Monster scouting

Monster scouting (スカウトアタック lit. scout attack) is a method of recruiting monsters that appears in most games within the eponymous subseries. It is an option available in the command menu and when selected the player's party will put on a show of force to impress the target monster, with the success chance displayed as a percentage. If the player's team fails to impress the potential recruit there is a chance that the target will be irritated by the effort, thus leaving it unavailable to scout. Naturally, powerful monsters are more difficult to scout than the weaker ones.

The success rate of a show of force is based on the damage calculation that would be performed by normal attacks, and as such is influenced by Oomph, Oomphle, Sap, Kasap, & tension. This calculation relied solely upon the attack stat of a party monster until The Dark Prince, where the wisdom stat of a monster will be used if it is higher than that monster's attack stat, with Ping and Kaping raising the chance as expected.

Appearances

Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker

The Hero will receive his scout ring along with his first monster in the game's opening segment, with the details of scouting being explained during this tutorial.

Note that a monster's tension will have no influence on the chance to scout metal slimes, oddly. This unusual exception was removed in subsequent games.

Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2

The Hero begins the game already in possession of a scout ring. During the post-game, Leonyx will strengthen the ring so that the player can scout the gigantic monsters that lord over the environs of the mysterious island. When scouting these enormous monsters, having the Giant Killer trait makes the process much easier.

Certain monster traits increase the base success rate of a show of force, being the appropriately named Talent Scout, Pro Talent Scout, & Genius Talent Scout. Furthermore, the player can toss a bag of beastie bites at the target to further raise the base chance of success by 10%; monsters can only eat one helping per battle.

Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2 Professional

The system remains unchanged, though beastie bites can now be purchased on the new post-game island for 100,000 gold per bag.

Dragon Quest Monsters: Terry's Wonderland 3D

The + value of a monster now contributes to shows of force, being 1/10th of the + value rounded down. Additionally, monsters that have been tossed food will not grow angry even if a show of force fails to impress, allowing multiple retries until the target becomes full.

Dragon Quest Monsters 2: Iru and Luca's Marvelous Mysterious Key

Monsters of truly titanic size, those which take up all four party slots by themselves, can now add 10% to the base success rate if their + value exceeds 100.

Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 3 Professional

The newly added trait スカウト率アップ極大 (Lit. maximum scout rate increase) raises the base chance to recruit a monster by an incredible 40%.

Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince

Monster scouting in Nadiria is greatly hampered until Psaro defeats the boss of a given Circle and increases his reputation, after which the calculation is performed normally. The simplification of monster sizes has not altered the effectiveness of the Little Menace and Big Bully traits, but the influence of monster foods have been diminished significantly compared to earlier titles.