Recruiting is the entry point to everything else in DRAGON QUEST MONSTERS: The Withered World. A monster has to join you before it can be raised, put in a party, or used as a parent for Synthesis. Square Enix has described three routes in.
Show of Force
The main method is a Show of Force, used during battle against a monster you want. It is an attempt rather than a guarantee: if it succeeds, the monster joins your team on the spot. Show of Force is the official English name Square Enix uses for the mechanic.
The odds are not hidden from you. Square Enix has published a still of an attempt in progress, and it shows a large ring gauge in the corner of the screen carrying a success figure to one decimal place, with every monster in the active party listed alongside its own separate value. How those figures are calculated, and how the party contributions combine, has not been explained. What the still does settle is that the game shows you your chance before you commit to it rather than making you guess at it. Items raise that chance, which is covered below.
Volunteers
On rare occasions a monster you have defeated gets back up after the battle and asks to join you of its own volition. There is nothing to spend and nothing to time; it simply happens sometimes when you win.
Items that improve your odds
Items push both routes in your favor. The same category of item can raise the chance that a defeated monster volunteers and boost the success rate of a Show of Force, so stocking up before a recruiting trip is worthwhile.
Item | Effect on recruiting |
|---|---|
Monster Munchies | Makes a monster slightly easier to recruit |
Beastie Bites | Makes a monster considerably easier to recruit |
Smoked Sirloins | A meat item used when scouting |
Meaty Treats | A meat item used when scouting |
All four arrive in the purchase bonus item sets described on Editions and Pre-Order Bonuses.
Scout Run
Scout Run is a facility in the base game, not paid content. You spend special items called scouty snacks to befriend monsters without entering battle at all. It can be used as many times as you like, with a short wait between uses.
Because it sidesteps combat entirely, Scout Run is the low-risk route to filling out a roster, and the wait is the only thing rationing it. The Scout Run VIP Card add-on raises the snack allowance, puts more monsters in front of you at once and shortens the wait; it is covered on Downloadable Content.
Where to look
Monsters are tied to where and when you go looking. Different fields hold different species, and the day and night cycle changes both which monsters appear and how they behave, so a field checked in daylight is not a field you have finished with. The exploration side of that is on Story and Setting.
Aura monsters and hidden monsters
Two further routes were described in August 2026. Some monsters walk the field wearing an ominous, swirling reddish aura, and they are much stronger than the ones around them. Square Enix is direct about the trade: make sure you can win the fight before you pick it, because the reward for befriending one is a genuinely powerful party member.
The other route is not a fight at all. Suspicious-looking bushes are scattered around the fields, and splashing one with the Waterwing Can can turn up an item or a rare monster. The can is part of the world restoration system covered on Story and Setting.
Some monsters cannot be recruited in the wild under any circumstances and exist only as the product of synthesis, which is why the two systems are best treated as one loop rather than two. Ranks, families and sizes, which govern what you are looking at when you find something, are on Monster Families and Ranks.