Scout Monsters and Send Them into Battle

Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince is the latest installment in the Dragon Quest Monsters series. In this RPG, you take on the role of the monster wrangler Psaro and construct a team of monsters to battle against your enemies as you progress through the adventure.

Your active team can have up to eight members, with up to four in your main party and four more in your reserves. During battle you can issue precise orders to each individual monster, or set general tactics, such as ‘Show No Mercy’ or ‘Focus on Healing’ and leave it to your monsters to decide the specifics.

If the enemy has you on the back foot and victory seems a distant dream, your monsters may enter a frenzied state out of sheer desperation. Should this happen, they’ll inflict greater damage and gain additional opportunities to act, clearing the way to turn a certain defeat into a famous triumph

How Do I Get More Monsters?

There are many ways to grow your roster of monsters. You could leave it to luck and wait for an enemy monster to ask to join you after battle, but there are more efficient methods. For example, if you run into a strong looking enemy that you fancy in your team, you could hit it with a ‘Show of Force’ and try persuading it to join you.

You may also meet other wranglers on your journey who are willing to combine their monsters with yours to create a brand new creature — one they’ll even let you keep! With clever use of your items, such as meat based goodies and other treats, you can increase the likelihood of a monster wanting to join you, as well as improve the persuasiveness of your ‘Show of Force’. Put your items to good use to recruit the monsters you want.

This is all well and good, but a monster wrangler’s favorite way to improve their team is through the power of synthesis — a method of combining two parent monsters to make a new one. The synthesis system has been overhauled for Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince, and now features more intuitive combinations that will make sense even to series newcomers.

The Great Sabrecat is a toothy specimen that can be combined with the bird-like Garuda to synthesize a Missing Lynx.

Talent Acquisition

When a child monster is synthesized, it comes with its own innate talent, but can also inherit talents from its parents. Understanding this is the ultimate key to creating powerful monsters. There are numerous talents to be acquired.

Some provide life saving healing spells, while others can turn a monster into an attacking powerhouse or a sponge for damage. A selection of talents are even named after some very familiar monsters…

When a child monster is synthesized, it comes with its own innate talent, but can also inherit talents from its parents. Understanding this is the ultimate key to creating powerful monsters. There are numerous talents to be acquired.

Some provide life saving healing spells, while others can turn a monster into an attacking powerhouse or a sponge for damage. A selection of talents are even named after some very familiar monsters…

Talent Focus: Cure-All

With potent healing spells, such as Multiheal and Omniheal, as well as Zing to revive your allies and Kabuff to boost their defence, the ‘Cure-All’ talent is a must-have for your party’s healer.

Talent Focus: The Dragonlord

Devastating fiery breath attacks, such as Inferno and Hellitosis, and the debilitating Burning Breath and Wave of Panic, combine with the spells Moreheal and Kasizzle to make ‘The Dragonlord’ a fearsome talent that’s worthy of the name.

Family Traits

Each monster type has its own unique set of traits — latent abilities that can boost attributes or disrupt your enemy’s plans — with new ones unlocked automatically when your monsters reach a certain level.

A monster’s size affects the number of traits at its disposal, with large monsters able to acquire more.

Sizes and Ranks

In DRAGON QUEST MONSTERS: The Dark Prince, monsters come in two different sizes: small or large. Small monsters take up one slot in your team, while large monsters require two slots. This means you can have a party of four small monsters, or two large ones, or two small and one large. Not only do large monsters have higher attributes than their small counterparts, they can also act multiple times per round during battle.

In addition to sizes, a monster is assigned one of nine ranks: G, F, E, D, C, B, A, S or X, from lowest to highest. The rank is attached to the monster’s type and can’t be changed. Among the Rank S monsters you’ll find many familiar antagonists from the series, but the most fiendishly powerful monsters exclusively occupy Rank X.

As Psaro’s adventure takes shape, two battle areas, where you can test your monsters’ might, will become available — the Endor Colosseum in the human world of Terrestria, and the Maulosseum in the monster realm of Nadiria. Every opponent in each arena is an expert monster wrangler in their own right: can you overcome them all on your quest to raise an army capable of toppling the Master of Monsterkind himself?

Familiar Faces from DQXI and New Friends to Find

Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince features over 500 monsters to befriend, including Jasper Unbound and Krystalinda from Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age. Naturally, there will also be a selection of brand new monsters you’ve never seen before.

Jasper Unbound — The former general of a famous kingdom who succumbed to his own dark ambitions and transformed into a monster.

Krystalinda — An ice witch who was magically sealed inside a forbidden book in ancient times.

Greater Platypunk — A fluffy monster from the beast family that is widely considered a king among platypunks.

Gander — A monster from the demon family that appears before dying creatures to witness their final moments.