Idle Monster Frontier is a unique blend of classic idle game, RPG, and monster capture game mechanics, so we understand that it can be hard to wrap your head around how it all fits together. There's only so much we can fit in the already overly verbose tutorial, so given the space-constrained nature of the game, especially a pixel game like this one, we've compiled this little guide here to help get you started. Also be sure to check out the Player's Guide in top right corner of the team overview for a list of all monsters, traits, and items. # Stats Each monster has different base stats, with some minor randomization (i.e. not all Toads have the exact same stats, but most Toads are within 10% of each other.) VIT is the total hitpoints of a monster. STR is the strength of a monster. It is used by Warriors to deal damage, and also blocks a small amount of incoming physical damage. INT is the intelligence of a monster. It is used by Mages to deal damage, and also blocks a small amount of incoming magical damage. INT also affects the effectiveness of most healing skills regardless of underlying character class. SPD is the attack speed of a monster and is indicated in attacks per second. You can see a monster's stats both in the team overview, and on the character info page by swiping the info module beneath the monster's portrait and hp bar (the box above the pink buttons.) Note that trait effects are not reflected in the view of the stats, but only in the realtime measurements of DPS & HPS. # DPS & HPS The DPS (damage per second) and HPS (heals per second) measurements can be seen on the second page of the team overview (use the arrow in bottom left corner of team overview.) These measurements are NOT estimates, but are realtime averages of damage/heals dealt over time. Therefore, you need to take a monster into the field before you can see its DPS/HPS. A freshly acquired creature that has never been in battle will not have these measurements available, and these measurements will vary depending on the attributes of the monsters that they last fought. For example, if your monster fought another that was immune to their damage type, their DPS would be 0 even though they would otherwise have high damage output against a different monster. # Crits & Avoidance Every monster has a 5% base crit rate and a 5% base avoidance rate. Crits do double damage and are indicated with double sized damage number visuals. # Consuming Monsters Monsters are consumed every 10 levels to level up other monsters. They are also consumed to level up traits, to pay Tribute, and for monster Fusion in the Secret Lab. # Scrapping You can start scrapping your monsters after unlocking Merchant level 1. Gold generation from monster scrapping is intentionally low in the early game as a way to prioritize the use of other monster sinks such as trait leveling, monster leveling, and Tributes. With further upgrades to Merchant it IS possible to make a profit from upgrading and scrapping monsters in the mid game onwards, but you should definitely prefer other avenues of sinking characters before resorting to scrapping as a means to clear inventory space in the early game. Merchant levels 4 and 9 make it profitable to level up monsters before selling them, which is a great way to generate gold, but again, other uses for monsters should take priority when possible. Merchant level 5 unlocks an auto-scrapper which can automatically scrap monsters meeting certain criteria before they even hit your inventory. # Rerolling Drops Every dropped monster, Epic and below, gives you the opportunity to spend gems for a chance to acquire a random monster of the next highest rarity. The chance of a successful reroll is shown clearly below the button. Every 5 failed rerolls, a free reroll is awarded which is guaranteed to succeed. Like the Gachapon, rerolled monsters aren't limited by dimension or area. # Traits Traits come in 2 varieties: learnable and core. Some core traits are also able to be found as learnables, but some core traits, especially those on Legendary and Master creatures, never appear as learnables. You can learn a trait with the LEARN buttons on the character info page. Note that you can only learn one non-core trait from any given monster, and that learning their trait will also consume that monster. Traits have different rarities which affect the rate of their appearance on monsters in the world. Trait rarity is not indicated in game, but traits in the auto-scrapper are roughly sorted by rarity if you want a hint :) You can find a list of all traits in the Player's Guide in the top right corner of the team overview. # Stacking All traits and trait effects stack unless otherwise noted. Damage boosts and speed boosts stack multiplicatively without limit. Example: 100% + 100% + 100% = 2x \* 2x \* 2x = 8x Resistance, crit chance, and avoidance stack multiplicatively with diminishing returns and have a generally unreachable limit of 100%, but are not otherwise capped. Example: 30% + 30% + 30% = 1.0 - ((1.0 - .3) \* (1.0 - .3) \* (1.0 - .3)) = 65.7% Piercing can be thought of as anti-resistance, and is simply subtracted from the enemy's stacked resistance. # Offline Progress Your monsters will keep fighting for up to 12 hours (expandable to 48 hours with Barracks lvl 10,) earning gold and capturing monsters while you sleep. You can capture up to 6 monsters from any of the zones between your home base and furthest reached zone, and the amount of gold you earn per offline hour is based on your furthest map reached. While you can "idle" by continuously doing AFK long runs, the game is designed and balanced around going offline between active/semi-active play sessions. # The Frontier The Frontier is the dangerous and unconquered territory beyond your furthest outpost. It's indicated by sparkles and flashing on the map segment at the top of your screen. Monsters on the Frontier have elevated rarity, and the Frontier is the only place Legendary and Master monsters will spawn (after unlocking the appropriate Barracks levels.) Given the gold cost of outpost travel, and the elevated difficulty of the Frontier, you may find it necessary to do runs from the first map to grind the gold+monsters necessary to level up before you're able to make it far enough into the Frontier of a recently conquered outpost that outpost travel is profitable. While moving forward is always your ultimate goal, it can sometimes be worthwhile to farm an area for a bit to power up or capture a specific monster before moving on. You can use Farm Mode to avoid conquering the next outpost, and thus avoid accidentally moving your Frontier into a more difficult area before you're ready. # Tributes The Tribute system is unlocked by purchasing the Altar, and is accessed by clicking the whirlpool in the center of the Altar. There are 100 total Tributes, and each one requires that you sacrifice the listed monsters in exchange for the permament teamwide bonus shown below the requirements. While the bonuses from individual Tributes are not large early on, they stack to become significant over time. Note that you can configure your auto-scrapper to retain monsters that are required by your current Tribute. # Ascension After beating the 4th boss you will be given the option to ascend to a higher dimension. Each higher dimension effectively resets your furthest map reached and increases the difficulty of the game, moving the Frontier back to the first outpost in Woodlands, but allowing you to keep all of your monsters/resources. Given the increased difficulty, world gold drops are also increased. The first ascension unlocks both the Tower and Secret Lab, and allows Dummies to begin dropping from the Gachapon. The first several ascensions also add powerful new monsters to the world that can't be captured in prior dimensions. # Dummies Dummies are wildcard monsters that can't be equipped, but can be consumed in place of any monster of the same or lower rarity regardless of other requirements. That is, they can be used to level up monsters and traits, and also to pay Tribute and for Fusion. Dummies come in 2 varieties: Lesser Dummies and Greater Dummies. Greater Dummies have the added benefit of being able to extract traits from other monsters in exchange for gold without destroying the Dummy or the monster from which the trait was extracted. They effectively provide a gold-priced unlearn which also allows the trait to be transferred to another monster. # The Tower The Tower in your home base is taken over by the Darkness after your first ascension. It's filled with 20 floors of hand-crafted extremely high difficulty teams. You can access it by clicking the front door of the Tower on map 1. Every player is given 1 free key to enter the Tower per day. Players that purchase the Tower Bundle from the shop are given 2 free keys per day. Gems can be used to enter the Tower after using up your daily keys. Defeating a floor will reward you with Dummies and gems, and unlock the next floor, while losing a floor will give you a chance to spin the Wheel of Woe to ease the pain of defeat. The wheel has a chance to give gold, gems, Tower keys, and Dummies, so it's worth entering everyday even if you know you're not yet capable of defeating the floor yet. Note that you cannot re-enter the Tower after defeating all 20 floors, so if you'd like to keep spinning the wheel you should avoid defeating the final floor. We will address this at some point in the future by either adding more floors, or allowing you to reset the Tower at a higher difficulty. # Secret Lab (Fusion) After unlocking the Secret Lab, you can begin to Fuse any 2 identical monsters of Epic rarity and above by clicking the Fuse button in the lower left of the character info page. The target monster, the one with which you began the Fusion process, will retain its traits and level after Fusion, while the other monster will be consumed. Fusion is represented by a pair of numbers: FUS x,y; where x is the Fusion level and y is the Fusion quality. The max Fusion level is 4, while the max Fusion quality is 16. Each monster can be fused with an identical monster of equal or lower Fusion level. Fusing will sum the qualities of the 2 Fused monsters, while the Fusion level will always increase by 1. In the following examples of Fusion math, the first operand is the Fusion target: 1. FUS 0,1 + FUS 0,1 = FUS 1,2 2. FUS 3,4 + FUS 2,3 = FUS 4,7 The Fused monster's base VIT, STR, and INT will be multiplied by the Fusion quality. That is, a FUS 1,2 will have double the stats of an unfused monster, while a FUS 4,7 will have 7x the stats that it started with. Fusion levels 1 and 4 each have unique skins that change the look of the monster, which you will see in the Fusion preview after choosing your Fusion candidates. Fusion level 4 also adds an extra trait slot, regardless of quality. The strongest Fusion, a FUS 4,16; is accomplished by fusing with the highest possible Fusion quality at each Fusion level, and requires a total of 16 identical monsters. While a FUS 4,5 only requires 5 identical monsters. A FUS 4,5 will look visually identical to a FUS 4,16; and will still have an extra trait slot, but will only have 5x its base stats rather than 16x. Here is an explanation of all of the possibilities to reach Fusion level 2: Starting with a FUS 0,1 you have no choice but to fuse with another FUS 0,1. Doing so will yield a FUS 1,2. Now from here you have 2 options. You can fuse your FUS 1,2 with an unfused monster, a FUS 0,1; to yield a FUS 2,3; OR you can fuse 2 other identical unfused monsters together to get a second FUS 1,2 which you then fuse with your original FUS 1,2 to yield a FUS 2,4. As you can see, there are 2 possible qualities of monster at Fusion level 2. Likewise, there are 5 possible qualities at Fusion level 3, and 12 possible qualities at Fusion level 4. The lowest of the possible qualities at each Fusion level is achieved by fusing with a previously unfused monster, a FUS 0,1; while the qualities in-between are achieved by fusing with progressively more fused monsters. Here is a list of all of the possible Fusions, ordered by quality, up to Fusion level 3: **FUSION LEVEL 1** 1. FUS 0,1 + FUS 0,1 = FUS 1,2 **FUSION LEVEL 2** 1. FUS 1,2 + FUS 0,1 = FUS 2,3 2. FUS 1,2 + FUS 1,2 = FUS 2,4 **FUSION LEVEL 3** 1. FUS 2,3 + FUS 0,1 = FUS 3,4 2. FUS 2,3 + FUS 1,2 = FUS 3,5 3. FUS 2,4 + FUS 0,1 = FUS 3,5 4. FUS 2,3 + FUS 2,3 = FUS 3,6 5. FUS 2,4 + FUS 1,2 = FUS 3,6 6. FUS 2,4 + FUS 2,3 = FUS 3,7 7. FUS 2,4 + FUS 2,4 = FUS 3,8 Note that quality always represents the number of monsters invested.

# FAQ ## What should I spend my gems on? For a free player the best use of gems would be either some gacha pulls or a good epic single. Getting lucky on some early re-rolls is another valid strategy. After that, you'd probably want to save for late game trait unlearns. For a paying player, I'd start with the boosts bundle and/or the legends pack then spend the bonus gems on gacha and/or time warps depending on your progress and goals. Ultimately you'll want to save some gems for trait unlearns in the late game if you want perfect monsters. ## Why can't I travel to any map I want? Games are interactive systems of rules, and in this particular game one of the rules is that your travel options are limited in such a way as to provide tension and strategic options. Do I push for the next outpost, or should I keep farming this one for a bit? Because the monsters become more difficult as you progress, allowing you to freely return to any zone would create balance issues that would have to be remedied in another way, such as making it so that the monsters in the teleported zone are the same difficulty as your furthest reached zone, or drastically lowering droprates on low level monsters, etc. While we're open to making such a change in the future (it wouldn't be the first time we've made a major change to the system,) we stand behind the current system for now. ## Why can't I auto-loop? See the Offline Progress section of the guide above. The game is designed and balanced around going offline between active/semi-active play sessions. Part of the motivation is to keep the balance the same between web and mobile versions of the game, and auto-looping isn't appropriate for mobile play styles which tend to be more session-oriented.

> *Originally posted by **[purple_pwny](/forums/1042299/topics/1826958?page=1#13114285)**:* > ## How many monsters are there? > > as of 2019-05-04: 78 capturable monsters. 24 more on the way. > > ## How many traits are there? > > as of 2019-05-04: 38 learnable traits, 63 total (including unlearnable cores.) More on the way. Please use iso date format to be less ambiguous. Thank you for this information.

Attack speed is not in attacks per seconds, its in time between attacks

> *Originally posted by **[rvlynch](/forums/1042299/topics/1826958?page=1#13230527)**:* > Attack speed is not in attacks per seconds, its in time between attacks > oh, so a 1.52 speed monster is worse at speed than a 0.96 monster?? i have most of my team of 1.52 or higher thinking they attack 1 and a half times a second! i wondered why a uncommon gold viper seemed faster than a rare viper (the blue snake) because goldie had a 1.52 and blue had a 0.96, lol. i guess the blue snake is faster than the green snake!

Animation wise, the higher speed monsters bounce more times per second. Sure, the bouncing and attacking might not be related, but I seem to have seen something on the faq that lists attacks per second as the stat.

Is there no way to make my monsters auto start once they die? "farm mode" doesn't do it and it seems really useless.

If you look in the player guide you see a monster with attack speed description. low med or high. if you compare the scores you can see that low is around 1 med 1,5 and fast 2. A monster of mine with 1.57 attacks way more times then a monster with 0.97...

The second party - does anyone have any info on this?

> *Originally posted by **[InklingRain](/forums/1042299/topics/1826958?page=1#13313393)**:* > The second party - does anyone have any info on this? It is a second party. So a second life later on or another build ;P It is more end game or a nice way to keep youre upgraded monsters in another party. You can also switch the party while facing enemy's... so you can create a boss killing party/undead-monster killing party and a regular party.

> *Originally posted by **[rvlynch](/forums/1042299/topics/1826958?page=1#13230527)**:* > Attack speed is not in attacks per seconds, its in time between attacks > no, is rate of attack, so higher value is better from this faq Stats Each monster has different base stats, with some minor randomization (i.e. not all Toads have the exact same stats, but most Toads are within 10% of each other.) VIT is the total hitpoints of a monster. STR is the strength of a monster. It is used by Warriors to deal damage, and also blocks a small amount of incoming physical damage. INT is the intelligence of a monster. It is used by Mages to deal damage, and also blocks a small amount of incoming magical damage. INT also affects the effectiveness of most healing skills regardless of underlying character class. SPD is the attack speed of a monster and is indicated in attacks per second. You can see a monster's stats both in the team overview, and on the character info page by swiping the info module beneath the monster's portrait and hp bar (the box above the pink buttons.) Note that trait effects are not reflected in the view of the stats, but only in the realtime measurements of DPS & HPS.

Can you explain how the "bad luck protection" works? Like in numbers? How many rares do I have to get to have 100% at least one of them and does that bad luck protection means "If you kill X master monsters, next one will be 100% drop" or "If you kill X Gorillas, next Gorilla will be 100% dropped" ?

> *Originally posted by **[OndraD26](/forums/1042299/topics/1826958?page=1#13389145)**:* > Can you explain how the "bad luck protection" works? Like in numbers? How many rares do I have to get to have 100% at least one of them and does that bad luck protection means "If you kill X master monsters, next one will be 100% drop" or "If you kill X Gorillas, next Gorilla will be 100% dropped" ? > If you are referring to the bad luck protection on rerolls, it appears as dice in the lower left for every failed reroll. Once it's full you will be guaranteed the higher rarity on a reroll. One nice thing is that, if you succeed on the reroll, it doesn't reset the counter. Note that the reroll can be anything from any tribe, so you never know what you'll get.

I meant it on drop rates

> *Originally posted by **[nallrad](/forums/1042299/topics/1826958?page=1#13250881)**:* > Is there no way to make my monsters auto start once they die? "farm mode" doesn't do it and it seems really useless. farm mode is where you can farm gold and rare monster since in farm mode you don't advance making it easier to farm since you can teleport and if you advance to another flag you have to pay more to teleport there and above it says there aren't auto loops to balance offline and gameplay but you could just watch and ocasionally tap

So - what's the current "creme de la creme" party with all those new mobs added? Angel as heal/Maiden as DPS and Mermaids as tank and support? Or are there something better I've missed?