FORUM.TERMINAL_LEVY

Hey! I'm gonna offload updates on how my Monster Rancher 1 DX playthrough is going here since I'm kind of hardstuck at rank B and I don't know if it makes for great streams anymore.

I wanna try knocking out two birds with one stone here:

1. wanting to free up my Wednesday stream slots
2. feeling never-ending nostalgia for screenshot LPs.

MR1 gets kind of samey after a while, and it's a menus game anyway, so I think it's a good fit for a quick lil SSLP treatment. If I end up getting a monster into A rank I'll stream the rest of their career run, but otherwise I feel like just posting updates here is enough.

table of contents

1. Catching up with 1000 Rocks
2. 1000 Rocks' Glow-up & the Dragon Invitational
3. 1000 Rocks' Last Hurrah

***



Our current monster is 1000 Rocks, who's generated off of Ongaku Zukan by Ryuichi Sakamoto (obv. we wanted thousand knives but it was not available in the DX library). I wanted to try turning him into a tank so I sent him to the mines (++Life +Defense -Skill) but I've come to learn that the -Skill is a real killer. 1000 Rocks punches pretty hard as a Golem Golem but his hitrate even in Rank D is like, 20%. So it's been a lot of remedial +Skill work:



I'm also trying out something different with him, namely doing optional tournaments instead of just focusing on the official rank-up tournaments.



When 1000 Rocks hits, he hits hard. Dropping his Skill down to like 70 and having to play catch-up, as well as his starting stat total of ~750 means he's probably never going to be a contender for Rank S, but I don't think that's the goal with him anyway. He's kind of a "rebuild year" monster after we spent all our savings getting Sara up real high. The long-term plan is to get a bunch of money saved up from mid-tier optional tournaments and go big on our next guy, Ice Cream:



Ice Cream is a Monol/Gali I got off of fusing I think... Gamer, our first ever monster (Year Zero by NIN) and The Boss (Nebraska by Bruce Springsteen). 1029 is kind of a wild stat spread for a baby, certainly the highest I've ever seen. I still need to figure out what his build will be. Obviously Intelligence is the attack stat here, I just need to decide whether he's a Defense guy or a Speed guy. Starting off with Circus training (++Speed +Intelligence -Power) might be the go-to, but Mailman (++Intelligence +Skill -Defense) might not be too bad either. My experience with Sara has led me to think that Defense is a really important stat in MR1, so if we go the Mailman route I'll definitely have to mix in some Guard (+Defense) duty or Defense training.



Anyway, that's it for now! Next update will probably be a retrospective of how 1000 Rocks' career went, since these take just a couple hours to bang out.

I'll try doing at least one update a week of this, but I don't wanna formalize too much right now.

1000 rocks's

Work ended up being really light today, so I ended up playing a bunch more.



1000 Rocks' Skill rehabilitation period is a little rough, since he's only getting like ~4 a pop from Hunting. I really wish I hadn't accidentally messed up his training as a baby. After a while, though, he ends up getting pretty beefy, so I enroll him in the C ranking match.





Here's 1000 one-tapping Goregon, the other Golem in this tier. We go 7-0 in the tournament and enter Rank B.



Rank B is a whole different ballgame, though. RIston here especially makes the literal Skill difference apparent. Still, 1000 is not doing too bad in the side tournaments, usually going like 2-1.



I accidentally click past the dialogue, but in one of these side tournaments we run into a Dragon! A new monster type!




His statline is kind of nutty for Rank B, though, and he ends up fragging 1000 Rocks. Somehow that is Maccam's only win in this tournament, so 1000 still wins the prize.



After the tournament, Tesca comes over. We haven't talked to him since the intro, so it's been quite some time! He catches up with Holly, and they talk about an even stronger dragon in an invitational tournament in August. She says we can beat it, which I'm not really sure about, but I'm not about to go against Holly's dreams here. Apparently, if we win, we get a Dragon Tusk, which sounds like an item that... lets us combine a Dragon out of a Naga and Dino? I think? This is the most dedicated cutscenes I've seen in this game in a while, so I'm curious to pursue this quest.

1000 Rocks' performance in the B rank optional tournaments ends up being so good I decide to graduate him from jobber status and try the Rank B promo tournament.



He ends up scaring most of his opponents away, except for Riston...



chebbed ya dick



After getting into Rank A, we receive the invitation letter. 4th week of August is not that far away, plus there's another side tournament before that, so we only have like 5 weeks to get comfortable in our new rank. Karn also shows up after the letter, and even though I finally have the statline to go into the ruins, I really cannot afford my monster getting lost right now, so I decline. Maybe next time.



Here's 1000 Rocks against Garent, the Rank A Golem. He's got a full loadout of skills in all 4 ranges, but that doesn't really make up for 1000 walking up and KOing him in two hits. Kind of surprisingly to me, despite the really rough Rank C, 1000 Rocks is kind of holding his own now even in Rank A. And I called him a jobber!




The Invitational comes up. There's only one other monster in it, the Dragon, which makes this feel less like a tournament and more like an assassination setup.



That's scary.



...but not for me! Despite the extremely scary stat spread, 1000 Rocks' Power is enough to two-tap Megiras, who isn't fast enough to make the hit rate go below like 40%. What a glow-up, huh?



After the tournament, Tesca comes in to congratulate us and talk more about the Dragon Tusk thing. Apparently we now need specifically a Dino/Naga and a Naga/Dino—a "Grape" and a "Stinger", according to Holly—to actually make the Dragon. That's gonna be some hunting. I imagine this was intended as a "sharing the Naga/Dino CD around the playground" kind of thing originally, but that doesn't really work with MR1DX, but I also don't just want to look it up on a guide...

Anyway, I said this update would be the end of 1000's career, but he's like 4 years old in Rank A and not showing any signs of slowing down yet! I'm really impressed! He's on the path to become as good as Turnip, probably. Can you imagine, again, what he'd be like if I didn't tank his Skill down to 50 in the first year? That Defense has been working out really nice for him, but I really should've just done Guard training instead of Mine.

Here's 1000 Rocks going ino his 4th year. Building work is still really effective for him at roughly +6 Life/+12 Power. The problem right now is not the amount of damage that he's doing but his contact, especially against monsters with like 350+ speed, so we focus on hunting for a while (~+5 Skill).



The official A rank tournament is still probably above his level as he only just got into this rank, but it's not a bad idea to do a run to gauge the level of competition.



Wait, huh? What the fuck?

There's some interesting builds in A rank. Argu the Skill/Int Gamer and Lana the Life/Power Worm are scary heavy hitters, but they can't really do their thing to a guy that walks up and hits heavier and faster. Same for the tanky Terrace (Plant, Life/Skill/Power) and Gardian (Monol, Skill/Def). The real counters to 1000 Rocks' build are the evaders: Amy (Pixie, Speed/everything), who 1000 Rocks loses against, and Ryusei, the Cooler Riston (Hare, Speed/Skill/Power). Unfortunately for Ryusei, he low rolls both of the things he's good at, and 1000 Rocks emerges victorious, 6-1.



All the kids love 1000 Rocks, the huge rock golem that caves all the other monsters' chests in with a single finger.

S rank initially seems pretty barren with no optional tournaments, but the progression here is a little different to the previous ranks. You're meant to win the Official S Tournament once, after which you start getting invitations to the Big Four, the special 4-monster tournaments that Tesca mentioned at the very start of the game and I forgot all about. Beating the Big Four is how you get to Rank 10 and get to credits in MR1, which is the ultimate goal of this LP.



Happy 4th! Holly wishes for 1000 to do his best. I think he's already above and beyond what I expected of him. 1000 Rocks wishes me the best of luck, which is new. I didn't realize monsters could do that. After that it's back to Building with some Hunt & Guard mixed in to continue evening out his Skill and Defense.







Karn shows up wanting to take 1000 to Reno. For once I've got a monster with over 600 Power, which somebody mentioned in my chat as being a requirement for some of the rock breaking in the ruins, so I decide to go along with Karn for once.





God damnit. Anyway, it takes Karn a month to find 1000, just in time for an official S rank tournament! I decide to skip this first one, because we just got to S after barely spending any time in A. I decide to just keep working until the March tournament a couple months later.




The rafters are jam-packed for this tournament, as are our opponents' statlines. We actually end up with a pretty good debut record of 5-2. Unfortunately, so do two other monsters, and we're made to fight a tiebreaker against one of the monsters we lost to...



Here's Chuckles, the Jell/Monol. With 600 Defense and 400 Life/Power, he can both survive 1000's attacks and hit back almost just as strong. He'll end up being a recurring character in 1000 Rocks' S rank tenure, which I appreciate. Fights against Chuckles somehow always come down to the last hit at the last second.



1000 ends up locking in a tournament win with a last-second Kick and a HP% tiebreaker. Very nice!



We get two letters: one announcing our promotion to R-6 breeder, and another one inviting us to the Monsters Cup, one of the Big Four! Nice!



While training up for the invitational, Holly tells me it might be time for 1000 Rocks to retire. He had been getting slightly lower gains from work recently, so I was worried about this. Despite Holly's suggestion, I kind of want to see how far 1000 can really go. We're at the Big Four! We should go out swinging, right?



I also get two(!) upgrades for the ranch, both costing 24k gold in total. One's an inventory slot expansion, the other is this mysteriously phrased upgrade that will help me raise my monsters better in some non-specified way. Sure, why not.



Badass title card. Monsters Cup features two S rank regulars, Baru the Naga (Skill/Power) and Lightning the Gamer (Skill/Int). Lightning defaults and 1000 Rocks one-taps Baru, so all that's left is Redondo the Dragon.




Redondo's statline is as busted as the previous monsters we've faced, and he's a real hard hitter, but 1000 manages to come out on top. Look at how close that is!




The banner for Monsters Cup shows up on the save screen, which makes me wonder if I only have to win each of the Big 4 once..? Anyway, what a run from what was meant to be a workhorse monster, huh? I keep thinking "what if I didn't fuck up 1000's Skill" but it's not like it went anywhere, it just turned into Life and Defense... Well, I'll know better for next time.



Soon after the Monsters Cup, 1000 turns 5. This makes him our strongest & oldest monster! Very exciting, very venerable.



Next of the Big Four is the Disk Cup. Another badass title card. Our opponents here are Soketsu (a kind of all-rounder Monol/Gali) and Chuckles, who's always an exciting fight. Aside from those two, we have...




Arbar, a regular ape from the zoo. He's a slippery fuck at 493 speed, but somehow 1000 makes contact enough times to get a timeout win. Arbar is also interesting in that he has the only healing ability I've seen all game, trading 50 Will for 50 HP. It doesn't really come into play as much as the dodge rate does - 1000 Rocks has like a ~6% chance to hit for most of the fight, so it's remarkable that he gets like 3 hits in.






We're R-8 now. The shopkeeper is so impressed he gives us a one-time 50% celebrity discount. We stock up on taffy and go back to work. The most cost-effective thing would've probably been to stock up on Vitamins, since those are 1000G cheaper, but I'm kind of scared of them, honestly. There's no way stat-changing items like that don't come along with some health issues.



Some more fanmail! I think this is the first one of these that's for me, and not for the monster. I'm kind of scared of a kid that wants to be a manager...



It's a bittersweet moment, though. 1000 seems to be done for good. So close to the finish line..! Well, that's okay. It was a phenomenal run, much better than anything I had in mind for him at the start. I also learned a lot as a trainer, like "tanking your initial Skill is probably absolutely never worth it".



All in all. a very solid life! Over those 5 years, he went 84-28, for a .750 winrate. Those are killer numbers, I think!

For now, I'm going to put 1000 Rocks on ice until I get another good Power/Life guy to combine with him into a super baby.

Next update I'll set up a new monster! I have some CDs in mind...

Monster Rancher really is a game about being a boxing trainer. If they showed the player character I would want to be an old man in sweatpants holding the pads

1000 rocks.... 1000 memories..... thank you