Normal vs Epic beast taming

[Lane]

Read a whole bunch of threads on beast taming but can't find answer to this one...

I know I can get legendary named beasts later, but right now I am thinking of taming a low lvl basic beast and lvling it up through stages myself. Is there a difference between a normal growth stage beast vs epic growth stage beast? Does epic has better stats or something else going for it? Or its just starts with a few lvls head start.

While we are at it, do legendary named beasts have better stats or difference is just in some unique masteries they might have?

[Elendil_the_Tall]

The only real difference is that you get to pick the growth masteries, and you also get any masteries unlocked through job leveling.

[Kaysoky]

Legendary beasts have different base stats and more importantly, different skills.

For example, the Legendary Tima Ash has access to the "Turn over a New Leaf" skill, while also having higher base HP and attack than a generic Magma Tima. Another Fire-ESP legendary Tima named Crimson Fang, has a different skill (Fire Tornado), and higher ESP power compared to generic Tima.

Once you get to the end game, there are also three legendary beasts that start at level 53, which is 3 levels higher than the maximum level. This effectively means they get a free Growth Potential trait.

[Lane]

Ooooh the abilities, right! Thanks alot of good info. Back to original question tho, did I understand it correctly. There is no difference between starting from basic or epic beast apart from epic being abit higher on lvls?

[MayamSP]

Originally posted by Lane:

Ooooh the abilities, right! Thanks alot of good info. Back to original question tho, did I understand it correctly. There is no difference between starting from basic or epic beast apart from epic being abit higher on lvls?

Every time a beast evolves it gets a new personal mastery. There are several types of personal masteries but 2 of them specifically "Genetics" and Elemental SP masteries are unchangeable if you take them. If you tame a high level beast then it might come with some genetic or element mastery that you do not want in your build, it will just eat up your mastery slot and you won't be able to do anything except tame another beast.

This is the reason why if it is possible to evolve a beast you you should always tame and train the lowest level one so that you can take your time and think about what mastery you want.
Check out this guide if you wanna know which beasts evolve into what and which beasts can only be obtained fully evolved:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2020436206

[Darth Cannabis]

Mayam explains it well, as well as explaining why it personal took me so long to build up my own beasts.

Basically, the earlier you get a beast in its evolution past, its all about insuring the training along the way. Almost always, training for extra mastery slots are vastly preferred to me over genetic or esp (the main exception when creating a true elemental beast, but even then I want at least 2 trainable growth slots).

So to control this, you get the beast as early in evolution as possible when possible. Some things thou, you don't have the option on. Most legendary beasts, only have that one evolution, no previous ones and a few of the unique epics do as well. There is even that one outlier elite, with only a single evolution (Mutant Venom Yasha, is a bit of an odd duck in that one). On those, its up to the rng gods when you capture it, as to what growth masteries you get, and whether the previous ones are retrainable or not.

So in my case, in every case I could evolve, level and develop from the base form I did. In the cases of unique beasts with one evolution and no previous forms, or even some with only 2 (red dorori), we could see up to a dozen captures of a single beast before rng gave me either a specific growth mastery desired, or at least 2 out of 3 retrainable. This adds up to a lot of time spent on beasts alone.