Beginner's Guide : A few things I wish I knew starting out!

[krunjar]

MSM - Beginners Guide.

Likes

The first thing to understand about monsters is their coin RATE and coin MAX. Coin rate does increase with the multiple element monsters but the best reason to breed those sweet quads is coin MAX. Which allows a monster to stockpile more coins before they stop. Why is this relevant to likes? Well you see the fact is that a monster's likes only affect it’s coin rate not it’s coin max. Therefore going out of your way at the start to give single or even double element monsters their likes is a complete waste of time as they fill up in a few minutes anyway. However the likes of triple and especially quad elemental monsters are very important. Long story short. Don’t worry about likes at the beginning .. just breed more monsters and keep upgrading that castle. On the other hand with the higher element monsters' coin rate and their likes become very important! Make sure to keep those 3x and 4x monsters at 100% if at all possible. As a higher coin rate can shave hours off their time to hit max.

Later on once you can afford to drop a cool mil. Get a unity tree asap. This will make it so that likes anywhere, even in your warehouse will still count! Don't’ bother trying to play monster/deco tetris like I did. It’s a waste of time!

Coin Production

This is the first thing you’re going to want to get up off the ground. First thing that needs to be understood is that 1 and 2 element monsters are very low earners because of their low coin max. They can earn decently if you were to watch them 24/7 but no one’s got time for that. That being the case you want to focus on multiple 3 and 4 elemental monsters. Not that you don’t want the 1’s and 2’s on your island. The song and aesthetics are important! But just bear in mind these aren’t your bread and butter.

3 elemental monsters will typically earn between 12-16k every couple of hours at level 10. Whereas quad elementals will stockpile 80-120k over a 8-12 hour period. Your strategy should be influenced by how often you check your monsters. As most 3 element monsters are 4 square 3 beds they can be mass produced and be better earners than 4 element if you check them often. But if you only check like once a day or less .. 4 element monsters win every time.

Feeding

Most monsters initially should only be fed up to level 4. When it comes to feeding less is more because the cost of feeding increases exponentially the higher the level is. However the benefits of increasing a monster’s level on it’s stats stay the same. Later on when food becomes more plentiful I feed most of my monsters to level 10 as this is the point at which feeding them becomes REALLY prohibitive. And also where they get their 2nd size upgrade. Initially all gold you don’t spend on castle upgrades should be spent on food. As mentioned before, decorations for low tier monsters don’t really do much. The exception is when wishing torches unlock as you want to get these up asap. Other than that it’s up to you of course but in general it’s always a better investment to upgrade the castle and make more higher tier monsters than it is to try and pump food into the few you have. Get those easy lower levels and move on!

The key to feeding strategy is balancing the expected benefit of feeding a monster vs it's impact on your food production. Which raises as overall coin production does. As with more spare coins you will be able to bake more. The main thing to be careful of is not too overfeed a monster when leveling them isn't going to benefit you much in comparison to feeding another monster that could give that same benefit for much less food.

The last thing to bear in mind when feeding monsters is breeding chance. Higher level monsters used in breeding will improve the chance of breeding any monster three and up that has a less than 100% breed. It's more than practical to breed 3's and 4's with 10's for quite a awhile however. But if you're trying for rare's seasonals or ethereals you might want to pick a breeding pair to feed up.

Breeding

Okay the first thing to address is wishing torches to really get into breeding you need friends and torches! Each one lit increases your chances of breeding any monster that has less than 100% chance and that’s most of the good ones. And of course do as your done bye and light your friends torches! You can click the flame tab in friends to see what friends have unlit torches and just run down the list. Some people change their display names to request lit torches on a particular island so try and accommodate those requests when you can!

Now to address breeding chances. As far as I can tell 2 element combinations have a 100% or near 100% chance of breeding. So as long as you get their elemental combination right you are golden. Triple elemental monsters aren’t that difficult to breed but don’t have a 100% chance. Quads, Myhicals and the much coveted ethereals is where you’re really going to want your torches lit XD

For specific combinations to breed certain monsters there is a wiki so I won’t go into the fine details the Wiki also has which combinations have the shortest possible average incubation times in case of failure. What I’m going to cover today is what monsters you should go for first and in what order.

Without any shadow of a doubt once you have your wishing torches going you should 100% rush the island's quad monster. As well as get one of every triple element monster. There is no need to breed multiple triples at first.

Next up will depend on how often you check. If you want more quads .. then try and breed them with the combination that has good results either way. For example on cold island the best combination for Deej is Thumper and Toejam. Because the most common result is a toejam which takes 2 minutes to hatch and sell. And then you can just breed again. And even if you get thumper .. that’s a good 3 element monster!

However on each island I like to have a balance between 4-6 quad element monsters and many 3 element monsters. Breeding 3 elements without a quad can be a pain. However the coveted ethereals are gained by breeding a 4 and a 3 element monster. However over 90% of the time this pairing will fail .. and produce a 3 element monster of the same type as the 3 element parent. This strategy is very useful when breeding 3 element monsters for wublins and when populating your island with 3 element monsters. As not only are you getting an almost certain monster of the type you want but you’re constantly rolling on that sweet sweet ethereal. This is why you want to rush the quad monster!

Mythical monsters require a VERY specific combination and are a pain in the butt as there’s no real way to fail successfully like there is with ethereals. Both the parents are 3 elementals so each failed breeding occupies your structures for a long time without diamonds. They also aren’t that special financially. So getting a couple to finish off the song should be all you really need. This is the ONE monster I would be tempted to spend diamonds on to speed up breeding. I’m not advocating it but unless you are very lucky it would probably save you a lot of time.

While ethereal monsters are somewhat difficult to breed meaning they can't really be relied upon as a go to strategy for starting out. It should be noted that these are by FAR the most efficient monsters you can own on the natural islands. Both their coin rate and coin max outclassing quads. The 5 beds they take up can be an issue with planning an island on a coin only castle though.

EDIT : There is one particularly standout monster among the 3 elementals and this is the humble Congle. They store almost 30k at rank 10 which is about twice as much as most of the others so if you're looking to min max these will probably out produce any other 3x element monsters.

Wublins

Wublin island is rather unique and is unlocked fairly early; it is an electricity themed island with a very different way of getting monsters. There is no feeding or even castle upgrading. No beds to worry about. You buy the monsters as statues for 5k each and need to wake them up by zapping eggs from your main islands to them. So .. why would you want to rush these guys?

Each wublin when they become active or are collected from will randomly roll between 6-12 hours and randomly generate a resource. Each wublin regardless of type will generate either 2 diamond, 10k ish food, 50k ish gold or about 500 ish shards! That’s a lot of resources!

Wublins are awakened by filling their inventory with specific eggs in specific quantities. All of these are zapped from the other island .. Note I said EGGS not MONSTERS once an egg is in the nursery it’s useless to the wublins. The second factor to bear in mind is that once you give a wublin it’s first egg you will have a limited time to fill it’s inventory before all of the eggs inside are lost and you have to start over from scratch. This can be used to your advantage of course. But if you’re actually trying to wake up a particular statue and not using it as a dump (explained later.) It’s a good idea to line up some of it’s more time consuming eggs ready to hatch before you give it the first one.

What they cost more than anything is time in your breeding structures. So before you go hard on wublins my recommendation is to get plant and cold island nicely filled out. This is so you can awaken the almighty Zynth!

Most people fill their wublin island with mostly zynth's. The reason for this is simple. They take only 4 spaces (Most wublins take 9) And are relatively easy to awaken. Requiring only eggs from the first two islands. If you’re planning on getting the whole wublin song and getting all the 9 tile ones. Which I do recommend. It’s not all about the min max yo XD Then there are also a couple of those that are easy awakens. But zynth is the one you want to spam.

If you check out the wiki there’s a very good article on optimal Wublin placement. It will take quite a while to fill out your Zynths. If you have diamonds you may want to invest in additional breeding structures or even the mirror plant/cold islands. The faster you can churn out eggs the faster you can wake up the wublins.

Another wonderful use for these dormant statues is the hard to awaken ones. Those 9 square ones that take 10’s or 20’s of eggs? These can be used to dump your failed breeds in. Let’s say you have a quad or ethereal cooking in the nursery. But you don’t want your mating structures to get stalled trying for more? Dump the failed eggs in wublins once they finish. Not the ones you actually WANT to awaken but the ones you don’t. This is why I don’t plan to wake up the 9 square wublins for a long time. They are such a convenient trash bin for eggs!

Diamonds!

Ahh the eternal question .. what to spend diamonds on .. first of all DON’T spend diamonds speeding up monsters. It’s a criminal waste that you WILL regret later trust me! Also don’t buy like 1000 diamonds and then buy the ethereal! I didn’t do this one but I see that a lot. Like lvl 5 with no entbrat and an ethereal .. 1000 diamonds can be so much better spent! For this matter don’t buy monsters outright period. (Other than a single element for coins ofc.) Breeding is easy to learn and just takes time.

What to spend your diamonds on : -

Additional Breeding structures and Nursery structures and their upgrades. Breeding power matters!

Castle upgrades, After a while your castle upgrades will stop costing coin and start costing gems. If you wish to fill out with lots of 3 and 4 element monsters to supercharge and islands coin profit this is a nice way to spend gems.

Mirror Islands! At level 20 you will get access to mirror islands which is basically just a copy of islands you already own. Why would you want this? Because it’s much easier to make a profit on the lower level islands. Castle upgrades and such cost more and more money the further along the island list you go. However quad elemental monsters on plant island compete with any other quad for coin production. No island is as easy to develop into a profit than your first. The reason you go to other islands other than ofc cool monsters and songs is because plant island gets tapped out.

Also since the song is the same you can go full min max on the mirror island if you like. I’m still a level from unlocking these myself but I plan to fill my mirror island with quads for mucho coinage.

Structure upgrades!

This is less important but if you need more room in your warehouse/hotel structures the only way to upgrade those is with diamonds. Remember that decorations in storage still count for likes as long as you have a unity tree!

Initial Offers : Just a note :- If you ARE planning to spend money Buy a very small amount of diamonds at first. After the game clues on that you are willing to spend it will start throwing the new player packs at you which are very economical. It’s up to you how many of these you want to buy. But a smart person will tease out these packs as you get lots of food diamond coins and even keys!

[Starbucaneer]

Thanks for the info Krunjar, there is very useful information that I wish I had known at the start. Although I do like to go into a game blind and learn as I go. I usually dip into youtube or steam guides when I get stuck. With MSM I wish I had known a bit more beforehand and this guide would have been VERY welcome indeed

[lalaithan]

Why in the world would you stop at level 4 when leveling monsters? There are perks beyond size when leveling them up.

[123]

Thanks that is a neat guide!

However, I don't agree on the leveling point either, supposedly even breeding chances are influenced by monster levels (see ingame tip). I'd go to Level 8 for a start, that is well doable even for new players and a bit later on I'd level them to 10.

Midst-game I leveled at least my breeders and quads to level 12 - quads do become tadbit expensive, though, so that is a matter of how much food you got.

Endgame you will want to level as many monsters as possible to 16 as an additional bonus drop source (diamonds, keys, relics). Rare, epics, quads and ethereals seem to have the best drop rates for this.

About the Zynth-farm: I'd start zynths as soon as I got air island, focusing everything on the zynth farm in the beginning. The food and coins they give are most valuable then, and later on you depend on a full farm to get diamonds.

[krunjar]

Ah perhaps I was not clear. I only said you should stop levelling them at 4 while you are new and food and coin is still tight. This is a BEGINNERS guide after all :) I also suggested moving on to level 10 pretty fast but that the levels beyond that are very difficult for a new/medium player. It's just not worth levelling the low monsters early beyond four because you're trying to rush the multiple element monsters. There's always different opinions though and if you disagree with me I respect it :)

I will edit the guide to make it clearer.

[ak-ryuu]

Originally posted by Blödhgarm:

Some other basic tips from my tribe's community
https://discord.gg/torcht1tans
Consider joining our discord community, we're testing and documenting all the best practices of MSM.

Note that this is not a tribe discord (I know Blödhgarm knows, but it was maybe phrased a little ambiguously) -- it's a general MSM Community server, all are welcome there, you don't need to be a member of or even interested in in the associated tribes.

(The community has been around almost as long as the Steam version on the game, and later also started a tribe of (almost) the same name) because there was demand for it, but there's many other tribes represented there as well :))

[LadyBoss85]

I played this game a long time ago, via BigFish. When you raised a monster to lvl 15, you transfer it to the Gold Island, and it was gone on the original island. Now it stays there. Kind of confusing..
Love the game, just figuring out what monsters are the effort to feed fully and transfer.
PS: So many new islands, very nice ! Thanx

[krunjar]

And a bonus tip that may or may not work that I just discovered. When you are lighting torches it seems like when you visit a friend the island wheel is set to a random island. I have a theory that it's not so random but rather the island you get set to is the island that your friend was on before they logged out. Why is this important? Well you have two kinds of torch lighters. Ones that will light the torches you request in your names .. and ones that will smash the first torch they can and go because they got 100 other friends to do XD. However if you are careful and always log out in the island you want torches lit on you can direct their random smashing of torches where you please ;) Also it's just nice even for the directed ones so they don't have to scroll through your islands to get the one you want. We all got lotsa torches to light XD. So it's appreciated when you don't tell me to light water then log on wublin.

[123]

It's not a theory, but a fact mobile players found out years ago ;-). You log out, you define the island your friends see. So yea, if there's nothing said in the name it is good advise to light the island right in front of you, because many players log out on the island where they need torches, most of all.

Min-max pro-tip: Note that when you are ingame, your friends will always see the island you have been on LAST (it seems to save on switching) - so if you spend some time, for example, on the colossingum it might be worth it to visit the island you want to be lit right before, this will show then while you do matches etc. just as if you logged out on it.

[[SST] RAGE4ORDER]

Something else about feeding monsters. A level 20 monster will randomly give you extra coins, gems, or food. And be highlighted by shiny yellow stars.

[123]

Actually.... the above is partly right, a level 16+ monster will give you "Bonus items": 10k Food, 1 Gem, 1 Relic, 5 Star Power, or 1 Key, additionally to the regular coin amount they give anyway. The chances are higher for 20s, but it is also wayyyy more costly to feed a monster to 20, so to get Bonus Items I'd level monsters to 16, first of all.
And if you wanna prioritize even further, level quad-elements, rares and epics to 16, first of all, because they also have higher rates for Bonus Items.

For Info about this, see:
https://mysingingmonsters.fandom.com/wiki/Bonus_Items

[Yoshi Master Kyle]

Originally posted by lalaithan:

Why in the world would you stop at level 4 when leveling monsters? There are perks beyond size when leveling them up.

yes for example:every single teleporting island,gold island and also bonus items,breeding being easier not to mention better currency production oh and theres also the fact that they look bigger than before