Tamers! I've been very hard at work on Monster Crown and while next week's update is the next Content Pack, I think this week's update serves as a great appetizer.



Transformations - Frostbite!

First off we've got the heavily voted for Frostbite transformations available in this pack! The following monsters can be transformed using it:

Walerus
Hani
Domigon
Epheal

These monsters will get signifcant power ups and their new forms come with a slew of new crossbreeds for you to discover. Each one will have the move Cold Flurry added to their learnset. This move is learned at the start (level 0) so newborn monsters bred from these will have it right away but for your adult monsters you will have to visit the Frobec Move Learner to have it added to their current moveset.



Additional Content

First off, all monsters have received their own custom eggs and proper encyclopedia entries, as well as overworld sprites. We've also added two new chiefs for you to take on to earn exclusive new monsters and up your certification level! You can locate them in Nio Kio and Empathy Kingdom but you must have completed the quest in each respective city for them to appear.

Four new small sidequests have been added (two are less a sidequest and more a way to get a one-off Legendary monster that most of you have already visited but not yet obtained :D).

Card Collection

Card Dungeons have been given a power-up! Monsters will appear faster, with a higher total cap on screen at once, and all move at twice their natural speed. This makes turning cards holographic more thrilling and risky - beware!

If you've completed all the current story content (that is, you've completed Nio Kio City's mission), you'll be able to meet a Card Creator in Nio Kio back alley. This character has an impressive handheld printer from Hewston City, the hi-tech capital of Crown Island. With it, they'll be able to make monster cards for you.

In order to commission them you'll have to show them a base monster that she can recognize as a species (For example, you could show them Gyn but not Gyn's crossbreeds). It can really add up in cost but we've had such a great reception to our card collection feature that I just had to get some more content out for you with all the love you've shown. I'd love to see pics of your collections after you've commissioned your favorite mons and turn them holographic!


Wild Monster Movement

You may have noticed there are apparent spots on the overworld that your scouting icon and wild monsters cannot traverse. This is because the world of monster crown is streamed seamlessly in an open world fashion (you can reach anywhere from anywhere without loading screens) and the collision system is fairly unique within this genre. There were some decisions made during development that sped up my ability to create the entire large world as a single artist and designer early on as well as offering huge RAM benefits within Unity regarding scene management/loading.

These alterations helped in those capacities but without careful designing, could cause gameplay issues and unusually high CPU usage while calculating moment to moment world collisions, especially with 8-12 wild monsters chasing you that all have to respect these things as well and may cross into loading zones that the player is not currently within. I'll make a youtube video showcasing the system one day soon because I think a lot of you would find it interesting, but basically I didn't let scouting or wild monsters go across world loading lines.

Now that the game has been out there for a while and optimized in a lot of ways, I thought it was finally time to remove those limitation. I monitored the game closely this week while working on it and built some additional caching systems and I'm very happy to say monsters will pursue you like never before :) and even player movement will be a little lighter on the CPU.

I know this caused some confusion sometimes as the reason for this wasn't clear and I apologize for that. I know that it will all pay off when you're zipping around Monster Crown's world at top speeds in the post game ;)


Miscellaneous

If you transform a monster and the monster to be transformed into has a canon name, it'll be used as long as you have not renamed your monster. I avoided this for a long time because I care about the individual names you set and don't wanna make your loved Laz "Steve" change his name on transformation, so the logic works like this:

If Laz's name is his species name "Laz" he will be renamed to "Apo" after transforming, unless you named your Laz "Steve" in which case it will keep Steve. It uses the same logic as monster palettes basically.

One often requested Quality of Life adjustment is that after you use them once, the storklift and healer will skip their animation and heal/transport you instantly.

Overall there are 8 new monsters available in this update. Happy exploration guys, hope you look forward to much more content next week too!

[h2]Bugfixes[/h2]

+Sometimes chiefs could challenge you without a choice
+Storklift animation only plays the first time from now on.
+Improved world collision loading/checking
+Proper transformation name updating
+Many more small fixes
+Using z to finish text early makes any asosiated picture to dissapear before the text.
+Certain invisible spots that stop monsters
+Overworld monster sprite "sliding"
+Closing the "save completed" dialog or using the button to close the menu will also talk to the NPC in front.
+Monster Scout Softlock
+Item Seller's stock photos are off center
+LIMIT text on victory screen overlaps level text
+Wrong Item menu "use" issue.
+Offer always chooses last used contract.
+Using a pact in a card dungeon does not show how many pacts you have left
+Jasper battle infection glitch
+multiple item discriptions missing.
+Traumata Cave Sidequest Movement During Dialog
+Milltown NPC no dialog after story scene
+Stray pixel in Vryn icon
+River Of Gold & Kintsugi No Text
+Trying to use box can make monsters disappear.
+Undergrowth Pass Invisible Sprites
+Relentless Crawkadaga not showing up