Although Monster Sanctuary takes a lot of cues from other monster-taming games like Pokemon or Siralim, its battle system is also vastly different and can’t be approached in the same way. For monster taming fans who have come from these titles, they may find the battle system in Monster Sanctuary a little more difficult than they have come to expect from such games.

While Monster Sanctuary does have something of a learning curve to it, largely due to its often punishing combat, it doesn’t take long to get a handle on the intricacies of its battle system as there is virtually no downside to losing in battle to test the waters.

Updated July 12, 2022 by Ryan Bamsey: The meta of Monster Sanctuary changes with each new update added, and the recent Forgotten World DLC added quite a lot. We’ve gone over this guide and made sure it’s as useful as it can be as a primer to the combat system of this wonderfully complex game.

Balance Your Strengths And Weaknesses

There is a lot going on in the status pages of your team’s monsters, but one that should be kept in mind when considering adding new members to your team is the elements they are weak to. It’s important to take both the weaknesses and strengths into account, and it’s a good idea to spread them out evenly across your team.

Having multiple monsters weak to one element is just asking to get destroyed by party-wide attacks.

Have A Diverse Range Of Attacks

Just as you should aim to have a diverse range of weaknesses and resistances, you should also make sure that the main attacking monsters on your team have a wide range of attacking elements. While Brutus is one of the most powerful monsters in the game, it can only learn Neutral attacks, which only a handful of monsters are weak to.

In comparison, Manticorb, Monk, and Imori all have access to multiple different attack elements while their respective niches are all fairly different, though both Manticorb and Imori both focus heavily on Critical Damage.

Know Your Debuffs And Stacks

There are two different types of ailment you can inflict on enemies, and they can be easily identified by the color of their icon. Red icons are Debuffs, while yellow icons indicate Stacks. The main difference between these are that Stacks can, well, stack naturally, while Debuffs need specific abilities or equipment before you can apply stacks of them.

Some Stacks are positive, such as Age and Charge. You want as many of these as possible.

The table below details the negative Debuffs and Stacks in the game and what they do.

Many of these debuffs can be modified and improved through the use of auras. Most notably:

  • Congeal will add a damage-over-time effect to Chill, giving it an offensive use like Burn and Poison. Fatal Upkeep will increase the damage inflicted by Burn, Poison, and Congealed Chill. Multi X skills will let you add more stacks to regular Debuffs. Though extra stacks of a Debuff provide lesser effects, this is still a great way to hamper a foe. More instances of Multi X skills on a team let you stack even more Debuffs.

Healers Can Be A Life Saver - Emphasis On ‘Can’

While healers can be useful in the grand scheme of things, they are not necessarily compulsory additions to your team. Monster Sanctuary provides plenty of paths to success and survival - if you plan to never take damage, you don’t need healers as a failsafe.

  • Put dedicated Shielders or Tanks on your team to soak up damage without even touching your health. Shields are powerful and easily applied, and some monsters synergize perfectly with them thanks to passive abilities and auras. Go all-out with offense and take enemies down before they can take you down. This sounds obvious, but with proper planning, a party of buffed-up hard-hitters can solve a lot of the problems that Monster Sanctuary throws at you. Use devastating status effects to your advantage. Weakness will reduce incoming damage, stacks of Blind may help you avoid it entirely, and damage-over-time abilities can stack up quickly with the right movesets.

Cleansing Buffs And Healing Debuffs

From the mid to late-game, many wild monsters, Champion battles, and Keeper Duels will have the opposing team enhancing their capabilities with buffs, many of which can become problematic very quickly. With this in mind, attacks like Cleansing Flame, which removes buffs after attacking, or the Cleanse passive buff which adds a chance for every attack to remove a buff from the target should be kept in mind when team building.

Another good option for removing enemy buffs is Cleansing Sidekick, which will grant every monster on your side a chance to erase buffs when attacking - as long as you’ve got Sidekick up.

On the flipside, you’ll also want to be able to remove debuffs from your side of the battle. When they stack up, they can cause a lot of problems for you.

A high-level Restore can remove up to four debuffs at once, but is single-target, while Mass Restore is party-wide but only removes two at a time. Having these skills around, even if you don’t value the healing aspect, can come in clutch depending on what you fight.

Take Note Of Passive Stat Buffs When Choosing Equipment

Before equipping your monster with all of the highest damage boosting weapons and Critical Chance boosting accessories, take note of where their strengths in battle lie and what stats they would actually benefit from.

Since it is designed almost exclusively for shielding, equipping a Targoat with Critical Chance boosting effects over Defense boosting gear is counterproductive, since its Shield ability’s strength is dictated by its Defense stat. The same can be said for dedicated healers, which often heal based on their base HP or Mana stat, so those should be prioritized over damage-boosting equipment.

NEXT: Monster Sanctuary: Best Shielders