Beginners Guide + Teambuildingtips + Walktrough (WIP)

Prevent yourself from mistakes by reading at least the first section. Spoilerfree until section 2. This is a work in progress guide.

1. Read this before you start your first game

Hey welcome to my guide to Monster Sanctuary.

If you have any additions or find mistakes, let me know in the comments. Before you start your first game, you probably want to know the following things, because it will save you much time and prevent you from getting sad, because you wasted a limited item. That's because some things are unique or limited until the patches come out that give us unlimited supply of them. Don't destroy or donate them and use/choose them wisely. This first section is basically spoiler free. I dont't say or mean you should read or follow the whole guide. It's only the first section that i believe should be read before starting.

• The first thing you can't change and which is unique is your starting monster. You can't get the other three maybe until the game is finished. So, maybe when you are ready to start your game, look at the skilltrees of all four by starting new games before you fully dive into the game. Then chose something that you like and suits your playstyle. I've seen people using all of them for something, but you can perfectly play the game with all of them. My personal favourite is the bird. He can be very strong and used in various ways.
  
  
• There are only 4 shift stones and 2 switch stones.
  
  
• Shard of winter, sun stone, and magical clay are unique.
  
  
• The egg you get from the last boss is unique.
  
  
• Monk, minitaur, specter and steam golem can be gotten more than once, all other champions are unique.

As of my knowledge, that should be all things that are limited.

Important: As you explore the map, all champions get stronger. So exploring without leveling your team, will hurt you. So don't only run around dodging fights.

Here is how it works exactly:

The enemy scaling is based on the number of rooms you have discovered that have a Monster encounter inside of them. The more you explore, the stronger wild Monsters become.This also means that, if you missed a path in one of the earlier areas, and later come back to it, the Monsters there will be at your level.There's also a minimum level for some areas. The minimum level of Sun Palace is 18.

Also note that once a level is assigned to a room with monsters, they will stay at that level on that savegame. The idea of this system is to have similar experiences independent of the order the player explores the areas. (once you complete blue caves you are free to either explore stronghold dungeon, ancient woods or snowy peaks first). The level of your own monsters is not relevant for the enemy spawn levels.

If you want some beginners tips, learn about some mechanics and if you want to know how a good starting team looks like and much more, keep reading. From here, the guide will contain spoilers.

2. Basics

Most things are explained ingame quite well. I'll explain them anyway, because i can go more into deatail and strategy. Also I'll mention a few that aren't explained ingame, but i'll skip on the very basics ones. If you feel like there was missing something, let me know, because others might have the same question too.

So the game is basically made of two parts:

• jump, run, solve puzzles, and do minor quests
  
• monster catching, evolving, fighting and beating bosses

These two features interact, because your creatures will be needed to progress. They can help you to levitate, create objects to activate a switches etc. A list of what they can do and how to easily get these abilities is in the walkthrough part. How to acces hard to reach areas is explained in the handy tips part. That's because i want to focus on the mechanics here. If you checked out these sections and still are confused, then let me know. Your starting monster also has an ability, but the early monster you will get also can do the same, so don't be worried.

There is a battlerating system and the better you finish a fight, the more you will be rewarded. This is important when you are looking for rare drops, such as new monsters and weapons. The experience will be the same. The most important part is how fast you can finish a fight. Each monster uses 0,33 of a turn. (You can fight with three monster.) Second important is the health remaining of your team. Sometimes it's worth to heal yourself before killing of the enemy. You also get a bonus for overkill, where debuffs on the enemy will count towards this. Buffs on yourself also give a bonus fot this. When you encounter shifted monster you will want to get 5 or at least 4 stars, so you get the egg. I believe when you get 4 star them or more you always get the egg. If you have different informations, let me know. But this is a lategame feature, don't worry about this now. Champions will also give you their egg when you reach 5 stars, but you can reapeat these fights for free in the base, so don't worry about that. ALso the difficultiy of the enmey gives a bonus, but you can't really influence it. It depends on the level of the enemy compared to you as i believe.

The the combo system will be explained quite early and it is working from the first fight on. It Basically always increases the damage of the following actions in this turn and then resets. For every hit, heal and buff and debuff it adds 5%. If you use an attack with your first monster that deals damage 5 times, your next monster will deal 25% more damage. This is why you often use the supporter first. SOmetimes when you need a lot of heal, you can attack first, to increase the combometer before you use your healer. If you have to revive or use an item, always do it first. In the beginning it's not as important, but later on it will be possible to get high amounts of combocounters.

3. Handy Tips

First of all: If you can't progress because you don't know how to solve a puzzle, can't find the right ability to progress, ca't make a jump or you don't know what to do next: join the discord server. There you can get fast help for all kind of questions. You can just make a screenshot and ask your questions there. I'm sure more guides will come out, or i'll implement more information in this guide.

If you don't know where to explore, just check this map. More details will follow, also there is a nice guide by another player.


If you can't reach something there are several ways in general:

• If you want to travel high: Put a rock on the ground, just on the edge where you need it and jump from there. Also comes in handy in some situations where you don't need it, but it makes it easier.
  
  
• If you want to travel high and far: Levitate once you reached the highest point after the second jump. Also you can run to a cliff and do the first jump when it looks like you already left the cliff. (Or i have brainlag.) At least you can jump very very late.
  
  
• If you want to a platform right above yourself: Jump to the side, turn and immediatly jump again. Sometimes in combination with a rock.
  
  
• If you want to reach something that is beneath yourself: stand at the corner, go over the cliff, and press the direction you came from. Often you need to jump again at the right time and then levitate. Just make sure you equip a bird before you go over the cliff.
  
  
• Sometimes you want to jump and then levitate before you use the second jump.
  
  
• Sometimes you want to delay your second jump, so you don't hit the ceiling.
  
  
• Holding down space while jumpfing will make you jump higher.
  
  
• When you get the double jump, make sure you hit the space bar the second time right when you reached the highest point. To master this, is the hardest part.
  
  
• The jumping style needs some practice, situations where i needed 20 min in my firstplaythrough, were done in 3 tries when i encountered them in my next one.

Also some general things you want to take note of:

• Some chests can only be gotten through other areas. Same goes for levers etc. If you can't reach something, or activate something you might not be able to to it at this time. Make a note and come back later. If you see a plain wall, especially when it has roots in it, it can often be destroyed.
  
  
• When you encounter a riddle that you can't solve, give it 20 min. It's amazing how fast you can learn these. Afterwards you can still search for help.
  
  
• Try to make fight short by running full dps in normal fights, this way you get the most items.
  
  
• Upgrade about 6 weapons and 18 equipmentpieces to fully fullfill the needs of your team.
  
  
• Make sure you have enough manaregen or mana for your fights. If you have to use downranked skills, your loss is higher than if you cut off the other stat. In short fights, mana helps you out better and in long fights regeneration. When fixing mana issues, try to use food and the weapons, this is the easiest way.
  
  
• Don't explore too much without improving your team. Champions will level up and you don't.
  
  
• Once you have beaten a group of monsters, you need to kill three other ones, then the first one is respawned. This way you can make a nice circling route when you have four monster groups.
  
  
• You can do normal attacks and use items by pressing the arrow keys in fight.
  
  
• You can use downranked abilities if you don't have enough or want to save mana.
  
  
• There are currently only three screens with an open end that can't be explored. (Stronghold Dungeon in the upper section, ancient forest in the east and one in the snowy peaks.)

If you know other tips you want to share, let me know,i'll add them.

4. Planning and improving your team

The game is quite good at explaing everything. But for creating and improving your team, you need some planning and experience. You can have 6 members in your team and all get the same experience, but only 3 can be chosen for each figth. Generally you could make perfect team for every single fight. Find 3 monsters, that are resistant in this fight and hit the weakness of the enemy. But this would be hard to accomplish, because you would have to level so many monsters.

How should a team look in general: There is more than one way. Often you want a healer and a damage dealer. The healer is often also supporting and/or tanking. This is why yowie is such a good boy. He has massive hp, can buff, can heal and even has passive healing. You start with buffing, then healing or shielding if needed and finish with the damagedealer. This way you build up combo points before you attack. The tank is often the supporter and healer as well because you itemize him more defensively and he won't deal much damage anyway. Depending on what you are doing the second slot is often used for a second tank/healer/supporter or for a damagedealer. And the last one also needs to get out the real damage. You can build him super agressive, but in some fights you want to make you sure he can't be onehit.

How you setup your team depends on what you want t do with it. There are basically 4 type of fights:

• normal monsterfights
  
  
• keeperfights
  
  
• champions
  
  
• infinity arena

And then it depends if you only want to beat it to progress, or if you want to 5 star the fight. Any of these can be made easier by outleveling or outgearing them, getting the right food, or resetting a skill tree.

In normal monsterfights if is often beneficial if you kill everything fast. This gives many stars and thus many items. Even a small improvement can make a huge difference when fighting these. Instead of setting up a normal team, you can stack 3 catzerker (physical aoe) or frosty (magical aoe) to aoe the enemies down fast. The other approach is to run a normal team, for example: including a supporting healer/tank and a physical and a magical damage dealer. When you run a normal team, make sure you don't run out of mana and don't get onehit. Use and upgrade the right items and chosing the right food. If you go for the onehit build, make sure you take everything that increases your damage output.

Keeperfights are often quite hard, so outhealing their damage is kinda hard. Because they deal so much damage and your monsters die so fast, buffs are often not as good as well. You can try to counter their setup, outfarm them or do crazy stuff as i did with also running a 6 man aoe team. When it comes to items/food, it should be noted that hp is often worth taking in these fights, because for each round your creature lives, it can deal damage.

Most championfights are kinda easy compared to keeperfights, because you can just use items to heal and revive if needed. Most of the time you can't run a full damage team though. Getting in a defensive monster as yowie and getting enough hp so your creatures don't get onehit, or taking resistant creature will it make it easier. Just play it slow and defensive, you can 5 star them after the story.

Infinity arena depends on your goal: farm chests/badges or reach max level. I don't have much experience with max level runs, so i can't tell you much about this. For the farm i also recommend strong aoe teams, because they get much done in a short time. Else you need a well formed team to be able to counter everything. I would not bother with arena too early, better watch out where you can get good items from monsterdrops.

You can experiment by your own, in the next section i'll just show you how i built my teams.

5. Examples of teams and my own teams

I've written this part as a teambuilding playthrough. You don't need to follow this, it is just an example how would play to be efficient in some way.

Your first team will contain of your starting monsterr, a blob and any third egg you get. In the beginning fights are not too hard, so you can use any monsters you want.

Equip every item you find on 3 monsters, and if you swap one out tranfser the items to the new one. Make sure to match physical attackdamage with physical attackers and magicaldamage with magical attackers.

Then you should get a Yowie and a catzerker. Once you are level 3-5 you can get quite easily 3-5 star the yowie and the catzerkers. Earth attacks or fire attacks will help. These 2 are so good. Yowie is a great supporter and tank and catzerker deals insane physical damage. Get a second catzerker for later and it's even viable to run a third one.

So with your yowie as frontline tank and your catzerker as dps, there is one slot left in your team you use in championfights. You can use your starter, or get a monk later on, because he hits 3 weaknesses. Or even use 2 catzerker. There are also other possible candidates for this slot. If you have chosen eagle, he can do it. He has the super useful shock ability and can deal physical and magical damage. (Equip the right gear) Some went for light cat or evil eye in the last slot. This 3 man team is used against Champions.

Against normal monstergroups you can run one yowie and two catzerkers or even three of them. Yowie heals and buffs, and generates combo points and the catzerkers just double/triple aoe the enemies for fast fights and many stars. You will often have full hp after the fight and get 5 stars. What do you do when you meet physical resistant enemies? Change the catzerkers for two/three frosty, which you will get next. If you play this way it is important that you get the right gear and enough experience. It will take a bit time to get these, but in return you can onehit the normal monster and get a lot of experience and gold and equipment and other items fast.

So now you have a full team. Yowie+ 2 or 3 catzerker+2 or 3 frosty+X. My first playtrough was with 3 frosty, yowie, catzerker and monk. The 3 frosty mowed down alle enemies, because i set them on full magic aoe attack. Problems came when enemies are resistant to magic. This is why this setup is more fexible. If you dont mind grinding a bit experice you can get 3 catzerker and 3 frosty as i, mentioned, but then make sure you use three guys to fight and rotate yowie in the bench, so he gets experience.

I just did another playthrough with 3 catzerker and 3 frosty. I only leveled yowie a bit for beating the Champions, and either went with 2 frosty or 2 catzerker in the championfights. In the keeper fights i went with 3 catzerker and 3 frosty. Just aoe the enemies down fast, buffing and healing is not needed then. Running 3 of a magical and a physical team gave me the opportunity to kill most normal encounters in 1-2 turns. Had to farm a little bit of xp and gear though, but the shorter fights made it worth.

So how to equip and skill these guys: Yowie should get max hp. He won't deal much dmg anyway, and doesn't need defense because of his self heal. You can give him some manaregen and magicattack on the weapon if needed once you skilled his heals. Basically he just buffs and then heals in harder fights. In normal fights, he can just buff or attack to get combo counter up, followed by the double aoe finishers from the other 2 monsters. These should have max physical/magical attack. Skill yowie for all passive and active heals and his buffs and everything that gives a combo counter and then whats leftover in hp. Catzerker needs everythign that increases crit, crit dmg and the a strong aoe. The frosty need also the strongest aoe and everything that lets them deal a lot of damage. Also i took their passive starting shield.

Perfect gear for the catzerker: Katar+3, Fang+3, Impact Ring+3, Cape+3, this will give them 100% crit on their first (and only) hit each turn. This Crit will deal about 100+183+50=323% damage. Of course it slithly depens on the used food. And while i mention it: Depending on the level, early on you migth want to feed apples, later on you can go for anything that gives crit damage.


As for the Frosty you can go with Staff+3, Wizard Head+3, Scroll+3, Fang+3. This will give them maximum magic attack and thus starting shield.


For Keeperfights you might want to a vital ring or other items that give hp. This way you might get out an additional attack.

In lategame you can get shifted versions of your team and go for easy 5 stars on champions as well. L-Frosty, L-Eagle, D-Catzerker is a lategame combination that i found in the forum that should also help out there. Even triple D-catzerker should be viable.

Now you should be able to beat all champions, and normal fights. In infinity area you could use catzerker+yowie+ any 4 guys with different resistances or attacks for example. Hardest part might be the keeper fights. But if you follow these rules, you should be able to beat them.

6. Walkthrough

Maybe i will go more into detailed walkthrough later on. For now I'll only mention the basics. How to build your team on the way is mentioned above. While you are progressing, you should get most of the monsterabilities you need for puzzles just by fighting normally without grinding.

Some monsterabilities aren't needed for progression but only for getting to chests. Here are the abilities you need to have and an easy to obtain monster that can do this and where you get it:

Ability	Monster	Area
Move heavy blocks	Yowie	Mountain path
Levitate	Vaero	Mountain path
Break hidden walls	Yowie	Mountain path
Activate water orbs	Blob	Mountain path
Create a rock obstacle	Rocky	Mountain Path
Activate fire orbs	Magmapillar	Mountain Path
Dark room vision	Nightwing	Ancient woods
Activate earth orbs	Goblin brute	Ancient woods
Activate lightning orbs	Crackle knight	Stronghold dungeon
Swimming	Koi	Beat the current endboss

Also there are currently some more abilities you can use to get an additional chest. Basically it's the activation of orbs but at range.

Ability	Monster	Area
Activate ice orbs from far away	Mogwai	Snowy peaks
Activate fire orbs from far away	Goblin Hood	Ancient woods
Activate earth orbs from far away	Toxicuus	Stronghold dungeon

7. Puzzles

Since it was requestet, here the solution for the lever puzzle in the ancient woods. Just activate the levers in the order of the pictures.


Pull the following lever, get the chest and pull it again.

The puzzle with the 4 water orbs is solved by the following: stand in front of one on the bottom, at the furthest range from which you can activate it. Activate it and immediatly run and jump to the top. It might need some tries to find the perfect jump. Activate both orbs on the way. Activate them in the run and not only when you are right in front of them, you can activate them from a bit away. Don't stand still to activate them, and jump early over them, Right after you pressed the activation, so you don't touch them. Every split second Counts. Drop down and activate the last one. It will still take some tries, but it can be done.

The puzzle with the 7 levers is solved as the following and i quote Isengoethe, thanks for the answer:

"Levers are numbered from left to right 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and gates are numbered from left to right 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Levers 1, 2, 3 activate Gates 1, 2. Levers 4, 5, 6, 7 activate Gates 3, 4, 5.

Assuming that all Gates where previously closed at start, pull Levers 1, 3, 4, 6, 7."

If you need another solution for a puzzle, let me know. I didn't figure out the puzzle with the 7 levers atm. Feel free to offer a solution, because i just pulled them until i could pass, it worked out it all playthroughs, but it needed 5-10 min.

8. Feedback and Links

So that's it for now, if you need more details or have questions let me know. I really would appreciate feedback to improve this guide. I will also try to keep it up to date and if you like it, feel free to rate it. :)

If you like browsing the wiki to get specific informations on monsters etc. you can browse here:

https://monster-sanctuary.fandom.com/wiki/Monster_Sanctuary_Wiki

Also there is a nice guide on where to find which monster etc.:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1849909203

There is also a second beginner guide in the guide section. Sadfully we had the same idea at the same time as it seems. Since i already put a lot of work i don't really want to delete it. He didn't cover all things i did, but i didn't cover everythign he wrote. So maybe check this out:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1851743162

Thanks to Conan The Librarian who helped me out with his experience in creating guides.

[fyrefly1998]

For the lever puzzle, you actually only need to pull three levers. There are probably quite a few solutions. I think, going by your numbering, I pulled levers 5,4, and 2? Something like that.

[Origami Angel]

nice guide, thanks sir

[Isengoethe]

Regarding the Sun Lever Puzzle: I played a new game and it seems not all Gates are closed at the start as I initially assumed. From left to right number the gates 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Only Gates 4, 3, and 1 are initially closed. Pull Levers 1, 2, 5, 6, 7.

Assuming that the Levers have starting bits of:
Lever 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Bit 0 0 1 1 1 1 0

Gates are 1 if open, 0 if closed,
Gate 1 is connected to Lever 1, and 2 by AND
Gate 2 is connected to Lever 2, and 3 by AND
Gate 3 is connected to Lever 2, and 7 by AND
Gate 4 is connected to Lever 5, and 6 by NOR
Gate 5 is connected to Lever 4, and 5 by OR

P.S. I might have overcomplicated things.

[lorinc]

"I believe when you get 4 star them or more you always get the egg. If you have different informations, let me know." 4 stars do not always give egg.

[Julian Peter Haas]

FInal Level cap is planned for being 40, right now 25 is the current one.

[unrealph]

So the level cap is 25?

[Julian Peter Haas]

To be honest, easiest way is to level up aoe-guys and give them strong equipment. if you want to do the "normal way" it's just testing out and look at what is killing you or why you can't kill him. The more boring way is to spam catzerkers. But maybe somebody in doscord has a good idea.

[Tchey]

Thanks for all this work. Would be neat also to have a guide on creatures, what does what, how to use at best, example teams, etc. I'm almost end-game now (final boss still killing me but i'm improving), but i'd enjoy such a reading.

[Julian Peter Haas]

That's because the first attack gets a 50% crit Bonus and a 40% dmg Bonus by the skilltree. So with level one it deals 1,6 (dmg of shred) * (2,83+0,5) (crit modifier) *1,4 (skillmodifier) as dmg. So 7,45. When you use Level 2, it is 1*(2,83+0,5)*1,4 (first hit) + 0,5+(0,5*2,83+05) (average dmg of the second hit) average dmg. That's 6,82, what is less. It's close, but in favor of Level one. Also it deals consistant dmg, because you always crit. Once i had enough mana to use Level 2 skills twice, i changed to the skill from the second tree.

[Chaz]

I have a question regarding the catzerker build, why didn't you use the second level of shred? I'm running 1 L cat and 2 D cats and with level 2 shred, there's pretty much nothing that can survive a whole wave of that :)