User:Kimbles/DD1 Notes

Since I'm one of the few people who have actually played this and have two books for it, I'll be writing out the info that I've found here until we can get proper pages for it.

It's a pretty interesting game... It's basically "collect monsters and battle them", but you're also expected to build a city for them to live in and keep them more or less happy. It's also framed as a (fictional) videogame that you're playing on your "Dino Pad" PDA...thing, which apparently runs on the (fictional) "Planet OS" operating system. You're greeted with the Dino Pad menu when you turn on the game, which has a bunch of useful features such as an address book, memo, calendar, timetable, calculator, and pocketbook, all of which are totally functional. It also has stuff like the sound check, some minigames, and of course the main game (Dino Device). It asks you for the real-life date when you turn it on (for the calendar and such), but sadly it only goes up to 2010. :(

Dinos

Dinos are the monsters you collect in the game. There are 150 in all, although most of them are recolors.

You can keep up to 3 Dinos with you at a time, and as many as you like in the houses you place in your city. (There's probably some upper limit though.)

Types

They're divided into 10 basic types:

Japanese	English	Theme	Styles
イグアーム	Iguarm	Dinosaurs	Carina, Taurus, Pegasus
テトロトップ	Tetrotop	Quadrupeds	Leo, Capricornus, Aquarius
バーディス	Birdis	Birds	Aquila, Cygnus, Corvus
シェルブック	Shellbook	Sea creatures	Scorpius, Cancer, Cetus
キックバグ	Kickbug	Bugs	Orion, Auriga, Hercules
エコロード	Ecolord	Plants	Cassiopeia, Bootes, Cepheus
デュアロン	Dualon	Bipeds	Lepus, Ursa Major, Virgo
ゴストフリー	Ghostfree	Ghosts	Ophiuchus, Gemini, Perseus
メタボール	Metaball	Minerals	Libra, Sagittarius, Lyra
ゼロイー	Zeroii	Mythology	Draco, Centaurus, Eridanus

Several things are determined by a Dino's type, like what devices it can equip and which city features/other dinos it prefers to live beside. Tetrotop, Birdis, and Shellbook types are rideable if you have them in your party. (Tetrotop is high-speed ground travel, and Birdis and Shellbook let you move over mountains and water, respectively.) Each type also has a special ability/effect that it can use in battle, but I don't have them all figured out yet. *nod*

Styles

Each type contains 3 designs called styles, listed above. (They're all named after constellations.) There are 30 styles in the game, meaning 30 unique monster designs.

Each style comes with 1-3 unique attacks, which can do damage or cause other effects. Styles that come with 1 attack can equip up to 3 weapon devices, but styles with more attacks have to equip fewer, since weapons take up free attack slots.

Elements (a.k.a. Attributes)

Within each style are 5 different elemental variants: Fire, water, electric, earth, and no element (which uses the "natural" colors). Each of these Dinos is named after a specific star in the constellation the style is named after. *nod*

Elements play a large part in how much damage a Dino does/takes in battle. It goes Fire > Earth > Electric > Water > Fire, with non-elemental stuff having no disadvantage or advantage.

10 types x 3 styles x 5 elements each = 150 different Dinos total!

How to get Dinos

The easiest way to get Dinos is from the Gatcha Station, otherwise known as the Gatchaste (or Gatchasta I guess) for short. This takes information from the profiles (addresses) you keep in the game's address book (specifically, it looks at their name and birthday) and generates a Dino from it. An address can be reused as many times as you want, and any particular address will always give you the same style every time. (The element is random though.) The first Dino you get in the game is always the one based on your own profile, which the game makes you input the first time you start it up. Note however that there is at least one "rare" style in each type that you can't get from using the Gatchasta machine.

(The second Dino you get is a Centaurus whose element depends on the version: fire (Agena) in Red, or water (Toliman) in Blue. This is more or less the only visible version difference.)

Another way to get Dinos (after you unlock the colosseum) is to find them wild. Ocassionally you'll get a message while walking around your city and a wild Dino will attack you. You'll enter a 1 vs 1 battle, and if you win you can keep the wild Dino. (There's no penalty if you lose.) These wild Dinos can be any style or type (except Zeroii), including some of the rare styles that you can't get from the Gatchasta.

Supposedly you can also get different styles by combining Dinos later in the game, but I have no idea how it works or how you do it.

Zeroii types are the big exception, because they're considered "super-rare" and have special requirements in order to get them: Dracos can only be obtained by winning a post-game tournament, Centauruses, aside from the version starters, are found by putting specific passwords into the Gatchasta (in the form of name/birthday), and Eridanus is found by combining other rare styles. (Still no clue how to do this.)

Devices

These are the weapons and armor that Dinos can equip.

Each Dino can equip 1-3 weapon devices (depending on the number of attacks it has), as well as one armor device. Much like Dinos, devices all come in 5 different elemental versions, which decides which elements it's good/bad against.

Weapon devices can be things like claws, swords, guns, lasers, missiles, etc. When equipped, it replaces one free attack slot and can be used just like a regular attack. (The animations tend to be pretty cool.) Each equipped weapon device can only be used 5 times per battle.

Armor devices are what they sound like. They tend to be shields, helmets, or arm/leg guards. They mainly raise defense and tend to lower a Dino's speed a lot. (Weapons lower it too, but not by as much.) The amount of damage a Dino takes from an attack is affected by both the Dino's element and the element of their armor.

Devices are also categorized as either generic or exclusive. Generic devices can be equipped by all Dinos within a type, and exclusive devices can only be equipped by a specific style. Exclusive devices are generally much stronger and more stylish, but not all styles have them, so some styles will end up always having to use the generic set. The rarer styles within a type tend to have more. :O

How to get devices

TO BE CONTINUED....