Wa-hey! Let's play Dragon Warrior Monsters 2: Tara's Adventure!

Hello! Welcome to my new LP! Maybe this one I'll stick with! Anyway, this time I'll be showing off Pokemon wait no not that monster catching game. I meant to say Digimon wait no not that one either. Lemme just post the title.



That one! Dragon Warrior Monsters 2: Tara's Adventure! Much like other monster-catchers of the time, there's a paired version, Cobi's Journey, that has a few different wild monsters and affects what worlds you have access to in postgame. But perhaps more importantly, the most prominent version difference is your main character! Cobi and Tara are brother and sister, so if you want to play as a boy, you have to play Cobi's Journey, and vice-versa. We'll be playing Tara's Adventure because it's the one I grew up with.



We can, of course, name her whatever we like, as long as it's within five letters. For the sake of getting the show on the road, I'll be doing the first update with the default name, but once I've gotten a vote from y'all, I'll switch to that for the meat of the game.

I'm also going to make a request of everyone here. We're going to be recruiting a lot of monsters over the course of the game, and I mean a lot of monsters. Unlike Pokemon, nicknames are required, and they aren't allowed to be identical to any other monster's nickname. So I'd like you all to provide 5-letters-or-less names for me to use to name monsters. I'll be taking them in order, and feel free to submit as many as you like. If there's a certain species you'd prefer to have a given name, I'll try to accomodate unless I run out of non-preferential names to use, but otherwise, there's no telling what's going to get each name. So be silly!

And I think that gets all the preamble out of the way, so now time for lists, and then the first chapter! Please look foward to it!

Chapters:

• Chapter 1: The Things We Do For Pie
• Chapter 2: A Brand New World
• COMING SOON

Name Stack:

• Robin (Lamp Demon)
• BandD (Beast)
• CClaw (Bird)
• PestI (Bug)
• Demoj (Demon)
• PDead (Zombie)
• SSnke (Material)
• LSnke (Material)
• GSnke (Material)
• SFish (Water)
• QMark (???)
• Mumms
• Batsy
• Where
• Gizmo
• M.Bay
• SLIMY
• HAIRY
• FUZZY
• MOIST
• HEAVY
• WHAT?
• OhGOD
• Nope!
• NOPE.
• Maybe
• IDEFK
• Cthuu
• F'nrr
• Timat
• Lil'h
• Kerob
• Hamut
• Phoei
• Lendr
• Yuji
• Akira
• Ko1
• PikaQ
• SlBro
• Blbsr
• Trtwg
• Eddie
• IDK
• IMHO
• AFK
• BRB
• LOL
• MiFi
• OTP
• [Your submission here!]

Five characters? Man, that's rough.

Well, let's start by finishing our MC's name: "ntula"

As for monsters, Imma go with names inspired by some of my favourite classic movie monsters:

• Frank
• Mumms
• Batsy
• Where
• Gizmo
• M.Bay

Chapter 1: The Things We Do For Pie




We start off...on a boat! ntula's looking out off the ship's deck. Cobi comes in from the left side of the screen and gets our attention.

Hustling! The parents, unfortunately, do not have names.



Weird thing to mention now, I guess, as opposed to, I dunno, before we got on the boat, but sure, dad, whatever works for you.

Back on the bow, we talk to Cobi again.



This is, honestly, a surprisingly detailed sprite of the island that we will only see, like, once ever.

Once we dock, the game cuts to Cobi and ntula playing on the farm, which is the entire green part at the bottom of GreatLog.



Rude dad. Well, let's go see what Mom needs.

Oh boy! Pie! This is an acceptable errand.

That said, we are stopped very quickly, as soon as we leave the farm.



A boy and his plushie make cryptic comments at us before running off. Oooooo...kaaaaay?

On the next screen, boy and plushie circle around an old woman and make her dizzy, before moving on.

Boy, Prince, same thing. Same for plushie/elemental.

We move through the market, coming across the prince and elemental playing with one guy's merchandise. He chases them off after a bit, and we continue on, with no more distractions until the Vault.



It occurs to me that I have no idea how this pie has stayed fresh after being shipped to an island. Oh well, doesn't matter. Pie get, time to go ho--



Guess we're not going that way. But that's fine, there's another path to the farm.



...Or not. Well, maybe they'll move aside if I talk to them?

Oh no...

The duo rams into us, causing us to drop the pie package!





Then begins a tug-of-war for the pie! It goes back and forth a bit, before slipping out of everyone's hands and landing right into that well! Ewwww...

Regardless, the mischief makers dive right into the well after it, so we better go too.



They're now tug-of-warring between each other, right next to a weird donut.

With that, Cobi rams into the duo, causing their hands to slip again! The pie, thankfully, drops to the ground, but Kameha is sent crashing into the donut, destroying it!



Fireball-looking bits come out of the hole, and Warubou seems to be concerned.

Kameha dashes out of the well, while Warubou leaps forward and...plugs the hole with his butt (and we pick up the pie).



I just wanted pie, and now the island is sinking...? What a terrible day. Clearly the adults will listen to us!

...Or not. Well, maybe if we talk to Dad or Mom, they'll listen.

I guess no one believes us, how about that. At least we delivered the pie! Let's...let's go back to Warubou and report.








Whew. Hopefully there's less exposition in the future. A summary: we use a magic key to open a magic door to another world and beat up monsters until we find something we can stuff this hole with. I'm sure this is perfectly fine for, what, a pair of 8 year olds? It's not really said anywhere, but considering how young everyone treats them, I don't expect they're very old.

Anyway, before we can set off...

He throws us another key, the GreatLog Key.

Good things to mention to an 8 year old: "fight monsters or everyone dies"

Cobi suggests heading home first to talk things through, so we do.



Yes, yes, she'll be much less concerned when only one of her children is in a life-threatening place. Anyway, one of the farm's monsters, a slime named Slash, wanders in on us.



And with that, we're all set to start our journey to save the island! Cobi will serve as the person we go to when we want to manage our monsters on the farm.

Next time: The Oasis World! What wonders and mysteries await us there? Please look forward to it!



Before I end this post, I'd like to ask: is the formatting okay? I'm spacing things out as the game has them, but let me know if you would rather I take advantage of computer screens that can hold more than 18 letters on a line.

Also, I just went ahead and said 'Yes' to the two dialogue boxes that popped up; considering the series, I highly doubt 'No' leads to anywhere interesting, but since I have to play through this again with the selected PC name anyway, lemme know if you want me to check out those options.

I love what a ridiculously convoluted set up this is for monster collecting.

As a fan of the DQM games I am very excited. Warubou made a surprising 180� there once his very existence was in jeopardy! Tara into "ntula" amuses me greatly, otherwise I'd suggest something like "DrMro".

The spacing seems fine to me. It takes up a lot of vertical space but it's not hurting anything. I think I'd prefer that unfinished sentences not be separated by an empty line, but if that's any kind of work don't worry about it.

You said there would be a lot of things to name, so here are a lot of names. Please use them however you feel like they'd be funny. Whether that means piling them on the stack or not.

In the theme of a kid naming things by adjective:
SLIMY
HAIRY
FUZZY
MOIST
HEAVY

This being a DQM game, I'm sure these will be comical sooner or later:
WHAT?
OhGOD
Nope!
NOPE.
Maybe
IDEFK

Awkward references to famous monsters:
Cthuu
F'nrr
Timat
Lil'h
Kerob
Hamut
Phoei
Lendr

I don't know if any members of the Lamp Demon family are in this game, but if you get one, you should name him Robin.

As for general-purpose names, I'd like to suggest Yuji, Akira, and Ko1 (because Koichi won't fit) as a tribute to the holy trinity of Dragon Quest.

Monster names:
PikaQ
SlBro
Blbsr
Trtwg

No way I can just nickname monsters without assigning them bad puns based on their type!

Here is nicknames, one for each family:

Slime: GooP (Goowenyth Paltrow)
Dragon: SHot (Scaled n’ Hot)
Beast: BandD (Beast and Desist)
Bird: CClaw (Caw Claw)
Plant: FlMan (Flora-da Man)
Bug: PestI (Pest Insector)
Demon: Demoj (Demojargon)
Zombie: PDead (Pun-Dead)
Material: SSnke/LSnke/GSnke (Solid, Liquid or Gaseous Snake as appropriate)
Water: SFish (StandoffFish)
???: QMark (Questing Mark)

- Eddie

Hmm; since these have a restriction, I'll probably end up using them first just to get them out of the way.

But this one's unrestricted, so I'm putting it at the bottom!

I would rather see them printed out more naturally.

I find that these
line breaks are

hard to read,
especially over a

large block of
text.

Monsters

IDK
IMHO
AFK
BRB
LOL

Alrighty! Unless anyone has a particular preference for how it's been, I'll just be sane with it.

I updated Chapter 1 with new formatting, as well as rehosting the images so that they don't disappear. I also added in the, uh...only name for Tara that people have voted for.

So next up will be ntula's oasis adventure!

MiFi
OTP

Chapter 2: A Brand New World

Hi, welcome back; today we're off to the Desert World! But we won't be alone.



We have a Slime friend! His name is Slash. Let's take a look at him, shall we?



The first screen tells us his stats; ATK and DEF do what you expect them to do. AGL, I believe, affects how often the monster dodges. INT affects skill damage. HP and MP stand for Horticulture Points and Machinery Points.

WLD is a bit different; it affects how often the monster does what we tell them to. A WLD of 0 means they'll always listen to us; monsters we recruit in the wild will not have 0, while bred and gift monsters will.

The second screen tells us the monster's personality, species, family, owner, experience, and held item. Slash is a Hotblooded Slime of the Slime family, owned by ntula, with no experience or item. Easy.

The third screen tells us all of Slash's no skills. When he gets skills, they'll go here.

The fourth screen, finally, tells us Slash's parentage. As a gift monster, we don't know Slash's parents. Maybe he's an orphan.

Anyway, let's talk around town! GreatLog is filled to the brim with generous souls who are glad to grant useful things to an up and coming monster master. Particularly mom and dad.

Dad gives us a lesson on how to recruit monsters. In short, when we run into wild monsters, we can feed them meat, and after the battle, if they like us enough, they'll ask to join. No one else has anything for us yet, and most of the facilities are blocked off right now save the Vault, where you can store money and items so they aren't lost if your monsters die.

So with that, we're off!



Past Warubou down in the well is the Magic Door. It leads to different places depending on which Magic Key we put in. For now, all we have is GreatLog's key, which would lead us right back here, and the Oasis Key. We stick the latter in.



Fancy wavy graphics!



Well, it's a little different. Let's head outside...

Slash, I don't think we're in GreatLog anymore...

Anyway, welcome to the Desert World! We can get a vague overview of the world map by pressing Select, so let's try that now.



The wing in the top-left corner is where we are now. There's also two structures on the map, probably towns. Otherwise, this is a whole lot of nothing. I wonder what we'll find here to plug the Log's Navel with? Let's head to that nearby town to look arou--



--ack! Not three steps and we've already encountered a wild monster! Let's take a look at battles, shall we?



We've got four options on a turn.
The first is Fight; this just has your monsters attack based on their last Plan; if they don't have one, it'll just be a basic attack.
Second is Item; we can have ntula use an item before the round begins, and after the item is used, the round plays out like we selected Fight.
Third is Plan; this lets us specifically tell our monsters what to do. We can give the mid-level orders of Charge, Mixed, and Defense, or we can tell them explicitly what action we want them to take. Based on their WLD stat and Personality, they may disobey a given Plan.
And lastly, we can run away with Flee.

This SpotSlime isn't much of a threat, so we'll just have Slash attack.

They trade a few blows, but the outcome was inevitable.



We get a whole 3 XP from that! Huzzah!

Moving on, we don't make it to the city before running into another wild monster!



This is just about as threatening as the SpotSlime, so I treat it with about the same amount of caution.



And get about the same result! Except twice the XP from this.



A short time later, we come across that town we saw on the map. Let's head in and ask around!



A decent bit of info here! Looks like there's a king in the city to the south who might know something about our plug. And also a woman who tried to hit on an 8 year old girl.



also treasure is important

Inside that brick building is a waterway.



yes yes that's nice and all but more importantly



MEAT

Sounds like all signs point south! There's nothing else important in Kalka right now, so let's move on.



On our way, we run into a leaf on the ground, which is actually an Herb! Every time we leave and reenter a World, random items like this can spawn on the ground. Here in the Desert World, we'll only find things like Herbs, BeefJerkys, and scraps of G, but later we can get some pretty valuable stuff.



Speaking of BeefJerky, let's try out that one we got earlier. When we select an item, we can select whether to use it on an ally or an enemy. If there are multiple of either, it then further goes into a selection of which monster you want in that set, but in a case like this where there's only one, it'll skip that.



It liked it, yaaaaay~ Now let's continue beating it up. After the battle...



Slash levels up! Hooray! And also...



We made a friend~



And then we get to name him. There's no option to not do so, either.



We can choose to add him to the party now, or send him back to the Farm. If our party were full, we could pick any of the monsters here, including the ones already in the party, to send to the Farm.



They have their own follow sprite too! Let's take a look at GooP.



All wild monsters have unknown parentage, so I'm skipping that screen. In any case, let's move on to Asiya!

Lots of info here. The King has something like a TidalBell, maybe we can use that? Let's go ask him.



Or not. Now, how can we get in to meet the King...

Maybe we could get in with that circus troupe? The King's all but assured to call them in, so if we can participate, that'd get us in, no problem!



Partial success! The ringleader will let us in, but we need a full party first. Now, we could go out, maybe recruit another SpotSlime or a CactiBall, and use that, but I have a slightly more ambitious plan.



And that plan involves coming all the way up here, to the northeastern corner of Desert World. Because here we can find...



...not this, actually, but I'll gladly accept it. (I did not feed her any meat; occasionally monsters will join you anyway.)

Anyway, what I was actually looking for was...



This guy! KingCobra is a powerful monster this early in the game. Worth using that PorkChop you got from Dad on (they aren't able to be bought until the next world).



The PorkChop isn't a guarantee, so this took a few tries, but eventually she joined up. We're gonna go ahead and send GooP home for now. Let's take a look at the new arrivals.




Both of them come with skills on arrival; SHot's StopSpell does exactly what it suggests: it stops the enemy from using Spell-type skills. PoisonHit is similarly self-explanatory, an attack with a chance to inflict poison. Poison is very good; bosses do not have innate status immunity beyond what their species grants, so you can land poison and other statuses on quite a few things.

On our way back to Asiya...



A CactiBall joins us anyway. :V I send it home.

This update has been going on long enough, I think; next time, we'll join the circus and meet with the King! Please look forward to it!

Does Slash stay useful through the entire game or is he going to get outclassed eventually?

He's no different from any other wild Slime aside from his starting WLD of 0 and personality of Hotblood, and we'll find wild Slimes in the next World, so no, he's not going to be particularly important as the game goes on. For now, though, he's definitely better than a SpotSlime, and somewhat better than a CactiBall. Pretty soon he'll pick up the Firebal skill, which will be our first AoE; that'll keep him relevant for a bit longer until we have a good option to breed him with.

Well, at least he'll get put out to stud. (StudSlime?)

Monster nicknames:

DUNE
LEO
JOJO
SPUD

If you're still taking monster name suggestions, then I'd like to suggest Babou for a MadCat, if you get one.

I'll be taking monster name suggestions until the LP ends.

By the way, sorry I missed last weekend, I was busier than I expected to be! I'll try to get an update up soon.

Abandoned