Monster Rancher 1 - Raising tips: Work, Training, Feeding, Money

Your First Playthrough:

• Don't expect to beat the game with your first monster, on your first playthrough! While it is possible, it's not the norm for a new player, and the game is originally meant to have replay value and played through multiple times.
  • To beat the game/get to credits, you must get to Trainer Rank 10. You do this by beating Official tournaments E through S (rank 1-6), then four new S Grade tournaments are opened (Big 4) for ranks 7-10.
  • Instead of racing to Rank 10, Use your first monster not for Trainer Rank progression, but to accumulate as much money as possible, as easily as possible.
  • Don't promote your difficulty too soon by fighting in the Official Tournaments. Instead, fight in the tournaments in-between Officials for money.
  • If the tournaments are too easy, THEN promote to the next Grade for higher tournament money payouts, and keep saving.
• Money is indirectly one of the soft gate-keeper hurdles in the game.
  • With Trainer Rank comes opportunity to upgrade your Ranch (without enough money you will never be prompted to upgrade)
  • You need money to afford frequent items for raising strong monsters (which can help raise your Trainer Rank)
  • With Trainer Ranks, Ranch upgrades, and Strong monsters, you'll have an easier time creating even stronger monsters and also unlocking the hidden breeds later on
• Raising Methods: There's no need to use the most advanced methods immediately, in fact you won't be able to.
  • However, You can use the cheaper raising methods on a new game to maximize lifespan and work gain potential until you've saved enough money for more rigorous raising methods.
• Stress/Fatigue warnings: While the game warns you when a monster is tired or stressed, it is more advantageous to be proactive, rather than reactive. In either scenario you will have to do something to lower fatigue and stress (rest/feed items, or both), but being reactive means you are also likely losing small bits of lifespan each time you have to correct it after the fact.
• Training is for learning new attacks. It can be tempting with the sale notices, but you don't often need Training. SAVE before you do Training.
  • Learning new Techs/Attacks have stat thresholds based on the Locale's stat to reach before they can be learned.
  • Use Light and/or Hard works to raise stats until you can qualify to learn a new attack.
  • It's an unnecessary lifespan hit to do Training without getting the Attack you want from it. If you don't learn a new attack, or it's an attack you don't want, then reload and don't do the Training/Try again/Try a different location.
• Expeditions are optional story and in-game progression. They can provide a variety of items useful for selling for cash, unlocking new monsters, raising stats, increasing lifespan etc. (See Expedition Maps guide for details)
  • There are POW, INT, and SKI obstacles peppered through out expeditions. Once removed, the obstacles stay removed.
  • Most useful items require high INT to find, and high POW to break down obstacles.
  • It can be strategic to bring a POW monster to expedition for the sole purpose of clearing POW obstacles (and not searching for items), then revisit expedition later with an INT monster to search the locations.
  • Your first monster/playthrough probably isn't going to be a great expedition monster unless you lucked out or planned it that way before attending. Most advanced players have a monster dedicated specifically for Expedition with the important stats optimized.

How to upload your monster for Competitive

1. Make sure your monster is frozen at the Lab.
   
2. Save your game on any numbered save slot.
   
3. Exit the game and go back to the Title, and choose "Vs. Mode" in the menu.
   
4. Choose the same numbered save slot from Step 2, to register the frozen monsters online.
   
5. Once the Frozen monsters have been registered, Select "Check Frozen Monster".
   
6. In the list, confirm your monster shown, then click "Display Search Key".
   
7. Note the Search Key. It may be required to submit your monster and is helpful if the monster name has censored character strings.
   

NOTE: you can only have 1 save slot uploaded at a time. Whatever is the last save uploaded is the only save in the cloud. You may overwrite the save slot on your local game however you want, it will not change what was already uploaded unless you re-register/upload it again.