This is a question that I'm often asked, especially by players whose power rating (PR) is around 100-200k PR. There's a stumbling block at this point where it becomes difficult to improve enough to be able to join stronger troops and join in the remainder of the game (being able to defeat Mortimer, play crystal raids or to do well in events). The challenge though is that all of the methods below are likely to take some time to achieve. Be patient, it will happen. :)
Be aware that monsters with high health tend to give you a better power rating than high attack monsters. For that reason, your power rating alone may not be a good indicator of your team's strength.
The Quick Way - Spending
Save up free gold from Tapjoy or Supersonic offers, or buy gold in the game with real money, to use on ultimate, lucky, or event spins. This is an extremely risky gamble as you may only receive a special or a rare for your 50 gold. Ultimate spins are available in the store, but can also be won as prizes in events. Event spins will also appear in the store during an event. Lucky spins give you three times the (very small) chance of winning an epic and these offers appear randomly during game play around the map or in the event areas (gives you a chance of winning event monsters too).
Keep an eye out in game for special promotions that randomly run during events. Some of these promotions will reduce the cost of spins to 40 gold, or will have an increased epic/event drop rate, and others will give you 5/7/10 energy every time you spin. These bonuses can offset the disappointment of having bad luck while spinning. (Note: The energy for spins promotion tends to give you energy for ultimate spins as well, even though this isn't advertised in the banner).
Examples of Spin Promotions
Some event monsters have higher trade value than others - Crystal Siege is currently the highest valued, followed by Battle Royale (offensive only) and Dominion. Raid, Arena or Celestial Towers event monsters have the lowest value as these monsters don't gain an event bonus after the current event ends. (They do occasionally make a surprise return in a future event but this is extremely rare. It's more common that they might reappear in Coliseum, although that tends to only run several times each year).
Note: Once you spend in the game, you will no longer see the free chests that you have been used to finding. The "first time gold sale" that offers an elite spin and costume will only be available once. If your first spend is a different/higher amount, you'll never have this chance again. (The elite spin will guarantee you a super at worst). Every time you spend at a higher level, the current package won't be available and the game will expect you to spend at the next highest level in order to gain those extra items.
Zodiac Matching
Once four or five monsters in your team have the same zodiac sign, their passive abilities will turn on. These passive abilities will substantially increase one or two of the stats of your monsters. As you can imagine, this will automatically raise your power rating significantly.
In the example below, this webula has the zodiac sign of Cancer. Its passive is Rogue, and when it's placed in a zodiac matched team, it will gain 65% attack at the cost of 10% health. (The increased attack makes this the most popular passive to have on an offensive monster).
Click on any monster in your inventory to open an information screen
as shown on the left. Click on the passive to find out more
information about what it does when it is turned on.
As far as which zodiac to choose: some people base this choice on their best monster (strongest or highest rarity) and trade their other monsters to match; others choose the zodiac they have the most of so they can turn the passives on as soon as possible; some people simply choose their real life zodiac.
All 5 monsters in my team are matched Sagittarius
See the sections below on "Zodiac Leveling" and "Passive Leveling" to find out how you can increase this effect even more.
Evolve your Monsters
When you click on a monster in your inventory, you'll see a button giving you the opportunity to evolve your monster. To do so, you'll need two identical monsters and four specials. (To evolve some rares, you'll only need to collect specific commons instead of specials). After you've evolved your monster, you'll have a new monster to feed up from level 1. The monster that you opened up is the one that will become evolved, and the second monster that's in your inventory will disappear in the evolution.
Clicking on the Evolve button brings up the second screen for your evolution
Make sure that you feed all of the monsters involved in the evolution up to their maximum level. This will create a "perfect evolution" where your evolved monster will have the highest possible state. This may not be as important when you're evolving rares, but if you're evolving a super or above, it's considered essential. (It's very hard to trade away a monster that isn't perfectly evolved).
You can double check whether your monster will be perfectly evolved by looking at the "Perfection" percentage as shown in the above left screenshot. If it shows 100%, your monster will be perfectly evolved. If the percentage is lower than this, and you're certain that you have all the required monsters maxed in your inventory, you may need to check whether the evolution process has chosen the correct monsters for you. To change any of the monsters, click on their image under the "Required Ingredients" title on the evolution screen and you will be able to select another monster of the same type. This commonly happens if you have more specials of the right element in your inventory than you need for the evolution and the game takes a "best guess" at the ones you want to use.
To change the monsters used in this evolution, click on the one you
want to change under "Required Ingredients" and the screen on the
right will appear, allowing you to choose another monster of the
same type that is in your inventory.
If you're able to take part in crystal raids with your troop (see below), you'll be able to grow a collection of crystals used for second evolutions, creating an even stronger monster.
This second evolution requires a super crystal and 3 rock crystals,
most commonly obtained from crystal raids in Lost Temple.
Supers from Salvaging Rares
When you receive rares that you don't need, from farming or defeating the daily boss in camp, take them to the salvage station in troop hall. For the price of some stone, you can choose to salvage your rares to gain "rare essence". The amount of essence received is random and varies between 1 and 7 for unevolved rares. When you have 115 rare essences, you'll be able to craft a super egg.
Click on the Salvage Station to see the monsters you can salvage.
Clicking on a monster will bring up the left screen, press "Salvage" to salvage it
Click on the Crafting tab to see how close you are to crafting an egg
You can also salvage unwanted supers and ultras in the same way, however at power rating of 100-200k it would be best to keep them for now as it takes a large excess of these rarities to be able to craft a new monster of a higher rarity.
For all rarities, see the "Monster Trader" section below for a new alternative way of upgrading your monster rarities using less monsters.
Monster Trader
Newly added to the game in recent months is a Monster Trader. This trader appears in your Troop Hall for 24 hours each week, always after the game day reset following the end of the weekly event. The trader has been making some extra surprise visits both during and between events. Drop by your troop hall often and check if she's there while you're petting your troop pet.
The Monster Trader is a new way of upgrading your monsters to the next rarity. Each week the monster trader will have a new selection of random offers for you, from donating legendary monsters all the way down to specials. If you're able to collect enough of the monsters the trader is looking for, you will be able to trade them in for a monster of the next highest rarity. The offers you receive are completely random and every player in the game will receive different ones. One consistent detail is that the monster you will receive is of the same element as the monsters you need to donate.
When you're starting out, gaining any kind of super is difficult and the Monster Trader is an easier method if you've been busy farming and have collected these rares. If you have enough inventory space, you can collect and store rare monsters of the same type in the hopes that an offer will appear for them one week.
An example of three types of rares that I could trade in for a super
Be careful though as not all of the offers are considered to be "good" by advanced players. In the above screenshot, the first offer will give me a darkwolf super, however it's statistics are one of the lowest in game and many rares (especially reward rares) will have a stronger attack. The second offer is for a brushbaby, which is a past event monster that is unlikely to receive an event bonus again, but it requires you to collect 6 dyngo's that can only be obtained from the right event spin (troop wars). The third offer is likely to be the best: 6 rares that can be found from farming for a rockbottom. A better offer would be one that would give me a reward super from my collected rares.
Often for beginners, it's difficult to know what the supers are from their image on the Monster Trader screen. However, you're likely to know which element it is (the same as the rares you need to donate), and you can run a search through the
bcrank.us catalog using the keywords "super" and the element. Scroll through the list that appears until you can match the image of the monster to one in this list.
Using the BCrank catalog with search terms "super" and "leaf" to search
for the brushbaby image. Clicking on it then will open up more
information, and can tell you how they're usually obtained.
If you're on the higher end of the power rating range that I'm targeting, it's likely that you already have some evolved supers. In order to make them stronger with a second evolution, you'll need to be in a troop that is running crystal raids to most easily obtain the required crystals. The trader can also help as she also has offers for trading in specials for crystals, or trading in multiple super/ultra crystals for an ultra/epic crystal.
There does seem to be a complicating feature of the trader. When you don't have enough of the monsters to trade immediately, you'll be offered the minimum number of those monsters to donate. However, if you already have the minimum number of monsters to donate before the trader appears, she tends to require an additional monster that you don't yet have. Be prepared to either farm for another rare during the 24 hours the offer is available, or ask around the players that you've been friends with long enough (12 days) in game to see if they can quickly trade you the extra monster you need. One way around this is that monsters in your inbox gifts don't count for the available monster donations. This can be especially handy if you're looking to trade specials for crystals, or crystals for better crystals, as many specials and crystals are given to you as gifts. Another method players have started using is to "hide" some of their extra monsters in their Arena defense team. The trader can't seem to see them there and is likely to ask you for less monsters. You can then recall your Arena defense team to retrieve these monsters for donation.
Supers from Event Tokens
This is the way that I received my first super! It does take time though.
Event tokens are prizes that drop during 10 day raid events (where you fight a mini-boss for event tokens and an event special to donate to a raid boss). They also drop at a lower rate during Celestial Towers, Arena, Exodawn and Santiflyer events.
During 10 day raids, Celestial Towers and Arena events, you can click on the event "Trader" who will have a selection of game items that you can buy with your event tokens. There is always an option to buy the current event super for 250 event tokens. This super will have a bonus for the duration of the event, but isn't likely to have a bonus in future events. Be aware that your super bought this way will start at level 1 and you'll need to feed it up for it to be useful during the event. The active ability of monsters bought this way is usually set to one ability each event - ask around your troop or Battle Camp Global on facebook to find out what that ability is and whether you want it. Most commonly, the active is venom and unfortunately only one venom will be effective on your team at a time. The passive ability will be random.
If you have good patience, try to collect 500 tokens so that you can purchase two event supers at once. This will give you a better chance of gaining one in your zodiac and also allows you to evolve your monster in the future as these monsters aren't likely to be available again in the game.
Supers from Monster Grabs
As you play the game you will come across a lot of opportunities to win free Monster Grabs. These come from achievements like story line quests, daily quests, event prizes, raid hall prizes (found at each map area). Alternatively you can purchase monster grabs for 5 gold, however I wouldn't recommend spending your gold in this manner.
Monster Grabs are spins available in the troop store. They gives you an opportunity to win commons, uncommons, rare pieces, rares, specials, super pieces and full supers. Most spins will give you the lesser prizes. Occasionally you'll be lucky enough to receive a super piece. It's very rare to win a full super from the Monster Grabs, but it does sometimes happen.
The supers available are generally called "spin monsters" as they're the same monsters that you can win from non-event spins. These pieces can also be gained from the three methods below. Keep the super pieces you win and over time you may be able to complete a full monster.
Supers from Raid Halls
Even though you have previously completed a map area's raid hall in order to move up to the next map area, each 24 hours you are allowed to complete the raid hall again. The lower bosses give you a chance to win a monster grab (see above) and the last boss will give you a chance to will either a full super or super pieces of the same element as the raid hall, also the same element that has been focused on in that map area. For example, if you're wanting a chance to win a water super (or pieces thereof) keep playing the raid hall in Turtle Falls. Make sure you get a hit against the final boss in order to give yourself this chance.
Raid Hall in Turtle Falls
Your troop can also choose to run any of these raid halls as a troop raid. Your troop will need to complete the raid hall on easy before a new option of running it on extreme will appear. The extreme raid will require a lot more effort to kill the bosses, but the drop rate of the better prizes improves.
Click here to read more about Raid Halls.
Supers from Troop Raids
This isn't a method that I'd currently recommend as the drop rate for supers is far smaller than that of the raid halls (see above). Troop raids take place within the troop hall at the horned rock monster with a glowing purple mouth and is labelled "raid" (see below screenshot). Your troop admins can start a raid here at any time. Click on the raid monster and you'll see a list of available raids. Each is based around one element, and the super (or pieces thereof) will also be of the same element. Each raid down the list is substantially harder and requires more effort from your troop, however the prizes improve as well. Prizes will be awarded once you have finished all five sections of each raid - failure to finish a section will mean that you have to start from the beginning again.
Troop Hall Raids
Supers/Ultras/Epics from Troop Hall Dungeons
In between events, the troop hall dungeon will be open for you to battle. The type of dungeon will change four hourly and will randomly take one of the elements and one of the rarities (super/ultra/epic) to make 15 different dungeons, plus there is a special dungeon in the rotation too.
The troop hall dungeon is completed individually for 5 energy at a time. The more times your troop members complete the current dungeon, the higher your "troop rank" will become. As your troop's ranking increases, the drop rate for the better prizes improves slightly and you may start winning more than 300 stone or element boosters. Completing the dungeon on the highest difficulty you can manage, the higher the drop rates too. Be aware that you may need a large inventory in order to collect all of these possible monster pieces!
Crystal Raids
Crystal raids are the easiest way to win full supers in the game. The challenge is that with a low power rating, you're unlikely to be in a troop that is able to complete crystal raids. To be able to battle crystal raids, you need to have defeated Mortimer in the Lost Temple map. Your troop will then need to work together to defeat each crystal. Be aware that the first crystal is always the easiest and any subsequent crystal will become much harder. Lost temple resets 7 days after you first start a crystal, and that will give your troop the chance to try another "first crystal" again for the easiest raid. The ordering of the elements is random each time Lost Temple resets. For more information on Crystal Raids, refer to to BattleCampManual's amazing guide.
Reward Rares and Supers from Event Prizes
By achieving a significant number of trophies in an event, you may reach a prize tier that awards you a "reward rare" or a "reward super". These monsters have an "R" in the top left corner of their picture. Their active ability has a "+" at the end, indicating that it's stronger than usual. e.g. Snipe+
Snipe+ does an extra 50% damage compared to Snipe on these supers
At low power rating levels, achieving even a reward rare may be challenging. Some players will spend to gain a higher tier. Others may save up their energy gifts and possibly collect the free energy available each day from the daily raid boss in camp and the five energy gifts from friends. Over time these accumulations can make a difference in an event.
Individual and Troop prize tiers can be seen by clicking the event "E"
on the top left corner of your screen during an event.
Trading for Supers with Maxed Specials
If you keep an eye out on the trading website bcrank.us or on the official BC facebook group "Battle Camp Global Trading", you'll come across trade requests that are offering tier 1 supers (where the passive enhances the active ability the most) or reward supers in exchange for a number of maxed specials of specific elements and ability (potent/charged/energized). This is a relatively easy method to improve the supers that you have collected so far.
BCrank now has an option to search specifically for these trades. In the main search bar enter "super" to limit your search to supers, then click the button on the right hand side of the search bar to open the drop down menu. In the top text field "Search posts looking for...", enter the search term "special". BCrank will then give you a list of supers that players are trading with the keyword "special" in what they're looking for.
Searching for supers that are available for trade with maxed specials
Note that in order to trade a super with maxed specials, you'll need to have a high level of trust in that player as multiple trades are required. You'll first need to trade your maxed specials for the other players level 1 specials. You'll then need to trade your worst super for their good super. The risk is that the other player may take your specials and not give you your good super.
You can gain an idea of how much that player can be trusted by checking their name on bcrank.us. Enter their player name on the main page and then click the button on their page that shows you their trades. Under their name at the top of the page you'll be able to see how many "thanks" (thumbs up icon) they've received from being a good trader and how many "flags" they've received from being a bad trader. I'd suggest finding someone with at least 10+ thanks and no flags to minimise your risk.
My BCrank page, found by searching for my player name. Click on "trades" button and you'll be taken to a page that lists my current trading posts. Just below my profile picture, you can see (in orange font) that I have 167 thanks from trades I've made. If I had flags, they'd be shown in red on this same line.
Specials can be won through farming around the camp area and sometimes from troop hall dungeons too. There are a number of ways to max your specials. Click here to read more about maxing specials and other monsters most easily.
Zodiac Leveling
Within the Arena, you can speak to a Ranger and unlock a zodiac for yourself. By donating specific runes (gained from Arena battles) you can gain a zodiac bonus so that all monsters of that zodiac will have their three stats raised slightly. In the example below, my zodiac level is 60 and all of my Sagittarius monsters will have a 25% increase to their base statistics.
Zodiac leveling is available in the Arena
For more information, please see my Zodiac Leveling post.
Passive Leveling
When you have a stable team that you're wanting to improve slightly, you can increase the passive level of your monster. This method is not recommended while you're still working to build a team, and isn't advised for improving rare monsters.
Have a look at one of the monsters you want to boost and see what passive it uses. The best passives to level up are the ones where the passive increases the active ability (such as lethal/rogue for an offensive monster, or priest/protector for a healing monster). These are generally called "tier 1" monsters. Tier 2/3 monsters have passives that raise two stats, one of which is used by the active. Tier 4 monsters, or "feeders", have passives that don't affect the active. In this latter case, there is usually little point in increasing the level of the passive. The table below lists the majority of tiers for easy reference.
Click to Enlarge
Tier 1's have passives that increase the monster's active the most.
Feeders (tier 4) have passives that don't affect the monster's active at all.
The next step is to find a monster that you don't want to keep that has the same passive. Feed this monster to the one whose passive you want to increase, just the same way you'd try to feed the monster to a higher level normally.
In the example below, I've selected a super with lethal to feed to my ultra that also has lethal. My ultra is currently at lethal level 5, and the red text shows that I have a 24% chance of increasing the passive to level 6 when I click the "Feed" button. You can feed multiple monsters at the same time to increase the percentage chance of success (if they all have lethal as a passive), or you can feed them individually for the smaller chance of success but you my be lucky and multiple levels could be raised (or unlucky and no raise might be achieved). The percentage chance of passive leveling succeeding will depend on the rarity of the monster being fed (higher rarities will bring higher chance, although supers and rares have the same percentages currently). For each passive level you reach, the next level will have a lower chance of success.
My monster has passive level 5. In this example, feeding another monster that also has the lethal passive gives me a 24% chance of leveling the passive up to level 6.
Equipment
A post about equipment is still being planned but as yet remains unwritten. As a brief summary, jewels can be found by digging at the dig site. They can then be leveled up at the jewel station in the troop hall. You can then forge equipment at the forge in troop hall and socket jewels to this equipment. When your monster is wielding this equipment, it gain a percentage increase to one of its stats based on the level of the jewel socketed. Click here to read the early blog posts on collecting and leveling up jewels.
This Health Collar with level 5 health jewel gives my water monster a 11.25% health boost
Monster Giveaways
Occasionally you may find monster giveaways run by generous players or troops in the official Battle Camp Global facebook group. These giveaways are usually for reward supers - meaning that you'll need to have another super to make the trade. The requirements are usually quite simple, such as guessing a number. (A special thank you to Claudie D. who gave me my first reward super in a giveaway a very long time ago!)
The website bcrank.us also runs a weekly giveaway that you will automatically be entered into if you log onto the website daily.
Joining a Super/Ultra Tier Troop
The last alternative that I can offer for gaining better monsters is looking through Battle Camp Global on facebook for Super or Ultra tier troops who are looking for new troopmates who meet special requirements. These troops will be in the ultra or super tier during an event, meaning that all of their troop members will receive a reward monster of that rarity. If they have empty places in their troop, they might invite you to join them for that event only, in exchange for a "gift" that you'll provide them. Most often, troops will invite someone in who is willing to donate a certain level of stone to raise their troop level, or a large number of specials to their troop pet. During Celestial Towers or Arena, troops will be looking for players ("farmers") who have collected a large number of sun/moon emblems or valor medals that they can use to complete more raids. During raid events, troops will be looking for players with a large number of event specials that they can use to complete more raids. Expect to prove that you have these requirements with screenshots of what you have collected so far, and have enough to beat other prospective troop members.
The REAL, OLD PvP Passives