MONARK - Some Demo tips to prep for full game

[greenzsaber]

Since everyone's currently able to play the demo, know that how you start off will determine how long you'll be taking to platinum this. Here's some tips to best get you ready for the full game release if you're playing the demo.

 

• Get Lust as your first fiend. To get Lust, select the 2nd choice for everything except for the last question at the starting quiz. For the last question, select the option with Love to get Lust. Lust is pretty strong because it's a magic user and can get really high damage, and you'll want to ensure you have access to its skills as early as possible, especially when you want to grind.
• You'll be getting Fiends of the other Egos (7 deadly sins) as you progress, the most useful ones in order, are Lust, Greed, Pride, Sloth, Wrath, Envy/Gluttony. Your next Fiend that joins is determined by the highest Ego amount that that hasn't joined the party yet by the time the next Fiend is set to join (e.g. if you have Lust at 200 Ego, Pride at 300, everyone else at 100, then Pride will be your next Fiend, but if Pride is already in your party, then Lust will be the next Fiend). You could grind for Ego in the demo via the phone numbers before fighting the Act boss (next Fiend joins right after the final Demo boss, but gotta wait for the full game to use it), but Ego gains from battles is mostly random, and there are better ways to manipulate Ego later. You'll probably get Pride by the end if you don't grind, which is a pretty solid choice.
• Keep track of your Ego as you play, especially before a major boss, because it will take a long time before all the Fiends join you, and you could be stuck with suboptimal Fiends for a majority of the game if you aren't careful.
• You can ignore your other human characters early on, as they won't always be with you throughout the game. The spirit (EXP) you gain is better off assigned to your Fiends/MC, who'll always be with you.
• Party order before battle determines the order your party goes when your turn starts. There's no changing it during battle, so keep that in mind.

 

FYI: If you skip all cutscenes and look up all the answers to the puzzles, and grind efficiently, the game will take around 20-30 hours to platinum. You can double that amount of time if you're going in blind, but are willing to use effective grinding methods.

[Rozalia1]

Having played the game myself I can say a few things on these matters. 

 

I'm not sure if Lust is quite the optimal first choice. Not that Lust isn't good, but the issue I came across is the game seems to be far more stingy on the psychology tests when it comes to Greed points (less obvious overall too, some answers that you'd think would give Greed points don't and others you think wouldn't do). As such it might be best to get Greed as your first one as getting Lust points in the tests is much easier. Pride as the second fiend is optimal yes due it being a healer so make sure that Pride is part of the tiebreaker question be it Lust or Greed you decide to go with first. The Pride boss being the first one means you'll get Pride as your second fiend if it was part of the tiebreaker question in the questionnaire at the start. 

 

On the questionnaire at the start information on another thread says you can get Lust by answering the 1st response on each question and then the second on the last and then choosing the love/whatever answer on the bonus question. This is correct but also inefficient as you can get way more ego points by answering the questions differently and still getting Lust by usage of the bonus question which is a tiebreaker question in case you have the same ego for 2+ stats. Generally you can tell when something will give you points when you get questions that go along the lines of "Will you eat all the food?". Saying yes will get you Gluttony points while saying no gets you nothing.

 

Human characters are a shafted yeah as you lose availability for each one for long stretches of time in the early/mid game and then in the post game they get shafted again as you can't use them for the post game boss (not a spoiler don't worry). The thing is you are forced to use them in story fights so if you don't level them then they'll be one shotted by any enemy attack and their only use will be using "Defer" on the rest of your party. 

 

Something I'll address too is something that I've seen in a number of reviews. That being that you need to grind after every chapter as the difficulty spikes. In my playthrough I found one instance where enemies got buffed heavily enough after a chapter completion that I had to spend a bit of time getting myself more levels and some better gear for my fiends. The other chapters I found didn't quite spike as hard so I could just continue without any grinding. A note on grinding gear. The game gives you access to codes that lead to high level stages you can't do at point at times. Those enemies possess far better gear than what you have access to in the story. Obviously you in no way have the stats to beat them... except you can actually totally beat those stages with some luck. Sloth and Kokoro both have access to the Mortal Coil spell (armour can give you the move too but the spell won't be as accurate) which has a chance of instantly killing an enemy. Upgrade their spell to make it more accurate and then spam it on high level fiends while keeping as many enemies out of your range as possible. If you use area/party resonance with the MC on all your characters then they'll all gain access to Sloth/Kokoro's Mortal Coil spell. If you manage to do this then while story fights are throwing enemies with R gear at you, you'll have fiends with SSR gear and when they upgrade to SR you can get EX gear.