GUIDE

The Withered World demo: synthesis, talents and team building

In DRAGON QUEST MONSTERS: The Withered World, synthesis is how your team grows: two parents produce a new monster. This guide covers the demo's rules, from recipes and plus values to talents, traits and EXP. It is based on the public demo, so numbers and recipes may change in the full game.

Three ways to combine monsters

The demo has 205 synthesis recipes of three kinds. Ninety-two are specific pairs, such as Slime + Firespirit for a She-Slime. Twenty-nine pair a monster with any member of a family, such as Slime + Dragon Family for a Drake Slime. The other 84 combine two families.

Family + family recipes depend on order: the child always belongs to the first parent's family. Slime Family + Dragon Family gives Drake Slime (rank F) or Bad Egg (rank G), while Dragon Family + Slime Family gives Raptile or Small Fry. Each ordered pair of different families has one rank G and one rank F result.

Drake Slime also comes from Wing Slime + Small Fry. In all, 157 of the 161 species are a recipe result; the exceptions are Slime and the three rank E species, Drakularge, Ursa Major and Treeface.

In family + family synthesis, put first the family you want the child to belong to.

Plus values: why the parents' levels matter

The parents' combined level adds plus to the child. A total of 20 adds +1, and every further 10 levels adds one more, up to +8 at 90. At 100 the bonus jumps to +10, then rises by 2 every 20 levels until +20 at 200.

Officially, both parents must be level 10 or higher, so every synthesis adds at least +1. Each rank also has a maximum plus: +3 for G, +5 for F and +10 for E, up to +100 for X. How this bonus combines with the parents' own plus is not confirmed. Only one recipe needs a plus value: Dracky + Dracky, which gives Greater Dracky, requires a plus of 2.

If the parents' levels total 90–99, reaching 100 turns +8 into +10.

Ranks and families in the demo

Seven families have species in the demo: Beast Family (26), Nature Family (25), Slime Family, Material Family and Undead Family (23 each), Dragon Family (21) and Demon Family (20). Ranks go from G up to X, but demo species stop early: 79 are rank G, 79 rank F and only 3 rank E. Every monster + family recipe gives a rank F monster, and family recipes for ranks B to E give no monster in the demo.

Two rank G parents can still give a rank F child: 39 specific recipes do exactly that.

Talents and the skill points they need

Every species has an innate talent, and each talent unlocks 7 to 10 skills, spells or traits at fixed point costs, the last at 85 to 200 points. Slimer, the Slime's talent, teaches Frizz at 3 points and ends with the trait Auto-Restora at 100.

Skill points come from levelling and roughly match the level: 21 at level 20, 51 at 50 and 100 at 100. They arrive in chunks of 3 (4 from level 63), and each Seed of Skill adds 3 more, up to 999. A level 20 Slime with every point in Slimer reaches Slime Squisher; ten seeds take it to 51 and Accelerate.

Thirty talents evolve into a stronger version, as in the chain from HP Booster I to HP Booster IV. There are also 36 talent pairs that combine into 15 special talents: Frizz Ward + Crag Ward, for example, gives Magma Shield.

Points are shared across a monster's talents, so plan which talent gets them.

Even at level 100, a 200-point talent needs 34 Seeds of Skill on top to complete.

Traits that come with size and level

Each species has six trait slots: one innate, one at level 20, one at level 40 and three that apply only at size L, the last from level 60. The Slime starts with Zapmeister, adds Critical Triumph at 20 and Big Bully at 40; as an L it also has Tactical Genius, Insta-Accel and, from level 60, Adrenaline Rush.

Ten species are size L by default, and an L monster takes two party slots instead of one. Size seeds switch a monster between S and L.

Of the 206 demo traits, 172 are always active; the rest trigger at set moments, such as the start of battle. Stacking depends on the category: stat and resistance boosts add up, some categories allow only one trait, and the rest only rule out duplicates.

Treat size L as a trade: three extra trait slots for a second party slot.

How EXP climbs with level

Each species follows one of ten EXP curves, but they sit close together. Level 50 takes between 645,900 and 662,598 total EXP, a gap under 3%, so the curve barely changes how fast a monster levels.

On curve 0, used by the Slime and 23 other species, level 20 takes 16,835 EXP, level 50 takes 645,900 and level 100 takes 6,666,679, so about 90% of the total comes after level 50. The step from 99 to 100 alone costs 173,066.

The Bonus Ball multiplies EXP and gold by 1.5 for 10 battles, handy for levelling future parents. A Seed of Growth simply adds one level.

Save Seeds of Growth for high levels, where a single level costs the most EXP.

Practical tips for building your team

Stat seeds add 3 to one stat without passing the species limit, so check limits before investing. A Slime at 1,000 max HP, for example, needs 140 Seeds of Life to reach its limit of 1,420.

Saying farewell to a monster gives items by growth rate: 1 below 30%, 3 from 30%, 6 from 60% and 10 from 85%. Each item is a seed: 13% for each of the six stat seeds, 12% for a Seed of Skill and 5% for each size seed.

Three NPC monsters (a Gasbagon, a Putrefido and a Firespirit) can be borrowed for synthesis, each with a suggested recipe. The Firespirit's recipe, Bubble Slime + Firespirit, gives Molten Slime, the only demo species immune to two elements: fire and light.

Check resistances before a fight: −25 marks a weakness, and the whole demo roster has only 10 full immunities (100).