Monster Sanctuary (Switch): all the updates (latest: Relics of Chaos Update)

On this page, you will find all there is to know about the various updates for Monster Sanctuary on Nintendo Switch (originally released on December 8th 2020 in Europe, North America, and Japan)!

Click here for more Software updates!

Monster Sanctuary – Ver. ??? (Relics of Chaos Update)

• Release date: May 16th 2023 (North America, Europe, Japan)
• Patch notes:

Monster Sanctuary – Ver. ??? (The Forgotten World Update)

• Release date: June 24th 2022 (North America, Europe, Japan)
• Patch notes:

A New Area

• Become the first keeper in history to discover the Forgotten World, and its secrets. Delve deep into the lush environments of the Forgotten World, and make use of your companion’s abilities to explore what will be the most expansive area of the game to date!

 

New Monsters

• Encounter 9 new, ancient Monsters that were thought to be long extinct as you venture into The Forgotten World – and one new optional Champion Monster! Continue to push your team building skills to the limits, with over 200,000 Monster Team combinations.

New Game Modes

Take advantage of 3 new game modes!

• Randomizer
  • All Monsters in game are randomly swapped around! Randomizer adds infinite replay ability options to Monster Sanctuary. Once activated, this game mode cannot be deactivated. 
• Permadeath
  • Once your Monster is knocked out in combat, it is permanently defeated. There is no way to revive them (except for Phoenix Affinity and Charged Rebirth). You can still use the exploration abilities of a defeated Monster. As soon as all of your Monsters are defeated, Permadeath will be disabled and all of your Monsters will be usable again!
• Bravery
  • This mode will allow you to play with a limited selection of Monsters to test your team building skills! You will start with 3 random Monsters. In each area, you will gain one new random egg from a treasure chest found nearby the entrance to the area. You cannot gain any other Monster eggs through any other means, except for story events.

All of them can be combined with each other and New Game+. The existing difficulty modes (Casual, Normal, Master) will also work with these new game modes! These are not recommended for beginners. 

 

New Skills

• Not only do the 10 new Monsters come with new skills, but the skill trees of all Monsters have been revamped with new skill nodes!

New Legendary Keepers

• Discover new legendary keepers to battle and defeat in tactical 3v3 combat!

And More..!

• QoL Changes
• 13 New Equipment Items
• Level Cap Increase

• Additional notes: as this update was released on Nintendo Switch nearly a week earlier than initially scheduled (June 30th), the developers kindly ask Nintendo Switch players to please refrain from spoiling the experience for players on other platforms!
• Source: Team17

Monster Sanctuary – Ver. 1.3 (Counter Attack Update)

• Release date: December 13th 2021 (North America, Europe, Japan)
• Patch notes:

• adds Brazilian Portuguese translation
• Multiple Egg Donating
  • To make your life as a Keeper a little easier, we added the possibility to donate multiple eggs at once to the Monster Army. It is an additional option in the Monster Army menu and should make the process of donating eggs way faster for you.
• Improved L/R switching Monster behavior in menus
  • This feature makes managing your inactive Monsters easier! When selecting an inactive Monster first, the game will cycle through inactive and active Monsters. If selecting an active Monster first, the game will only cycle through active Monsters like you know it from before. You can also switch Monsters in the feed menu and monster consumables menu now using L/R buttons on gamepad or a/d on keyboard.
• New Skills Added: Counter Attack + Sidekick Support
  • Minitaur got some love in this update with the new skill Counter Attack, enabling a powerful revenge! Vodinoy also gains Counter Attack, see below for detailed balancing changes.
  • Sidekick Support is a new Aura making full sidekick teams more viable or allowing Monsters that don’t attack that often to benefit from Sidekick buffs. Dodo, Changeling and Dracozul gained this new skill. Check the balancing changes below for more details.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed multiple bugs related to saving/loading teams (sometimes, when saving a monsters on multiple teams and switching between those, the skill tree didn’t update properly)
• Fixed Issue that Tanuki could not be donated in NG+
• Fixed ‘Shield Crush’ to properly apply the Aura effect (was only working on the monster itself)

Balancing Changes

Monster skill tree changes:

• ‘Changeling’ has Debuff Resistance now, gains ‘Sidekick Support’ and loses one ‘Combo Buffing’
• ‘Draconoir’ both shifts have -1 base attack and magic now
• ‘Dracozul’ gains ‘Sidekick Support’, loses ‘Combo Buffing’
• ‘Goblin Hood’ gains ‘Multi Sidekick’
• ‘Goblin Brute’ gains ‘Multi Regeneration’
• ‘Goblin King’ gains ‘Multi Might’ and ‘Multi Sorcery’
• ‘Dodo’ gains ‘Sidekick Support’, light shift changed to ‘Curse Breaker’
• ‘Moccus’ gains ‘Warlock Healing’, ‘Power Healing’ and ‘Life Stability’, loses a ‘Mana Plus’, ‘Attack Plus’ and a ‘Defense Plus’ node
• ‘Minitaur’ gains ‘Counter Attack’ and ‘Bleed’, loses ‘Shared Might’
• ‘Megataur’ gains ‘Chilling Wind’, ‘Flurry of Blows’, ‘Critical Boon’, ‘Exploit Party’, two ‘Crit Chance+” nodes, loses ‘Heavy Punch’, ‘Earth Affinity’, ‘Hybrid Mastery’, two ‘Crit Damage+’ nodes
• ‘Megataur’ ultimates changed: ‘Boulder Toss’ and ‘Blizzard’ replaced by ‘Polar Winds’ and ‘Frost Pierce’
• ‘Stolby’ gains ‘Death Blow’, ‘Warlock Healing’, ‘Buffing Heal’ and ‘Double Strike’, loses ‘Static’, ‘Earth Affinity’ and ‘Mana Plus’ node. ‘Transfusion’ is now available at an earlier level.
• ‘Vodinoy’ gains ‘Counter Attack’, ‘Critical Break’ and ‘Weakening Crush’, loses ‘Reflect’, ‘Health Plus’ and ‘Mana Plus’
• ‘Spectral Eagle’ light shift magic and attack reduced by 1
• ‘Akhlut’ now also has ‘Fish’ type
• ‘Kanko’ now also has ‘Beast’ type
• ‘Koi’ now also has ‘Aerial’ type in addition to the other types, both shifts gain +1 attack and magic
• ‘Aazerach’ loses one ‘Transfusion’, gains an additional ‘Mana Plus’
• ‘Vasuki’ gains ‘Power Healing’, ‘Hexing Support’ and ‘Combo Shielding’, loses ‘Life Channel’
• ‘Mega Rock’ gains ‘Shared Might’
• ‘Targoat’ gains ‘Double Strike’, loses ‘Empower’. Light shift loses -1 base Defense, dark shift gains +1 base Defense
• ‘Mad Eye’ and ‘Mad Lord’ light shift skill is ‘Mass Mystify’ now
• ‘Magmamoth’ drops ‘Cocoon’ now
• ‘Tanuki’ gains ‘Heroism’, dark shift changed to ‘Heroic Assault’
• ‘Raduga’ gains ‘Phoenix Affinity’ and ‘Magic Attack’, Light shift gains +1 base Magic, dark shift gains +1 base Health and +1 base Mana

Skill changes:

• ‘Critical Sorcery’ and ‘Magnetize’ are Unique Auras now
• ‘Punishment’ is an Unique Aura now
• ‘Magic Barrier’ now additionally reduces the damage taken by 1% for every 100 Max Mana.
• ‘Devour’ is an Aura now
• ‘Brawler’ and ‘Sorcerer’ shield values increased to 75% (from 50%)
• ‘Exploit Party’ shield value increased to 5% (from 3%)
• ‘Combo Shielding’ now shields by 50% of the monster’s Defense (instead of 30%)
• ‘Dragon Blood’ Health and Mana regeneration increased to 9% (from 7%)
• ‘Dragon Mastery’ now applies a debuff on all enemies instead of one
• ‘Goblin Provisions’, ‘Goblin Recovery’, ‘Goblin Offenes’ and ‘Goblin Defense’ now additionally apply a random buff to every goblin at the start of the turn
• ‘Occult Power’ now shields by 40% of the Monster’s Max Health (instead of 33%)
• ‘Hexed Touch’ debuff trigger chance increased to 50% (from 40%)
• ‘Mentor’ now applies two random buffs instead of one
• Fixed ‘Shield Crush’ to properly apply the Aura effect (was only working on the monster itself)
• ‘Channeling Balance’ damage reduction is now multiplicative with each other when having multiple Channel buffs
• ‘Blind’ miss chance reduced to 30% (from 40%)
• ‘Lord of the Deep’ Bleed value increased to 20% (from 15%)
• ‘Electrolytes’ debuff remove chance reduced to 50% (from 75%)
• ‘Trickster Buffing’ debuff chance increased to 15% (from 10%)
• ‘Channeled Balance’ damage reduction is multiplicative with each other when having multiple Channels
• ‘Charged Hazard’, ‘Charged Anamoly’ and ‘Charged Destruction’ now require to consume 12 Charge stacks to trigger debuff application (instead of 15)
• ‘Sheltered Nature’ now also reduced the damage taken by 1% for every 1000 Max Health

Equipment and item changes:

• ‘Restoring Wand’ defense on highest upgrade level reduced to 25 (from 35)
• ‘Abyssal Sword’ Apply chance increased to 80% on highest upgrade level (from 60%)
• ‘Harp’ Magic value increased to 240 on highest upgrade level (form 220)
• ‘Pirate Hook’ attack increased to 230 and healing increased to 1000 on highest upgrade level (from 210/500)
• ‘Scepter’ Max Mana increased to 100 on highest upgrade level (from 80)
• ‘Hexing Rod’ now applies two debuffs on highest upgrade level
• ‘Totem’ Attack and Magic values increased to 55 on highest upgrade level (from 48)
• ‘Apple’, ‘Pear’, ‘Mango’ and ‘Orange’ now increase the Max Mana by slightly more
• ‘Cookie Mushroom’ now additionally increases healing and shielding by 3%

• Additional notes: none.
• Source: Team17 (Steam)

Monster Sanctuary – Ver. ???

• Release date: April 20th 2021 (North America, Europe, Japan)
• Patch notes:

New Game Plus

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.

Casual & Master difficulty modes

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).

New PVP Matchmaking

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 levelof 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 levelof 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).

New PVP Season

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.

Balancing Changes

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’ + ‘Outlast’ + ‘Volatile Shield’ + ‘Critical Break’ + ‘Sabeteur’s Shield’, loses ‘Earth Affinity’ + ‘Defense Overload’ + ‘Mass Protector’
• 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
• Crystal Snail: gains ‘Observe’, ‘Multi Poison’ and ‘Restoring Shield’, loses ‘Channeling Balance’, ‘Outlast’ and ‘Shieldcast’
• 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%)

• Additional notes: none.
• Source: Team17 (Steam)

How to download updates for Monster Sanctuary for the Nintendo Switch?

To download the updates for Monster Sanctuary, you have three options:

• let the console do its thing if you have automatic downloads activated, and didn’t completely turn it off

If not…

• try to launch the game from the Home Menu while being connected to the internet. You should get a prompt when doing so: simply follow the instructions on screen;

OR

• select the game > press either + or – to go to the Options page > select Software update > select Via the Internet.

To check that you have the latest version installed, simply select the game on the Home Menu, and press – or + to go to the Options: the version number is displayed just below the game title.