Loading...
Loading...
Scouting and Recruitment
August 20, 2026 at 02:54 AM
Created the scouting page covering the Show of Force, post-victory volunteers, recruitment items and the base-game Scout Run
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.
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.
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 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 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.
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.
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.
