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.

You can also breed Dinos by building large houses (called Megahouses) and placing two Dinos inside. The resulting Dino can be one of the parent styles, or a rarer style within the same type, providing a more reliable method of finding rare styles (in theory). Sadly, the mechanics still aren't very well understood at this point.

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 breeding other rare styles.

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.

Devices can also be upgraded, using items called plugins. Weapons take Plugin W to increase attack, and armor takes Plugin A to increase defense. The number on the plugin refers to how many points it adds. Once a device has been upgraded, it gets a +# on the end of its name to show the total of added points. Different devices have different upper limits, but generally it's around 40-70 for generic devices, and 20-40 for exclusive devices.

Dino happiness

The happiness of a Dino living in your city is partly decided by the sectors surrounding its house. Each type (Iguarm, Birdis, etc.) has a set of terrain and Dino types that they like or dislike. If too many of the surrounding squares contain terrain or neighbors that the Dino can't stand, it'll become unhappy. Unhappy Dinos run the risk of becoming sick, or in the worst case, rampaging around your town and possibly destroying other buildings.

X | X | X 
--+---+---    D = Dino's house
X | D | X     X = Squares that matter
--+---+---
X | X | X 

So long as there are more positives in those 8 squares than negatives, the Dino will probably stay happy. (The guide books aren't terribly clear on this.)

Nobody has any idea how this works in regards to Megahouses.

Legend:

• @ = Very good, O = Good, - = Normal, X = Bad

Type/Type		I	T	B	S	K	E	D	G	M	Z
	Iguarm	@	O	-	X	O	-	-	X	-	O
	Tetrotop	O	@	O	-	X	O	-	X	-	O
	Birdis	-	O	@	O	-	X	O	X	-	O
	Shellbook	-	-	O	@	O	-	X	X	-	O
	Kickbug	O	X	-	O	@	O	-	X	-	O
	Ecolord	-	O	X	-	O	@	O	X	-	O
	Dualon	X	-	O	-	-	O	@	X	-	O
	Ghostfree	X	X	X	X	X	X	X	@	-	O
	Metaball	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	@
	Zeroii	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	@	X

Terrain/Type	I	T	B	S	K	E	D	G	M	Z
Center	@	@	@	@	@	@	@	@	@	@
Plot	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Land	X	O	X	-	O	-	O	X	-	O
Hole	O	X	-	O	O	X	-	O	X	-
Water	-	-	O	O	X	O	O	X	X	X
Mountain	O	O	O	X	-	O	X	-	O	X
House	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Shop	O	-	-	-	O	O	-	-	-	-
Colosseum	-	-	-	O	-	-	O	-	-	O
Subway	-	O	O	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Factory	X	X	X	X	X	X	X	-	O	X
Dust	X	X	X	X	X	X	X	O	-	X

Breeding mechanics

In order to breed Dinos you need to have a Megahouse, which is a large (2x2 sector) house that can contain up to 3 Dinos. To place a Megahouse, you need a square of 2x2 empty houses, which you then approach from the left side and select for building. If done correctly, it should show all four houses selected and give you the option to combine them into a Megahouse (which costs 1500 credits).

Once you have a Megahouse, you can place the two Dinos you want to breed inside (leaving the third slot open, since it will be used for the child). Eventually, after some time passes you'll get a message that a new Dino has been born.

Though the element of the child Dino is random, the style is at least somewhat decided by the styles and rarities of the parents. Breeding two Dinos of the same style can result in a child Dino of the same type but increased rarity, so for example Pegasus + Pegasus = Taurus, Taurus + Taurus = Carina, etc. Breeding two high-rarity styles (Carina + Carina) can give you an Eridanus, and in fact that's the only way to obtain the Eridanus style.

I've heard some conflicting reports on this though, such as people saying that Aquarius + Aquarius gave them a Cancer (which is a whole different type). I've also had two matching styles give a child with the same style (rather than a rarer one), so there's obviously some element of probability involved. It's also a mystery what happens if you breed two Dinos of non-matching styles, or if this even works. This part of the game really requires more experimentation, because the guide books hardly even mention it at all!

Emblems

When you first start up the game and put in your first address, the game assigns you an emblem, which appears on the Dino Device title screen. These decide which elements are more common than others, and influence your Dinos' stat growth somewhat. They are non-changeable without restarting your game, and are somehow decided based on the first address you put in.

There are 5 possible emblems per version, 10 in all, based on the 9 planets plus the moon (it uses the astrological symbols). The names are all vaguely based on the name of the planet, but a few are kind of hard to figure out. :/

Info					Elements						Stat Bonus
Version		Japanese	English	Sign		None	Fire	Water	Elec	Earth		Atk	Def	Spd
Red		テリオラヌス	Terioranus	Uranus		40%	30%	10%	10%	10%		+1	+1	+2
		シグマーゾン	Sigmarson	Mars		10%	40%	30%	10%	10%		+2	+2	+0
		カプチペアン	Kaptipean (???)	Neptune		10%	10%	40%	30%	10%		+1	+2	+1
		ビーサイオス	Vesios	Venus		10%	10%	10%	40%	30%		+2	+0	+2
		ジョルナターン	Jornaturn	Saturn		30%	10%	10%	10%	40%		+1	+3	+0
Blue		パームーン	Parmoon	Moon		40%	30%	10%	10%	10%		+0	+1	+3
		プルータリオ	Plutario	Pluto		10%	40%	30%	10%	10%		+2	+1	+1
		マーキュリエ	Mercuriae	Mercury		10%	10%	40%	30%	10%		+0	+2	+2
		バイジュピター	Bijupiter	Jupiter		10%	10%	10%	40%	30%		+3	+0	+1
		ザウラース	Zaurearth	Earth		30%	10%	10%	10%	40%		+1	+2	+1

Centaurus passwords

The Centaurus style is normally unobtainable, aside from the version-specific starters. You can only get the others by using special passwords (name and birthday combinations) and putting them into the Gatchasta. The passwords were apparently given out in Comic BomBom at some point, but they're also listed in the Futabasha guide book.

Dino	Element	Name	Date
Rigil / リギル	None	seruspe▽＞％	1872-01-23
Agena / アゲナ	Fire	rnioo↑*?@#	1938-02-08
Toliman / トリマン	Water	aeris&→¥△♪	1756-12-21
Hadar / ハダル	Electric	uaiaql!←＄○	1825-08-14
Wazn / ワズン	Earth	gnycus<☆↓＋	1949-09-10