I have taken my monsters on a lot of expeditions once they hit a life total that's decent enough (over 250 or so). I am finding that it's very difficult to find anything special. There are apparently new factors.

In MFDS, you could bring your monster on an expedition once it achieved the appropriate rank. Once you got there, if your monster had a good life total, you could find pretty much everything that the map had to offer in one trip.

In MFDS2, I have only found 1 event item in then 10+ trip I have made. I have only visited 2 places because I have been trying to search them throughly - Beach and Pyramid. I have not found anything on the beach. I found Ancient Relief 2 in the pyramid. (Need 2 pieces of it to get a Xenon). The only comfort I have so far is that the Relief is in the same ruins it was in MFDS. But having traipsed thru the pyramid 5 times with monster of high-str and hi-int and coming away with only 1 item is a bit annoying.

Now I have been thinking about it... It's possible that some of the items are only available during certain seasons. In MFDS, there was a Red event crystal that showed up in a different place depending on what season you got there. I find that this time, all the red crystals are there, but I can't find any Amber event crystals. Maybe they only allow 1 or 2 of them to show up in a given season. The Pyramid is a big area, so I don't think I have been to every possible item spot in a single run. (Or maybe I did just once when I found the Relief 2) So, I have no proof, just a theory.

The other thing it could be is just that your monster doesn't notice things all the time. It may make constant Int or Str checks to determine if the item will be visible to your monster. If so, then perhaps coming back to a spot several times can trigger finding it. I don;t know, but the Pyramid has the highest number of items in MFDS. It has 5 henger doll pieces, 2 Ancient Reliefs, and the Kings Crest (after you get the 2 reliefs). I figured this would be the place with the best odds of finding things. So far, it's going slow.

I suppose it would be a good idea to list out the Expedition areas and their requirements.

Angowass Road (Class D)
Murimujo Beach (Class D)
Kalaragi Jungle (Class C)
Papass Mountains (Class B)
Promiass Ruins(Class A)
Volcano (Class S)

In order to go to any of these places, your monster needs to be of the rank listed or better. Furthermore, your breeder rank must of that rank or better too.

If you would like to see maps of all but the volcano, they are identical to the maps in MFDS1 and can be found in the MFDS FAQ section. The notes on these maps are no longer applicable, though the geography of the map is the same.

The volcano is Kawera from MR2. Papas is also from that game, but you could only go there for errantry, not expeditons (MR2's icy mountain expeditions were in Torles). I'll take a look at MR2's errantry maps to see if Murimujo is near the Torble Sea.

The Expedition area for the Volcano is called Volco Hot Rocks. The Erranty area is called Kawera. The other Errantry areas have the same name as they did in MFDS.

Something else I have noticed about Expeditions - Nearly all of the Noramon encounters are with Special monster breeds. Just last night in Volco, I encountered Gadget G, MahJongkoro, the Baseball Seuzo, the samurai Durahan, and the the teddy bear Mew.

Ah, I see. The errantry and expeditions take place in different locations. I didn't realize that. I'll take another look at the maps to pinpoint the expedition areas' geographical locations.

For the record, I don't think we've archived the names of the errantry locations, so we'd might as well do it here.

They are all here -

Monster Rancher Metropolis: Monster Farm DS: FAQ (basic essentials, read this first!): Errantry Maps

Wow, I'm off the ball today. Thanks!

Say, what about learning techs? Any different than the original?

Nope. Techs are learned on Errantry as before. If your monsters has the requirements for that tech and they go on the right errantry, they will likely learn it.

We had a nice chart in the perfect guide of MFDS, but obviously none yet in MFDS2. Essentially, though, in order for your monster to learn all of its possible techs, you have to do errantry on every map at least once. Most monsters get no more than 2 techs on any map.

Not sure if anyone has noticed this yet, but you can occasionally get 1/2 off discounts on errantries and expeditions.

Discounts like in the old days. :)

Well, there've been discounts in every title barring MR3 and Evo. It's not like we've been depraved of them of late.