One of the most fun things you can do in Monster Sanctuary is testing out your finely-tuned builds against tough foes. Kindly, the game has what it calls champion monsters – brutal enemies who can attack multiple times in a turn and have inflated stats.

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There are 27 champion fights in total, ranging from the humble Steam Golem that you have to fight at the beginning of the game to the most secret of creatures, such as Vertraag and Diavola. They’re the toughest challenges that the game can throw at you and you’ll need five-star ratings if you want to get their eggs, so here are our tips.

6 Study The Champion

One of the first things you should do when taking on a champion is to study everything you can about it. From the fight preview you’ll know exactly what it is weak against, resistant to, and even the elements it can use.

Using this information, it’s quite easy to stack your combat team with monsters who can target weaknesses and resist the champion’s attacks. If this tactics doesn’t outright win you the fight, you can at least perform some reconnaissance.

  • Check out the moves the champion uses, whether they are physical or magical, and whether they like to inflict debuffs or stacks.
  • If the champion uses buffs, make a note of what they are. Some are easily countered – get around Agility by only using magical attacks, counter Regeneration with damaging debuffs.
  • If the champion uses debuffs, see if any of your monsters with access to Restore or Mass Restore are suitable for the fight. In addition, some of the more difficult champions like offensive stacks - find suitable monsters with the Purify ability to counter these.

5 Don’t Be Afraid To Alter Your Builds

If there’s one thing you’ll learn around the mid-game point of Monster Sanctuary, it’s that your builds are not likely to last you throughout the entirety of the game. As you unlock new tiers or encounter new obstacles, you’ll find that your monsters’ builds are sub-optimal, and this is highlighted when being stonewalled by a particularly tough champion.

Skill Resetters provide the solution. They will refund all of your skill points and allow you to experiment with new builds.

These items can be purchased from the Consumable Merchant in the Keepers’ Stronghold for only 300 G.

In addition, save any Skill Potions you come across for use with the monsters that you consider integral to your strategy. They can only provide one extra skill point per monster, but some skills can provide massive bonuses.

4 Debuff Stacking Rules

Monster Sanctuary Best Debuffers Fungi Catzerker Vasuki

Poison and Burn are fantastic debuffs to exploit against champions. Chill is also very great, but mostly when combined with the Congeal aura. The reasons for this are as follows:

  • Poison deals damage equal to ten percent of the champion’s HP. Champions have a lot of HP, so this adds up quickly.
  • Burn deals damage based on how powerful the champion is. As champions have inflated stats, the Burn damage will too be inflated.
  • Congeal deals quite a lot of damage, but Chill itself is also a fantastic debuff thanks to the mana regeneration reduction. If a champion is prevented from using its main skills consistently, you’ll have an easier time fighting it.

3 Take Out The Mooks First

Monster Sanctuary Dracozul Fight in a snowy area of the Sanctuary.

Some champions will have other, regular monsters helping them out. These should be your primary targets in such fights, as they often have very annoying moves that directly contribute to the difficulty of the main champion.

Don’t be tempted to whittle the entire party down with weaker, party-wide attacks – focus the mooks down with single-target attacks and be done with it.

2 Prepare For The Gimmick Fights

Monster Sanctuary Raduga

There are a few champion fights in the game that are quite unique, either in their strategies or in their affinities. We’ve listed them below – knowing them in advance can help you prepare for them when you find a suitable monster for the job.

  • The Specter is weak to magic attacks and strong against physical attacks and debuff damage. You’ll want to have a team of pure magic attackers to take this one down quickly. Ironically, Specter itself is a very powerful debuffer and makes for a fantastic addition to many teams designed to take on champions.
  • Conversely, the Goblin King is weak to physical attacks and resists magic. As a result, you’ll want to have a team of heavy hitters – perhaps those with builds focused on critical damage.
  • Raduga is a quirky monster that changes its elemental strengths and weaknesses depending on the moves it uses. It can end up weak to any of the four elements, so taking along a team that has access to all four elements, ideally even monsters with access to all four, will be very beneficial.
  • Qilin and King Blob are weak to debuff damage. Any debuff-centric team will take them down very quickly. Consider two monsters with Multi Burn or Multi Poison, or both if you want to finish the fights even quicker.
    • King Blob is a prolific self-buffer. Bring monsters that know how to Cleanse, such as Sutsune or Sizzle Knight.
  • Elderjel and Vertraag are weak to neutral damage and resistant against debuff damage. You’ll want to bring your heaviest hitters that deal in brute force.
  • Brutus has no weaknesses, no strengths, and has a huge Attack stat. It’ll be able to pump out very high damage numbers but can only inflict physical damage. Bring monsters that resist physical damage if you have them, and damaging debuffs.
  • Spinner will use Counterfeit, which will copy one of your team’s moves that it used in the previous turns. Use this to your advantage – you could build a team that only uses moves that it resists, for example.
  • Aazerach is a prolific user of Blind, which is a very annoying stack. Bring a healer that has the Purify passive skill and make them heal before you attack whenever you have been Blinded. You can augment this strategy with attacks that never miss and damaging debuffs that only have to hit once to start dealing passive, permanent damage.
  • Diavola uses Restoring Shield at the start of every single turn, making debuff-intensive strategies a waste of time. Instead, try using debilitating stacks such as Bleed and Blind to ruin its day. A Bleed Out team would work wonders.

1 Tips For Getting 5 Stars

Monster Sanctuary Battle Results 5 Stars

If you want to perfect these fights and obtain the champions’ eggs for your own use, you’ll need to finish the fights with a five-star rating. Below are some of our tips and explanations of how the system works:

  • You need 10,000 points overall to hit five stars.
  • Your Buff and Debuff scores will increase whenever you apply them or when an enemy takes debuff damage. For this reason, relying on debuff damage for the majority of your strategy is a great way to rack up those points, though you will likely need supplementary strategies for those champions resistant to debuffs.
    • While you can get a ton of points for finishing a fight in as few turns as possible, the points you get for a slow and steady debuff strategy will more than make up for the loss incurred by a very long battle.
  • You get points based on how healthy you can keep your monsters over the course of the fight. This is assessed at the end of a turn, meaning as long as you have good health recovery tactics, you should get a lot of points for this category. Monsters with great healing moves, such as a bulky monster with Lifewave or a utility monster with Multi Regeneration, are great for this.
  • Your execution score will increase if you take advantage of the game’s combo system. It rates how well you’re able to rack up the combo meter with the first two monsters to act in your party and also how much your third monster is able to take advantage of that.
    • Note that these positions aren't based on their physical positions in the party, but the order they act in a given turn.

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