[Coda]

*blinks* *pokes* ... *sighs* It was a font issue on my end, sorry DK. ^^;

Keeper of Gold is a pretty good team member in the early game. Ridiculous stat stick. (BTW, it's one of the rare evo materials. :P ) Keeper of Rainbow is too.

I'm a fan of the Ninjas, in the right teams. They're really easy to level up and have ridiculously high ATK relative to their team cost. Yes, it comes at the cost of having utterly abysmal HP, but if you're not worried about HP (for example, if you have other team members that provide lots of HP, or if the extra ATK means you're taking stuff out before you get hit in the first place) they're powerful. High Dark Ninja is a staple of my devil team.

The Pengdras are valuable -- not as team members, but as XP. They only need ~2700 XP to get to max level, and they only need a single Dragon Plant to evolve (dark and light need Dragon Seeds) and are worth 45000 XP to monsters of the same color. The low-level technical dungeons (unlocked when you clear Castle of Satan) drop the red, blue, and green ones very frequently, so grinding on them on Mondays (when they have increased drop rates) is an efficient way to level up your monsters.

Flame Knight is okay early game; it has the advantage of being easy to skill up and Guard Break is one of the more reliable ways to punch through high-defense monsters before you start getting better spike damage later on.

The Carbuncles, likewise, are useful before you start picking up better Healer-types; you'll outgrow them eventually but their ease of acquisition makes them good for a while.