Introduction
So, we got a new event a few days ago and it has a lot of rewards. You can find the announcement here. Thing is, it’s really different from events we’ve had in the past, and somewhat confusing at times. So I want to make sense of some of these things and discuss what other people are doing to see if there are any good ideas I’m overlooking.
Basics
First of all, you have to go to an event notice board to participate in this event. There are three in the game, one in each of the major towns.
To begin the event you want to select “The Grimoire Master” and then “Obtain daily Coin, Scroll”. You will get 2 items: a [Event] Monster Selection Scroll and a handful of [Event] Ancient Coin. The selection scroll is something you use to purchase monsters. The ancient coins are the currency for purchasing said monsters. You can get more ancient coins by doing various content in the game (like the level dungeon, saalus, etc.).
When you use the selection scroll you will be offered a random selection of monsters at different costs. You want to buy as many high-cost monsters as possible while also prioritizing duplicates. Once you’ve chosen your monsters, you can register them by using a consumable scroll that the game puts in your inventory. You can register only 30 monsters at a time, but that shouldn’t be a huge issue since you can just hold onto extra in your inventory in the form of scrolls. After forming an initial team, hold onto extra monsters in the form of scrolls until you get enough duplicates to evolve them into higher star-ratings.
This event is like a cross between gacha games and auto-chess. High-cost monsters are naturally stronger. However, if you get three copies of the exact same monster, they can be combined to make a stronger version of the same monster. Ideally, you make a high star-rating high-cost monster, but a high star-rating low-cost monster can also be good! They even start using skills (thanks to @crevox for pointing this out).
Try to do a lot of things in game outside of this event to earn more coins so you can have greater purchasing power each day. You can get extra coins by doing level dungeons, mercenary missions, saalus, uphill, and legendary raids. If you are doing everything and find that you have a lot of extra coins to spare, you can choose the “Trade in…” option at the event board to buy more selection scrolls and have more attempts at buying the monsters that you want.
If you press Alt+T or type “/grimoire” in chat you will be able to access the event UI.
Leveling Up Your Monsters
Your monsters gain EXP only if one is summoned. To summon a monster, you need to register one in the leftmost slot of the grimoire master UI by dragging the desired monster into that slot. Then you need to put the summon action on your hotbar and use it. Like most any other skill, you can find it by pressing F3.
It would seem that your monsters gain EXP only as long as you’re within level range to gain EXP. It seems that level dungeons, CMs, fields, and hunting grounds would yield EXP. When you first get a monster, it is level 1 and very weak. Since EXP is rewarded only at the end of things like level dungeons and CMs, just make sure to summon your monster at the very end so there’s no time for it to get killed. There is a CD for summoning, so be careful about your monster getting killed at an inopportune time.
It’s kind of like old partis solutions all over again (for those of you that remember that)!
Actually Using Your Monsters and Getting Rewards
Once you’ve leveled up your monsters a bit (one CM is enough to clear some of this event), go back to the event board and choose to enter the Remnants of Bernice Dungeon. Once you’re inside, it’s pretty simple; your monsters will do all the fighting. All you can do is issue the occasional movement command, and that will mostly be just to avoid attacks and make sure your monsters don’t get killed stupidly.
Once each day when you kill a boss monster, you get 1k attribute points and a monster album box. You also get rewards for the first time you clear a particular stage. So, I would just run the Bernice dungeon once a day to get the daily reward and see if I can clear any new stages. Any more than that isn’t a productive use of your time.
Stage Gimmicks and Tips
After the first five stages there will be gimmicks that require your active participation or more specialized party compositions to overcome. Here are some, courtesy of @Friend.
Stage 8-10 - Meteors fall from the sky. Move your monsters to avoid them.
Stage 13-15 - Electric damage between your monsters. Spread them out to avoid the damage.
Stage 18-20 - High damage lasers. Must be dodged.
Stage 23-25 - Fire tiles that do global damage, removed by having a monster step on them.
Stage 28-30 - Full Silence. Your monsters cannot use any skills.