Monster Loot
| Monster Loot | |
|---|---|
| Type | Resource |
Monster Loot is the game's own label for the spoils of the underground: Slime, Bug Meat, Bat Wing, Solar Essence and Void Essence. Marlon buys all five over the counter at the Adventurer's Guild, and the Shipping Bin takes them too, but selling is almost always the worse move. These five run the whole length of the crafting list, from the first scrap of Bait a new angler makes up to the Iridium Band that carries a farmer through the Skull Cavern, and one of them fills a slot in the Boiler Room's Adventurer's Bundle. The town treats the lot of it as rubbish, with the Wizard as the one exception. Rarer drops that fall outside the category matter more than any of the five, because a Prismatic Shard is what the Forge wants in exchange for an enchantment.
Location
The Mines and the Skull Cavern are the whole supply, and the floors sort themselves neatly. Insects on the top floors give Bug Meat, and slimes of every colour give Slime from the first floor to the last. Bats take over the floors below thirty and keep going to the bottom, dropping wings all the way. Ghosts, Metal Heads and mummies give Solar Essence, and so do Squid Kids and Haunted Skulls. The shadow creatures of the lava floors give Void Essence, as do the serpents coiling through the desert cavern. A deep run therefore comes home with a mixed bag rather than a stack of one thing.
Krobus sells the same goods without a fight. His stall in The Sewers rotates through them, with Slime on Mondays and Bat Wings on Sundays, and both essences on the shelf every day in quantity. Getting in needs the Rusty Key, which Gunther sends over once sixty items are sitting in the museum. For the recipes that ask for fifty of something, a few weeks of shopping beats a few weeks of fighting.
Fish Ponds turn the same drops into a passive trickle. A pond of Sunfish produces Solar Essence, a pond of Void Salmon produces Void Essence, and the fish that eat insects, Dorado and Lingcod among them, produce Bug Meat. None of it is fast, but none of it costs health either.
Three things multiply the haul. The Burglar's Ring comes from Gil once five hundred Dust Sprites have been cleared, and it raises the chance of a drop on every kill. The Monster Compendium is a power book that gives a permanent small chance of doubled loot, and the two stack, so a farmer wearing the ring and carrying the book through a deep run collects noticeably more. Monster Musk, whose recipe comes from the Wizard's Prismatic Jelly order, doubles how many monsters each new floor holds for ten minutes, which is the difference between hunting and harvesting.
Gil's board on the guild wall pays for volume rather than loot. A thousand slimes buys the Slime Charmer Ring, two hundred bats the Vampire Ring, a hundred and fifty void spirits the Savage Ring, and the serpents of the desert pay out the Napalm Ring. Those goals come in by themselves while the loot is being gathered.
Uses
Bug Meat is the cheapest and the busiest of the five. One piece becomes five Bait at the second level of Fishing, which is what makes early fishing bearable, and ten pieces make a Bug Steak, a pocket meal for a long dive. It also goes into Wild Bait, Magic Bait and the Sturdy Ring.
Slime is bought in bulk or not at all. Fifty go into an Oil Maker, a hundred into a Slime Incubator, and ten into a Cork Bobber. Anyone running a Slime Hutch ends up with more than they can spend.
Bat Wings are the Lightning Rod's main ingredient, five to a rod, and a row of rods turns a storm into Battery Packs instead of lost crops. Wings also go into Monster Musk and the Dark Sign.
The two essences are where the real crafting sits. Solar Essence lights the Glowstone Ring and finishes the Quality Bobber, the Barrel Brazier, the Mini-Obelisk and a batch of Hyper Speed-Gro. Each Mega Bomb takes one of each essence along with its Gold Ore, and bombs are what make a deep Skull Cavern run possible at all. The Iridium Band asks for fifty of each, which is the single largest order either essence ever sees, and the ring it makes lights the way, draws items in and adds to attack damage for the rest of the save.
The Adventurer's Bundle in the Boiler Room takes Monster Loot as its filler, so whichever of the drops reaches the chest first fills the slot. The Forge, at the bottom of the Volcano Dungeon, deals in rarer drops: a Prismatic Shard buys a random enchantment for a tool or a weapon, and a Dragon Tooth buys an innate one that lifts a weapon's own numbers. Prismatic Shards fall from mummies, serpents and the shadow creatures at a fraction of a percent, so they arrive on long runs rather than on demand, and Dragon Teeth come out of the Volcano Dungeon itself.
Notes
The whole category reads as junk to the valley. Handing any of it over costs friendship with almost everyone, and the Wizard is the exception worth remembering, because he loves both essences and a spare one covers a weekly visit to his tower.
Selling is a last resort. The essences are the only two with a price worth noticing, and even those are better kept, because the Iridium Band swallows a hundred of them between the pair. Bug Meat and Slime are worth more as Bait and machines than as coins, and a chest set aside for Monster Loot pays for itself the first time a recipe asks for fifty of something.
All Resources
Every entry in this group, with its key details.
| Name | Image | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Bat Wing | 
|
15g |
| Battery Pack | 
|
500g |
| Bone Fragment | 
|
12g |
| Broken CD | 
|
0g |
| Broken Glasses | 
|
0g |
| Bug Meat | 
|
8g |
| Cave Jelly | 
|
180g |
| Cinder Shard | 
|
50g |
| Clay | 
|
20g |
| Coal | 
|
15g |
| Copper Bar | 
|
- |
| Copper Ore | 
|
5g |
| Driftwood | 
|
0g |
| Fiber | 
|
1g |
| Gold Bar | 
|
- |
| Gold Ore | 
|
25g |
| Green Algae | 
|
15g |
| Hardwood | 
|
15g |
| Iridium Bar | 
|
- |
| Iridium Ore | 
|
100g |
| Iron Bar | 
|
- |
| Iron Ore | 
|
10g |
| Joja Cola | 
|
25g |
| Monster Loot | - | - |
| Moss | 
|
5g |
| Radioactive Bar | 
|
- |
| Radioactive Ore | 
|
300g |
| Refined Quartz | 
|
50g |
| Rice | 
|
100g |
| River Jelly | 
|
125g |
| Rotten Plant | 
|
0g |
| Sea Jelly | 
|
200g |
| Soggy Newspaper | 
|
0g |
| Solar Essence | 
|
40g |
| Stone | 
|
2g |
| Sugar | 
|
50g |
| Trash | - | - |
| Trash (item) | 
|
0g |
| Treasure Chest | 
|
5000g |
| Vinegar | 
|
100g |
| Void Essence | 
|
50g |
| Wheat Flour | 
|
50g |
| White Algae | 
|
25g |
| Wood | 
|
2g |