First of all I wanted to ask you how you learned all of this stuff about this game, I mean witout the help of all of these people who have posted all of this info, Iwould have never goten as far in this game as I have at this point. And I still haven't beaten A rank yet, because I am trying to fill up my book as much as I can (I know I can't yet get Zan, Phoenix, or Doodle). And all I have to unlock is the Raiden and I am in the 15th year and I still havn't seen the peddler come with the Nanchuku yet. And sence you have pretty much beaten the game with 511 out of 512 monsters, I was hoping that you could help me out a little. Like what kind of monster do you think I should raise now? Note: I only have aroumnd 46,000 Gs because I haven't battled much yet, and I only have the second barn (And no-one put that the second barn can't hold a Joker!)

I was just sort of cruising and saw this (a year and a half late)

The only advice I can give about figuring out games is general advice, and it applies to any game, so it's good for anyone playing any MR game.

You need to learn to pay attention to what the game is telling you. Remembering when things happen, noticing little changes in lists and things, they may not seem like much but they're important sometimes. If you need to take notes, that helps a lot. I have a really good memory most of the time especially on a game I'm "into"

Knowing how to research helps. Not only does it let you find sites like this, but it can give you clues to how to find info in other places. Most of what I've discovered I did on my own, but I've always freely admitted when detective work gave me the clues to start. MRA2 was out in Japan for months before it came here. What started as looking through some Japanese websites for MR artwork led to looking at different forums and info sites like this one. They're in Japanese, however numbers and tables are not too hard to decipher, logically. My best friend Thorr knew enough Japanese to translate some key lines of text, and logical induction did the rest. The result was the stuff you can find here about multi-generational breeding. Sites like that also gave us clues that we had trouble deciphering until things happened to us in our own games. After that 2+2=4.

As for playing a long term game like this, coming up with plans always helps. That's part of the game, planning and scheduling. I very rarely had to ask myself what I was going to raise next, because what I was raising would lead me to the next step in a plan. Or I would run into trouble with the current monster, and want to do better (at say Exploration) with my next one, so I would raise a good explorer.

Last hint I have, is curiosity. You learn a lot by putting pieces together, but you have to ask the stupid questions in the first place. What does that trait do? Are these different colored monsters really different? How long can I get a monster to live? Sometimes the really numb questions lead to fun experiments. But it all starts with asking questions until you find one you can figure out an answer to.

It also helps a lot to be able to speak and write reasonably well, and explain what you are seeing, thinking, and the results you get to other people. The work I did in older MR games helped me when I wrote for MRA2. The things I learned here about writing and moderating helped me in several game forums since then.

If I were serious about it and not just looking at it as a source of personal fun, I think I'm good enough at it now to do it for a living. That might be fun, but so much of what I write has to be what I want to write about, and when you work for someone its too often what they want you to write about.

I hope I have another MR game to write about someday.