Secret of Mana’s Monsters (Bestiary)

February 14, 2022

It’s time to find out more about Secret of Mana’s monsters. Square divided them into fourteen categories, a truly astounding number that messes with the menus on this website. I’ve thrown in trivia and advice of my own under ManaRedux says…

General Tips

• Don’t skip monsters unless you absolutely have to. You’ll find yourself underprepared for important battles. Catching up on experience and gold late in the game is no one’s idea of a good time.
• Only three monsters can be on the screen at a time. It’s often claimed that you can trick the game into displaying a fourth, but that’s simply not true due to how it’s coded. You can use this to your advantage when facing monsters that multiply, or keeping three easy monsters alive so nothing more difficult will spawn.
• Most monsters can only attack in one direction. Attacking on the opposite side of your allies might make things too easy.

Notes

Square’s official backstory on each monster has been translated for the first time from the Fundamental Knowledge Compilation. This was only published in Japanese at the time of the Super Famicom release, so it’s only recent that most of us learned of the game’s proto-Pokedex. Some of the monsters may seem less cute than they appear after you read what Square came up with. Translation credits go to Sheexy, Taosenai, Hiro and Yoshi.

Credit is also due to Hybris, RPGClassics, Mike Slayton, Phoenix 1911, Zerro013, and the Wiki of Mana.

Legend of Abbreviations

Lv – Level (the most important stat for any monster’s prowess)
HP – Hit Points
MP – Magic Power
EXP – Experience
GP – Gold (or Luc if you’re a purist)
Japanese – The original spelling of the monster’s name.
Str – Strength
Agi – Agility
Int – Intelligence
Wis – Wisdom
PDef – Physical Defense
PEv – Physical Evade
MDef – Magic Defense
MEv – Magic Evade
Element – If the monster belongs to an element class in addition to type
Special Abilities – Magic spells and what not
Weakness – What really hurts the most…
Drop(C) – Common Drop
Drop(R) – Rare Drop
Square’s Official Description – See above
ManaRedux says… – See above

This is only a partial list of stats. Detailed explanations of some things can be found at the bottom of kWhazit’s page. kWhazit also made a simulation calculator if you want to play around with some values and see what the game’s engine does with them. I also got info on evasion stats from StingerPA of the SoM: Randomizer Discord server:

The evasion formula is pretty complicated.

Generally speaking, enemies and bosses have an evasion stat of 0 or 99. If it's 0, your attacks will always hit as long as your weapon makes contact. If it's 99, well, that's where the fun starts.

The formula for determining if the attack succeeds is as follows:

An attack is successful if Hit Rate > (1+Random)*Evade/2, where Hit Rate = Agility/4 + weapon's hit rate

Due to agility being included in the formula, each character will have a different hit rate stat (viewable in the stats screen at each level). And then a couple weapons increase agility as well.

The Japanese kana was left as is. Sevon explains the rationale better than I can:

1. Not all katakana words can be directly translated into English. The language itself is phonetic, so kana only tells how things are to be pronounced, not translated. In most cases, we also don't know what the original intention for some of the words might be in the case of homophones.

2. There are three different spelling systems for romaji, all of which would upset someone or other since all are accepted as correct.

3. It's seriously not that hard to put things into Google or something nowadays to get the pronunciation.