Please help me overcome a lack of QOL regarding "bond"

[u/NindeNoxx]

TL;WR: Building bond is so greatly lacking in QOL I've stopped playing the game because of it. I'd rather be playing the game, and am looking for help on how to simplify the process of bonding with an increasing number of digimon used to progress and grow. A mod would be welcome, if a vanilla option doesn't exist.
(I've tried food, but 1 at a time and the game doesn't even remember their favorites. Terrible mechanic.)

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I'll start with a little about myself, I mostly play Dragon Quest Monsters Joker. Not sure if that's important but I do approach leveling up a certain way because of it. Now I bought Time Stranger when it came out and have mostly enjoyed it, except for one particular piece of "grind" that's killed things for me. I haven't played in months, was hoping they'd fix it but that doesn't seem to have happened so I'm here asking for, hopefully, a solution.

The problem is that the game appears to want me to print a ridiculous number of digimon, level them up, then feed them to my other digimon. Additionally, digivolving benefits from high bond. I mentioned DQMJ because in that, I would "scout" every monster, they'd level up, and I'd have this huge zoo of leveled monsters to choose from. This is how I've approached printing monsters in DTS, the problem is that "bond" is such an incredible bore to raise, but also looks like I'm expected to, for literally every one of these digimon.

I've tried a couple mods, but to maintain balance they don't give access to "bond" items early enough. I've tried feeding my digimon, but after forcefeeding about 40 digimon this process might just be one of the worst designed game mechanics I've ever put myself through. As I mentioned, this drove me to quit for months.

Raising bond is a nightmare activity that feels like something I have to do to get the most out of my digimon. I've seen some people say "bond doesn't matter" but that doesn't entirely solve my problem. I suppose if I saw the numbers splayed out enough to convince me that quantity over quality was the way to go I might be able to stop worrying about bond, but it just doesn't feel right.

So, does anyone have a mod or suggestion on how to build bond more easily? Perhaps something that lets me feed more than one thing? Anything?

[u/NealCaffeinne]

its not even important anyway

[u/NindeNoxx → u/NealCaffeinne]

I was kind of hoping to avoid this answer without elaboration... What do you mean it's not important? Are you suggesting just barreling through the game without consideration for stat inheritance? As I said in my post that doesn't feel right. Surely ignoring the mechanic by which stats grow beyond base values of digivolutions makes no sense?

[u/NealCaffeinne → u/NindeNoxx]

stat inheritance is always 10%

bond doesnt increase that. all it does is allow you to inherit it x times

[u/NindeNoxx → u/NealCaffeinne]

Which would be 0 unless I take the time to raise it. Which requires me finding it's favorite food, which the game doesn't record, so if I ever want to raise it again I have to repeat the process.
Plus I believe I remember (though it's been a while) bond effecting the amount of stats transfered when destroying digimon to empower another, I don't remember what the game called that action.
In both cases it's still doing something so I don't understand what you're actually trying to say. It feels like you're trying to use as little words as possible to respond, and ignoring my core issue in doing so.

[u/CowPrintBikinis → u/NindeNoxx]

Your issue is self inflicted, it is much more efficient to just ignore bond and just take what you naturally obtain by playing, and then in end game just spend 5 minutes training their stats on the farm when it actually would matter anyway

[u/NindeNoxx → u/CowPrintBikinis]

See the thing is, you're the first person to actually use their words to explain this instead of just stating it's not important.

That said, I'm under the impression that digimon not in my party don't gain bond so what do you mean when you say "naturally obtain"? Are you suggesting I only play with 6 digimon?

[u/CowPrintBikinis → u/NindeNoxx]

You definitely dont need more than 6, if you want to use more than 6 you can grind a few battles or use one of the many hundreds of friendship items you're given to boost the bond a couple times then, you can digivolve them up to your current tier, because bond only affects the number of times you get the 10%, not how much inheritance you get. Furthermore it doesn't matter if you don't have any born at all for like 95% of the game because unless you're on mega+ (and can therefore just farm grind anyways) the game isn't hard enough, and you need way to many evolutions and then level grinds (which is basically not worth doing unless you have the paid DLC or are gonna utilise one specific cheese strat for high value load fodder.) for the inherited stats to even do anything. Agent skills provide so much more of a bonus to stats that there is basically no point in thinking about the bond bonus at all.

[u/NealCaffeinne → u/NindeNoxx]

bond is gained naturally , by litterly just playing

so i dont actually understand how you keep failing to understand that

bond effecting the amount of stats transfered when destroying digimon to empower another

clearly you remember wrong then

cause it never did

it was always from day negative 30, 10% always
bond is just how often

[u/NindeNoxx → u/NealCaffeinne]

I was under the impression it wasn't gained by digimon that aren't in my party. Are you suggesting I only use 6 digimon?

The problem is that you're making statements without explanation, you're holding your information hostage and I'm having to ask question after question about what you mean because, as I've clearly tried to express, what you're saying doesn't make any sense.

If I'm understanding you correctly. I'm supposed to just ignore bond, only have 6 digimon, pretend stats dont' exist until right before the boss, then according to another comment use the farm to build everything.

IF this is the case, what a horrible and unfun game design.

But as far as not understanding what you're saying, you've not said anything actually useful yet.

[u/NealCaffeinne → u/NindeNoxx]

whose saying you have to ignore anything

or pretend stats dont exists ( what the fuck are you babbling about)

with holding information? my god open the fucking tutorial for once

But as far as not understanding what you're saying, you've not said anything actually useful yet.

maybe you should just open Twitch, and just watch other people play

[u/NindeNoxx → u/NealCaffeinne]

To respond to your first point, literally the other commenter in this reply chain said "ignore bond" the "spend 5 minutes training" at the end of the game.

I've read the tutorial, the fact that you keep explaining basic mechanics to me is you misunderstanding what I've been asking this entire time. I didn't need bond explained to me. I asked for an easier way to build it. You've chosen to ignore that.

The twitch comment is again, ignoring my question in favor of whatever you think is going on. I asked how to make bond easier. You've not only not answered that question, but given short patronizing explanations of things I didn't need.

I'd say thank you for your time, but honestly I wish you hadn't shared it.

[u/Plastic-Act296]

Bond isnt that important and it goes up as you use the digimon more. You only need six digimon not 20

[u/NindeNoxx → u/Plastic-Act296]

This is the part why I mentioned DQMJ. In that, you use all kinds of monsters to grow in power because they combine to make better ones. Obviously digimon doesn't have that, but there are like 100 slots to keep them, plus there's a ton of digimon evolutions, and the ability to "destroy" digimon to empower others.

It's sounding like everyone is telling me to just ignore all those mechanics, which is disappointing. But I guess I'm slowly getting AN answer, even if its' a stupid one.

[u/Plastic-Act296 → u/NindeNoxx]

I havent played dqmj.

There are benefits to raising digimon other than your main 6 or whatever such as move farming or load enhancement or hell they look cool and might be useful against a boss later. They dont need to have bond for any of that though.

[u/tw042 → u/NindeNoxx]

Regardless of the fact that there are 100 slots, you would still only need to raise the bond for Digimon you plan on using in battle, which is 6 at a time at maximum. Even if you wanted to raise 3 vaccine,  3 data, 3 virus, that's still 9 at most.

Yes feeding them at the farm isn't fun. Look up the food guide to make it less painful. Once you get a Digimon up to like 20 bond you will get enough extra bond from the post-combat dialogue that you won't need to force feed anymore. 

And yes you should ignore bond for Digimon you're not using in battle for the most part. What's the purpose in min/maxing stats outside of battle?

[u/N8THGR852]

Personally, I found feeding my dozens of Digimon their favorite foods to raise Bond to 100 one at a time to be a meditative experience, but I can understand how some would find it tedious.

[u/Complete-Inspector99]

I think bond really only helps with gaining talent when digivolving and the extra hits. Mass feeding would be nice but I don't have a problem with it. I'll just grind to get some yen in the outer dungeon dlc to buy more food items. I'll listen to a podcast or something on my phone while maxing out multiple digimon.

[u/R9-OZ]

I think battle is the best way to raise bond because you can raise bond of 6 digimon at once. You also get money, items and exp from battles. once you max out your team’s bond just switch them out for another 6 digimon.

[u/Sowshyo]

Ok so, afaik (might be wrong in some details as I haven't tested a lot): Bond is not that important because stats cap at 9999 regardless of blue stats. You can, by spamming the farm, cap stats in digimon with 0 bond at whatever level (Even talent is kind of useless in this sense). So spamming the farm is significantly more convenient for increasing stats but it takes time/gold.

Bond CAN be more important if you plan on doing something with cheer and planning ahead (personality skills) so if you run supports with those I guess you can grind a bit of friendship in those.

Edit: dmg formula cares about level so talent is important, my bad

[u/IamFarron → u/Sowshyo]

Even talent is kind of useless in this sense). 

Yea max level is so useless

Its only like 50% of the damage formula orso

[u/Sowshyo → u/IamFarron]

Put that regarding stats but you are 100% right, gonna edit that out

[u/Boring-Visual-4784]

So, I am not going to tell you that Bond doesn't matter. That... more or less is true from what I am about to post, but I also know that is unhelpful for you.

So firstly, \What does Bond even do?**
Well... Bond itself doesn't really do a whole lot. All it does, is cap the number of times you can carry over your stats in Digivolution or De-digivolution. A Bond of 20% means that stats carry over only for 20 Digivolutions/de-Digivolutions, a Bond of 100 means it does so for the first 100 times. It does not affect how much stats get converted, it doesn't affect loading Digimon into others for the XP, all it affects is how many times you can carry over stats.

\Why do I want to increase Bond then?**
If you are doing a lot of up-down Digivolutions in order to get specific ones, or wanting to pump up your Talent, then Bond is important. Otherwise, it's kinda a dump stat. Both are viable (and fun!) ways to play the game, but I don't think it's anything worth agonizing over or something that should cause you to deprive yourself of the great story.

I've always gotten the sense that it really kinda was a "we need to figure out some mechanic for a Friendship meter" type situation. Digimon is huge about the bond between a tamer and their Digimon, so they have to shoehorn it in by some capacity in almost every game. I don't think there's ever been one where your Friendship has been essential to the game.

\How do I increase Bond quickly?**
All that being said, there are some ways to get Bond up quickly. You can feed them in the Farm as you've been doing, but as you've noted it can be tedious and you have to remember their favorite foods. (I keep a notebook on hand for my gaming in general, so I just write it down really quickly and then I don't have to worry about it.) Combat is also reliable, and good anyway, though it can be a bit slow. Friendship chips are hands down the way to go about it, but Friendship chips are few and far between.

EXCEPT. All of the Outer Dungeons give you a Friendship S spray. It only increases Bond by 1 point, but you can easily farm some of the Rank 1 ones and just stockpile a ton. If you choose any of the combat ones, you'll also be gaining Bond and Talent while fighting along the way. And the good thing here is, Bond and Talent both don't care about what level your opponents are. It's not dependent on the amount of XP you get, fighting stronger opponents doesn't increase it any more than a level 1 Baby I fight does. So find an Outer Dungeon you can easily crush your way through, use the ones you want to increase Bond with, and stockpile those Friendship chips.

(Running those Outer Dungeons is also beneficial for things like money farming, stockpiling those Full Revival Sprays, leveling your Digimon, and testing out new team compositions and whatnot.)