Good Evening Tamers!

[h2]It's time for CONTENT PACK 5![/h2]

What's this content pack all about? Well, it brings the My Card Collection feature to Monster Crown!

Are you one of those kids (I was) with a binder full of your favorite collectible cards? Proudly displaying your rare, holographic finds on the first page and flicking through to show off your favorites? I know I was. All that hard work opening booster packs, trading with friends to create an awesome deck and an awesome binder was such a great feeling to pull off - even if someone conned me into trading away my Ultra Rare Magical Hats for a Toon Blue Eyes White Dragon. No regrets really though, that dragon could shine!

There's a kid just like that in Empathy Kingdom, the same town you found Gyn in and learned about the crown indicator for breeding, he's right next to the Storklift, don't believe me? Here's photographic proof:



Visit this kid to get your very own Monster Trading Card Binder. You'll be able to buy booster packs at any store, but your first hit is free as this guy spares you a booster. Once you've opened your pack you'll receive a random assortment of cards for your collection. You can examine your collection from this button on the main menu:



Once you're in, you can select any card and get lost in gazing at it (I know I have been guilty of this) and find yourself daydreaming in a procedurally generated dungeon! Various powerful crossbreeds will chase you, phasing through walls, hunting you down. You must locate the stairs to the next level of the dungeon and fight your way out to survive. Along the way you can tame these rare crossbreeds and collect all kinds of gold.

If you die though, you're gonna wake up from your day dream empty handed and disappointed! to add insult to injury, your card will have vanished for good. However, if you reach the end of the dungeon you'll get to keep any mysterious dream crossbreeds you've tamed as well as the horde of gold you've amassed and ALSO your card will turn holographic.

Once your card is holographic you can visit the dungeon as often as you like without worrying about losing the card.

One last note - this new system will let you get access to monsters you may have missed up until now, such as Jungro, Hooclaw and Roedra!

[h2]Monster Breeding Preview[/h2]



So this one is a bit of a game changer! Before you commit to breeding a monster you'll now be able to preview the moveset, base stats and which ones come from which parent before you ever commit to creating that egg! You won't be able to see how it will look (only the egg is shown) but this will make breeding much more beginner friendly and just plain useful to you expert breeders out there.

P = primary parent attribute
S = secondary parent attribute


[h2]Other Changes[/h2]



A big change that was made over the past two weeks (and the reason we delayed last week's update to this week) is a full increase in the resolution of the screen. Small screen players may only notice a small improvement but those of you playing on large displays will have a much easier time appreciating the game at an appropriate detail level without appearing too stretched out, and a much easier time reading the text size on-screen. As you can imagine this lead to me needing to adjust every menu in the game to make sure things still displayed properly. There still may be a thing or two I have to adjust but I believe I have caught almost everything.

The game's RAM usage has been significantly reduced (down to a little over half) and additional ambient effects (like fish in rivers, fireflies at night, bat-monster Romninoct flocks instead of Mimika at night and a revamped night visual) have been added. Changes were made to Chiefs to encourage you doing them in any order you wish as well, increasing your level by 1 rather than to a specific level and having auto scaling teams depending on your current level.



The tamer card has also been finished up, which you can view by pressing tab/toggle on the overworld menu to see a preview of yourself and your full monster team for quick screenshotting and sharing online or with friends so they can admire your expertly crafted beasts!

The next content pack will feature a story expansion and will have you reach the "middlegame" of Monster Crown's story, so I hope you look forward to that while trying out this latest new feature!

For the full changelog see below:

Changelog

EA v1.57
----------------------
+Monster breeding offspring preview added
+Completely revamped resolution and menus realigned
+Wild monsters and following monsters are now always animating like in-town monsters
+Heavy RAM usage reduction
+Additional environmental aspects
+Chiefs now do not set a respect level they increase whatever it is by 1
+Chiefs now have scaling teams for your current respect level to make approaching them in whatever order more fun
+Tamer card fixed, press Tab/Toggle on the overworld menu to see you and your team in all your glory (I'd love to see pictures!)
+Additional text audio added
+Roedra's forms have been added, this time the sprites were done by my good friend and incredibly talented artist RacieB! I'll be working with her a lot more going forward to increase the speed at which we wrap up monster art. be sure to check her out at:
http://racieb.meowcorp.us
https://twitter.com/RacieBeep


***Due to the volume of changes this update includes it will remain in the ea-beta branch for one week.***