The Big Book of Beasts (given in quotes with 'the' being part of the name, originally Monster Book) is a recurring item in the Dragon Quest series.
It is an optional item that keeps track of nearly all the monster species players can encounter in the game the book appears in. It first appeared in Dragon Quest VII, but was later retroactively added to IV, V and VI. Later titles will merge the Book's functionality with certain sections of the menu, such as the Battle Records.
Uses[]
In all the titles where it appears as an item, obtaining the Big Book of Beasts is purely optional and not a requirement to beat the game. It is essentially a convenience for the player, showing all monsters (with some exceptions between games) the player has fought while listing other statistics like the amount of EXP awarded and how many of that particular monster the player has defeated and can even show the monsters' battle animations. Defeating a certain number of a single kind of monster will usually result in a minor reward for that monsters page, such as showing more of its animations and revealing what items it drops if the player has yet to obtain any from the monster in question, which is otherwise obscured by a series of "???".
Starting with Dragon Quest VIII, the book also features short descriptions of monsters as well, describing various attributes such as habitat, species family, and natural behaviour. Oftentimes, these descriptions will allude to resistances or weaknesses of a particular monster, or perhaps valuable items that the enemies may drop, giving clever players an edge in battle.
Appearances[]
Dragon Quest IV Remakes[]
The Book was absent from the original release, having instead been introduced in the re-releases. It is handed to the Hero by their adopted father shortly before the man sacrifices his life in order to protect the Hero's. Despite only obtaining it in Chapter 5, any monsters encountered during the previous chapters will still show up in the book.
Defeating 20 members of a given monster species will reveal their dropped item, unless already directly acquired. While most of the bosses are registered in the Book, a select few, the five human bosses Quick Draw McGore, Attila the Hunk, Prima Donna, Samson Knight, Kirk Buzzer, as well as the final forms of Psaro and Aamon are not.
The book can only be used on the field map, not inside buildings, caves and dungeons, or even settlements.
Encountering all recordable monsters will result in the Hero winning 300,000 tokens for the casino in Endor and Immigrant Town. Due to its otherwise prohibiting cost of 250.000 tokens, the Gospel ring is perhaps the best purchase available with the Book's reward.
The completion of the book may however result impossible in some cases, because certain monster species are only meetable in earlier chapters, meaning that, should they be skipped or missed, the final reward of the book cannot be earned. The monsters in question are the Dirty Dogu and Wimp, both of which are only met on the Libeccio Continent in Chapter 4 while playing as Meena and Maya, and Sir Roseguardin, who can be met in Chapter 5, but only before the point in the story where it is necessary to defeat Estark, after which he disappears without a trace.
Dragon Quest V Remakes[]
Once again absent from the original release, the book can be purchased at the curiosity shop in Fortuna for 1000 Gold; however before it can be bought, the first article sold by the curiosity shop, the wagon, must have been purchased, and even then the Big Book of Beasts first becomes available only after defeating Faux Dowager at Coburg.
Again, the book can only be used on the field map, not inside buildings, caves and dungeons, or even settlements. Aside for its natural usefulness, the Book does not provide any additional reward.
Unlike in Dragon Quest IV, the book does not track of any bosses, including the optional Living statue. This time, just defeating 10 members of a given monster species will reveal their dropped item.
Each monster has also the additional information if they are recruitable or not, using the moniker Unrecruitable if they're the latter, while using the more broad Easy to recruit, Occasionally recruitable, and Hard to recruit terms to define their tameable chances, instead of more specific odds (both a 1/2 and a 1/4 chances are considered Easy, both 1/16 and 1/32 are Occasional, both 1/64 and the very low 1/256 are considered Hard).
Dragon Quest VI Remakes[]
Absent from the original release, the book is obtained in a hidden chest in Haggleton after buying the thief's key (the Super Famicom version of the game had a scale shield in the chest).
As with Dragon Quest V, the book doesn't track bosses.
Dragon Quest VII[]
The first true appearance of the book, where it is a reward in the present for winning the guessing game in L'Arca's animal appreciation festival. Completing the book will grant the reward of a gospel ring, which was apparently hidden somewhere in the book, and only falls off once all pages are filled.
The use of the Book is not restricted, and can be read anywhere, even where it was previously unusable.
A slime stamp appears in a monster's page once it has been successfully tamed and brought to a Monster Meadow, with the labels Unrecruitable, Easy to recruit, Occasionally recruitable, and Hard to recruit to indicate their overall difficulty. This time, only a handful of bosses, mostly the final and post-game ones, are recorded in the book, while most of the minor ones met during the adventure are ignored.
Like in IV, defeating 20 members of a given monster species will reveal their dropped item, although the Book doesn't show the secret item drop that particular monster has when it is chosen by the player as a Traveller's Tablet boss, which may be an exclusive item not found in any other way; an example of such, is the Poison needle plus, which can only be found as a drop of a Hirsute hexer made as a Traveller's Tablet boss, or the Sacreder Armour, which comes from a boss Alarmour.
Monsters can be ordered numerically or alphabetically, and in the 3DS version, there is a separate section of the book for monsters exclusively found in DLC Tablets, such as Hammer the slime.
However, a glitch exists in the 3DS version, that will prevent the successful taming of the DLC monsters should it trigger: if all the regular monsters found in the base game have already been tamed before attempting to tame a DLC monster, then said monster will be unable to enter the Meadows. This is because the monster caretaker, Monty, will reward the Hero with the Wiggles's whatsit item immediately once all of the base game monsters have been tamed, and due to an oversight of the developers, it will result in him being stuck in the congratulatory dialogue, forever unable to accept any other monster in the Meadows. Being unable to tame DLC monsters can result in a multitude of problems, as said monsters as a result, cannot be used to create a custom Traveller's Tablet, which limits the player's options, and may prevent forever the search for certain items. So for anyone interested in taming all the monsters, it is important to keep in mind to tame all DLC monster before taming all regular monsters, thusly bypassing the issue.
Dragon Quest VIII[]
From this title forward, there is no actual book to speak of, instead a monster bestiary is included in the Battle records, showing a list of monsters they have defeated, alongside an Alchemy recipe list and an Item list (a first for the series).
The monsters can be categorized by either numerical, their habitats or by family type order, being then able to be displayed inside one of these categories by either normal or alphabetical order; Monster's pages now have a brief description about their behavior and biology, as well as a general location in which they can be found. Once again, all the bosses are featured in the bestiary, and meeting all possible monster species will once again reward a Gospel ring, given to the Hero by Trode himself.
Also from this title forward, monsters can now have two possible item drops, one common and one rare, with only a select few monster species having just one item drop.
Once again defeating 20 members of a certain monster species will result in more info added to the monster's page, however this time around it only makes it clear if said monster species has a second item drop as, if this is the case, it makes a second row of three "???" appear; furthermore, this system is completely skipped over if said monster happens to drop one of its items before reaching the 20 defeat threshold, immediately revealing if the dropped item is the common drop or the rare one.
On the topic of completely filling the "???" of a monster's page, this can only be achieved by either acquiring directly the item with a natural drop, or in the 3DS version thanks to Red's Rougery skills; obtaining the item thanks to any variation of Yangus's Steal Sickle skill, will not make the item being registered on the monster's page.
Dragon Quest IX[]
Again, the book's function is provided by the Defeated Monster List in the Battle Records menu (available after Stella is encountered), with its functionality being virtually identical to VIII.
Additionally, using the skill Eye for Trouble, learned thanks to the Thief's Acquisitiveness skill tree, adds a second page for a monster's bestiary entry. As such, unique bosses could potentially miss having this second page unlocked, if Eye for trouble is not used during their battle.
Dragon Quest XI[]
A similar functionality to the bestiary of the Battle records is provided within the Misc./Info menu under Defeated Monster List.
Because there are over 600 species of enemies available, the data can be broken down by region, family, or current location. Some data may reset according to the player’s overall progress and must be re-obtained; however, defeating a powered-up monster will reveal the lesser monsters of the same species (e.g. downing a malicious slime will also unlock the regular and vicious monster entries).
Unlike all other titles before it, in XI, the possible drop of the monster, both common and rare, is already revealed by default, making the monster list much more useful to use to track down elusive items.
Gallery[]
Other languages[]
| Other languages | |
| French | Livre des Créatures |
| German | Monster-Menagerie (VI) Buch der Bestien |
| Spanish | El Bestiario |
| Italian | Libro delle Bestie |
| Dutch | Unknown |
| Norwegian | Unknown |
| Greek | Unknown |
| Portuguese | Unknown |
| Russian | Unknown |
| Chinese | Unknown |
| Korean | Unknown |