Monstermon Trainer - changes and full feature guide

New in 1.10.4 (luck, elites, monster balance)
 - Monster balance: before you choose your starter you pick how strong your monsters are, to match the difficulty of your game. Normal: as before. Nightmare: +12% life and damage for your monsters. Insane: +29%. (Measured: on Nightmare ToME's ordinary creatures are about 18% stronger than on Normal at the same player level, on Insane about 43%; your monsters get two thirds of that. Madness games can use Insane.) Insane Nightmare: a challenge where your monsters are 15%, 20% or 25% weaker (you pick). The balance of your game's difficulty is highlighted. Older characters are asked once.
 - Elites: a creature caught as an elite keeps its strength: +20% life and damage over others of its kind (rares +25%, uniques +30%), and still joins up to five levels above you. They are much harder to catch now: an elite counts x0.25 (was x0.45), a rare x0.12 (was x0.20). Elites caught before this version get their strength too.
 - Luck: every 10 Luck above 50 gives +3% on the Lucky Mudsnout (25% to win at 50 Luck, 28% at 60, 31% at 70; less below 50). The machine shows your chance. Luck also helps a little when you throw an orb: x1.03 for every 10 Luck above 50 (shown in the capture details).
 - The slot machine's odds were checked over 400,000 simulated spins and 3,000 real ones: the win chance and every prize come out as listed.

New in 1.10.3 (new monster art)
 - Every monstermon has a new, more detailed sprite, painted closer to the look of ToME's own creatures: real anatomy instead of cartoon shapes, fur, scales, shell and stone that catch the light, and the soft ground shadow the game's monsters have. The five Primordials, their elites and Archmage Merrowin were redrawn too.
 - No two lines look alike any more. The frostkit is now a white winter stoat (it was one of four rabbits); the glacihare is a gaunt ice predator with blade-like ice ears, clearly different from the burrowbun line; the brambleback is a boar gone to bark and moss under its bramble thicket, no longer a brown twin of the grizzleboar.
 - Radiant monsters are now a different colour, like a shiny: each monstermon has its own radiant colours (a black-and-gold drakeling, a white thornstag with autumn antlers, a white raven of a dirgebird, a silkweaver in a golden web, a green-glowing lanternfly...). Radiant creatures that are not monstermon get a golden tint. A radiant monster keeps its colours when it evolves.
 - Big monsters (montagor, hoarfang, frostmaul, elderoot, dreadwraith, skyrender, terragorge, hydrabyss, tidalisk, abyssmaw, quarrywurm, gorgeflower) are drawn two tiles tall, like ToME's own giants and wyrms. Merrowin and Old Cobble too.
 - Old saves: your monsters get their new look (and their radiant colours) the next time you send them out.

New in 1.10.2 (bug fixes found by 100 automated test runs)
 - Protect (spiky, baneful, royal, burning and frozen) no longer causes a Lua error when lava, a trap or another hazard hits the protected monster; its strike back now only answers creatures. Counter no longer strikes back at lava or traps (it could hit your own monster).
 - Evolving your chosen partner while it rests in its orb (on the world map, for example) no longer leaves its old body behind: the old form could come back in the next zone as a monster outside your team, next to your real partner.
 - Releasing your partner while you travel the world map really sends it away now (it used to come back in the next zone).
 - Your monsters that are no longer in your team never stay at your side.
 - Sharpshooter abilities only look for creatures (not the sandworm tunnels and other things a level can hold).

New in 1.10.1
 - Other trainers are real Monstermon Trainers now: gym trainers and leaders, wandering trainers, your rival and his brothers know the class's trees and spend their talent points like a player of their level (inspect them to see). In a duel they help a monster in trouble with Field Medicine or Pep Talk; gym leaders and your rival can also fire it up with Rally or Max Power. Their monsters spend all their points as before.

New in 1.10
 - Hearthmoor: every building costs twice as much gold and asks a little more (eight squatters as strong as you, four places for the Vault, four grass species, ten duels, four badges, three ruins, 80 species and level 18, seven badges and two Primordials).
 - The Orb Workshop is gone (Craft Capture Orbs already does its job). In its place: the Expedition Lodge. Send up to three monsters from your team or storage on expeditions (Mudsnout Marsh, the Trainers' Road, the Old Quarry, Smugglers' Coast, the Deep Wilds; one to three days). They come back with experience and finds - gold, gems, orbs, potions, Battle Points, rare trainer goods - and now and then a wild friend. Monsters of a type that suits the place bring home half as much again. Old saves: a restored workshop becomes the lodge.
 - Grandpa's bed: sleep in it once a day (walk into it, or use the armchair) and wake up Well Rested for 500 turns: your monsters learn 25% faster and deal 10% more damage, and your orbs catch 5% better. A night's sleep still heals everyone, and Grandpa sends you a dream.
 - Grandpa's diary: twelve lost pages lie around Maj'Eyal (the Old Forest, the Maze, the Sandworm Lair, the Heart of the Gloom, the Scintillating Caves, Reknor, Norgos' Lair, the Lake of Nur, Daikara, Dreadfell, the Ruined Halfling Complex and Oswin's Rest), one on a floor of each place once the letter has come. They tell the story of Corbin, Oswin and Merrowin and of the five Primordials. Read every page found - and see where the missing ones are - in Grandpa's diary (the Manor's armchair, or ask Pell); they are in the game's lore list too. Find all twelve for Grandpa's emergency coin purse.
 - The Lucky Mudsnout: a slot machine by Hearthmoor's gate. 15 gold a spin, one spin in four wins, with spinning reels: Hearthberries, 20 gold, capture orbs, a salve and a tonic, a gem, Battle Points, free spins, rare trainer goods, the 250 gold jackpot - and one spin in a thousand a lucky monster, a rarer and stronger kind never found in the wild.
 - Pell now waits at Hearthmoor's gate.
 - Halfway There and To Catch Them All now count the 120 monstermon only (60 and 120 species), with rewards 40% smaller: six tier 5 orbs and the new Monsterdex: Collector's Edition. New Master quests count everything a trainer can catch, with rewards 10% bigger: eleven tier 5 orbs and the Monsterdex: Master Edition. Old saves keep what they earned.
 - Directions fixed: the Rock Gym lies south-east of Derth, the Bug Gym south-west, the Ice Gym just north of the Ruins of Kor'Pul; Hearthmoor and the brothers' stories point to the right place. Every place description was checked against the world map.
 - Faster: weather, terrain fields, hazards and clouds are drawn as a light tile picture instead of a full-screen shader pass per field (a big gain in frames per second in battles full of fields); the Open Monsterdex check on your hotbar only looks at what you can see; monster data is looked up through an index.

New in 1.9
 - Other trainers and gym leaders are real monster trainers now: their monsters get the same partner bonuses as yours and spend their own talent points, and they keep up with your strongest monster (never more than three levels below it, two for your rival; an ace one level closer), so duels are a real fight.
 - Monsters show a LEVEL UP! flyer when they level, and every evolution teaches two new abilities.
 - Every monster ability grows with its points: more damage and power, a shorter cooldown at 3 and 5 points, longer effects at 4 points. Abilities that did the same thing on one monster were reworked (about 150 of them), so one monster never gets two abilities that do the same (only monsters of different types share an effect).
 - Gym shops: prices x2.5, and every leader sells three goods of its own type (a talisman, a consumable and a lure).
 - Earned Trust grows with your Willpower. Your own monsters can no longer hurt you. Trainers know Phase Door.
 - Oswin's Rest is rebuilt: a furnished house, Mum's garden, stables with the family's old monsters, Grandpa's arena (friendly matches), a training ground and Grandpa's memorial. Hearthmoor's restored buildings are furnished too.
 - The brothers each have their own voice and stories that unfold as you help them, they walk around the grounds, and each of their tasks is its own quest in the quest log. Your rival talks more about his journey.
 - Monsters called with Chance Encounter or a lure are worth no experience or loot. Minions called by hostile monsters are.
 - Trainer gear is all light: the Granite Gauntlets are now gloves.
 - Fixed: an error when a creature used an ability with an unknown effect.

Adds the Monstermon Trainer, a Wilder subclass that catches monsters, raises them and battles alongside them, plus 120 new monsters, 346 monster talent trees with 1384 abilities, 8 gyms with trainer duels, three rival brothers and their house, a Grand Family Tournament, Grandpa's estate Hearthmoor to rebuild, five Primordial bosses behind rifts, 15 ancient ruins, a Monsterdex, Battle Points, 20 unique items and the Shrinking Charm.

New in 1.8
 - 80 new monstermon (20 lines of two, 10 lines of three and 10 that never evolve), met from level 14 on, each with its own sprite. Balanced with thousands of simulated fights against the creatures of Maj'Eyal at levels 15 to 45.
 - Hearthmoor: at level 5 a letter tells you that your grandfather Corbin left you his estate, a new place on the world map. It lies in ruins. Drive out the squatters, then restore nine buildings in four chapters with Pell the caretaker. Each asks for a task (places discovered, monsters caught, duels won, badges, gems, ruins restored, Monsterdex entries, a Primordial defeated) and a little gold, and each gives you something: the Manor (rest, Grandpa's journal), the Vault (item storage), the Greenhouse (Hearthberries that heal your monster), the Training Grounds (train stored monsters for gold, a daily drill, +5% life), the Battle Pit (two of your own monsters spar and learn), the Orb Workshop (a gem becomes three orbs), the Library (where every type lives; the archmage moves in), the Observatory (shows the five rifts) and the Trophy Hall (+1% damage per trophy). Every building finds a page of Grandpa's journal: the story of Corbin, Oswin and the archmage Merrowin. The last letter comes with Corbin's Orb, which never misses.
 - Five Primordials: Vharoth the Ember Tyrant, Nerissel the Abyssal Tide, Zekkaron the Storm Colossus, Moragul the Hollow King and Ysolde the Verdant Mother wait behind rifts on one floor of five dungeons, chosen at random every game (the rifts wake at level 12). Each fights five levels above you in its own arena with its own special event (meteors, rising water and shielding pearls, lightning pylons, soul lanterns that make the king untouchable, blooming flowers that heal the mother). In a rift your monsters faint instead of dying. Each has eight trees of its own: 32 abilities with mechanics no other creature has (brands, heat, the tide, drowning, static, conductive foes, souls, hollowing, seasons, seeds, minions).
 - Defeat one and its elite joins you at your level, with all eight of its trees. After the first, old archmage Merrowin turns up with the story of the five and the quest Monster Team 6: have the elites of all five and the legend from the Grand Family Tournament in your team at once.
 - Primordial elites and your tournament legend can not be lost in the wild: when they fall they collapse back into their orbs at 1 life, so Monster Team 6 always stays possible.
 - Fixed: Pebble Storm and Scatter Stones hit every foe they aim at (a foe in front no longer shields the ones behind it).
 - Fixed: a creature caught in the Heart-Gloom ("slumbering giant white rat") wakes up as its own species: it counts in the Monsterdex and evolves like any other. The gelatinous cube now evolves into a crimson ooze (ToME has no morphic ooze any more).

Catch them
 - Craft capture orbs from gems (every orb has a small chance to come out a higher tier), fuse 10 gems into one of the next tier.
 - Throw orbs at weakened, sleeping or stunned monsters. Subduing Shots keeps you from killing what you want to catch. With no orb readied in the Orb Belt, Throw Capture Orb lets you pick a stack from your pack, readies it and throws.
 - Challenge Arena (level 12) raises a ring of stone walls for 20 turns to fight one monster alone.
 - A caught monster joins at your level (elites up to 5 levels higher).
 - Pick one of three random starters (always three different types, new every game) or gamble on a random level 1 creature from anywhere in the game.

Raise them: 25 talent trees for every type
 - Only one monster fights at your side. Your team holds 4 to 10 monsters: Bigger Team adds room from level 5 on, one point every 5 levels (5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 10 monsters). Permadeath in the wild; in trainer duels a beaten monster only faints.
 - New in 1.7.4: your monster is the front line. Every foe near it goes for your monster before it goes for you; when your monster falls or goes back into its orb, the foes come for you.
 - New in 1.5: 23 new trees for each of the 12 types (276 trees, 1104 abilities), so every type now has 25 trees and 100 abilities, plus six trees for every body (Vitality, Ferocity, Instinct, Gale, Predator, Guardian).
 - Every monster has 5-6 trees by nature plus three of the new trees of its types, rolled for that one creature. New in 1.7: only three of its class trees are open, chosen at random for every single creature, so two monsters of the same species can fight in completely different ways; the others are shown locked and a category point opens them. The Move Tutor teaches more trees (the trees of a gym type need that gym's badge). Spend its stat and talent points on its own level-up screen. Every evolution also gives the monster a category point.
 - New in 1.6: the 40 monstermon have a Monstermon Nature (extra damage, resistances, life, accuracy and armour that grow with their level). Tested with tens of thousands of simulated 1-on-1 fights against the creatures of Maj'Eyal a trainer can catch, at levels 5 to 45: every monstermon now stands with the stronger creatures of its level.
 - New mechanics for the new abilities: weather (sun, rain, sandstorm, hail, fog), 19 kinds of terrain (electric, grassy, misty, lava, bog, frost, spores, shadow, quicksand, thorns, void and more), 8 entry hazards (stones, spikes, toxic spikes, webs, mines, shards, sparks, runes), stat stages, more than 40 status effects, charge-up and dive moves, protection, counters, substitutes, curses and doom, recoil and draining, multi-hit and chain moves, summoned minions and totems, and almost 70 passive traits.
 - Using one of the abilities puts the monster's other abilities on a 4 turn shared cooldown: no spamming.
 - New in 1.7: abilities use the monster's best stat when that beats the tree's own stat, and an ability always hits harder than the monster's basic attack (even with every point in Strength).
 - New in 1.7: your monsters learn faster than you. The partner that is out earns twice the experience you earn in battle (more with Shared Training) and can grow up to 5 levels above you; monsters resting in their orbs only learn with Shared Training.
 - New in 1.7: monsters resting in their orbs no longer recover during a fight. Gem Remedy (every trainer knows it) presses a gem against an orb: 10% of the monster's life per gem tier.
 - At your side a monster fights harder than in the wild (+25% damage and life, more for young trainers), minus 10% until Earned Trust wins it over. Most monsters evolve once or twice.

40 new monsters
 - Original, grim monsters with their own sprites, from larvlets and emberpups to warbeetles, tidalisks and skyrenders, roaming the zones that fit them.

8 gyms
 - Bug, Rock, Water, Electric, Ice, Fire, Ghost and Dragon gyms on the world map. Five trainers with three monsters each, and a leader with five to eight.
 - Talk to a trainer to be challenged to a duel. A stone stadium rises for as long as the duel lasts, and only the monsters fight: your own attacks do nothing. A monster that blinks out of the ring is pulled back in.
 - Badges unlock Move Tutor trees and strengthen your partners. Each leader gives a unique item, then stays to run a Battle Shop. Wear one badge in the badge slot for a bonus with its type.

Barry, Harry and Larry
 - Three brothers were each promised a starter by their grandfather Oswin. The one whose starter beats yours becomes your rival, and the one whose starter you took will let you know about it.
 - Your rival challenges you right after you pick your starter and comes back every 5 levels with a bigger team. After each win, compliment or insult him: either way he tells you a bit more about the family. After the fifth battle you earn Challenge Rival or Call for Friend.
 - The brothers complain about each other constantly. They also love each other, though none of them would say so.

Oswin's Rest and the Grand Family Tournament
 - The brothers' house stands near the human starting area. The two brothers who are not your rival live there and give you a questline of seven tasks, one at a time: a pie mystery, a garden, Grandpa's training route, two sparring duels, a letter for your rival and the family album.
 - Finish the questline and win all eight badges, and all three brothers and the eight gym leaders gather at the house for the Grand Family Tournament: twelve trainers, a bracket of one-on-one duels. Every trainer fights at your level, and every opponent's monsters at your team's average level.
 - The champion chooses one of five legendary boss monsters at level 1. This is the only way to get a boss monster, and you can only ever own one.

15 ancient monster ruins
 - Ruins all over the world map ask for five guardians each: monsters of certain evolution lines at a minimum level, from level 3 near the start to level 25 in the far corners.
 - Hand them over from your team or straight from your Monsterdex storage. Rewards: capture orbs, trainer goods and Battle Points, with a small chance of a level 1 elite or unique (ancient) monster, which goes into your Monsterdex storage. Restore ten ruins and the keepers give you a Shrinking Charm.

The Monsterdex
 - A new item slot holds your Monsterdex. Its Open Monsterdex ability shows your monster storage, your capture progress for every species a trainer can catch (the 120 monstermon and every creature of Maj'Eyal that is no boss or unique), your badge progress and your trainer records (duels won and lost, trainers beaten by kind, the strongest trainer you beat, your best monsters by creatures defeated, catches, evolutions and more). It only works out of combat.
 - Quests (v1.10): Halfway There (60 of the 120 monstermon: six tier 5 capture orbs) and To Catch Them All (all 120 monstermon: the Monsterdex Collector's Edition); Halfway There: Master and To Catch Them All: Master count every species a trainer can catch (eleven tier 5 orbs; the Monsterdex Master Edition).

Other trainers and Battle Points
 - Wandering trainers in dungeons (0-5 in a whole dungeon, never two on the same floor, and the ones you beat stay beaten), villages, cities and on the roads of the world map. Their level follows the place: anywhere in a dungeon's recommended range (deeper floors lean higher), so sometimes you will want to decline a duel; never more than 4 levels below you, and never above level 50.
 - Every duel you win pays Battle Points (trainers 3-10 by level, gym leaders 15-50) and 1-5 gold by the trainer's level.
 - New in 1.7.5: a won duel gives experience worth about five fights (a gym leader's much more), and every experience gain of a trainer and its monsters is 5% smaller: a trainer levels about as fast as any other hero. A new game opens with a short story about a trainer's life in Maj'Eyal, and the starter screen always shows every choice.
 - Spend them in the Battle Shops of beaten gym leaders: Training Elixirs, Technique Crystals, Primal Essences, Bond Ribbons, Move Manuals, Insight Tomes (a category point for one of your monsters), Evolution Shards, Phoenix Plumes that bring a fallen monster back, champion orbs and more.
 - New in 1.7: the Shrinking Charm (from the sixth gym's leader on, 300 Battle Points, one per trainer; or from the ruin keepers). It shrinks one of your monsters onto your shoulder: your attacks carry its type's damage, and you can use one of its abilities yourself.

20 unique items
 - Whistles, gauntlets, lanterns, crowns, slings and more: many trade your own safety for a burst of power in your partner.

Class trees: Capture, Partner, Training, Field Lore, Leadership, Battle Tactics (locked), Sharpshooter (locked, from level 10: Scatter Stones, Shatterstone, Pebble Storm, Coordinated Fire), Move Tutor (level 10). Trainers also know Extract Gems (salvage metal items into gems), which improves every 10 levels.
Generic trees: Slinger, Escape Artist.

Talent icons are based on https://game-icons.net (Lorc, Delapouite, Caro Asercion, sbed, DarkZaitzev, Skoll, Cathelineau and others, see CREDITS.txt), CC BY 3.0, recoloured. Monster, item and gym art is original.
