Aroma - Zest's sister. She is your assistant. Informs you of the monsters status and reminds you of upcoming battles.

Ayase - The mail lady. She will bring by discounts for training and other notifications.

Bolzoi - Runs the Shrine where you make monsters. Also brings you the invitation to special matches.

Chamois - She is in charge of the Studio.

Colt - Monster Trainer from another continent. Will have to face her in the IMa Amity tournaments. Appears in various other Monster Rancher games.

Crow - The coolest looking guy in this game. He runs the shop. He is super cool.

Francesca - The announcer at the Tournaments. She also runs the Agima office.

Mr. Mardoc - The chairman of AGIMA. Wants you to help Age Island's monster raising reputation.

Zest - Aroma's brother. He is the one who requested you come and help get the ranch back together.

Shrine - Run by Bolzoi, this place is where you regenerate monsters to raise. You have to put in words to make them. You can only use four letters at first but, you will get you use another space each time you raise your breeder rank. The most is letters you can use is eight. Capitalization matters. Try any type of combination you can for different results.

Agima - This is where you can retire monsters or assigned them to be coaches. Retiring monsters gets rid of ones for good. You can not get them back. When you assign coaches to places already filled, the monster there will be gone for good, unless it's one of your own. Then it will be given back to you. More on coaches in the Training part of the Ranch Guide.

Studio - Place to store monster by freezing them. You can also combine monsters here. Freezing them is good when waiting for a tournament and you think the monster will not make it. Although, it will not receive invitations while frozen. Combining monsters is a good idea. Look for monsters that are strong in stats where the other is weak in. This will give you a more balanced monster while training. Also ones with different Traits will give you new ones. Some that can not be acquired through items.

Ranch - Selecting this takes you back to the ranch. Trying to do this without a monster gets a funny reaction from Aroma.

Training - Training is what you will spend most of your time doing. Unlike most of the other Monster Rancher games, you do not have normal chores or exercises for the monster to perform. Instead there are different Monster coaches. The big arrow mean that there will be a large gain in that stat. Blue arrows signify gain, and red arrows meaning the stat will go down. The coaches with more than one arrow will wear out your monsters faster than the coaches with one arrow. Each one take up one week out of the month.

You will start with a handful of coaches at your disposal. They will work effortlessly to train your monsters to the best of their ability. But their abilities SUCK. So first thing you want to do is replace them. The higher the stat is for the blue arrow the faster that one will go up. Also higher stats in arrows that go down will lessen how much you lose. Try to get the coaches on the first screen replaced first with 999 for their appropriate stat. When doing training always focus on what stats a monster is good in. Whatever they gain a lot in try to get those up the most. Don't try to make an even stat monster. That will not work as good as a monster that excels in a few and lacks in others. None of the stats should be neglected other than Int but, only do that if the monster has no Int based attacks it uses.

Rest - Allows you monster to rest for one week. Should be done when Aroma tells it is tired or sleepy(NO LATER!). This will bring you back up to good condition. The less you rest it the more stressed out it will get and will make your monster more prone towards injury.

Special - The Agima Training Center. This is the only way for your monster to learn new attacks. There is a course for every stat except life but the Life stat will go up by doing any of the selections. The chances of getting a new technique are given to you after you select one. If the person tells you it is unlikely that you will learn one that pretty much means you won't. As long as she says it is likely or you probably will you should learn something new. Unless you get knocked out. I have never seen a monster learn a new skill when they get knocked out. Winning, though, seems not to effect if you get a skill or not. You can gain one and still lose. A monster's stats effect how strong their opponent will be. They will almost always be stronger. The fee is 3000 but you will often get coupons in the mail bringing the price down to 1000. The special training takes four weeks and you will miss any invitations that would be sent during the time you are doing the special training.

Battle - In this screen is the only place you can check your monster's loyalty level. Try not to enter tournaments with a monster that has low loyalty. They will act confused in the ring and not do anything but get beat up on. This is your calender of battles. You can only enter the battles that are for the rank your monster currently is. The battles will either be elimination style or a round-robin event. Don't expect monsters to give up to you if you have played any of the Playstation Monster Rancher games. I have had many battles and never seen it happen. All the battles will take place again the next year at the same date. Pressing the shoulder buttons allow you to view the rest of the year, so I won't bother putting a full calender here.

Item - Two options here. Either use the items you have or go to Crow's shop. You can hold an unlimited amount of items so don't worry about running out of space. The shop doesn't ever get any new items like the other MR games and I never seen a sale happen. Make sure you get all the gems and cups. They cost a lot but are worth it.

Town - Takes you into town.

Monster - This displays all the information on the monster you are currently raising. The first screen displays the monsters age, rank, type, and breed. The screen to the right shows all the monsters current Traits and what those traits do. The top screen allows you to edit which attacks you want your monster to have in battle. It also gives a good description of the attack. The left screen displays the monsters current stats and the bottom screen displays its battle record along with its personal likes and dislikes.

Breeder - This displays all your stats. Including current Rank, Money, Win Average, and other things.

Book - You can view all the monsters you have regenerated so far here.

When feeding your monster simply give it whatever has 3 or 4 blocks of nutrition and no less. The more Nutrition the less tired it will get during that week. Try to give it stuff it likes but that isn't too important. Not giving your monster food will only make it very fatigued. It won't have drastic side effects, just don't expect to get much done that week.

Through out the game there will be a number of events that will occur. Some are just for character development (not much though) or to be funny and some will get you money or items among other little good things.

Once on each of these, your monster will give you a really good item.

Ayase will bring occasional coupons for the Special Training, dropping the price of it down to 1000. It should always be taken advantage of when possible.

Don't worry about running out of money. You can lose it all and not lose. Eventually your monster will either give you an item to sell or you can just win a tournament.

A number of events will happen at random where the different characters will interact with each other. They happen at random(including the one in town) and have no real effect on the game .

This one only happens once as far as I know of. Ayase will come visit you and tell you of an ad she say about a monster at Ira Lake. Anyone who goes there and beats it will get a 20,000 bounty. The monster can be rather difficult to beat but it is possible. Although Ayase misread the ad and the bounty is only 200.

Birthday - Once a year on the week the monster was regenerated you will be informed of its birthday.

Growth Periods - There are four points in a monsters life. The first starts as soon as it is regenerated. This is its youth. Stat gains aren't very high and gets tired fairly easy. After this is the monster's prime. Stat gains are at their highest and it will become fatigue slower. Following this is old age. Stats don't decrease as quickly as before and becomes tired much easily. Eventually it will get to the point to the end of it's fighting career. Stats will no longer gain, will always be fatigued, and stats will drop during battles. It is best to make them a coach or use them for combining at this point. The most unique thing about this Monster Rancher game is that no matter how old your monster is it won't ever die.

Every couple of months you will randomly get one of three events. The worst one to get is the Question. Your monster will ask you a question along the lines of “Intelligence doesn't matter much as long as I am strong?”, and you can say yes or no but it doesn't seem to have any effect on anything. I would suggest resetting and trying it again. It is random and you can get one of the better events to happen.

Free items are good, k? They are your friend. Sometimes your monsters will give you one. The item can be anything. It just finds in where ever and gives it to you. Some stuff that can be sold in shops and some stuff that can't be. Its good to save them up and sell if you need money. You can also get a lot of the trait items this way.

Stray monsters will attack you no matter what. Even if your monster is tired. But they are generally week so as long as you are like C Class you will be okay. Knocking out the monster will get you items sometimes.

Data from: http://monster-rancher.com/

Official Cup - The Official Cup tournaments must be beaten to advance to the next class. There are five total that your monster must place 1st in. There are three a year and always land on week 4 of February, June, and October. Each of them have six(including you) monsters participating.

Ima Amity - Once you reach A Class, Mr. Mardoc will pay you a visit. He will congratulate you for getting as far as you are and tell you of the IMa Amity cup. It is against a trainer from FIMBA and happens once a year. Its always the same trainer(Colt) and she always has a Mocchi. The invite comes Week 1 of September and the tournament is on Week 1 of October.

Special Monsters - There are four monsters that can't be regenerated until you beat special tournaments for each one. Two are in A Class and two in S Class. Bolzoi will bring you the invitations for these. There is only one battle for each of these against what ever monster it is for. No money is awarded for winning. Here, I made a cool table showing you the details.

Great Four - The Great Four is a set of four tournaments you must beat after you beat the S Cup. They are just like the other official tournaments but only four(including you) monsters in each. Look, I made another cool table showing the schedules.

Emperor Cup - This is the last battle. You must defeat all three of the Great Four tournaments in order to compete. Mr. Mardoc will drop by once you have and tell you about it. Then on week 1 of June you will receive the invite. The battle will take place week 1 of July. Beating this completes the game. You can continue playing and beat it over again but the credits only roll the first time you beat the game.