Hey Monster Keepers!

We have just gone live with a new hotfix (1.2.1) addressing some of the bugs that you guys have reported! Here are the notes on what we tackled!

Patch Notes:

• The game freezes when skipping through the last end credits screen quickly
  
• The game freezes when a player has the Buff Info menu open in PvP while their opponent disconnects
  
• Combining Poison Eater skill with Power Healing passive for the spectral toad, makes the skill not selectable in combat
  
• When switching the active monsters in Combat with L/R while having the confirm popup open if you want to retreat from Combat using a Smoke Bomb would leave the popup open while also setting the Combat Menu active for the switched monster.
  
• 'Energize' and 'Shock Charging' auras now no longer work if the Monster having the Aura is dead.
  
• It was possible to stack multiple 'Shock Charging' auras despite it being marked as 'Unique Aura'

If you encounter any more issues and bugs please be sure to report them to us here!

Sadly, given the longer update turnover times on consoles, we're not quite able to release this hotfix patch as easily there. We will bundle the bugfixes with the next bigger update (1.3) on those platforms.

To stay up to date on Monster Sanctuary follow us on our social pages below!

Follow Moi Rai Games on Twitter
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Dear Monster Keepers,

Today we're launching the second major post-launch update for Monster Sanctuary! It's releasing today on all platforms - PC and consoles. We're calling this one the "Legendary Keeper Update", but it also includes player costumes, a couple of different speedrun features, and more! Check out the trailer here:






We added a new end-game / post-game challenge to the game! Deep within the Magma Chamber, you will find the hall of Legendary Keepers. Each statue is dedicated to one of our most generous Kickstarter backers, who helped make the production of Monster Sanctuary possible.

We asked each of those backers if they could contribute to our Legendary Keeper challenge with a team of Monsters of their own choosing. This resulted in a series of fourteen unique Keeper fights, which are some of the most challenging fights in the game! Each fight will reward you with some high-tier goodies once you've beaten it. Those who manage to beat every single fight will be awarded with a new unique accessory for their Monsters to equip!




The big, flashy new feature of this update: player customization! You may now find different costumes on your travels through the Sanctuary. Six new costumes have been added to the game with this update, and we will add more with future updates. Also, there are now different color palettes for all of the player costumes, including the default player costume.

Some of the costumes can be found in new treasure chests that have been added to different areas of the game, while others are awarded for epic accomplishments in the game - like the "Keeper Master" outfit that is only granted to those who defeat all of the Champion Monsters in the game.



Once you've unlocked a costume, it carries over to NewGame+. You can change your costume in a new room inside the Keepers' Stronghold. There's also the option to change your character's gender and name there.




We also added a combination of different features to the game that should add quite some quality of life for those who'd like to speedrun Monster Sanctuary. Many thanks to those in our speedrunning community who helped us with their feedback, like Dixnine, PurpleThiccmin, vstevenv22, Odyssey18, ShneekeyTheLost, and KungFuSandshrew among others!

• We added a timer that can be turned on as you start a new game. The timer keeps running while you're in game menus. The timer pauses during loading screens. The timer stops once you reduce the final boss's health points to 0 (but the timer will still run after the credits, in case you wish to continue your speedrun afterwards).
  
• We added cutscene skipping to all larger cutscenes and NPC interactions in the game.
  
• We added a new 3x combat speed option for even faster combat animations.

The current record (pre-update) for any% is held by DixNine at around 2 hours and 6 minutes. We are excited to see everyone's attempts to break the game in record time!


With update 1.2, you will also be able to directly challenge your friends to a PvP match. It's very simple to use: One player has to "host" the game, which will give them a four-digit code. The other player joins their match by using this four-digit code. Private matches also allow you to adjust two PvP settings: who goes first and whether duplicate Monsters are allowed or not.

Please take note that PvP still only works if both players are playing on the same platform. Also, we unfortunately had to disable the PvP direct challenge feature on Xbox because of technical limitations.




The Legendary Keeper Update (also called Update 1.2) also includes several highly requested changes that should increase the game's quality of life:

• You can now automatically sort Monsters and your inventory based on different criteria.
  
• The buff overview screen in combat is greatly improved, allowing you to see all the different active buff and debuff stacks at once.
  
• Whether you’re new to the game or just need some additional guidance on your journey, when talking to your Spectral Familiar, they can now help you with some useful, general gameplay tips to get accustomed to the game’s mechanics.
  
• For those up for more challenging encounters while backtracking old areas, there is now an NPC at the Monster Farm that lets you increase the minimum level for all wild Monsters depending on your Keeper Rank. This setting can be turned on and off.
  
• The Health Bar now previews shield amounts for shielding actions. Also, we were able to finally fix the bug with the red bar not disappearing properly.
  
• We start a new season for the PvP Leaderboards (Season 3).
  
• Even on Casual mode, some of the Keeper battles were still too tough for some of our players. With this update, we specifically decreased the difficulty of Keeper battles on Casual mode by lowering all of the enemy Keeper Monsters' attributes.

As a small sidenote, we wanted to inform you that we printed a new batch of hardcover Monster Journals - which are available on our page:
https://monster-sanctuary.com

These new Monster Journals are the "second edition" print - meaning that the skill trees inside are based on the current skill trees from the new Legendary Keeper update.


Monster skill tree changes:

• Qilin: Gains 'Charged Anomaly', 'Shock Charging', 'Buff Charging', 'Charged Healing', 'Attack Plus', 'Mana Plus' and 'Initial Shock', Loses 'Blessed Strikes', 'Dragon skin' and 'Armor Shred'
  
• Magmamoth: Gains 'Charged Destruction'. Some passives on its left most skill tree got rearanged.
  
• Goblin Pilot: Gains 'Charged Hazard', loses 'Armor Shred'
  
• Glowfly: Gains 'Charged Hazard', 'Multishock' is now available at level 10+
  
• Glowdra: Loses one instance of 'Mana Proc'
  
• Skorch: Gains 'Charged Destruction'
  
• Crackle Knight: Gains 'Multi Shock', Loses 'Wind Affinity'
  
• Goblin Miner: Gains 'Charged Banner', 'Charge Amplifier', 'Load Up' and an additional 'Mana Plus' node, loses 'Buff Charging'
  
• Salahammer: Gains 'Charged Banner'
  
• Koi: Gains 'Critical Healing' and 'Charged Reflexes'
  
• Vaero: Gains 'Charged Reflexes'
  
• Sycophantom: Gains 'Charged Chant', 'Load Up' and 'Healing Shield', loses 'Magic Powered Shield' and one 'Magic Plus' node
  
• Blade Widow: Gains +1 Base Defense, both shifts gain +1 Base Attack
  
• Beetloid: Light shift got -1 Base Defense
  
• Targoat: Gains 'Load Up'
  
• Dracozul: Gains 'Shared Barrier', loses one 'Health Plus' node
  
• Darnation: Gains 'Antitoxins'
  
• Aurumtail: 'Glimmer' was moved up in the skill tree
  
• Kame: Gains +2 Base Attack, 'Multi Might', 'Charged Reflexes', 'Load Up', loses -1 Base Health, 'Meditate', one 'Attack Plus' and one 'Static'

Skill changes:

• Meditation now grants 6 Charge stacks (instead of 5)
  
• Charging Sphere now grants 3 Charge stacks on highest upgrade level (instead of 2)
  
• 'Backstab' damage bonus increased to 25% (from 20%)
  
• All mass shielding actions got their shield amounts increased
  
• 'Force of Nature', 'Carnage' and 'Polar Winds' heal amount increased
  
• 'Power Focus' now grants a damage multiplier based on how many monsters acted the turn, meaning to get the most out of it you'll need the monster now to use it last in turn.
  
• 'Solar Blaze' mana cost increased to 250 (from 240)
  
• 'Solar Burst' level 3 mana cost increased to 230 (from 220)
  
• 'Gale' level 3 mana cost increased to 230 (from 220)
  
• 'Critical Socery' crit chance reduced to 5% (from 6%)
  
• 'Enlighten' trigger chance got reduced to 55% (from 60%)
  
• 'Martial Prowess' chance got reduced to 70% (from 75%)
  
• 'Channeling Balance' damage multipier + damage reduction value reduced to 6% (from 7.5%)
  
• 'Extra Channel' chance reduced to 12% (from 15%)
  
• 'Shield Burst' now expends 90% of the whole shield but the damage is lower (200% for Shield Burst level 2)
  
• 'Healing Wave' level 3 base heal amount reduced to 200 (from 225)
  
• 'Life Wave' heal amount increased for all levels
  
• 'Avalanche' crit damage bonus increased for level 2 + 3
  
• 'Dragon Mastery', 'Steam Punk', 'Tranquility' and 'Phoenix Heritage' applied debuffs now trigger proliferate, Flash Freeze and similar passives
  
• 'Holy Presence' now also triggers on healing and shielding actions
  
• 'Intelligent Swarm' now has 100% chance to apply a charge stack again (instead of 75%)
  
• 'Thorn Tendril' increases critical damage now (instead of critical chance) and the bleed damage is based on critical damage now (500% at highest upgrade level)
  
• 'Abyssal Sword' Buff/Debuff apply chance increased (60% at highest upgrade level)
  
• 'Center of Mass' damage increased to 30% (from 25%)
  
• 'Electric Field', 'Icy Skin', 'Poison Glands' + 'Spiky Defense' now have 50% chance to trigger (instead of 40%)
  
• 'Spark' now has 50% chance to trigger on highest upgrade level (instead of 40%)

Additional Quality of Life changes

• A new setting in the options menu: you can switch to the older Snowy Peaks and Keepers' Stronghold themes
  
• Performance improvements (which should especially help the performance on the consoles) - the issue of a memory leak due to the player jumping was fixed
  
• When the player is buying items, the quantity of already owned items of that type are displayed now
  
• The player now gets warned when they are about to donate a Champion Monster
  
• Ancestral Medal can now be found in Level 5 Reward Boxes, replacing Omni Ring; Omni Ring has been moved to Level 4 Reward Boxes, where it replaces +5 Belt

We want to sincerely thank everyone who participated in our contest! After long discussions and voting sessions, here are the winners. Congratulations!


GhoKoji's entry on Twitter about the story of the first Catzerker


Schiraki and her Manticorb Tiger - submitted on Instagram


Straussdraws atmospheric image of the Spectral Wolf - submitted on Twitter

Believe us, it was extremely hard to decide for only three winners since all of them deserved to win! This is why, we decided for a surprise 4th winner ;)

The namelessmonsterkeeper cross-stitched the goodest boy Spectral Wolf and will receive a nice Monster Sanctuary sticker set sponsored by our plushie-genius Chrissi!

This concludes our fanart contest! We hope you had as much fun as we did and even if you didn't win you can contact Chrissi for handmade customized plushies here on Twitter, Reddit or Instagram.

In case you have missed it: we currently run a special fanart contest on Twitter, Instagram and our Discord.

The three winners will each get a plushie of one of the fan-chosen Top 3 Monsters: Catzerker, Manticorb and Spectral Wolf. The plushies are made exclusively by wonderful Chrissi.

Participate until 16th July 2021. Rules in the images.

Monster Sanctuary has reached 3000 reviews on Steam and we'd like to thank you from the bottom of our hearts!

Enjoy the Steam Summer Sale - Monster Sanctuary is on sale as well!

Hello, Monster Keepers!

It's been a while, so we want to give you an update on what's been going on around Monster Sanctuary. Today, we have a variety of news for you:

• Results from the survey!
  
• New previews of the post-launch update 1.2 that you might have missed!
  
• Moi Rai is on Instagram now! Get behind-the-scenes info on our team there.
  
• Monster Journals are sold out - find out how you can let us know to be informed once we do another print.

Our community survey is closed, and we want to thank you from the bottom of our hearts for taking your time to provide us with your thoughts on the future at Moi Rai Games! Every feedback was appreciated and will be read and considered. Today, we'd like to share with you the top 20 most-favorite Monsters of Monster Sanctuary:




Again, we would like to thank you all for participating! There have been over 3.3 thousand people who filled out our survey. Just a couple interesting tidbits:

• The most popular game genre among our fans is the growing "Creature Collector" genre - they made up around 35% of all favorite games in the survey!
  
• The most popular series of games among our fans were Pokémon, Monster Hunter, and Final Fantasy.
  
• Over 63% of our fans are aware of "Nuzlocke" runs of Pokémon games, having either watched or even played them. It was quite surprising to us how commonplace Nuzlocke has become.

The next free update for Monster Sanctuary is going to be released SOON and is coming with many new features! We don't want to reveal everything right away, but here is a sneak-peak into some update content.



Are you ready to challenge the 14 Legendary Keeper statues to a duel?



Soon you will finally be able to change the appearance of your Keeper! Check out the first three costumes.



Got tired of being a well-known keeper around the stronghold and need some privacy? With the next update you'll be able to change your clothes, appearance, gender and name in the new room in the Keepers' Stronghold!

You can now follow Monster Sanctuary and Moi Rai Games on Instagram. Get to know the people behind the game, as every Monday we introduce one of our team members to you, our fellow community.



Follow Moi Rai Games on Instagram


Last but not least, a quick update regarding the physical Monster Journals: We are quite surprised to see that the initial run has been sold out! If you like, you can leave your Email address at our official website so that you'll be notified once we do another print of them.



Leave your Email address at our website

Hello Monster Keepers,

While we at Moi Rai Games are still working on future content for Monster Sanctuary, we're already deep into brainstorming the specifics of our next game. It will once again be a Creature Collector game, but without being a successor to Monster Sanctuary.

You can help us make the best of our next game. For that purpose, we prepared a super-short survey that won't take up more than 3 minutes of your time. Among other things, the survey lets you share with us what your favorite and least favorite parts of Monster Sanctuary are.

The survey also lets you vote on your favorite Monster in the game. We will collect the results and create a ranking of the most popular Monsters! We will share this ranking with you soon after the survey is over.

We will keep the survey open until June 6. Please be honest with us! Fill out the survey here:

Monster Sanctuary Survey


We're also happy to announce that you can now order the physical hardcover Monster Journals of our game. The contents are identical to the digital Monster Journal that we also have for sale on Steam.

Contents:

• A two-page entry for all 101 Monster in the game, including artwork, attributes, lore texts, skill trees, location
  
• Additional lore texts giving you extra insights into the history of the world
  
• An introductory mini-strategy-game covering the basics of our game
  
• A glossary of relevant combat terms used in the game
  
• A total of 220 pages of content

Order your Hardcover Monster Journal here

Monster Sanctuary - 33% off
Monster Sanctuary (Deluxe Edition) - 33% off
Monster Journal - 25% off
Soundtrack - 50% off

Start your journey as a Monster Keeper and explore the latest update!



Check out the rest of the Team17 Steam Publisher Sale!

Dear Monster Keepers,

We are happy to bring you the first major post-launch update for Monster Sanctuary!
This update is launching today for Steam. For consoles, we’re still in the submission process and the Release is delayed until April 20th for those Platforms. We are very sorry for that and we hope to be able to deliver future updates on consoles without delay.




The first of the two big new features coming to Monster Sanctuary: New Game Plus mode! This mode is unlocked once you have completed the main story content of the game at least once. When you choose NewGame+ from the starting menu, you have to select any of your existing save games - this will determine the extra Monsters and items available to you at the start. You can then start your new save file on the same save slot or on any other save slot.

Here are the full details of New Game Plus:

• All Monsters and many items from the chosen save file will be transferred to your new save file.
  
• Monsters are reset to Level 1, but keep their Shift.
  
• Equipment upgrades are removed.
  
• Items that are not carried over: Crystal Shards, Craft Materials, Food, Key/Story Items, Level 40 Badges, Craft & Reward Boxes, Battle Items. These items are converted to gold on the new save file.
  
• Inactive Monsters level up with your active ones until they reach their level from the previous save file.
  
• Explore abilities can't be used until you encounter Monsters which can use them.
  
• Similarly, you can only donate Monsters and eggs to the army which you have already encountered.
  
• Some tutorial texts are skipped.

We are adding two new difficulty modes to Monster Sanctuary (with the current difficulty of the game taking the role of the "Normal" difficulty that is chosen by default). They are called "Casual" and "Master" mode.



Here are the details of how these two new modes work:

• On Casual, wild Monsters have less health & do less damage. In Keeper Encounters, enemy Monster equipment upgrade level is reduced by 1.
  
• On Master, wild Monsters have more health, do more damage, and have many additional skills. In Keeper Encounters, enemy Monster equipment upgrade level is increased by 1.
  
• The difficulty can be changed at any time by going to the options menu. It can be changed mid-game.

The new Casual mode aims to alleviate the difficulty curve of our game. However, it's only a slight decrease in difficulty, which means that players will still need to engage with our skill systems and think about their strategy in order to succeed.

The new Master mode was primarily designed with New Game Plus in mind. It is balanced towards providing veteran players, who have loads of additional options available to them thanks to NG+, a new, harder challenge. While it is technically possible to beat the game on Master mode with a regular save file, we highly recommend using this mode in conjunction with New Game Plus (preferably using an optimized team of six Shifted Monsters).


This update also comes with a variety of changes aimed towards making the PVP mode more enjoyable! For one, it comes with a new PVP Matchmaking system.
Here are the nitty-gritty details of how the new matchmaking works:

• The matchmaking takes the level of your 3 highest Monsters in the party into consideration (to prevent the potential abuse of having a low level backline).
  
• It also takes into consideration the average equipment upgrade level of those Monsters.
  
• Outside of a certain level range (based on Monster level + equipment level), players are not able to match.
  
• The matchmaking also takes your PVP rating into account.
  
• Initially, the matchmaking will only let players within a certain rating range match against each other. After a certain time in queue, you are put into "extended search", allowing you to match against others who are also in "extended search".
  
• Players who have a rating of 1300 or above start in "extended search" by default (to prevent higher ranks of the ladder of not finding opponents).
  
• You're also able to manually configure when your game goes into "extended search" (instantly/30sec/1min/2min/3min/5min/never).

With this first update patch, we’ll also start a new PVP Season in Monster Sanctuary. This means that all players are starting in Bronze league again, which will allow you to once again get rewards for ascending to the higher PVP leagues.



This update features many balancing changes of Monsters, skill trees, and skills - almost all of which were made explicitly with the PVP meta in mind. We hope that these changes will shake up the current team compositions and open up new competitive options.

Monster changes
• Steam Golem: gains Multi Burn + Fire Shield, loses double impact
  
• Sutsune: Dark Shift gets -1 base Defense
  
• Spectral Toad: gains 'Attack Plus', loses 'Combo Buffing', Light Shift gets -1 base Health
  
• Qillin: gains 'Punishment' + 'Multi-shock' + 'Health Plus', loses 'Double Impact'
  
• Crystal Snail: gains 'Aging' + 'Observe' + 'Volatile Shield' + 'Critical Break' + 'Sabeteur's Shield' + 'Multi Poison' + 'Restoring Shield', loses 'Earth Affinity' + 'Defense Overload' + 'Mass Protector' + 'Channeling Balance' + 'Shieldcast'
  
• Ninki Nanka: gains 'Assistance' + 'Multi Sidekick' + 'Supply' + 'Healing Shield' +1 base Mana, loses 'Combo Buffing' + 'Mana Focus' + 'Transfusion' + 'Improved Mana Regen'
  
• Ninki: gains +1 Base Mana
  
• Vertraag: loses 1 instance of 'Purify'
  
• Troll: gains +1 base defense and -1 base attack
  
• Promethean: gains 'Chain Reaction' now
  
• Changeling: gains 'Hexed Touch' and 'Death Blow', loses 'Mana Plus' and 'Defense Plus'
  
• Akhlut: Has all 5 tiers of 'Heal' now, gains 'Observe' and his shift stat bonuses got newly reallocated
  
• Vodinoy: Is a 'Warrior' in addition to its other types now
  
• Toxiquus: Both shifts get +1 base Mana
  
• Yowie: gains 'Protector' and 'Purify', loses 'Transfusion'
  
• Goblin King: gains 'Crit Chance Plus' and two 'Crit Damage Plus'
  
• Magmamoth: Dark shift gains +1 base attack and +1 base magic, Light shift got +1 base attack
  
• Elderjel: loses -1 Base Mana, gains +1 Base Mana on Light shift
  
• Imori: Gains Toxic Slash, loses Blessed Strike
  
  Skill & equipment changes
  
• 'Armory' now increases all stats of accessories of warriors (except secondary effects)
  
• 'Weaponry' now increases all stats of weapons of warriors (except secondary effects), value increased to 25% (from 15%)
  
• 'Poison Eater' also counts as a heal action now, but the additional hits only do 20% damage now (instead of 30%)
  
• 'Magic Attack' damage increased to 6*60% (from 6*50%)
  
• 'Cookie Mushroom' damage bonus increased to 3% (from 2.5%)
  
• Decreased 'Scythe' damage and crit chance values slightly (end values: 200 attack, 225 magic, 7% crit chance, 25% crit damage)
  
• 'Katana' has slightly increased attack and crit chance values now (end values: 200 attack, 15% crit chance, 20% crit damage)
  
• 'Hook' and 'Harp' now grant full heal / heal bonus when equipped in the off hand (this makes all weapons provide full secondary effect when equipped in the offhand now)
  
• 'Large Shield' now provides full defense value when equipped in the off hand
  
• 'Curse Chain' debuff spread chance reduced to 35% (from 40%)
  
• 'Blood Magic' values reduced slightly to 35%/35% (instead of 40%/40%)
  
• 'Bleed' damage against wild monsters now increases the execution score (by half the amount normal damage does)
  
• 'Combat Guard' damage reduction value increased to 7.5% (from 5%)
  
• 'Magnetize' redirect chance reduced to 25% (from 35%) but the chance increases when the attacker has multiple shocks (by 12.5% for every additional shock)
  
• 'Electrolytes' buff remove chance increased to 75% (from 50%)
  
• 'Polluted Water' debuff bonus increased to 10% (from 8%)
  
• 'Assault Shield' shield value increased to 30% (from 25%)
  
• 'Shadow Proc' damage increased to 75% (from 60%)
  
• 'Enlighten' shift passive, 'Shared Sorcery' and other share buff passives now share the buff even when the sharing monster is already capped out on that buff.
  
• 'Hexed Touch' debuff chance increased to 40% (from 35%)
  
• 'Optimal Performance' damage reduction and debuff resistance reduced to 10% (from 15%)
  
• Oculus 'Intelligent Swarm' reverted back to have 75% chance to apply a charge stack (instead of 100%)

Hello Monster Keepers!

Here is a small update on the state of things


First and foremost: The 1.1 update is further delayed to April 2021 and we’re sorry for that. While we’re ‘done’ with the content of the update for quite some time, we heavily underestimated how long the whole process of getting the changes ported to consoles, having QA properly test everything on all platforms and having the update pass the submission process of Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft takes. This is mostly based on the lack of experience as this is our first game. Right now we have an unconfirmed target date of April 9th if there are no issues with the submission process.

As for the Content of the 1.1 update, we covered it in our last Update post: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/814370/view/4979262525030602590


What have we been up to ourselves meanwhile? Partly we’re already working on further updates we’ll release in the future for Monster sanctuary. Also we started prototyping our next project, which will be a Monster Taming game again, but with a slightly different direction this time (no Monster Sanctuary 2 for now - but we would not exclude the possibility in the future. A full fledged DLC for MS1 is also a possibility).


The Hardcover Monster Journal was a reward for certain backres who supported our Kickstarter campaign way back. We’ve received the hardcover Monster Journals and sent them out by now. Due to the pandemic, the shipping outside Europe may take some extended times in certain cases. We do have tracking IDs for the Monster Journals, so if yours didn’t arrive yet - feel free to PM us here and we will provide those.



As this was requested a lot: we did print quite some additional ones (about 150) to put online for sale, we’re currently in the process of setting everything up - we’ll do a separate announcement once they are available. Also we’ll do a giveaway for a couple ones in the near future on our twitter: https://twitter.com/moi_rai_

Thats it for now, hope you're not too upset and can wait a little more for the 1.1 update