This section covers all of the different numbers and descriptions about your familiars.
Creatures make up the backbone of Battling Dragons. Each monster is described in a number of different ways -- sometimes with words and sometimes with numbers. Here is what they all mean.

What is my creature's level?
What is experience?
What are spells?
What are techs?
What are skills?
What do my monster's elements mean?
What do my monster's statistics mean?
What is my familiar's species?
What is my familiar's stage?
What does the stage of development my monster is in effect?
What does it mean if a monster only has two stages?
What are boosts?
What is valor?
What does Life do?
What does Strength do?
What does Speed do?
What does Agility do?
What does Defense do?
What does Arcane do?
What does Virtue do?
What does Strike do?
How long does it take my monster to level up?
How long does it take my monster to hatch/become a new stage?
What are Bonus Monsters / B-Monsters / Tourney-Only Monsters?
How come not all types of monsters can be adopted?

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What is my creature's level?
What is experience? These two are closely connected. Creature's Level is a mark of how powerful your monster is. It is a sign of both age and battle experience. Every monster starts at level one when it is adopted. In order to attain a new level, you must gain a certain amount of experience. The amount of experience needed before you level up again increases with your level.
In the RPG, your human character also has a level that is seperate from the familiar's.
The highest possible level is fifty.
What do my stats mean? There are seven basic statistic categories and an eighth of Life in Battling Dragons which effect battle. Familiars, keepers, and even enemies are bound by them.

• Life shows how much damage a monster can receive before being defeated.
• Strength determines how much damage is caused whenever a character uses an Attack.
• Speed connotes how rapidly a character will act.
• Agility acknowledges a character's ability to avoid damage and critical strikes.
• Defense is a character's resistance to Attacks.
• Arcane distinguishes how much damage is done by this character's Castings and how much this character defends an enemy's Casting. It also increases supplemental abilities. However, Banishments are more effective against a creature with higher Arcane.
• Virtue distinguishes how much damage is done by this character's Banishments and how much this character defends an enemy's Banishments. It also increases curative abilities and resistance to negative status. However, Castings are more effective against a creature with higher Virtue.
• Strike reveals how likely a damaging action is to hit and cause critical damage.

Aside from earning Boosts, a monster's stats do not increase with level; they are constant and determined by species. Life, on the other hand, is only determined by level and has no relation to species or stage.
What is my familiar's species? Your monster is categorized in two ways -- its species and its stage. A monster will remain the species you originally adopted throughout its lifetime. It will progress through different stages of development depending on its species.
To find out about individual species, consult the Bestiary.
What is my familiar's stage?
What does the stage of development my monster is in effect? Your monster goes through different stages of development as its level increases. It begins life in a young stage, an egg for many monsters. Every species has two or three different stages. Each stage has a different set of learnable techniques, statistics, and possibly even elements.
Note that the different stages are not necessarily connected to the amount of power in a creature or its spells; this is always controlled by level.
What does it mean if a monster only has two stages? Certain monsters do not have a lot of changing to do before they become fully matured. Battling Dragons was originally designed for monsters with three stages; two-staged monsters were added later, but they were made equal to those with three.
Sometime in between when a three-staged monster would change to either of its more advanced forms, a two-staged monster will make its one change.
What are boosts? Boosts are slight increases to one of the seven statistics in BD. Both your monster and your keeper get two boosts at sign up and eight others as they level up, totaling ten boosts in all. Each boost will raise a statistic by one point. No statistic may be boosted more than five times. Life cannot be boosted.
Boosts are received at the following levels: zero, one, five, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, thirty, forty, and fifty. If a boost is not used, it will remain indefinately until it is used.
How long does it take my monster to level up? This entirely depends on how often you battle and how popular your web site is. Leveling up in the beginning can be very easy if you play the RPG. However, it drops out at about level three not because it is not finished, but because I do not want people abusing it to attain very high levels.
A strange pattern that I have noticed in Battling Dragons is that a familiar can usually level up by winning Web Battles against familiars of equal level. This would mean that it takes approximately fifteen losses against a monster of the same level to level up. Obviously, this is a course of action you do not want to take.
This means that if you won every battle, you would need seventy in order to reach level twenty-five. This is why web sites -- even small ones -- help greatly. Tournaments are also a great boost to experience.
When will my monster hatch/grow into its next stage? I used to just not want to tell people; now, I can honestly say "I don't know." Complex formulae are now used based on wins, valor, and total battles to determine this sort of thing. That means that you can be a level nine Egg battling a Hatchling of the same species but a lower level.
What is Latent XP? Latent Experience Points are those experience points that you earned during a time when you could not level up. For example, if a tournament ended while you were in a Web Battle (or vice versa), the experience earned would have been stored as Latent XP and received at the end of the latter.
Experience earned from the RPG and from web site views while in a battle is also kept as latent XP.