After supercharging my monster, Minda, via the special Speed and Defense maps, I began focusing on Int and Ski drills and Errantry when something very bizarre happened.
After getting a gain on my final turn on the Int map, instead of the bumped-up gains I got from the new, extended prime (up to 28), her Int increased by only 4 points, and her Lif didn't go up at all. I was a bit perplexed at first, thinking I had worked her way too hard, but when she returned to the ranch, Ruriru said she seemed well, and didn't give a stress warning.
After a couple of rests, I light drilled her in Int. The stat didn't go up at all. The same applied to Ski, as well as the other stats.
I had a pretty good idea as to what the problem was by then, so I tallied up her stats:
It was pretty obvious at this point; while the individual stat cap has been raised to 2,000, there is now a composite cap approximately equivalent to the old one (5,994, with 999 stat cap). This is a very major addition that's going to completely change the way monsters will be "maxxed" in the future, playing more to their strengths as opposed to getting identical numbers in every stat, though you can still do that if you fancy. Of course, a monster with 1,000 in every stat is going to be very, very different than one with roughly 2,000 in three stats and 1 in three others, or a mix of 1,500 and 500s, 1,200s and 800s and so on.
Back to the drawing board, everyone!
By Lisa Shock on Tuesday, August 21, 2007 - 09:05 am:
Wow, this is big news! I always enjoyed Fenrick's lower-level tourneys because of the strategy involved in allotting the numbers to the stats.
I should note that, even after maxxing your monster, the hard drills can still be used to switch some numbers around, though only the primary stat of the drill will increase (e.g: Meditation: -X Def, +X Int). This allows you to tweak your monster a bit, albiet in a fairly limited manner; at the peak of prime with the second The Tree upgrade, the lowered stat can drop by up to 5, so you'll have a hard time adjusting your monsters' stats during old age and especially twilight, where they drop to 1. And due to a lack of Lif and Ski hard drills with big gains/drops, the aforementioned stats cannot be ammended in this fashion.
In any case, it'd be much more effective to lower your monster's composite via Errantry, focusing on failures to drop the stats in the areas you want. But for minor adjustments, or dropping an unused stat to 1, the drills should do fine.