I often see people asking just what exactly the Monster Book is... And since, for KMS, it came out just before pirates, it's quite logical to assume we'll get it soon. That and, you know, the hotkey already being in game.
So, here's a guide to the Monster Book and its ins and outs!
essentially, when the Monster Book is implemented, everyone is given a "book" (It does not appear in your inventory nor does this system in any way impact your inventory space.) which can be opened, by default, using the B key. Upon opening it, you'll see this:
Well, yours probably won't open to Mano :p Essentially, you will see grayed out slots for many monsters. The colored tabs on the side of the book represent different level ranges. They aren't as exact as you would typically expect... The level ranges are rather rough. Usually, it's 15 levels per tab. IE 1-15, 16-30, etc.
The red tab is 1-15
The Orange tab is 16-30
The light green tab is 31-45
The dark green tab is 46-60
The light blue tab is 61-75
The dark blue tab is 76-90
The purple tab is 91-105
The black tab is 105+
The yellow tab is designated "Special", I'll get into that in a minute.
All monsters have 5 different cards which you collect in order. Cards look like this when you get them:
and are dropped at a really low rate. Note that the background of the card corresponds to the tab it will go under in the book. For special cards, the background reflects the color it would fall under, if it didn't go in the special tab. If you train on a monster for any extended period of time, you'll easily obtain all 5 cards, however for certain monsters (Such as Fierry, Dark Jr. Yeti, Jr. Boogie, and so on) which have terrible spawn rates, this is a big problem. To get the card to become colored, as opposed to grayed out, and count towards your unique card total, you only need one, so as far as prospective collectors are concerned, I would recommend only worrying about 1 of each card, at least initially.
As for what the cards do, it's rather straight forward:
The first card of a monster you obtain adds its picture to the book.
The second card adds its HP/MP.
The third card adds the Lore of the monster, its level, "Form" (IE Animal, spirit, undead, etc.) and any special notes about the monster (Half damage from electrical attacks and so on. It's usually either boss status or elemental attributes)
The Fourth card provides a nearly complete drop list. I say nearly complete because certain items are omitted (The most common of which is skillbooks. I don't know if this has changed as of late).
The fifth card gives a complete list of every single map the monster appears in, and for one hour increases the experience of that monster by 15%. After the fifth card, the number over the card in the book will change to a medal instead of a 5.
While cards will continue to drop after you have collected 5, no benefit will be gained from looting additional cards. Thus, it'd be kind of you to call any party members, buddies, or guild members who may be nearby and want the card if you can't use it.
Also, it's not particularly significant, but it's worth mentioning that the book will gain additional animations for each monster when you get more cards. IE, the first card is only the stand animation, second card adds the KB animation, and so on.
In regards to the last category, Special cards. Two different varieties of cards fall into this group: Boss cards and event monster cards. Boss cards are pretty self explanatory. Most bosses, from Mano on up to Pink Bean, are found in this category. Not all, however. The 3 King Goblins in Korean Folk Town, Rombot of Eos Tower, and MT-09 of Omega Sector aren't in this category. I'm not sure why these bosses were specifically excluded, but they were. As for Event monsters, the only ones that have cards so far are Kid Snowman (the small summoned one) and Lost Rudolph, both of which were Christmas event monsters. When your card total is displayed, it will say two numbers, one being the total number of cards of all categories, and the other being the number of Special cards. This is something I'll get into later as well.
When a card drops, and you loot it, you'll sometimes see this happen:
each card has a special ability associated with it, which will last for an hour after you loot it. This happens for all 5 cards of a monster, and every monster's ability is different. The quality of the ability is directly related to the level of the monster. For example, a Lunar Pixie increases jump by 1 when in Orbis for an hour. A Bear from Mu Lung increases jump by 2. That may not sound particularly useful, but some of them are extremely nice. Nependeath's card increases the drop rate on honey (Reportedly by as much as 10% O_O).
Here's a list of all the cards currently in the GMS data, and their effects:
(a bit of cleanup done by our good friend Devil's Sunrise)
Additionally, there's the issue of exclusive areas. Currently, there are 2 versions that I know for sure have monster book in working order. One is JapanMS, and one is ChinaMS. So far, when a version gets the Monster Book, they immediately create cards for the monsters in their original area. JMS did so for Zipangu (Mushroom Shrine, Showa, and Kaede included.), and CMS did so for their areas (Shanghai Wai-Tan, Shaolin Temple) also. The interesting thing is that, because CMS has Zipangu, they got the Zipangu monster book cards as well (giving them the largest Monster Book to date.) Given this information, it's not unreasonable to assume that GlobalMS, upon receiving the Monster Book, will create cards for Amoria, NLC, Mansion (heck, depending on the next event patch for KMS, these might get created.), and Crimsonwood monsters.
Some other cool notes about the monster book:- You can set it to open to a specific card if you want. People tend to do this with the cards of their favorite monsters and/or really rare cards that they're proud of obtaining. You can also undo the setting and return the default page to its opening page.
- The status of your Monster Book is visible to everyone, in the same way as Pet level and closeness. It lists the total number of cards you have collected and the number of special cards you have. Additionally, it shows a picture of the cover of your book, which changes color according to the level of your book. That's right, the book has levels. In my experience the level of the book goes up approximately every 11 cards collected, but this needs more experimenting. There are 8 covers for the book, and they all match up to a tab color (except yellow).
- There's a pretty cool effect that appears over your head each time you loot a card. Everyone nearby will know when you get one :p
- Card rarity seems to be related to level. The monsters in the first tab, snails and slimes and such, are relatively easy to collect, whereas the monsters in later tabs are much harder, even if they have better spawn and can all be one-hit consistently.
- Occasionally, special events are held where Monster Book special cards can be purchased. In KMS, the only time that I know of when this happened was at their 5th anniversary. Maple Leaves (yes, the same ones we just used in that event) were able to be traded in for a card once a day. The only cards available were those within at least 10 levels of the character purchasing it. IE, my level 30 (at the time) Infighter was capable of buying the cards for level 40 King Slime, but not capable of buying level 55 Alishar's card. The lowest level one that could be bought, Mano, required about 500 Maple Leaves, and each boss needed 500 more than the last. The highest card that could be bought was Papulatus, and I believe it required somewhere in the area of 12,000 Maple Leaves. 12,000 a day, for 5 days... Maple Leaves were selling for approximately 500-1,000 mesos each, so that would be 60 million mesos for all the papulatus cards. You can see people take this really seriously.
- You can click on a monster that you see in game and it will open the Monster Book to that monster's page. IE, if I click on a snail, it'll open the monster book to Snail.
- The Monster Book is searchable, but I don't know much about how this works since I can't type in Korean.
Screenshot of the Monster Book level thing:
Level 3, green cover, 47 total cards, 41 regular and 6 special.
Alright, I guess that's about it! If my KMS compatriots have anything to add, please chime in. It's been a while since I found a card :p
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Originally Posted by KajitiSouls
