Introduction

Monster hunting is one of the most important activities in Evony. You will get more resources, chests, and pretty much everything you need from items in less time than any other activity. It is not that other activities are not important, even crucial, but simply that they are slower in producing high volumes of items.

When it comes to monster hunting, you can hunt normal monsters or boss monsters. These differ in that boss monsters can be rallied, and normal monsters cannot. They also differ in the amount and quality of the rewards, though there is some gray area here, because a high end normal monster might be better than a low end boss.

As implied above, when looking at boss monsters, you might be participating in an “Alliance War” or “rally” with others from your alliance, or you might be hunting on your own. The mechanics differ very slightly, the rewards do not.

For a long time it was quite useful to collect reports of defeating monsters. Someone would ask a question along the lines of “what does it take to kill monster xyx” and you would refer them to a couple different reports where you did and did not take wounded killing that monster, and expect them to get a rough estimate of the answer. Unfortunately, this does not work well at all any more.

Once upon a time, when you attacked a monster, or another keep, the primary effect on the outcome was fairly simple. One looked at the troop type(s), the troop tier(s), the specific general (or later, pair of generals) chosen to lead the attack, and the level to which that general had been developed. It was also useful to know what armor and dragon (or spiritual beast) had been assigned to the primary general, and how it had been refined. With this information, you could get a fairly good idea of how to reproduce the same results. Sometimes you needed to understand the research levels from the Academy as well to fully grasp the picture.

With any version of Evony in the last year, and really for the last two years, that is not true. That is because the number and significance of “passive buffs”, those that come from things like Civilization Treasures, Art Work, Spiritual Beast Seals (and many other sources) have proliferated in both variety and in the amount of buff they provide.

Currently to get a reasonable picture of what it would take to reproduce someone’s results in a monster attack, you would need to know (this is no particular order):

1. What troop type(s) they used.
2. What troop tier(s) they used, and how many in each tier.
3. What primary and secondary general they picked
   1. To what extent the primary general was ascended.
   2. To what extent the specialties on both generals had been developed.
   3. If a fifth specialty had been assigned to either or both generals, and if so, to what level it had been developed.
   4. What armor had been assigned to the primary general, and how it had been refined.
   5. What dragon (or spiritual beast) had been assigned, what level it was developed to, and if a dragon, how it was refined, and how its talents had been developed.
   6. What skill books have been assigned, including any of the special premium skill books.
4. What active skills from both dragons and keep decorations are activated.
5. What covenants are activated not just on the primary/secondary pair, but across the board. Not just the fact the covenant is there, but to what level it is active.
6. The level if each Civilization Treasure, and which is active.
7. The level of each Civilization Art Work.
8. The level of each Spiritual Beast Seal, both cumulatively and the individual buffs.
9. The level of each blazon that affects any of the troop types chosen, with the specific buffs provided by the blazons that are active at the time, including how they have been cultivated.
10. The buffs provided by any officers in any of the buildings that may affect the outcome (depending on the troop types involved).
11. The level of each relevant (based on troop type) seat in the senate, and the level to which the seat has been developed. This includes not just those labeled as affecting your troop type as many senate seats affect multiple types.
12. The level of the Arch of Triumph
13. The level of the Victory Column
14. The level of each of the Military Tactics, and which if any have been assigned to the general pair. You need both the ‘Drill’ and ‘Breakthrough’ effects.
15. The levels of any relevant research from both the Academy and Military Academy.
16. The buffs provided by any of the ‘Champions’ that relate to the troop type.
17. The buffs provided by your keep decoration, if any.
18. The buffs provided by your ‘Miracle’ decoration if any. Include both those from merely owning the decoration and those from using the decoration.
19. The buffs from your Civilization Cards.
20. The buffs from your Civilization Culture.
21. The buffs provided by any sub cities you own.
22. The buffs provided by owning full or partial sets of Civilization gear even when not in use, particularly if ‘Amplified.’
23. The buffs provided from having a high level (greater than or equal to 36) building related to your troop type(s).
24. The buffs provided by the Coronation Fountain.
25. The buffs provided by your monarch gear.
26. The buffs provided by your monarch talents.
27. Your base keep level (yes this matters).
28. The buffs provided by any buildings in your Ideal Land.

Without any of these, you could be off in your ability to reproduce someone’s results by 20% or even much more per item missing from the list. Collecting all of this information reliably is effectively prohibitive, and so the practice of collecting reports except as personal milestones is now effectively useless.