Man, one thing I'm for sure looking forward to is having individual ToC sections for these things instead of hidden headers. It's been a hassle fixing the mat drops so far.

We're doing this in phases. Fix the material drops first (retains old format), then gradually overhaul the monster pages in general. It is more important to get correct information published first. Will be adding this note to relevant pages after lunch.

Speaking of which, it's important to make sure the correct information we publish is truly correct.
Please check monster pages for error. In particular:
*Blast Cubes (same drop table as normal jelly cube? we think so)
*C42 slime critters (data shows they drop both poison and fire materials, could use confirmation)
*Rocket Puppy (do they drop fire mat? we think not)
*Bombies and Deadnaughts (regarding depth vs. location, prestige starting floors are important here)
*Gremlins (especially toxic mortafire - are they poison dropping monsters? We have reports of a toxic core. More data appreciated)

Research is ongoing for:
*Toxilargo
*Battlepods (Snarbylord is doing some research for this)

Crown information seems to be highly variable (difficulty levels for one) and influenced by the area (danger rooms for example). I wouldn't put crown information on individual monster pages. Unless you do find a pattern, well then, yes we should. It's interesting research, a place I can think for it to go would be in a guide about monster slaying + crowns.

Rocket puppies...Construct arenas have a chance to spawn a horrific cluster of them, OCH and Scarlet Fortress:Grim Gallery have guaranteed spawns.

While we are thinking about monsters, it would be prudent to spruce up everything we can, as we did with the mission page and mission lists. Please check out the sandbox and consider the list there and proposed changes above the list. This is about providing clarity and ease of information access (as well as visual exposure) to players, in addition to something that's easier for editors to update. This usually means compressing things via templates or page merges instead of having a bunch of different pages/lists to update.

"Class" is a very old but sort of opinionated method of organization, but I have found it to be very useful regarding turrets and so on. There are certain release notes that use these terms (such as "elite," "drone," and "mini,") so they are official to an extent. We'll just have to be careful.

We are working hard on improving various other things around the wiki, and the monster overhaul is a huge project that takes lower priority than our current Mission Page and Acquisition projects, simply because we have momentum for these two projects right now. So, the monster stuff is a project for way down the road - that being said, any inspiring thoughts about how we should go about it should be discussed.

There are clearly distinct versions of monsters per tier, so we have to show each tier's picture. Otherwise it's incredibly confusing for new players. The list is also sortable by tier, so players can learn there's distinct differences between monsters. This seems to be confusing for certain beasts, with players thinking alpha wolvers are upper tier, and so on.

Why no to modifying the monster page? The classification information should really be included in it. A lot of players are completely unaware there's even a classification system.

I have an idea for a better list regarding the tier and repetitive name issue.

We have to include class, even if the majority of it seems to be colloquial. It's extremely useful information.

Here are the terms I've seen used in release notes (so it's not "all" player opinion, hence needing to be careful, but also needing to implement it better):

-"Drone" (also uses the phrase "a new class"): 2011-12-19
-"Mini" (also uses the phrase "a new class"): 2013-04-10
-"Elite" (also uses the phrase "reclassified"): 2013-05-01

When I was a new player, this classification really helped regarding connecting everything. For example, I could expect a turret for most, but not all monster families. If it's that bothersome, we can ask support about official terms for other classes.

I think it would be prudent to link to the article on the main monster page, as part of a minor reword of the top. It's always bothered me that it's written that way, when many "monsters" are our allies. They're not always "terrible." And why does it use the word "halls."

As far as having class on individual pages, it would just be in the infobox, as it is on the mecha knight's potential new format page, and allow players to get to other creatures with (EDIT: potentially very or only slightly) similar behavior, while family lets players get to other creatures with similar defenses.

I won't list all the classes that exist in my view, as that is unprofessional and inappropriate for a wiki. What I have done is cited staff use of three terms. These are terms that are extremely useful and the rest (if any) simply need clarification from staff. We cannot pretend they don't exist, or are user-only terms. This is as "official" as it gets, though one could argue against it based on staff use of "reskin" vs "clone," there is still a very evident underlying organization system.

The goal here is to emphasize the very similar (sometimes not as similar as others, such as rocket puppy projectiles vs. the other turrets, or entirely different but still brutal tactics of elites) behavior of ..."classes"....across monsters in the well established monster families.

As noted in the sandbox page, the list is incomplete and a WiP. I've only mentioned "turret" here on the forums (and it is on the monster classification page, as well as mentioned by Nick here, but the post does not specifically use the term "class").

What I'm going to do now, as proposed before and seemingly ignored, is ask support for the rest.
EDIT: I've submitted the request, now, we wait.

EDIT: here's a link to the classification page, in case it was missed in the sandbox and a cause of confusion. It needs a lot of work, hence, my mention of the need for us to be "careful." So I've done the best thing I think we can do, and that's ask support for clarification on this, at best, semi-official organization system.

So, while working on missions (and areas), I noticed that it's quite annoying to keep listing monsters consistently with all the status icons and linking directly or through redirects.

I figured since we're going to have the "monster" template space free eventually (using "MonstrousProfile" instead), why not just make it usable as a linking template now and save some trouble? I have moved the content of "Template:Monster" to "Template:MonsterTemporary" to make space for the template to be used. This way, when we're implementing MonstrousProfile, we can still use "what links here" on MonsterTemporary to keep track of progress and see what's left to do regarding the display.

So right now I'll be adding the appropriate outputs to the Monster template so it can be used to quickly and consistently link an entity, similar to other navigational "linking templates."

This is just an update of progress, in case people saw the edits and wanted more details.

Updating this usage of the monster template in the future should be a snap. It will also let us easily update any uniform changes the game makes to a particular monster's ability to, say, inflict stun or not.

EDIT: Template:Monster is now populated as a linking template, and is working extremely well so far. Feel free to implement in place of current linking on any relevant pages, and please use from now on to save yourself a lot of headache! Template should be easy to edit if you find any mistakes - go ahead and fix them as you find them.

IDK how I (and support) missed this. I mean it's even linked to on the page, sheesh. Major facepalm. This comment is just a heads-up, not focusing on this project ATM (will soon, hopefully), but there's a very solid admin post.