As my Monk has proven to be less useful in Malefia (2k damage just doesn't cut it at that point, and increasing it to the point where it's useful requires the bard to spend a couple turns that could be better used for other purposes), I have decided that I want to use a monster in her place.

Currently, the two I am thinking of are:
* Death Warden: 12k HP (the one I currently have), casts instant death, but when enemies are in melee will often attack, and that attack isn't a critical (and is thus a wasted turn).
* Black Slayer: 4000 HP (exactly, evety time I have caught one, without fail), gets reliable criticals, but has no ranged attacks.

None of the monsters have worthwhile group attacks; even free Mangar's Mallet isn't attractive when I have 37 SP NUKEs with the God's Staff I managed to find and free TREB with my Bard (if she's not doing something else, like wiping out vampire lords with her deathhorn).

Any suggestions?

Also, is anyone else disappointed that, in the remaster, you can no longer leave monsters at the guild, and you can no longer leave the guild with only monsters in your party? Those were some of my favorite aspects of the classic versions of BT2 and BT3.

I haven't made it to Malefia yet, but do they still have the Vortex that will drain your Mana if they hit you? Do they mana drain monsters if they hit? I seem to recall them having a bunch of health.

Yes, that monster still exists, but I do not know if the mana drain works on enemies. (I have no evidence of the game keeping track of monster SP.)

Also, why would I want to drain an enemy's SP when I could just kill it instantly?

In any case, my Death Warden still has 12k HP, which is plenty. (My characters have mostly surpassed 1k HP due to the fact that higher Con gives a bigge HP bonus than in classic versions.) In fact, after a certain point, HP doesn't really matter, and even the Black Slayer's 4k HP is far more than I realistically need.

By the way, I did look at the Black Death from the figurine, and the issue that it has is the Force of Tarjan spell, which is the sort of spell you do *not* want used randomly by a party member, as it can interfere with your strategy (it pushes enemies back).

So, really the choice is between reliable melee criticals or unreliable ranged criticals.

Other interesting monsters:
* One with "Chaos" in its name (IIRC) can cast MAMA and Regeneration (which the AI seems to be smart about targeting), but I believe it had some less than useful action.
* Vampire Lords have high HP (around as many as a Death Warden) and can cast Restoration (and seem to do so consistently if no enemy is in melee range), but their physical attacks are useless (I don't know if level drain does anything to enemies).
* Some enemies have breath attacks, but they don't do enough damage to be useful at this point.
* Familiar (from the figurine) I haven't tried in real combat in this version, but in classic versions I remember low HP being a liability here. (It casts LUCK, ANMA, REST, and even Heal All! In classic versions, it's a great monster to leave in the Refugee Camp just in case of a party wipe, as it can revive the rest of your party for free.)
* I haven't checked to see if the magic-eaters on UnterBrae level 4 still have enormous amounts of HP.

Unless you're really set on getting a Monster, how about going back and making your monk a Geomancer? Head back to Kinestia. You should be able to find another Familiar Figurine there to help with spell point regeneration, or casting the spells you mentioned earlier.

I assume that a Rock Man, or something else that would stone the mosnters, would be just as good?

Actually, no because, in the remaster, monsters made of stone are immune to petrification. (Note that this includes Rock Men.) Drawbacks of this:
* I already have a Geomancer, and I prefer not to duplicate set-ups. (I make exceptions for casters in BT1 and BT2 (though, when I play the BT2 remaster, I'm thinking of doing different things with my casters rather than have every one try to learn every spell), and for a certain monster in BT2 that loves to cast MAMA; too bad there isn't any monster as good in BT3).
* I only have one Strifespear, so the second Geomancer would not have a way of quickly killing high HP monsters that are made of stone except via EAMA, which is expensive.
* A Geomancer needs a lot of equipment to get decent AC. This is in contrast to the Monk, who needs none, and monsters, who only need Kato's Bracer (note that you now need to equip it on the monster for it to work). Since I am playing with separate inventory, using a Geomancer means fewer inventory slots for loot or extra Harmonic Gems or things like Black Arrows.
* My monk has a little over 1,000 HP, while a Black Slayer has 4,000. This doesn't matter as much as you think (most of my deaths are due to instant death, not hit point damage, which seems rather low at this point), but it is still a difference, and I will probably not level up to the point of reaching 4,000 HP on a standard party member.

I am, however, thinking of going Monk -> Geomancer on a later BT3 playthrough.

(By the way, before you comment on the usefulness of another EAMA, I note that, with patch 3.26, I have two characters that can critical an entire group: My bard with a Deathhorn, and my hunter with some Black Arrows.)

Edit: Another factor: In the remaster, monster party members don't take a share of the experience, so having a monster instead of a sandard party member means more XP for everyone else. (In the limiting case, a party of 6 Kringle Bro's and one low level character allows leveling a new character pretty quickly; it didn't take too long for me to determine the new Chronomancer requirements this way.)

One interesting change in the remaster:

Each monster has 4 possible actions it can perform. In the classic games, the game chooses one action for each monster, which will then perform the action if possible, and do nothing if not. If the action is possible, but doesn't have a good target (for example, if there are no enemies in range), the monster will perform the action anyway, though it will of course fail to affect targets that are too far away. (Note that, if an enemy tries to make a melee attack from a distance, the enemy group will advance, and any enemies in that group that haven't acted will fail to act this turn.) For example, an Herb (from BT2) will choose to attack (and instead do nothing if in the back of the party), cast SOWH on (IIRC) the closest enemy group (which will result in "too far away!" if the enemy isn't within range), or cast Summon Herb (which will fail if the party is full).

In the remaster, any actions that are not possible, or that will fail (for example, if no enemies are in range, or if the party is full so no room for summoning) will not be considered. For example, if the party is full and the Herb is in the back of the party, the only action the AI will consider is to cast SOWH, which means it will cast it all the time (on a random enemy within range) unless there are no enemies in range, in which case it will do nothing.

This difference means that, in the remaster:
* A Demon Lord in the back will always breathe on the enemies (this is actually stronger than the Soul Sucker's breath), assuming the party is full (otherwise it might cast PRSU).
* In BT2, a Wizard of Iz (found in Oscon's Fortress 1) or Scathe Mage (from Destiny Stone 1) can only summon or cast MAMA; in the remaster, given a full party, it will always cast MAMA unless you're in an anti-magic zone. Have fun! (There's also Wacum the Wiz, but that enemy appears only in Destiny Stone 3, which isn't so easy to reach.)
* BT3 doesn't have as many nice monsters, but it is worth noting that the Death Warden can be made to only use death spells if put in the back of the party. This leaves another party member subject to enemy attacks, and it has the disadvantage that (in BT3) spells tend to be resisted more than physical attacks, but it would be an interesting option.

My party just got into Malefia yesterday. Hooray for the automapping spell! Was the jump in monster difficulty this big in the original version? A single NUKE was able to take out most everything in Tarmitia, but now I've been casting NUKE with each of my spellcasters multiple rounds, and there are still some critters left over. I thought that Tarmitia was actually more difficult than it was, I guess.

Have you been able to bring a Gremlin on board? They've got a breath weapon that is still able to damage everyone in my party; The damage is low, but it still hits everyone consistently. So far, that's the only creature I've run into that can do that, as my party resists everything else.

I haven't run into the Chaos monster yet, but I've had multiple Vampire Lords survive 6 Nukes going off in their face. Fortunately, one hit from a Stone Blade takes care of them. Not so much with the Rock Men you mentioned. While "and is turned to stone!" is still present in the text when your Stone Blade using character hits them, they aren't killed by that. DEST seems to work on them, fortunately, as they are also a very, very difficult monster to hit in melee.

I have been able to get SPBI to work on a Gremlin (even though every other spell would fail on it). It had around 12k HP, about as much as ther other enemies in the area, and it does have a very reliable breath weapon; it's even capable of hitting other Gremlins? (And enemy Gremlins couls still hit mine.) Unfortunately the damage is still too low for it to be useful. Of note, I think Gremlins are the main reaso why Familiars (summoned via Familiar Figurine) are not that safe at this stage in the game; their HP is low enough that they can be killed by one or two Gremlin breaths. (Also, Breathrings and other items with the same property will protect the wearer from even a Gremlin's breath attacks.)

Vampire Lords are another monster that frequently has over 12k HP. While I don't see them as being that useful, if you put one in the back (and are playing the remaster, as this only happens because of changes made to he monster AI), it will cast Restoration every single time.

If DEST can work on an enemy, so can FADE (Chronomancer spell). STTO and ROCK won't work on petrify-immune enemies in the remaster, but I believe the monster AI is smart enough to not consider such spells when they won't work; a back row Death Warden will never use ROCK against such enemies, instead using FADE (if such enemies are in range) or targeting a different enemy.

By the way, the Strifespear can instant kill enemies that the Stoneblade can't petrify, and if the enemy is also difficult to hit in melee, the Strifespear can be used as an item to cast FADE. In the meantime, in the remaster a high level Hunter can kill enemies from a distance with thrown weapons or arrows; if your game is up-to-date you can even use Black Arrows to crit an entire group (the Deathhorn allows a Bard to do the same, but is rarer due to Gelidia having more possible item drops than Lucencia).

(Incidentally, if you do want to use a Monk in the endgame, a combination of the BT1 song that boosts damage (some sort of Fury song), Rhyme of Duotime, and DIVA can get the monk doing 5-digit damage, which should be enough to kill even high HP enemies some of the time. If there are a lot of high HP enemies and you don't want to use Black Arrows or a Deathhorn, you can alternatively keep stacking Spellsongs; eventually, if the enemies are close enough, you can get NUKE to deal 5-digit damage.

By the way, what level is your party?

I turned my Monk into the Geomancer, so no need for multiple songs to get her to do the 10K damage. She's using the Strifespear, as she also has the highest To-Hit bonus of any of my front line characters (+21) My Bard still has the Specter Snare from BT1, so she can critical hit. My hunter is using a Stone Blade, so even on the off chance that the critical hit fails, he can still stone the enemy. The only front-liner I have that can't auto critical hit is the Rogue, who needs to jump from the shadows to do that.

My characters started in BT1, so they're all pretty high levels. Thye're ranging from my Hunter who is about LVL 120 to the Rogue who is about 180. My Archmages are 150 or so, as they did some grinding runs in BT2. My Chronomancer was the Destiny Knight in BT2, and is currently sitting at LVL 109. Using him as a guide, I can tell you that I've earned about 28M XP in BT3, including a little over 4M wandering around in Malefia.

Recently, I ran into a fight that had two different groups of Tarjan's Bulls. I finally realized that the summon themselves, so I decided to run a little experiment, and wait for both groups to hit 99. One of my mages had to keep casting REST each turn, or else my Hunter would have died; Tarjan's Bulls can hit characters even at a -50 AC. When they both got to 99 Bulls, I started firing Nukes with all four spellcasters. After killing them all off (my bard even managed to kill one with the Keil's Overture song!), the fight was worth 1.1 million XP for each of my seven characters. I'm almost tempted to go back to one of the other realms and level up. :)

Did the same, but with just one group. 600k of easy experience; shame by this point it no longer matters!

I discovered this myself, though I never tried it against two groups of Tarjan's Bulls (I have done this against two groups of Kalt Mages in Gelidia, however). It's interesting that this strategy works better in the remaster than in the classic versions, for a few reasons:
* Classic versions limited enemies to 31 per group.
* In 8-bit verisons, XP is limited to 100,000 per battle.
* The 8-bit versions also have an integer overflow bug; if a single group of enemies would give 65,536 XP or more, they instead give the intended amount reduced modulo 65,536. (Not sure if this happens on 16-bit versions.)

If you're going to use this strategy in the remaster, and you aren't using the legacy bard song option, your Bard would probably be better off stacking Spellsong after playing Minstrel Shield; stacking it enough times can cause NUKE to do 5-digit damage (you might even be able to wipe out all the enemies with one NUKE), and Spellsong doesn't need to display a message for each enemy the way Keil's Overture does.

By the way, I noticed that enemies killed by the Geomancer spell Earth Maw give experience in the remaster; I'm pretty sure this was not the case in the classic versions. There's a weapon called the Heartseeker (rare drop in Malefia and the final area (only) of Tarmitia) which allows a Rogue to critical hit; on my recent (incomplete as always) BT3 run (of the remaster), I got one pretty quickly. (Or you could use the Death Dagger from BT1, if you're playing the remaster, or at least I assume you can.)

By the way, in the DOS (possibly Amiga?) version of BT3, AC does not stop at -50; a Monk's AC will continue decreasing all the way to level 255. The catch is, however, that a character's AC bonus (AC is 10 minus this bonus) is a signed 8-bit integer, so at a high enough level (over 100, but not as high as your Rogue), a Monk's AC will jump up to 138 I believe, at which point the character is easy to hit. (You can work around this at first by simply removing some of the Monk's armor, but this will eventually cease to work; the only real option is to stop leveling at this point (getting level drained is unfortunately not an option do to yet *another* bug in that version).)

One other thing I have noticed in classic versions, but whose status in the remaster is unknown (at least to me): Scaling spells (like Mind Jab and Vitality) stop scaling after level 255. (At least they don't overflow.)

Actually, I would say it still matters if you reach Malefia without being at such ridiculously high levels. With characters in the 60s, I find that my spells and my Hunter's Deadlyrang/Nightspear don't hit consistently, so gaining more levels (which can be done in the Wizard's Guilds in other dimensions) is still helpful.

Perhaps it might be possible, at high enough levels (maybe around 255 or so?), to actually hit Gremlins and Tarjan with spells or ranged weapons.

I distinctly remember the Apple version of BT2 giving 65,280 (FF00 in hex) XP when you farmed. Many a Miracle Mage was fought in Dargoth's Tower to learn this knowledge. :) Any extra XP went into gold, until that also reached 65,280. After that, you get nothing extra. I believe, but don't know for sure, that the C64 version did the same; that was the one my friend had.

I tried Earth Maw out against a Rock Man, and I also noticed that it gave XP. It seems like a much easier way to take out a big group of nasties than NUKE, and giving the XP for them is just a bonus.

As an aside, I found my first Staff of the Gods a couple of fights later. Now my Chronomancer can case NUKE for 37 SP. Since equipping the Familiar Figurine to your mages automatically regenerates their spell points, he can cast a whole lot more of them now!

I believe the 2GS version of BT2 might have actually capped XP awards at 65,535 (FFFF hex), but I don't remember for sure.

By the way, I am aware of two significant bugs in the C64 version of BT2, and these bugs are severe enough that my recommendation would be to avoid that version:
1. Accuracy is based off AC like in other classic versions of BT1 and BT2, but due to a bug a character with L+ AC will have trouble hitting late game enemies. As a result, if you keep your characters well protected, you will have trouble hitting enemies, and sufficiently high-level Monks are useless offensively in the late game. (This one I read about somewhere.)
2. Special party members will not use their special attacks (offensive spells and breath attacks) if there is at least one enemy present. This makes such monsters as Wacum the Wiz (very useful in properly functioning versions) useless in this version; the spell will be used just fine in intra-party combat (but not actually hit anything), but will not be used if there are any enemies that it would actually work on. (For the behavior in properly functioning verions, replace "not" with "only in the first sentence; that's how the 2GS version works, and I believe how the DOS version works as well.) (This one I discovered myself, after I wrote a program to transplant my 2GS party innto a C64 version save state for the purpose of transferring to the C64 version of BT3, which may be the best classic version of that game.)

Do you happen to know if the plain Apple 2 version has these bugs?

There's also two other ways to take out a group of high HP enemies, provided that your saving throws (affected by level, luck, and equipment with "Luck bonus" effect) are good enough:
1. Have a Bard use the Deathhorn. This, I believe, works in all versions except for older versions of the remaster.
2. Have a Hunter use Black Arrows. This does not work in classic versions (because the Hunter's ranged criticals are a remaster-only feature), but will work in recent versions (recent enough for the Deathhorn to work) of the remaster. (One other thing to note: Unlike in classic versions, you actually *do* need a bow equipped to shoot these, which unfortunately means you'll need to unequip your Luckshield (though you can compensate by gaining more levels, of course).)

Deathhorn drops in Gelidia, but given that there are so mant items that can drop there, it is a bit rare.
Black Arows drop in Lucencia and Kinestia, and aren't as hard to find; plus, I believe they can now be stacked to 30 per slot like other arrows.