Dark Cloud 2 Medals Guide
Medals in Dark Cloud 2 are a special objective you can complete in dungeons usually by finishing a specific task on that floor. If you're reading this guide I am going to assume you already know this stuff and want information about how to acquire specific ones. So let's get started!
This guide is sorted by the different Dungeons you come across. I will mostly be covering the harder Medals to acquire in each of the Dungeons. That means not every medal will be listed for every dungeon nor will every floor be listed. Only the more difficult ones.
Dark Cloud 2 Time Trial Advice
Dungeon 1 - Underground Channel
Collecting all of the medals in the first dungeon is fairly easy as you could probably already imagine. The hardest medals to get are the two time trial medals in the rooms past the Floor Pump Room. These floors are when you start encountering Mimics in the game and since you can't see their location on the map by default it makes finding them rather time consuming.
I have a little bit of basic advice for you which I go into detail in my time trial advice guide about. Aside from that the best advice I can give you to grab these two pesky medals is to use Save States. What I did is saved the second I zoned into the dungeon floor and cleared the whole thing. I memorized the location of the mimics the best I could and went back and cleared the floor again.
It still comes down to luck and even if you use my above tactic for memorizing the whole floor; you're still going to first need to randomly generate an easy dungeon floor. I would argue that some floors you just can't finish it in the alotted amount of time even if you cheese it. Find a floor with as few mimics as possible and where the mobs aren't massively spread out before memorizing it and rerunning it for the medals.
Dungeon 2 - Rainbow Butterfly Wood
I found this dungeon to be much easier than the first one in terms of collecting all of the medals. The time trials are much more managable here and if you bring Donny along with you there'll be no need to dig through chests for the stick to swat down the spider webs in some areas. For more information about Donny and how he can help you as well as other advice check out my time trial advice page.
The two hardest medals in the Rainbow Butterfly Woods to get are the ones involving fishing and the defeat all enemies by only using items. The fishing medals pretty much just take a lot of patience and a moderately leveled up fishing rod. I used the Bait Rod for all of them and the longest it took me to catch a fish for one of the medals is 30min.
As for the defeat all enemies by only using items requirement; I strongly recommend you space out when you do these medals, primarily timing them as you are filling up on items to throw at enemies. What I mean is when you get close to 20 bombs and Fire/Lightning etc Crystals - that's when you should do these medals. Since you can only hold 20 of each of these items I try to always use them up before I start overflowing on them.
If you start running low on items to use on enemies you can always make some bombs through the photograph/invention system that's in the game. If you'd like more information on just the items you can craft for this purpose I strongly recommend you check out my guide for creating destructible items for medals.
Fishing Tip: Use Petite Fish to avoid getting Gummies as they don't usually go after 'meaty' baits. If you're using a Lure Rod use Minnow/Spinner
Dungeon 3 - Starlight Canyon
This dungeon has extremely easy time trial challenges which you should be able to breeze through without any difficulty. Even while opening all the chests and collecting all the ABS after each kill I was still able to complete them with time left. This is also the first dungeon you learn how to play Spheda; which is the ingame golfing system that can net you a medal on each dungeon floor it's available on.
You'll be able to play Spheda on just about every floor of most dungeons; including the previous two dungeons we just visited. Spheda will take the place of the previously ? marked section when you are on the dungeon screen and looking at each individual floor and what you have accomplished.
The hardest challenges to tackle in Starlight Canyon are the Monster Transformation, Fishing and defeat enemies using only items. Fishing isn't one I can really give much advice for since it's mostly random. What i can say though is ignore the tips online to avoid leveling up Grip strength and ignore anyone who says the Bait Rod sucks and the Lure Rod is superior no matter what. I've found that to be entirely untrue.
The one fishing challenge that took me a long time to acquire in Starlight Canyon was on the Lighthouse Appears floor. The 72cm monster took me about 2hrs to catch and wasn't that fun if I am being honest.
As far as defeating enemies with Items goes you're definitely going to need to start making destructible items with inventions in order to accomplish your task. A lot of the enemies on the final floors of this dungeon, such as Lighthouse Appears, are much more powerful than the ones around the start of the dungeon. It will take multiple regular bombs to destroy them but only one or maybe two Improved Bombs.
Finally the last and hardest medals to acquire from Starlight Canyon are the ones that involve Monster Transformation. You'll need to come back for these medals much later in the game, most likely around Chapter 7 or 8 because you'll need to have a Monster that's at least level 51 or higher in order to really stand a chance. I highly recommend you focus on the Froggy badge or the Gemron badge as both of those monster badges have ranged attacks.
As you may have already realized Monster Transformation sucks and the monsters are very weak and fragile. That really never changes even as they level up so our goal is to level up a monster that can avoid being hit and that's why I recommend the Froggy or Gemron monsters.
Fishing Tip: Carrots will get you Umadakara which is a very large fish. Lure Rods will want to use Minnow/Spinner
Dungeon 4 - Ocean's Roar Cave
Ocean's Roar Cave is another fairly easy dungeon as far as time trial medals go. You may have to run some floors multiple times though depending on the random generation you get. Sometimes too many monsters spawn outside or inside and you spend too much time running down long dead end paths. Overall though it's not nearly as bad as the first dungeon and each floor should only take at most 3 tries. If you need additional advice on beating the time trials check out my guide.
The hardest medals to acquire in this dungeon are definitely the Monster Transformation ones as well as the defeat all enemies just using items. If you haven't read my advice for the previous dungeons and how to defeat the enemies using just items I will repeat some of the information for you.
To start, you're going to need to be inventing and crafting Improved Bombs at this point to clear the dungeon floors. Regular Bombs would still work but it would take entirely way too many to kill each monster in comparison to Improved Bombs. If you need more information on inventing and crafting destructible items in order to get these medals check out the guide I just linked.
That leaves us with Monster Transformation, Spheda and Fishing. For Spheda the only advice I can give you is save states. If you save after each Spheda whack you'll never fail. Fishing - the best advice I can give is to level up your rod a little bit before attempting to catch some Kajis in this dungeon. The best bait to use to catch them is Evy and they are the largest fish you can catch in this local area.
Finally we have Monster Transformation. You're going to need to have a level 51 monster or higher, preferably higher and as I recommended before Gemron works the best. Since the Monster Transformations are all fragile and quite weak it's best to use a ranged attacker and just whittle down the enemies. You'll go slowly but you'll clear the floor.
Fishing Tip: Petite Fish or Evy to catch Kaji, a very large fish. Lure Rods will want to use Minnow/Spinner to catch Kaji.
Dungeon 5 - Mount Gundor
If you are having trouble with the time trials in this dungeon come back after you clear the Moon Flower Palace and you've raised your defense and HP more. Also don't forget Donny and my other tips/tricks for clearing a dungeon floor quickly.
You will need to be using Improved Bombs or better at this point in order to take out the monsters in this dungeon. It's also going to start getting extremely costly in order to clear each dungeon floor since Improved Bombs have very steep cost requirements. I recommend using some of the Medals you've already acquired and buying a Name Change Ticket and making an item with 'Wealth' on it. This will get you more cash drops.
Information on inventing & crafting bombs
Finally we have Monster Transformation. You're going to need to have a maxed out Monster for this dungeon and as I recommended before Gemron works the best. Since the Monster Transformations are all fragile and quite weak it's best to use a ranged attacker and just whittle down the enemies. You'll go slowly but you'll clear the floor. This dungeon will be quite difficult to clear with Monster Transformation and you should expect it to take many hours to get a monster strong enough.
Dungeon 6 - Moon Flower Palace Dungeon
It's important for me to note that once you progress to Chapter 8 you will not be able to return to the Moon Flower Palace dungeon. Complete all the medals before you take on the Dream Spiral otherwise they'll be lost to time.
The best advice I can give for the time trials for this dungeon is to fully max out your weapon and make sure to grab all the stat boosts in the future. If you have someone's ultimate weapon the time trial medals shouldn't be that much of an issue for you at all. With Max's Supernova gun I was able to quickly mow through each floor.
For the floors where you need to defeat all the enemies with Max or Monica's mainhand weapons I recommend you bring a lot of food with you. It's also very important that you don't let the enemies hit each other or use any attacks that will cause them to damage one another. It'll nullify the achievement for you. I found the Ridepod floors easy as pie but that was with a fully upgraded Ridepod and a high rank Nova Cannon Arm.
As you've probably come to realize there are some specific medals that are a pain in the rear to get. Spheda is a piece of cake if you can use save states - just save each time before you hit the ball. If you are unable to use save states Spheda would be a total nightmare.
As far as the defeat monsters with only items goes for this dungeon you're going to have to step up your game and invent & craft Final Bombs which are insanely expensive to make. The hardest part of doing these medals is going to be affording the items to craft. You can also use Fire, Lightning and other Crystals as well to cut down on costs. Which I highly recommend you do.
Finally we have Monster Transformation. You're going to need to have a maxed out Monster for this dungeon and as I recommended before Gemron works the best. Since the Monster Transformations are all fragile and quite weak it's best to use a ranged attacker and just whittle down the enemies. You'll go slowly but you'll clear the floor. This dungeon will be quite difficult to clear with Monster Transformation and you should expect it to take many hours to get a monster strong enough.