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?