A few days ago, I was working on coverage of the Sword Route monsters before I had a bit of a bad day and blew up over something tiny - I apologise for that! In the interests of ensuring the work doesn't get lost, I thought I'd put some stuff here.
Xiiiiii why should we cover these?!
Otherwise known as an "Argument"...
Let's first look at how ZeldaWiki covers its monsters, which are similar to what we have here.
https://zeldawiki.wiki/wiki/Red_Lanmola
https://zeldawiki.wiki/wiki/Red_Moblin
https://zeldawiki.wiki/wiki/Blue_Darknut
https://zeldawiki.wiki/wiki/Red_Lynel
Some of these pages are not complete. The main point here is that, well, it's certainly not abnormal to want to cover these. Obviously, "different wiki, different policies," but we can at least see that there is information here that people will want to see: Enemy behaviours, where they can be found, and so on.
Taking inspiration, I made a maximal example in the Black Monster, which would benefit most from being made its own page:
https://deltarune.wiki/w/User:大佬233/Black_Monster
Beyond the internal stats and the like, the main benefit to this page is funnelling the "spooky black deer" thing into this page and explaining how it works in full. We can also funnel allusions into this without giving the Original Game a giant list of them. This feels like a very strong page.
Then for a minimal example, there is the Purple Monster, which has very little to it:
https://deltarune.wiki/w/User:大佬233/Purple_Monster
Even here, things like statistics, sword immunity, behaviour, and appearances are all useful information that would cause the Original Game page to bloat, or at least lead to a very large, uncomfortable table with a lot of information for someone to read. If someone keeps dying to the Silver Fish or Spear Boss, then they would probably want to find that specific creature's information, and maybe information on strategy. A table like that would serve neither purpose.
I did find the code a bit difficult to navigate, as, for example, the monsters, would all come from a single point which would then "overlay" differences across them. Therefore, I see documenting the stats as a way to make life easier for the everyman(!) as well.
The arguments for these creatures to be given their own page are therefore in line with @F-sharp's splitting of NPC pages and the like; if someone wants to find information on an individual thing, they should be given the opportunity to do so, and get the most information possible for it. These creatures have more to them than a Hometown NPC in some ways, so they should have pages.
I think covering the unused monsters is worth it from a TCRF documentation-style thing, though there is the "It's not canon grr" argument I guess? Still think it's worth having, it's in the game after all. Maybe have one of those silly "GRRR THIS IS NOT CANON" banners up there or something.
Infobox
At the top of both example pages, you will see statistics that would be ideal for an infobox, and a Darkner infobox for the creature that sucks. The current infobox is designed for regular Darkners, which isn't ideal for these creatures, as they have different stats. Here is a table with the Purple Monster's values so it's clearer.
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Internal Name | monster |
| Health | 1 |
| XP yield | 1 |
| Sword immunity | 1 |
| Docile | Yes |
"Docile" refers to whether you need the Sword and LV2 to make the creature damage you; the Sword immunity is the Sword level required to damage the creature. You would want Board appearances as well, of course (do we call them Boards when they're not Tennafied? internally they're still called that, so maybe..? is this a can of worms we shouldn't open?).
EvieMaybe mentioned that because names are internal-only, we should probably not include the conjectural name in the header. Not fussed about that personally (it feels like beating around multiple bushes for the same result...) but it's useful to recall.
The Shadow Mantle holder would benefit from this kind of infobox, as it's still being funnelled into the Darkner statistics, which results in weirdly long strings for a table meant for numbers.
On names
None of the creatures in the Original Game have names stated in-game. The Original Game page uses their internal names, spaced and capitalised, which I think is fine for page names.
@EvieMaybe mentioned that it would be worth decapitalising and noting the names are conjectural given their internal nature, which seems fine and I don't care too much about. This would mean the Original Game page would need to decapitalise the monsters in the table, though, as well as do the funny this thing to them. There's also the matter of monster variants being conducted in the way I mentioned earlier, which means they do not actually have internal names of their own. There's no shame in a name! How could Fantastic Mr. Fox do this?!
On the Original Game page, I did notice that I couldn't find references for the coloured monster names. I am assuming they are somewhere, but when I was going through the code, nothing dropped. There only seemed to be three colours noted, which obviously isn't correct. Given the Original Game page seems to use internal names, my assumption is I just didn't look hard enough.
There is something that the wiki does not note right now, which is spearboss. This is the name used for the Asgore-like event in the Manhole dungeon, which is basically a variable you set to true and then the monster goes crazy and deals damage with decreased iframes. I do not know whether that monster should have its own page or be attached to the "goldenrod" monsters.
So, uh...yeah, whatcha think? Wanna cover these? Do the lil support/this-is-evil-and-should-explode thing with reasoning or however vote things work.