Hello everyone! Today, we'll go into the details of the Monster Variants system that we briefly covered a few weeks ago.

Quick Recap:

In Missions and Monsters, the player will be able to recruit monster units, either from Taming them (with the new Wrangler class), or by earning them as rewards from various Missions. Monsters behave a little differently than humans: they can't change their "monster class", such as being a Vangal, an Ercinee or a Daodrenner. Instead, they have access to mini-classes called Variants. Each monster can use 2 such variants on top of their basic monster class (for a total of 3 classes equipped). They can set up a primary Variant and a secondary Variant. It's easy to think of them as a main class and a sub class for the most part. Monsters gain access to the active ability sets from their equipped variants on top of their monster ability set and they'll automatically use any known passives tied to the variants they're using, thus equipping up to 6 passives in total. Thus, monsters gain access to more passives at a time, but have a little less flexibility when picking them. They also gain access to more sets of abilities (3 rather than 2), but those sets have fewer abilities than human sets would have. All in all, they have their own strengths and weaknesses and should prove to be quite an interesting addition to a player's arsenal.

In-depth overview:

Monsters need to use AP to unlock abilities from their class and variants, just like humans. Since a monster's base class can't be changed ever, learning everything on it is somewhat quick, so we're keeping things simple and awarding AP to both their monster class and their primary variant at the same time. It's also worth noting that when taming a monster, they will come knowing all the skills they knew when you tamed them, meaning quite often their monster class will start almost maxed (or fully maxed if recruiting a Tier 3 monster), so the real use of AP lies in the Variants. New Variants can be learned in many different ways: through missions, by using special badges, and by learning enough abilities from other Variants (so, all in all, a similar way to humans). Variants (and base monster classes) will work with the Vicarious AP system to help the player train all their monstrous forces. When it comes to stats, monsters have fixed stats that depend on their monster class (and tier). Thus, their stats will always be the same for 2 monsters of the same type (assuming they are currently using the same primary variant, more on that in a bit). All monsters in Fell Seal have 3 different tiers (such as Vangal, Komainu and Gyaum), and each tier confers higher stats and sometimes improved resistances and such. A monster's skill tree has 2 "Tier Up" nodes that can be purchased and will increase the monster's tier, resulting in higher stats, etc:
The Primary Variant is more or less treated like a human's main class. The monster will gain AP for that Variant. The 2nd Variant behaves like a sub class, meaning the monster won't be gaining AP for it, but will gain access to its active abilities, and passives.
The primary Variant isn't just about gaining AP though, as it also influences the monster's stats. The primary Variant has an effect on the monster's base stats, immunities, elemental resistances, movement, jump, flight, swimming, etc. For example, using Fire Drake as a primary variant will grant a %-based bonus to atk, mnd, def, res, a bonus to Fire and earth resistances, and a malus to water resistance. The Aerial variant grants Flying, a small evasion boost, earth resistance, and weakness to thunder, etc. Each variant has different modifications; some are pretty small and others a little bigger, depending on various factors. The primary variant can be selected from the Class wheel and will show the resulting stats and the bonuses granted, showing exactly how the primary variant will change things (that screen isn't finished, so we don't have a screenshot ready quite yet!)

Visuals:

As usual, we're all about giving the player options, so we're adding visual customization to the monsters. By default, recruited monsters have "automated" visuals that will show specific "accessories" representing their 2 equipped variants and show the base monster sprite representing their monster tier. This is how enemy monsters behave.
(Mystic/Clockwork Kawa) Using the character customization screen, the player can select a color for the monster from the 3 tier sprites the monster has, rather than using the color of their current tier. They can also opt to select any number of variant accessories to create their monster's look, rather than use those tied to their equipped variants.
There's a lot to talk about when it comes to monster variants, but hopefully we haven't forgotten anything! Let us know if you have any questions or comments, and thanks again for the support!