Getting Stronger Every Day

One of the most important aspects of the game is to get stronger so that you can help your guild more, climb higher in the Arena ranks and just earn more rewards all over to get even stronger. There are a few very basic ways to go about this and I will update this section often.

Raise Your Monsters
This is the most basic way to increase your monster's strengths and will be the first way available to you as you progress in the game. There are certain restrictions according to your level how high you will be permitted to raise your monsters, like overstepping from the 80 to 100 max requires you to be level 68, so do your daily missions even if it means auto-raiding to build your experience and get higher to open more features.

Depending on the type of monster you will need a certain set of berries, look at the elemental attribute of your monster to get an idea of which berries you will need. Pretty self-explanatory there. You will usually need the berry levels to be equal to your current max, as well as the berry right below that. I will update totals for what you need at each stage when I can.
 * Soothe and Belief Berries - Used universally, you will definitely need to stock up on these.
 * Water Berries - Water Elements
 * Grass Berries - Grass Elements
 * Rock Berries - Rock Elements
 * Electric Berries - Electric Elements
 * Flame Berries - Fire Elements

Badges are important as well because they allow you to overstep and increase your potential max level. The badges and number used are as follows: Resetting a Monster will give you all gold, berries and badges back as well as most dawn stones I believe and all monsters used to awaken. If you are never going to use a monster again, or about to get rid of it through sacrifice or combine I strongly advise to reset and get your materials back, this will save you A LOT of time as you try to fill your wiki, or change around your team.
 * Picked Badge - 1x For each monster increasing its max level to 20..
 * Elite Badge - 5x For each monster increasing its max level to 30.
 * Heroic Badge - 6x For each monster increasing its max level to 40.
 * Epic Badge - 8x For each monster increasing its max level to 60.
 * Legendary Badge - 10x For each monster increasing its max level to 80.

Potential will increase the amount each stat increases and applies retroactively for any previous levels, this can be really important especially when approaching the much higher levels (3 points per increase at level 100 could be a 300 point difference, if you're able to get potential maxed your monster will be much happier for it.

*****WARNING******

If you plan on KEEPING a monster on your team, such as a legendary or your starter I recommend you only increase potential through pokestones. Not only is it a 100% guaranteed success, but you actually get an additional 40% increase in stats. However there is absolutely no way to get pokestones back, even with a reset stone you will only receive the potential stones back so  DO NOT  waste pokestone potentials on monsters you have no intention of keeping on your team or know you will be trading out, spend gold on those monsters.

******WARNING*******

Awakening is essential to have a good team, once your collection fills out a bit more I highly recommend focusing on monsters that you can get to the red awakening stage because Awakening not only increases the stats of a monster but also unlocks new or stronger abilities, such as Geranium's self-healing ability, Bulb's Team Attack buff and many other great skills. Many monsters will require two monsters a number of stars lower, one monster at the same star rank and then repeats of the same creature. For legendaries instead you will have to use certain monsters such as Arcticuno requiring Laplaces and Geraniums. I will continue to try listing all required materials for full awakening on the individual monster pages.

To awaken you will need three things: The Colors in order for your awakening level are:
 * Dawn Stones - Obtainable just about everywhere, including as level clearing prizes in the elite stages of adventure, bought in the black market, arena, or prizes for fighting myth monsters.
 * Gold - Until you're starting to combine towards gold equipment gold will always seem like a resource that is all but starved from you, hang in there. Make sure to participate in both Thunderbird and Mutant landed events daily, participate in your allies Myth Monsters and clear a floor on Champion's Tower each day as well as continuously exploring to build up your stash.
 * Monsters - If you are working on a 5 star team try not to sacrifice any 4-5 star monsters needlessly, unless there's something you really need in the Blackmarket or combine I advise holding onto these guys until you really need them for awakening. Monsters like the Hitmon- family (Montop Monlee and Monchan) are excellent fodder as well as any other low talent/high star monsters because they're the most common five stars to appear in your daily summons and will be greatly out classed by later monsters in the game.
 * 1) White
 * 2) Green
 * 3) Blue
 * 4) Purple
 * 5) Orange
 * 6) Yellow
 * 7) Red

Bonding will not likely be something that you can change on a daily basis but always keep an eye on which monsters you're currently bonding. Be aware that you are able to unlock extra bonding slots so that even if a monster isn't on your team you may be able to unlock the bonuses it offers to monsters you are using. I highly recommend when you start getting extra pokestones to invest in this. An excellent team will always include a great number of bonded monsters, in particular the first two or three that appear on a monster's list because these will usually increase one stat up to 30% or two for 20% and 10%. Try to build a team that uses a lot of the same bonding partners as well, one reason many people will try to use two or more of the starters are because their bonding is nearly identical and will offer greater boosts for fewer slots, however all three starters do require both, not one of the other starters to activate their first bonus.

There is also the option in Bonding to build a Resonance, which will increase certain stats. To use Resonance you need a purple monster bonded, and you can upgrade that slot to give a bigger bonus, but the level of the bonded monster will also increase the bonus applied so when you have extra resources through them onto your bonding partners.

Evolving your monsters is essential and will offer not only greater stats but also change the types of skills you have to much stronger versions. Be aware that when Mega Evolving you will be raising the talent of your monster so its awakening level will drop. At present I know the starters when mega evolved go back to Orange +3, for legendaries I am not sure yet. This will drop your OA a tad bit but can be recovered and passed once you get the monster back to Red.

Gems, and in particular the Fusion Gem will raise the stats of your monsters. You may have one of each category of gem, each which can only be leveled up by the same category. The five categories are: Make sure to do endless trial each day to buy the three rage and three skill gems available, as well as participating in the Champion League to buy up more with chances of high level gems and even fusion gems.
 * Fusion - Directly increase stats, each level up will roughly double the current number of the bonus.
 * Rage - Increases how quickly you gain rage to use your skills.
 * Skill - Increases the power of your skills.
 * Debuffs - Freeze, Blind, Poison and Slow are all available and can all be used to level up each other. These will usually increase the duration of a debuff, chance of it happening or damage of the debuff.
 * Champion - Increases resistance to debuffs from being applied (don't believe it has any effect on poison ticks). These are hard to obtain as currently the only known method is by placing top 3 in the weekly champion league.  Results are known to be reward for 'Local' rank unsure if placing 1-3 in 'Top' grants more.

Equipment
Equipment may seem like an after thought but from my experience you will gain far more OA by properly taking care of your Equipment than any combination of monsters you use. It is very important to aim for collecting full sets of each before upgrading to the next level (Once you're at the purple or higher stages).

There are many ways to increase your equipment and many things you should be doing daily to better your resources.

Equipment come in the same color codes as awakening your monsters, the lowest equips are Green, followed by Blue, Purple, Orange, Yellow and Red. You can combine 5 of the same color equips to create one (two on special events) piece of equipment one or colors higher.

Each slot of equipment will raise the same type of stats no matter which piece you use, but different sets and items will have higher or lower stats for those attributes.
 * Swords - Attack and HP
 * Hoods - HP, Defense and Damage
 * Armor - Attack, HP and Defense
 * Boots - Defense, Damage and Movement Speed
 * Rings - Attack, HP and Resist
 * Pendants - Attack, HP and Resist

Try to get pieces of the same set, and further try to equip those sets to the right type of monster. If an equipment has a set that it belongs to you will always see one of the four class markers on it in the item menu, there are Blaster, Defender, Striker and Healer sets that will give special bonuses that any monster can usually take advantage of but will be even more powerful on the right type of monster. For instance the Time set in Orange gives the following bonuses:

3 Pieces - Heal +10

4 Pieces - Attack +12%

5 Pieces - Heal +16

6 Pieces - HP +20%

At 4 and 6 pieces any monster will benefit from those bonuses but you are effectively wasting the 3 and 5 bonuses on any monster that doesn't heal.

The first way to increase your equipment is by Leveling it. Straight forward and to the point, most equipment will be limited to only level 40 without any further work, just a ton of gold. Your player level will limit you til a certain point just like raising your monster's levels. Always try to keep your equipment leveled up to it's max, be aware however that when your monster or equipment reach certain levels you will be forced to try the harder Endless Trial levels.

The second way to increase your equips is by Boosting them. Boosting is the same thing as overstepping for monsters but instead of badges you will sacrifice a piece of equipment one color lower for the first level, or the same color equipment in the higher ranks. This not only increases the equipment's stats but will also increase the maximum level you can raise the equipment with gold. **Note** You can actually give your equip as much of a boost as you want as long as the level doesn't pass what the endless trial requirement is you can continue to play at lower levels.

The third form of increasing your equipment is by Reforging it, which is very similar to increasing the potential of your monster. Reforging increases the Quality of your equipment, increasing the number of stat points that equipment gains for each level it goes up. Many newer players are not aware of this feature but Reforge crystals will definitely give you a much stronger boost each day and are very important. Make sure that whenever you're getting rid of an old piece of equipment to always reset it to get back about 80% of the gold and crystals used on it.

Finally there are Runes which will have an entire page themselves. Runes are acquired through the Hunting Field, and certain events. It is always woth your time to use all ten, and possibly more challenges in the hunting field to get as many Runes as you can. Each set of runes have different bonuses, depending if the equipment you are using has 2, or 4 of the same color, otherwise each rune will only give the benefit that it lists such as attack runes increasing attacks. Matching Rune sets is just as important as building up your equipment sets. Keep in mind that you need 2 or 4 of the same color on a single piece of equipment for their secondary bonuses to kick in, having four blue attack runes will only do their basic bonus without there being another blue run on each piece. Runes can also be leveled up using Magic Stones which you get from buying the Guild War Chest, from the Hunting Field Missions and Chests or by sacrificing Runes you'll no longer use. Try to keep your runes leveled up because the bonuses really build up quickly.
 * Water (2) - HP +4%
 * Water (4) - Healing +8% (Only applies to Healers)
 * Grass (2) - HP +4%
 * Grass (4) - Attack +8%
 * Rock (2) - Defense +4%
 * Rock (4) - HP +8%
 * Electric (2) - Attack Speed +4%
 * Electric (4) - Critical Damage +30% (Keep in mind only Strikers can Crit)
 * Fire (2) - Attack +4%
 * Fire (4) - Pierce +15% (Unconfirmed whether this means to bypass a targets defense or if it is like Char's penetrating attacks that may only apply to Blasters)

Myth Treasures
Slightly different then your regular equipment and only available after level 45 these treasures will greatly increase a certain stat, especially when matched up to the appropriate types. There are three types of Myth Treasures, Attack, HP, and EXP. Attack treasures will raise attack, HP will raise HP, but the Exp treasures which are the most common can only be used as sacrifices to increase the levels of the other two types (Whistles for Attack, Silk for HP). You can get pieces usually at ranadom from the Champions tower, EXP treasures from the Champion League and events will often give out random pieces.

Miscellaneous Bonuses
There are also certain bonuses that will increase the stats of your entire time in one go these are as follows:
 * Guild Tech - You can raise just about any stat in your Guild's Tech shop for the right price of Contribution. Your guild Leader must have already unlocked the appropriate level of each upgrade and then the guild members may purchase with their own contribution.
 * Wiki Bonuses - You acquire these by completing certain sets of monsters and their evolutions which will always increase Attack and HP when complete. This is the best reason to "Collect 'em All" because it can greatly increase your overall strength.
 * Trainer Ranks - For every three stars you acquire during the Adventure Missions you may spend them to increase your Trainer rank. These stats are tiny increases but build up over time and there is no reason not to upgrade this as it costs you nothing that you could spend elsewhere. Straightforward and simple, always use your stars.

As I think of more things to help you gain OA each day I'll try to update this article. Good luck everybody.