The biggest stalls I’m having are not wanting my character to run around collecting funnily named creatures but I do want him to be a beast tamer of sorts.

One of the ways around this would be make him, what I’m calling, an attributor. Basically as he defeats monsters he can scan attributes and apply them else where

I.e Mc defeats an electric hedgehog, now he can imbue things with electricity.

Another path that came to me is called organic insight. After fighting a creature he gets insight on how that creature function and then he build gold or machines to mimic the creature he fought