Friday, January 8, 2016

Easy Ways to Max Monsters

This is beginner's guide to maxing monsters with specials (including the specials themselves).

Advanced players may prefer the following more detailed pages from BattleCampManual and BC Tools that I highly recommend:

Battle Camp Feeding Guide
Battle Camp XP Calculator

Same Element Bonus When Feeding

Whenever you feed a monster to another monster of the same element, you'll receive a 30% bonus to the feeding experience (XP) delivered to your monster.  For example, when you feed a fire monster to another fire monster it will feed up more than a leaf/rock/wind/water monster would have.  This is an important consideration to all the information provided below, and is what is meant by the term "same element".


What are Feeding Boosters?

Feeding boosters will be stored in the backpack of your inventory when you receive them.  You can earn feeding boosters on day 17 of the daily logins, from the random prizes awarded when your pet has received 100 pets (check inbox), and from meeting the required trophy benchmark for feeding boosters each event (check inbox).


Feeding boosters are stored in the Backpack of your Inventory.

Click on them to open the right screenshot and press "use" to start.


A feeding booster doubles the amount of experience earned by feeding for 30 minutes.  This means that every monster you feed to another monster will essentially be doubled - you can think of this as having twice the level or an imaginary second monster being fed at the same time.

You can check in your Backpack to see how much longer your feeding booster will be active (29 minutes and 56 seconds here)


As feeding boosters are especially valuable and not all that easy for most players to get, many people will set up a collection of monsters to be fed during that half hour to maximise the benefits.


How to Max Specials?

Maxing specials is the key to maxing other monsters, but they can also be used in perfect evolutions (where everything is maxed prior to the evolve to give you the best statistics afterwards).

Specials have the highest feed value of the different rarity monsters, meaning that they feed up other monsters more than any others. Specials come in each of the five elements and with three different "multipliers" of feeding: Potent (2x feeding value), Charged (3x feeding value) and the strongest is Energized (5x feeding value).  You can find out the multiplier of your special by clicking on it in your inventory.  Most players rename their specials to indicate what multiplier they are, either by name or by using a code such as "xx" for potents (2x), "xxx" for chargeds  (3x) and "xxxxx" for energized  (5x), and on some devices you can simply use numbers. This makes them easier to tell apart during feeding and evolving.  (To rename your monster, click on the pencil button to the right of the current name of your monster)

An energized water special that I've renamed "xxxxx"


(Note: crystals have 25% additional feeding bonus above regular specials)

The following table has been taken from battlecampmanual.com where far more feeding information is available.  It lists for you the exact number of levels to feed one special in order to max any other special (or crystal) of the same or different element.

[Click to enlarge]

Example 1: Any level 24 potent (2x) will max a same element special using a feeding booster, as per the screenshot below.

Feeding a level 24 potent (2x) water special to any other water special will max it.

Example 2: A level 21 charged (3x) special will max any other special of any element when using a feeding booster.

Feeding a level 16 charged (3x) rock special to any other rock special will max it.


Without using a feeding booster, you can double these levels or use two of these same level specials.  More precisely, you can use a level 24 and a level 23 potent (2x) to max any same element special at any time.  You can also use a level 16 and a level 15 charged (3x) to do the same.  Alternatively you can use one potent and one charged (3x).


From BattleCampManual.com, it will take same element uncommons with these collective levels (when you add them together) to raise a special up to the levels shown in the above chart without using a feeding booster:

Level 16: 21 uncommon levels (e.g. a level 10 and a level 11)
Level 21: 45 levels
Level 24: 60 levels
Level 31: 116 levels

If you haven't reached the lost temple map area, you may only be able to collect commons for feeding. These will require much higher levels to achieve the same results.


It's common to use maxed potents for evolutions as they're the weakest special feeder.  Maxed energized are used for feeding up higher rarity monsters. Maxed charged specials are used as either.


Maxing Other Monsters with Commons/Uncommons

Many beginners start by letting their monsters gain 25XP with each energy used in the game.  This gives the appearance of leveling up monsters quickly, however each level requires more XP and the process will soon slow down.

Players then tend to turn to feeding commons/uncommons directly to their monsters to help level them up.  This tends to cost you a lot of stone - 5 stone per level of the monster you're feeding multiplied by the number of monsters you're feeding at once (maximum is 5).  Once you're looking at doing first evolutions (5000 stone) or second evolutions (20000 stone), this stone will seem like a precious commodity!

The first step to reducing stone is to start feeding up your low level commons/uncommons to each other.  For example, at level 1 it will cost you only 25 stone to feed five monsters at one time.  You can then feed five of these levelled up commons/uncommons to your monster to gain more XP for less stone.

However, at level 10 it will cost you 250 stones to feed any five monsters, and at level 20 it will cost you 500 stones.  This starts to add up when your monster reaches higher levels!

Over time, this method will still cost you a lot of stone.  The majority of players will use specials instead, as detailed below.


Maxing Monsters Using Specials

The wonderful chart below was calculated and created by Lawrence Wilson summarizing the number of maxed specials required to max any super/ultra/epic monster when it's unevolved, first evolved or second evolved, when using a feeding booster (double everything if you're not using a booster.  It's my favourite cheat chart in the game!

Chart created by Lawrence Wilson
[Click to enlarge]

The numbers in this chart refer to the collective "multiplier" of the required maxed specials. A maxed potent (2x) is worth 2, a maxed charged (3x) is worth 3, and a maxed energized (5x) is worth 5.  Yellow represents maxing a super, green represents maxing an ultra and red represents maxing an epic.  "Same element" means that you're using all specials that match the element of your monster that's being fed up (for example, wind specials to max a wind monster).  These multipliers are smaller than "different element" specials as they make use of the 30% feeding bonus on "same element" feeding.  "Non-evo" means a monster that has not yet been evolved - this will be all monsters that you've won in spins or from pieces. "1st evo" and "2nd evo" means a monster that has undergone a first evolution or second evolution (using crystals) respectively.

Example 1: In it's simplest terms if you want to max a fire super using fire specials you will need to look up the non-evolved row, the super column and the same element (feeding fire to fire).  There you'll find the number 3.56.  To max the super with specials, you'll need to find specials whose multipliers add up to a number higher than 3.56, the lowest of which is 4.  Therefore you can max this super with two fire potent (2x) specials, as the multipliers add up to 4 (2+2=4). You could also choose to use a fire energized (5x) special as 5 is greater than 3.56 too.

If you wanted to use leaf specials to max this same fire super, look in the "different element" (fire is different to leaf) column of the super section and you'll find the number 4.63.  Therefore we need a multiplier higher than 4.63, and so 5 is a great choice.  We could use an energized (5x) leaf special to provide our 5x multiplier, or we could use a potent (2x) leaf special and a charged (3x) leaf special (2+3 = 5).  Note that in this last sentence, leaf can be substituted for any other element that is different to fire in either case.


Example 2: To max any first evolved ultra, look in the "1st evo" row of the ultra section.  I need a multiplier of 11.6x using the same element specials or 15.08x with different elements.  For the same elements, I could use 2 maxed energized (5x) and one potent (2x) to give a 12x multiplier (5+5+2=12), or four maxed charged (3x) to achieve the same(3+3+3+3=12).  For the different element specials, I would probably use three max energized (5x) for a 15x multiplier (5+5+5=15) and make up the remaining 0.08x with uncommons.

Assuming your monster is at level 1, each special you feed at the same time will only cost you 5 stone, making this both quick and inexpensive.


Example 3: To max a second evolved super with different element specials will require a multiplier of 15.13. In the screenshots below I'm maxing a second evolution super using 3 energized (5x) water specials for the 15x multiplier, and I'm also feeding an uncommon to make up the little difference left by the .13 in the multiplier.  As you can see, I'm maxing this monster for the cost of only 20 stones (level 1 x 5 stone x 4 monsters being fed = 20 stone).

Feeding 3 energized water specials and one level 11 uncommon is maxing my second evolved leaf super.

Example 4: Event monsters won from spins usually come already maxed or at half levels.  To max a super from level 1 requires a same element multiplier of 3.56, which could be two potents (2x) of the same element.  For a level 25 super (half of the maximum level 50), you can use a same element charged (3x) special to max your monster.  This actually works from level 23, as shown in the screenshots below.  This is a good example of the non-linearity of XP required for increasing levels as the half level still requires almost the same special multiplier to max it.

Any level 23-25 super can be maxed with a same element charged (3x) special.

My Personal Feeding/Naming System

This is all very subjective and everyone will have their own method - I simply present mine as an example.

For me personally, I save up pairs of matching element specials where one is "half fed" and the other is a level 1 that will be maxed.  All the other monsters I want to max are placed in my inventory (with other monsters filling empty storage positions). I then fill my inventory with uncommons leveled up to to 14-15. Lastly I used up my monster spins to gain extra specials, uncommons and commons (I discard the rare pieces but these may be of use to you).  These monster spins push my inventory beyond its maximum capacity.  I'll then wait until my energy recharges and start a feeding booster.  I'll max my pairs of specials, use specials to max other monsters, farm with my 5 recharge energy, then use my remaining uncommons/commons to feed up any additional specials I've received or other monsters that need a little more feeding.  

I also have a personal preference to feeding uncommons to my supers until they're at level 23 and then feeding it a same element charged (3x) special to max it. It's not that cost effective with stone but I like to save my potents for evolutions usually.

My Inventory

In the screenshot above, the two water specials in the last row are paired for when I next run a feeding booster.  At a glance I can see they're paired by the letter "F", one is a level 1 energized ("xxxxx") and the other is a level 24 potent ("xx").  In the top row I have a level 1 leaf potent that is paired with a "half fed" leaf special not shown that is linked by the letter "D".  The rock special is charged ("xxx") and is already "half fed" ("half" in its name").  The potent ("xx") water special in the second row is almost fed up to half and will later be linked with the energized ("xxxxx") water special in the top row.

Note: the letters B/C/D on my other monsters tell me that they are tiers 2/3/4 respectively.  My "ForMarcia" monster is waiting to be traded.  The super in the bottom row has mender as its passive.  Each of the names tells me information I might want to know.

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