceleratles, Angel 
Slime heals, Slime Knight Counters. Completed this with a level 16 Green 
Dragon and level 22 inferior Slimetower with Midheal. Tactics set to Don't use 
magic and Focus on healing respectively.

After you clear Rank C, you're awarded with a partisan, somewhat decent spear. 
Luckily enough, Rank C isn't enough to open up the next area!

Rank B
Round 1, Scissor Beatle, Beetleboy, Boring bug
Round 2, Dancing Devil, Conklave, Imp
Round 3, Jumping Jackal, Great sabrecat, Great sabrecub

Round 1 isn't much of a problem, as long as your AI focuses all attacks on one 
foe a turn it'll clear them each by the end of turn 3. Round 2 is a bit more 
risky because of status affects and 4-hitter Conklave with decent attack. 
Round 3 gets pretty painful. You might want to focus your healer's tactical 
support exclusively to that. If they've got debuffs, you can also set them to 
use magic only and maybe get a Sag or Dazzle out there. They have some of 
their own status debuffs going out. Helm splitter for Defense and an attack 
lowering move. If one foe is down and you've got a helmsplitter on your bulky 
monster, set your healer to not use magic to force the battle to end in your 
victory, stalling can mean a loss.

For clearing rank B, you're awarded with a zombiesbane, very nice attack and 
destroys undead. Then, of course, instead of letting you proceed, he's gonna 
make you do Rank A. Stupid Archie.

Rank A
Round 1, Skelegon x2, Grim Rider
Round 2, Mimic, Trap box, Cannibox
Round 3, Hunter Mech, Killing Machine, Black Dragon

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, equip that Zombiesbane. Skelegons are fairly 
bulky, they'll require about two rounds of focused attacks a piece. The grim 
rider isn't much of a threat, but the Magic Barriers from the Skelegons are. 
Buckle down with no magic and only switch your healer to heal if you drop 
below 40%.

Round 2 isn't so bad. Trap boxes can paralyze and the cannibox tends to just 
assess the situation. The real problem is that the trap box can revive, but 
it's not a full restore so don't sweat it, your attackers will probably finish 
off whatever was just brought back that same turn since the foes are fast. The 
trapbox also has Perrilous Parrier, which sometimes reduces damage to 0, and 
sometimes doesn't.

Round 3 just. got. hard. Mechs tend to hit twice a round, keep your healer 
healing. If your attackers have healing support you might want to switch them 
if you drop low. If the mechs get a couple defence downs, you'll probably die. 
Each mech has between 300~400 hp a pop, and the Black Dragon melees for about 
50~60 damage. Also until the purple mech is down, don't use magic helps 
against bounce.

Completing Rank A awards you with a Miracle Mallet as well as the Bemusoleum 
key.

!Bemusoleum! [Bemus]
As soon as we go in, we see the zip Portal. Unfortunately we can't reach it 
yet! Let's work our way around and meet our first Hacksaurus. This wonderful 
little guy has Hit Squad and Giant Killer. He's what you want to dna digivolve 
your series of dragons I've been suggesting into. The blue door it was 
haphazardly protecting is sealed tight, so let's head up the ramp to face a 
Gargoyle. The path at the left of the stairs is a dead end, so let's head 
right.

In this room, there's a grotesque looking painting with Lion-O and skulls. 
Lily's ghost will beseech you and then loot the red chest behind her for a 
metal ticket. That means it's synthesis time again~ Well, let's finish this 
area first.

In this area, there's a leaf just ahead of you, turn around and head down the 
northward path to hit the Zip Portal, Healing Stone and a sealed red door. 
Push the yellow buttons and get ready to fight the fight of your life!

In this area, there's one path behind a giant mechanical and a bunch of 
offshoots. I'd say this is some kinda coliseum, but that's just a guess. 
Cyberslime alert! If you head out, many golems are patrolling the area now. 
But who wants to run away from a giant, right? All of the offshoots teleport 
you to another area. So let's head to the bottom left first. 

Rubble slime litter the area, and there's a cannibox chilling on the bottom 
shelf in the only blue chest in the waterways. The north exit leads to a pit 
full of Bona Constrictors, ignore them and hit up the ladder on the right 
side. There's some bull lightyear color scheme Hunter Mechs patroling the 
areas as well. These guys are pretty nice because you can farm them! Why does 
that matter? They drop metal tickets 4x more likely than Wild Slime, as well 
as Machine Parts! Everything in this area has a chance to spawn with Metal 
Slimes, so you might want to keep Metal Claws equipped to your healer or any 
decent hit squad monster. Some canniboxes spawn in this area, easy to tell 
them apart by finishing a battle in sight of one. If it disappears, it was a 
monster. Anyways, follow the path around to the red button then exit to the 
east side south. On this platform you'll be greeted by a liquid metal slime. 
If you've got some pinballs, attempt to kill it. If not, he'll just flee 
second turn and you'll be out some sweet, sweet exp. Zip back to the cross 
roads when ready to proceed.

The middle left side portal is next! It has a set of machine parts in a blue 
chest and nothing else. Take the teleporter back and take the left northside 
portal, there's a red chest in this immediate portal area, but nothing through 
the actual portal. So it's off to the right side! Right bottom portal we 
gooooo. In this portal, some Drake Slimes are beating up on a Hunter Mech. 
Poor fellar. Cannibox off to the right, ignore it if you want to walk through 
this area without fighting, otherwise the enemies will all disperse after it 
dies. Around the path, there's a Yggdrasil Leaf in a red chest, after that 
middle right portal!

It's a bit of a maze in here, but you're trying to get to the southeast exit. 
There's two leaves and one cannibox laying in wait. Through the south exit, 
follow the path to the Bona Constrictors to get e leaf, and then head up the 
ladder. Kill some mechs and hit the second Red Switch. Zip back and let's 
explore beyond the red door.

In here there's not much to do. Restless Armour and Rubble Slime abound. This 
is also a good time to Re-synth since you should have a few Metal Tickets and 
your latest group should be around level 20. Anyways, if you didn't resynth, 
there's a boss-like enemy waiting.

Bossish time!
Overkilling machine

The owner wasn't kidding, it really is an overkilling machine. He has hit 
squad for 3 strikes and multislash, helm splitter and to top it all off, he 
tends to strike twice a round. Just take him down, you might not have to heal 
at all. 2100 exp and 1005g and machine parts for a clean victory.

After we defeat him, the force field behind the Guardian goes offline. Sounds 
like it's time to kill some giants up in this hizzy. Zip back, sneak through 
some golems and head north. Here the guardian threatens to shoot you in the 
face.

Boss Time!
Sagittar

He has two attacks a round, Kadonks, Blizzard Slashes, Helm Splitter, Thin 
Air, Donk and the best part is that everything is affected by Hit Squad and 
will hit your entire team. Keep a steady stream of attacks and a healer ready 
on the sidelines and this fight wont be a problem.

If you're having problems, Hacksaurus is overpowered. You should have gotten 
quite a few Metal Tickets and Machine Parts for some good old fashioned 
overpowering. After you win, you'll get around 3200 exp and 2770g as well as 
another Metal Ticket. They really want you to synth, don't they?

The doors beyond the Saggitar will open ready for some good old fashioned 
'sploring. In here there's some dead cap'n and leaves on the ground. 
Apparently the medal is a hot item. 

!Spoiler!Alert!
The ghosts weren't really the ghosts of the people we know. Apparently they're 
the ancient dead people that are ghosts, but decided to take these forms to 
mislead you. Anyways, it's off to snatch the medal and complete rank S of the 
mole's challenge to get to the great one. So off to the Arena we go!

Within the Arena, the Don-Mole does some funky medal destroying and Eugene's 
ghost is Mynos the Elder. That's right, the creators of this game are lazy as 
hell. Ready for the pen-ultimate battle? Well too bad, we can't take the Rank 
S challenge yet. We've gotta go awaken the Divine Battler first, then defeat 
him until he mends his evil ways.

But we don't get to leave empty handed, we get to beat the snot out of that 
groovy Don Mole first, baby.

Bosh Time!
Don Mole

He's no push over, to start things off he hits like a brick. Expect to take 
between 50~80 damage per strike. What tops it off is that he's capable of up 
to three attacks in one round. Other possibilities are Sultry Dances for 
Binding and Multifists to hit multiple characters twice for low damage. 
Overall he really is a push over, I forgot to restore MP after Sagittar and I 
had no problems. After this fight, however, you're thrown straight into one 
against a Canzar. A giant, golden crab bot with a slimey core.

Boss time!
Canzar

He has two attacks per round, not so bad. He's also incredibly slow, so ignore 
Acceleratle and only buff up with Kabuff to start. The real problem, however, 
is when he uses Mist Me. Complete avoidance for one strike. In these cases you 
might want to keep your weaker characters ahead of the attack curve with an 
accelerate. Chilly breath is a harder hitter, about 50 damage to everything. 
Disruptive Wave can be problematic since it will remove any buffs you've got 
going on. Slime dunk isn't much stronger than his regular attacks. To top all 
things off, he's rocking Close Scraper, so stack those attacks for victory. 
Almost 4000 exp for victory as well as 550g.

Mynos tells you to meet him in the Bemosoleum in front of the disgusting 
painting.

!Bemu!x2!
Enter the Bemusoleum, either zip or just walk from the start to reach the 
grotesque mural room.

!Necropolis! [Necro]
Within you'll be greeted with some Dark Slimes and Dark Slime Knights. Sweet, 
gotta scout 'em all. There's a fairly obvious path, I find it easier to walk 
just paying attention to the DS bottom screen, as well as four exit on the 
north side.

The first exit going from left to right is a bit of a dead end with a Blue 
Chest. Now if you look at the available map in this room, you need to take the 
right path to get to the left side paths. On the fortunate side i tlooks like 
the stairs on the far northwest side will lead to the final boss room! Let's 
hope.

This next room has 3 items as well as Gargoyles and Liquid Metal Slime. Be 
sure to equip your team with Metal Claws and save before attempting to kill 
it. They have 6~7 hp and award 10,000 exp. Follow the path around, in the 
first map on the far east side there's a blue chest, proceed north afterwards.

Not much going on in here, same enemies as before, head to the far northwest 
to get to the teleporter! Within is the final boss.

Just kidding. It's another long path, but at least we get the final blue stone 
in the game (I really hope at this point). The teleporter on the far southeast 
leads to that off shoot room with the final two chests of map 2. Head back and 
down the stairs and follow the path to the west. The northwest teleporter is 
accessed on the lower area, and it leads to an octagonal room to the north. 
There's slides that lead you in one way path counter clockwise. After the 
slides you'll come to your first crossroads. Purple and Green teleporters. 
Green leads to the final Blue Stone giving us Monster Mender, it's a bottle 
that restores hp and mp of the entire team. Can use it thrice, then we have to 
refill it at the airship. Three more blue chests in this room, the middle is a 
cannibox. Head back after. The stone in the center is an elevator, leads to 
another dungeon. The pinkaporter leads to the top of this map in case you want 
to walk back.

The path is straight forward, there's some effectively blind Lethal Armor you 
can walk right by if you don't want exp. Kick some doors into submission and 
admire some grotesque designs on the walls. In here we've got some humongous 
Tyrantasaurs roaming around and a big bad Drakularge. As you proceed lots more 
of the same stuff, but the path splits. Teleporter and exit and Exit 
immediately in front of you. Each lead to the next room, which is an even 
loner passage with a whopping 1 hidden treasure. Ignore it if you'd like, even 
though it's bound to be red and amazing.

To make things interesting, this area adds a leaping Scythe Wielding Skeleton 
and more importantly a Giant Ogre. But of course the red chest is in that room 
through the north cubby on the southeast side. Most importantly there's only a 
metal ticket in there. If you're ballsy you can try to fight the Gigantes now, 
he fights with one Tyrantosaurus. He's not too powerful, and he's affected by 
the Giant status, so Hacksaurus will debilitate him. He strikes between 44~70, 
once a round. Kabuff if you feel it necessary, wining will net you about 1600 
exp.

Take the pink-a-porter and go southwest. In here you'll find the green 
teleporter and a healing stone, not like you need them anymore with that 
bottle, lol!

In here there's a blue chest around the first corner in a cubby, otherwise 
make your way around to the other side and fend off Lethal Armors and Phantom 
Swordsmen. There's one more Gigantes in this room on the way to the exit, then 
surprise another! The far southeast offshoot features a Cannibox, ignore it 
and head towards the teleporter. Then it's right back into an octogon slide 
zone. There's one last Liquid Metal Slime along the way, kill it if you want. 
Pink teleporter leads back to the top, Elevator down into yet another zone.

In here there are 5 hidden treasures. God damned nice. It's also filled with 
Magmalice and Gigantes. Immediate left is the chest on the left side, cannibox 
on the right. Follow the path around, there's two rock outcroppings on the 
narrow ledge and one chest in the cubby with the Gigantes. Hit up the green 
portal and go straight ahead to unlock the Necropolis Zip.

In this area there are 5 hidden items, search for them if you'd like, I just 
decided to proceed instead. The green teleporter is right ahead of you, and 
beyond is a pretty damn big room. Inside Lion-O proves that albino based 
evolutions can happen within a short time span.

Malevolynx looks pretty pissed. Furby busts out of nowhere to hug him, but he 
knocks her away like the stupid furball she is. Mynos tells us it's our job to 
protect that teeny sanguini. Try saying that ten times fast, tenny sanguini, 
I'm starting to like this Mynos guy. Anywhosers, boss time.

Final Boss!
Malevolynx

Start off with the standard Kabuff support, if using a Giant Killer, toss him 
some Oomph support. Malevolynx can attack up to twice a turn, and it's fairly 
problematic. His melee strikes are around 60 a strike kabuffed, and he's 
capable of Lightning Strikes for up to 160 damage. War cries can destroy your 
team, but he's slow so it leaves you a bit better off to prepare. He can also 
Multifists for four random strikes, not a huge problem. Keep everybody above 
150 hp and you should be able to clear this fight using Omniheals sparingly 
and support with item based healing. Beware he can Disruptive Wave before a 
round of attacks or items, but otherwise he's slow. He doesn't strat the DW 
treatment until he's near dead, so you might find it better off to ignore 
rebuffing. Dropping him will net you 7200 Exp with a group of 3.

After the battle, Furby hugs him again and he goes super saiyan and turns back 
into Leonyx the Divine Battler. Furby was it's heart, yada, yada, yada. 
Anyways, you're put into the Arena. Here the Don Mole hecka spoils everything, 
so I wont ruin it for you. After that, zoom back to the Albatross, speak to 
Rory twice to take off. Empyrea picks up the ship and you fly off for one 
final battle, the monster scout challenge! It pretty much skips to the final 
round. It's a one round match, same with the other monster scout challenge.

Final Final Boss!
Mumbo-Jumboe, Atlas.

Alright, so, it's back to the "Can't do anything, lol!" setup. Set your healer 
to Show No Mercy until people need healing. Mumbo tends to attack twice a 
round, and Atlas isn't that much of a threat. Atlas has about 400 hp, Mumbo 
about 600. The real threat is that Mumbo can Gigaslash, hitting anywhere 
between 190~300 damage.

When all is said and done, there's a very heartwarming scene. Our angry 
looking little main character decides to screw off to the island once again, 
Lost style.

And that's the game! The credit roll features the cast of Monsters, don't know 
if that's for comedic value, but it's kinda cute. There really were a lot of 
these games. I've never actually played one more than five minutes, and that 
was just the DQ1 remake for the GBC. Oh, and Rocket Slime. If it weren't for 
Rocket Slime being the best game ever, I wouldn't have ever picked this one 
up. After that, the real credits roll.

!@# Post Game [PostG]
Well, what's there to do now? Since this is of course a DS game, the logical 
assessment would be to power level and max out some monsters to do online 
battles. If, on the off chance you don't like competetive battling 
*cough*pokemonisbetter*cough* there's still a bit more content to access. If 
you took note, most of the Cast of Monsters was empty. That's right, it's time 
to breed. What, did you think that some meta-zone to catch all of these 
monsters would be introduced? Think again, chums.

When you land on the Island, Mayday gives you one final mission. Head down 
into the Cargo bay and destroy a mouse. When we go down there though, we might 
as well rob all of these passengers blind. There's some machine parts, and a 
pair of alignment items, Positive Puller, Neutral Ground and some FALCON 
claws. Essentially all trash. If you look into your former home away from 
home, some skank will pop out. She demands you show her the way to the Arena 
so she can fight you again. Head up to Mayday's room to rob him as well for a 
Bag of Beastie Bites. The vending machine also gets a few new items, most 
notably the Obsidian Sword, which raises chances of hitting monster opponents, 
but doesn't raise damage when hitting them like it's brother the Metal Claw 
does.

Anyways, if you head to the Arena the Don Mole tells you that Leonyx wants to 
see you, but we don't want to see that butthead. Well, maybe we should. Zoom 
on over to the Necropolololis and Zip on over to Leonyx's pad. Leonyx tells 
you to whip out your ring and enhances your scout ring. It's time to go 
capture some giants! He then makes note that we should go around the island 
once again, did some monsters get stronger? Nope.

So, really, what's left to do? It's time to make some supreme monsters, defeat 
the monster scout challenge and then finally take on super saiyan Leonyx. But, 
that's about as far as I go. I've never been one for side-quests and post-game 
nonsense!

~
!@#Metal Menagerie [Metal]
I've made mention of this place multiple times throughout the course of the 
game. You can access it by using a Metal Ticket. When there, it's filled with 
Metal Slimes. There's one of two ways for it to populate. You'll get one that 
stares at you in both areas to go across, or three roaming around. If you get 
the first, you have to force a few to leave to get your first encounter. If 
the latter, you can stretch it out as long as you kill them before they flee.

What purpose does this place serve? Well, you need 4 Metal Slimes to make a 
King Metal Slime, in which equipping a Miracle Mace can (albeit slowly) solo 
everything almost.

But that's not why you come here, silly bean! You come here for leveling after 
a Synthesization. Equip some Metal Claws to everything, especially hit squad 
characters and go to town. A good run will net you about 3600 Exp, since you 
can't save here, you might consider saving before coming here then restarting 
if you get a bad luck of the draw. Anyways, this place is the easiest to level 
fledgling monsters up to 15, then take them to Necropolis to farm some Liquid 
Slimes and you're gold.

There's also rumors that you can force Liquid Metal Slime to spawn exclusively 
in this zone, but I haven't seen any proof of it, so keep your ears to the 
buzz saw.

~
!Synthesensation~  [Synth]
Well, Synthesis, but it's a sensation. You put two into a cage and force them 
to fight to the death. After a gruesome battle, the winner will eat the heart 
of the loser and emerge as a new monster.

Not believing me? That's probably the best choice. You fuse two monsters 
together, choose which monster outcome you want it to turn into and three 
skill trees chosen between the old and new forms.

Let's go with example time. Example tiiiiiime!

Komodo + WhateverSlimeIUsedToMakeAJargon = Jargon!

I then chose Attack Boost, Something Else I don't remember because I didn't 
keep it, and something further that I didn't remember. Yay!

It gave me a Jargon with Attack Boost, Toughie and I think Agility boost. The 
best part is that half of the skill points invested in those trees carried 
over as well as half of the unused skill points!

Yeah, that's right. Don't use skill points randomly, create your monsters with 
a focus on solely focusing on those skill trees. Why? Because you'll lose 
skill points if you don't carry over that tree. More importantly, some skills 
can reach level 2 or level 3. If you say, max attack boost and get a gold star 
next to it, the offspring will be able to inherit Attack Boost 2. I've 
literally wasted at least 100 skill points because I didn't realize this.

So when's the best time to Synthesize? When you've capped skills, which will 
usually be around level 21. The benefit to level 21 is that most monsters get 
skill points at level 20 and 21.

The overall monster level cap is level 50, and a second synthesis monster at 
level 10 will almost always be stronger than a level 30 monster without 
synthesis. It's just how it works.

As you progress through the game, you'll start getting a lot of monsters at 
level 11. In all you can store 100, so these make extremely nice Synthesis 
fodder, even if you don't intend to make use of skills, skill points still 
carry over. Some characters, on the other hand, pass on skills extremely well. 
Hades Condors for example can pass on Cure All as well as synthesize into 
Treeface, a big hitting medium monster with hit squad and decent base stats.

Also, that brings me to the other point. Medium monsters are amazing for the 
typical progression of the game. I only synthesized out of them for Saggitar 
because I wanted a Hacksaurus so badly for Giant Killer. Medium monsters have 
much higher stat growth and most importantly, they can inherit four skill 
trees upon synthesization.

If you're having problems at any point in the game, consider investing in a 
Treeface or Dragon. They break the game balance apart and will oneshot any 
current level monster if you synth them into the next highest form after every 
zone.

~
!@#Marsha Scout Challenges#@! [Marsh]
Level 1, She requests you bring a Healslime. They're the floating Jellyfish 
slime that have next to no hp and a 100% scout rate. She rewards you with a 
Strong Medicine.

Level 2, She requests you bring a synthesized monster with the Healer skill. 
She mentions that synthesizing a healslime is probably going to be the easiest 
way to do this. She rewards a Seed of Magic for clearing this challenge.

Level 3, She requests you synthesize a Jargon and bring it to her. This can be 
done by Komodo + Slime if I do remember correctly. She suggests Frou-Fry + 
anything from the Nature Family. Rewards a magic elixir.

Level 4, She requests a Boreal Serpent. Jargon + Snowbird will create one. If 
you're actively using your Jargon, however, I suggest you create it through 
other means, or even a second Jargon first. Why? Because Boreal Serpent is a 
two-slot monster, which means you can only use one other in combat. Rewards a 
panacea.

Level 5, She requests a Hades Condor, scouted or synthesized. Luckily enough 
there's one just outside of the Arena waiting to be scouted during the days. 
Unfortunately he's a jerk. Best bet is psyched up Molemen at this point in the 
game. Rewards a bag of Oomph powder.

Level 6, Synthesize a slimestack with the inherited Cure-all skill. This makes 
me sad because I just made a slimestack with my only Dragon Slime and he 
doesn't have Cure all. Rewards a Yggdrasil leaf.

Level 7, Synthesize a Demonrider and bring it to her. She tells us to 
synthesize a Skelegon and Demon Family monster.

Level 8, Synthesize the Demonrider with a Bona Constrictor to clear this 
stage. I think, writing the rest of this area from memory.

Level 9, Bring her anything with Defense II, just level up Defense up to max 
and synth it off.

Level 10, Demon Servant, one with the four arms iirc after Zipping in from 
Necropolis.

Level 11, Bring her any Giant. Bjorn is the easiest to Scout.

Level 12, Synth a Durahan and Skullspider.

~
Frequently Asked Questions [FAQ]
Q: I keep losing in the Monster Scout Challenges, what should I do?
A: The simplest thing you can do is to use a healer. It doesn't sound like a 
big change, but bad luck can be completely reversed by an Omniheal or some 
well placed Midheals. You just have to hope that your healer doesn't decide to 
attack instead of heal like a punk.

Q: I'm having problems killing Metal Slimes, what should I do?
A: Keeping a Hit Squad character on your Substitute bar that can equip Metal 
Claws is the best method. I prefer always keeping a sub-healer Slimestack with 
Metal Claws permanently sitting on my sub bench, I can bust him out and he'll 
typically oneshot Slimes with three hitsquads for 2 damage a piece. The other 
strategy is to save before encountering. Simple, right? They tend to flee more 
often after taking damage, so I also suggest using Pinballs and Pretty Pebbles 
after they've been damaged already.

Q: I know you've praised them a lot, but are Medium Sized monsters really 
worth it?
A: They are in the main game, yes. They all come with Big Hitter which deals 
extra damage with all attacks. They can easily justify a two monster team 
because they sport massive Defense and can carry on 4 Skills. The only problem 
I have with Medium sized monsters is that most of them are Dragons, which 
innately level slowly, so unless you carry one monster through two zones, 
don't expect to get their skills leveled up beyond 3 any time soon. Near the 
ending of the game, however, two Hacksaurus started doing just as much damage 
as one Medium sized monster and twice as much against giants. The other 
benefit/flaw to Medium sized monsters is that multi-healing becomes much less 
efficient. It's a good and a bad thing since Mid-heal will be vastly superior, 
but if you HAVE to omniheal then you'll be wasting a lot of MP.

Q: What should my substitute team be?
A: That's a hard one to answer. Aside from my Metal Claw substitutes, I just 
put anything below level 11 on my sub bench for the sake of Synthesis.

Q: I'm having problems scouting "x", what should I do?
A: That's another hard one to answer, do more damage. Really, that's the best 
thing I can say. Scouting % is based on damage dealt, not current health of 
the enemy. And a lot of the times, even if you can one shot an enemy, you wont 
get above 20%. Monsters with Psycho tend to help with this, so a very good 
early on scouting team is 3 moles, specifically because they have Psycho and 
Lootist. By the time I hit Bemusoleum, I didn't even bothering scouting 
monsters anymore because I've synthed most of what was available already.

Q: I'm having problems finding "x" monster, what should I do?
A: Google. No, really, google. Either that or consult the GameFAQs message 
boards. I've included every monster I passed and what weather conditions were 
going on at the time, but it's by far not complete. For example, Skelegons can 
be found in Cragravation during bad weather by examining rock fossils. But I 
read that and didn't encounter it, so it's not even in my guide at any place! 
(besides here) Other than that, when in doubt, synth it out. You'll find the 
right combination.. eventually.

!Credits! [Credit]
Yes, what we all want to see our names on. Unfortunately none of your names 
will ever be here! Bwahaha~

The only credits deserved thus far are for myself, for being sheerly amazing.

Other credits deserved are for GameFAQs.com, if it weren't for a $40 gift card 
that I can re-gift, this guide would have never been created.