Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-33614060-20171115032238/@comment-4974000-20171116040215

You're very welcome!

Another thing I cottoned onto pretty late was the power of banishing monsters. Again, I banished a few when I was prompted but it wasn't part of my routine. But the things you use to banish, are pretty much only for banishing. So it's not like you need to save them for anything else. And if you do it a bit strategically (see below), you can use it to have a steady supply of tools for dispelling anomalies. Since anomalies both make the game harder and cost you a lot more energy to play them out, it's better to dispel them IMO if you have the tools on hand.

So what do I mean by doing it strategically? You can dispel the "baby" monsters (least ornate border) with one cup/torch/whatever, with small rewards. You can dispel the "middle" ones (somewhat ornate border) with three, for larger rewards (energy and coins always, and a chest of dispel tools sometimes). For the largest and most certain rewards, you would dispel the "big" ones (most ornate border), and for those you have to order things from the inventor or forge, trading the cups/torches/whatever, and some coins.

Now, you could go for the biggest monsters. That gives you certainty of getting chests with the dispel tools. But you have to spend coins to do it, and personally I prefer to keep those for crafting trading items and talismans. So I dispel the middle monsters. There's an element of chance - sometimes you get chests, sometimes you don't. But over time, in my experience, you get them in nearly the same proportions as you would get by crafting things for the big monsters, and to me, the middle ones offer a happy medium between reasonable returns and not having to give up coins.

The other thing to be aware of, especially the first time (since you probably have a bit of a backlog of banishing tools), is diminishing returns when you banish large numbers at once. (I have done bulk banishings quite a few times after long game plays with talismans, etc). Banishing anything from say five to 20 medium monsters at once will, in my experience, give you a decent number of chests back (overall - you will get the occasional no-chest). But if you go much above 20 in one hit, you won't get many more chests. I've tested this and if you have a backlog that would allow you to banish, say, 50 of one monster, don't do 1 x 50, do 2 x 25. The returns are much better.