I've cleared a lot of monster zoos during my various trips-to-death (and been cleared by a few) but I've noticed that the reward screen doesn't always pop up when I expect it. In some cases, I'll clear every monster in the zoo and even on the entire floor (that I can find) and don't get the clear reward. In other cases, I'll clear about half the zoo and it'll pop up, while I'm in the middle of battling more monsters. Is there some rhyme or reason to how this works? Do you have to clear the zoo in some special way: without running to another floor, popping off to the pocket dimension, using certain skills, etc? Is there some way to tell which monsters are actually part of the zoo?
Some. Yes. Leaving the floor (or dimension) forfeits the zoo reward. Have your potions and Squid Bolts within easy reach In the live patch Skepticism can forfeit zoo rewards, because you can't kill a monster that was just a pile of baseballs in a diggle suit. The patch (supposedly coming today!) fixes that. No other skills should affect it, although some people claim that retreating for too long can also glitch the zoo; haven't seen this rumor confirmed. Kill it and see if the "Monsters Remaining" goes down! Sadly no other way, which can be irritating when Gnomes and Wraiths decide to blink into other rooms... Also the Witchies that resurrect other monsters can sometimes let you get the reward while the zoo is not fully cleared; resurrected monsters can make the counter go down multiple times but don't necessarily make it go back up. I can't think of anything else that would affect it.
Agreed. The only way I've seen to still have monsters in the zoo when you get the reward is Witchies. Which is all the more reason to kill them quickly.
Cool, thanks for the info. I suspect my problem was changing floors and/or dimensions. Of course, I'll keep doing it since staying alive is better than getting a zoo reward.
It is, yeah. Better still to deal with Zoo's, although currently from what I've seen the rewards could stand a little improvement. So far I've fed all I've found to It Belongs In A Museum.
Most of Incosequentia-chan's rewards are leagues better than the ones you get from Monster zoo. Feels unfair.
I dunno, when I open a monster zoo i don't think "alright, a cool prize!" I think "Yay, lots of EXP!" The item is more like a sign for me to pause, take a breath, and resume normal dungeoning.
Words of wisdom I can never seem to live by. Must...earn....nearly useless....reward..... Cost me a death in what was shaping up to be a really, really promising random run on floor 3.
The best rewards are from Chests of Evil. Inconsequentia's are not bad, but often not even better than Zoo's. I hope they buff those, as opposed to nerfing CoE's.
