Hi Tamers,

Work has continued on Monster Crown all through the weekend, where I worked cooperatively with discord users to analyze and improve the balancing of the game. Balancing is something we'll always be fine-tuning but you're really gonna enjoy these changes, which I think are really instrumental to the fun-level of Monster Crown!

Rebalancing

To start with, move attack power levels have been rebalanced, this seriously reduces the OHKO/Sweeper effect and the power of simply focusing on your attack power. You'll definitely feel the need to make use of more varied teams, status effects, and strategies to take down foes. The stat on each individual move has not changed, however, the damage calculation has.

Enemies in Desperado, Scarred Province, Wetland Province, Flowering Province and Frost Province now scale with your tamer level, so increasing your tamer level now raises the challenge, and chiefs are stronger as well. Additionally, chiefs now appear on the map with a shield icon, so you can easily see these important foes



Stat orbs are now capped, only allowing you to boost your Monster's stat by 30% above the natural growth rate. This remains a viable strategy for those who dislike breeding, without letting you make totally unfair creatures using these eventually-common items.

Upon breeding, fusion, etc. a new base stat total limiter is applied. The limit is calculated as follows: 3.0 base in every stat (HP,Atk,Def,Mag,Res,GR). So therefore the most well rounded, evenly distributed monster would have a stat total of: 18.0. Your newly created monsters can only overcome the 3.0 limit by SPECIALIZATION! Keep in mind that the highest growth rate is like 1.4, so that frees up more points for other stats.

If your monster exceeds the 18.0 limit, it will be scaled down. Internally this is done by reverse-isotope therapy but you don't really need to know this because it's all done in code in an instant but I thought you monster scientists would value that info. You may exceed the 3.0 stat limit of course by say, decreasing speed, freeing up more points for Attack power, etc. You get the idea.

All of these rebalancing changes have personally made the game a LOT more fun for me in a way that I can't really put into words, and couldn't feel I was missing before. Somehow everything is just more fun and with the scaling, the monsters available to you immediately after Dew Cave just multiplied! I ran straight to Wetland province and grabbed myself a Boarnox, shortly after breeding it with a Bileat to make this tough guy before I ever visited Dania. It's a blast taking on the new, tougher wild encounters and wild tamers as well!

Performance Improvements

Recently I've optimized the world-loading code for Switch, and in doing so benefits come to steam as well, the game takes up much less storage space on your hard drive now and RAM usage is at approximately half.



Here's the full patch notes:

1.0.28
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+Random Tamers now fade out after defeat
+Crossroad cutscene tweaks/polish
+Rodney (Frobec Chief) no longer re-fightable
+Additional sound effects added to various menus for a more responsive feeling
+RAM usage reduced to about half (a little less than half)
+Open world level rebalancing
+Random encounters have a slightly lower chance of being ones that chase you
+Charity Chief given a new team
+Chiefs now have identifiable shields above them on the overworld for easy identification
+Monster ability icons now show descriptions for greater clarity
+Improved Net Egg functionality (easier to grab a new egg)
+Issue with wild eggs fixed
+Random encounters can now be having a snack of berry or meat
+BULLDOZER MODE (you can now decimate enemies like scouting while riding your monster, it's kinda too much fun tbh)
+Attack animations sizing adjusted
+Issue affecting box operations in the fusion menu fixed
+Can now ride Epheal FB


Whew I used up so much space on the rebalancing info that I don't want to make this too long, if I can say one last thing try out Bulldozer mode while riding your monsters now it's too much fun!