Monster High: Ranking the Quarry Monsters on Difficulty (Patreon)

I got a couple of requests in respect of the monsters, specifically to rank them on difficulty and also some details on when you know it is time to move onto a new monster.

Both of these items are very subjective, it varies from one settlement to the next a great deal because the power level of a settlement is based on its gear, its survivor stats/FAs, its innovations and its survival actions. As such it can be very difficult to break down exactly when you are ready to move onto a new monster or tackle a higher level version of one. Specifics about each monster type, with details of exactly when I feel you can move onto the L2 or L3 monsters are going to be kept in the seasoned hunter series. However, I will give a few tips and similar here.

Ranking the Critters:

How was the rankings for these monsters devised? Well first of all, I decided to exclude the nemesis monsters - nemesis monsters are essentially a different "game" from quarry ones, i.e. you use the quarry monsters to prepare for the nemesis ones. Additionally; the nemesis monsters are almost always 'fixed' on when they turn up, so there is no point ranking them, instead each one should be considered individually as part of a boss progression system. In short, no nemesis monsters.

The key to this table pictured above is as follows. The monsters are graded on a scale between the easiest (Prologue White Lion/L1 Flower Knight) and the hardest (L3 Dung Beetle Knight). The bands represent loose tiers where the monsters are roughly all the same level of power, but the requirements to face each one vary a great deal. 

The monsters are listed in order of appearance on the timeline and identified by their crest and their level. 

Now, what are the various things that make a monster easier or more difficult than other ones?  They boil down to a few specific aspects:

• Toughness
• Damage
• Accuracy
• Speed
• Movement 
• Wounds 
• Traits
• Monster level aka "*"/star
• Hunt events
• Behavior
• Trap
• Reactions

When you move up from one level of monster to the next, the things that do not change are the trap and reactions, they might get some increase in the numbers involved because of the things above increasing, but you should have a general idea of how the monster is going to react to being hit because it will be the same style as the lower level versions.  

However, there can be exceptions to this. For example one of these is the Level 3 Dung Beetle Knight, that has a trait which makes hitting it very dangerous without the correct preparation. 

Traits in particular are one of the major ways that monsters change their behavior between levels, The White Lion's Cunning for example means that it will grab every single turn after it performs its AI. This creates a situation where; if not managed, one survivor will be dragged away and suffer damage. This can fast kill an unprepared survivor and cause a hunt to fail.

As such, despite sharing cards and a model, it is best to think of each and every single level of a monster as being a new monster. Doing this makes it easier to comprehend the stepped nature of a monster's increase in power level. 

What I mean by this that the monsters increase in large increments, they have big steps up in power, while the survivors have a granular increase in their strength - a new piece of gear, a complete armor set, new weapons, new innovations. It's a lot of small pieces gathered up over time.  This means that the relative power levels between survivors and monsters looks a bit like this:

You want to be tackling the monsters once your in that sweet spot where the blue line is above the red one, figuring out when you are there is the trick and it's a hard one.  So to paraphrase Potter Stewart; I can't tell you in advance what will make you ready for a certain monster, but I know it when I see it.

In essence, you're going to have to practice and get used to when to step up. There's no right time because all the monsters are different and there are multiple approaches to the same problem.

However there are a five universal things which are always going to increase your chances of winning, so you should always build towards these if you want to face higher level monsters:

• Block 
• Evasion
• Dash  
• Armor
• Strength
• Surge 

You can remember them as BEDASS and these are the 6 core things that every successful hunt party revolves around.

Armor, Block and Evasion buy you time to kill the monster. Dash gives you the ability to mitigate many of the nasty things a monster will do, especially many AI cards/traits and Strength and Surge are your offensive options.  Essentially what these things do is they increase the time to kill for the monster while decreasing the time to kill for your survivors. 

There are a lot of other factors that also contribute to this balance (such as the luck and accuracy stats), however those 6 things are the core around which all successful hunt parties revolve around and as you can see; 4 of them can be gained via gear, while the other 2 are innovation linked.

In short, good gear and innovations is more important than monstrous survivors, if you build good gear that works towards the above 6 items, then you will greatly increase your chances of success.

The other part of the puzzle is learning to AI and HL manipulate, and that's where the very top most play in KDM dwells. Slow, methodical chopping monsters to death piece by piece.

Fen's Big Tip

If you are switching up to a new monster/monster level for the first time it is best to be over prepared for it. It is boring to grind the weaker monsters once you have them beat, but it is worth doing it a few times to ensure that you have that extra armor set, or that extra shield, or that extra innovation.

If you do not feel well prepared enough, the first hunt you take against a new monster/level should be performed by a bunch of B-Listers, survivors who can be lost without much cost (The Music Innovation Tree is amazing for helping make powerful survivors from the start, Saga and Clan of Death also help).  You should do this because a Total Party Kill on a hunt is awful, but you can soften the blow a bit by having the lost survivors be less important.  There are other ways of helping with this, such as the new Hours Ring, Story in the Snow or straight up practicing the fight before hand. It depends what suits the way you like to experience the world of Kingdom Death.

Quick Tips:

Finally; here are a few of the big gates to approach the mid game monsters and this should help you get started.

Group 1

L2 White Lion - Dash, Weapon Crafter strength weapons, decent survival limit and good armor on 2-3 survivors.

L2 Antelope - Good armor and weapons, best choice if you don't have any survival actions

L2 Gorm - Either survivors with 3+ hunt exp or very accurate weapons for ones with less than 3 hunt exp.  Dried Acanthus or other ways of cancelling severe injuries. Surge helps speed up the fight in order to mitigate the unavoidable Retch that happens each turn.

L2 Spidicules - Surge, Good Spears/Bows

Group 2

L1 Phoenix - Same as L2 White Lion plus high insanity/ageless, bandages and all survivors should have hunt exp = monster level (at least)

L1 Dragon King - As per L2 White Lion, plus ranged weapons and 3+ courage on ALL survivors

L1 Dung Beetle Knight - Dash, Surge, Shields, HL Manipulation

L1 Sunstalker - As per L2 Lion with a Shield.

The next step after that is the L3 versions of group 1 and the L2 versions of group 2.

So I hope that this proves of interest and gives you some ideas on how better to assess when you are ready for the next level of monster. Just because you are wrecking the L1 version doesn't mean you are ready for the L2 one. Traits matter.

Until next time, good luck hunting!