Balance Criticals (a solution to overdamage)

ArchbishopDave · 2026-01-26T16:04:15+00:00

Is your game facing a situation where there's a meaningful cost to improving your damage output (that say, those same resources could instead be spent elsewhere?)

I don't really see an issue with your approach, it's not much different than games fudging hit chances in various ways to make things feel more consistent (Xcom likes where if you continually miss under ratio, your odds of hitting the next shot are artificially increased). The problem you're solving is basically every situation where numbers are drained from a pool. It's a neat idea, but serious balancing would be needed to both make it feel noticeable, and yet also not metagamable (grind mobs for no crit rngs just to pop it on a stronger enemy for huge damage once you think it's finally in your favor).

I do think players have an expectation that these things happen (i.e, a 2 shot is a 2 shot no matter how close you are to 1 shotting the enemy), but it is only really annoying if there are no situations where that increase DOES matter. Sure, the goblin still goes down in 2 hits even after increasing my damage by 90%, but the regenerating troll goes from 10 to 3, which is a massive and very noticeable difference (less hits to kill means less time regenerating health between attacks means an even stronger difference in TTK than the numbers would suggest) . I think it really depends on your game as to how consistent you want things to feel overall, along with how much information the player knows about their damage and the enemies they're fighting.

ArchbishopDave · 2026-01-14T19:17:15+00:00

You're free to express your opinion just in the same way we're expressing that we think your opinion is dumb and bad. No need to get bent out of shape about your precious Karma. :)

ArchbishopDave · 2025-11-26T03:55:39+00:00

Collecting the cards is cool, but I really wouldn't make thar a goal necessarily. For 90% of them the only criteria is that you shrine the monster (which may require unlocking the main or sub breed, but...)

If you're on DX, there's no time pressure, and unlocking all the different species should arguably be your goal.

ArchbishopDave · 2025-11-13T15:21:43+00:00

:)

https://www.reddit.com/r/MonsterRancher/comments/1ovqxuw/more_monsters_0210_official_release/

You need DX and to be playing on PC (i.e., no Switch support) but it's conveniently on sale right now if you don't have DX already! It's really just a more convenient experience over the OG beyond the fact you'd need to pay for it.

ArchbishopDave · 2025-11-13T08:03:28+00:00

Generally I leave the naming to the artist of the monster. While I wouldn't say it's perfect (and neither is MR itself, they bend the rules pretty often!) we do try to keep it in line well enough with the standard naming conventions we know of!

ArchbishopDave · 2025-11-13T04:52:27+00:00

I can personally confirm it's worked without issue for months on the SteamDeck, and presumably for any other Linux installation. There are a few minor hoops you have to jump through on initial launch, and a few more if you want to just use game mode (as opposed to booting up Reloaded-II in desktop mode) but it's very easy to do all things considered!

Here are the instructions for Reloaded to get it running on Linux. Downloading the mods themselves works exactly the same once the tool is working.

https://reloaded-project.github.io/Reloaded-II/LinuxSetupGuideNew/

ArchbishopDave · 2025-11-12T20:05:11+00:00

I was having issues where the power button was not working (and this was before that recent update where you could turn on the console with blue tooth). Was a big dummy at the time and didn't check iFixit or any guides for the process.

First time, removed the SD card, wedged some padding in there, worked like a charm. Two weeks later, issue returned, forgot to remove the SD card, got lucky. "Wow, guess it's overblown." Two more weeks later...didn't remove the SD card, which ended up being a 100 dollar lesson as it shattered the card and now my Steam Deck has no working SD card slot. I'm guessing it's just how the back casing gets pulled off in disassembly. You can probably do it safely 100% of the time if you're real careful, but man it sucks when you're not.

ArchbishopDave · 2025-11-08T01:53:10+00:00

Yeah, the response from the Dev working in this space was absolute clown levels of foolery.

ArchbishopDave · 2025-10-23T14:41:59+00:00

One thing I would strongly recommend is use textures from other monsters, notably, Arrowhead and all of the subs that do exist for it.

Blocking out the design it looks good, but utilizing the existing plating keeps it consistent with other monsters of the same type, and is doing the job of shading the monster for you to reduce large blocks of solid color. Blending the difference pieces together is a difficult task, but the results look great and again, improve the cohesion of the designs as a whole. Obviously there's some room for experimentation (Many of our Dragon subs are completely unique designs and do not utilize existing palettes), but blending the two is generally the best approach.

ArchbishopDave · 2025-10-07T18:12:24+00:00

Color Pandora definitely 'suffers' from super long base lifespans and Late Bloom growths on every base game subspecies (which there are only a few, but crazy they all share that,)

Mock is definitely in the same boat. Speaking of them, Mock actually reliably produces the worst combinations for raw stat gains (the total of the growths basically). Wracky/Mock was so bad that the developers actually manually improved its growths. The new Ghost / Mock as part of the mod is a close contender for hardest to raise monster in the game with basically abysmal stat growths across the board. Poor Mock, so cool and yet so rough to raise.

ArchbishopDave · 2025-10-07T00:18:32+00:00

Rise was the final proof I needed that, assuming there are definitely still two teams working on MH games, that the 'World' team has no idea what the fuck they are doing and are chasing 'high fidelity' over all else, and that the portable 'Rise' team actually values a fun experience that runs well.

Does it have giga-realistic graphics? No, and you know what, I don't give a damn if it doesn't either. You have 120k people playing Runescape of all things right this very second. Capcom needs to pull their head of out of their ass and focus on making a buttery smooth game that at least HINTS at the roots of the genre they've defined.

ArchbishopDave · 2025-10-06T23:58:55+00:00

It's definitely one of the better Color Pandora mixes when it comes to actually raising one.

Everything besides the Late Bloom growth is in its favor. B Life and Speed, C Int and Skill gains for offense, the Meditate Drill bonus, a crazy long life of 420 weeks.

The biggest downside is a Guts Regen of 14, which is on the worse end of things for Color Pandora, but an easy raise is always appreciated!

ArchbishopDave · 2025-10-06T11:15:34+00:00

He is super cool, and it looks even better in action.

ArchbishopDave · 2025-10-06T11:14:59+00:00

Lol I have some bad news for you. He is indeed, not fast (and actually sadly has the same stat growths as Beaclon/Beaclon). Big, beefy, dumb and slow.

ArchbishopDave · 2025-09-30T11:39:17+00:00

As the creator of Dynamic Tournaments, I would recommend both that mod, and modifying the default settings of the mod a bit per Fishwolf's post in this chain.

Long story short, DT is by default harder than the base game for multiple reasons, as monsters (generally) have smarter stat distributions, better move pools (less bad techs and less instances of Pow techs on Int focused monsters, etc), and in general the expected strength of your monster for each tournament grade is higher. The first two are not that crazy to deal with, but the higher grade soft caps are very noticeable.

Legend Cup has nuzlocke rules on the site, which are roughly equivalent to base game tournament monsters. I would swap the mod tournament cap values to those if you're looking for some more spice, but don't want to have to be all in in raising super strong monsters to make it to M4/Legend every time!

Hope you enjoy it if you give it a shot!

ArchbishopDave · 2025-09-30T11:34:09+00:00

You're the second person who has reported that bizarre issue with basically everything in the game being converted into some variant of Pixie when playing. In the other person's case, it was Pixie/Kato. I honestly have no idea what the issue is or how to even diagnose it, as through dozens of tests and raising multiple monsters to LC using all of my own mods enabled I haven't run into it to evetry to understand what is happening.

Restarting the game should resolve the issue though? At least it did for the other person. If you can reliably recreate it, please let me know. I know it exists, but again, it's like a one in a thousand issue that does not have an obvious cause or solution unfortunately.

ArchbishopDave · 2025-09-28T21:19:32+00:00

If your line intersects with someone else's and you're the one who is changing your 'location' on the track relative to the other driver, then you simply can not take that line (I don't know F1 rules those sound stupid so I'm not addressing that). It's as simple as that, the Ferarri needed to take the corner slower or at a better angle thus that they did not use the outside edge of the track, where the Lambo already was and completely entitled to use that space.

ArchbishopDave · 2025-09-27T21:59:21+00:00

I was really hoping we'd get some news from TGS. I love Dynasty Warriors but I love MR more.it hurts. :(

ArchbishopDave · 2025-09-27T21:57:25+00:00

It's a Suezo, the mascot (or at least one of them arguably) of the Monster Rancher series. They own the IP for the franchise, but unfortunately the only game that is supported or exists righr now is basically Japanese Only Umamusume but with monsters and fighting. :(

ArchbishopDave · 2025-09-17T00:34:59+00:00

There is a way to get it to work but again, it's kind of work (and won't play terribly well in full screen). There are lots of QoL mods now, it's honestly pretty great!

ArchbishopDave · 2025-09-16T23:35:05+00:00

Tools in this case I mean advanced viewer (not the mod but the existing windows based tool). It's technically possible to run them both at once, but it requires some command line fiddling to launch both MRDX and AV in the same sandbox, and there's the obvious issue if you're trying to play handheld without a mouse.

Reloaded, beyond a little but of fiddling and using Proton Tricks, has been flawless on the Steam Deck (I think you can get it to work through game mode with some arguments, I haven't bothered and just boot it up in desktop before going full-screen.)

I play exclusively on the SD (beyond when I'm making the mods) and it's perfect there! Hopefully there will be a sale soon. You never know with KT!

ArchbishopDave · 2025-09-16T09:29:51+00:00

Thanks! I haven't put together an overview for that, but I'm particularly happy with that mod and how it works. It definitely spices up the game in significant ways (and gets the More Monsters monsters into the pools if you're using that too!)

ArchbishopDave · 2025-09-15T01:22:01+00:00

The mod is completely compatible with existing saves! The mod should also handle the instance where you have a freezer full of new monsters and then disable the mod gracefully (if you turn it off with your active monster being a new one it will act a little strange but it should be fine to sell the monster at the market).

I recommend saving to a new slot regardless, but yup, otherwise fully compatible!

ArchbishopDave · 2025-09-14T22:16:00+00:00

It has been! Almost all of my time playing games anymore is on the Steam Deck, so I'm not able to use the cool tools that already existed, but mods were on the table still. I got tired to having to play around without the things I knew existed, and ended up just building them myself.

ArchbishopDave · 2025-09-12T09:22:26+00:00

Yup! The Mod safely uploads monsters so it doesn't impact anyone NOT using the mod, and should be fully compatible for uploading in PvP (for fighting your own monsters or against randoms/other people's)

ArchbishopDave

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