Hey there,
I just stumbled upon Neo Monsters about a month ago due to it being on “sale” (free) - actually I just today got my first 6* ticket as login bonus (totaling 3 now, woot).
I’ve been trying to read up on quite a lot of guidance in this forum already and have found the new players guide and monster tier list especially helpful. As f2p player, I was able to hatch 2 packs of 10 eggs during the newcomer festival as well as 3 rare gold eggs so far and, as of my impression, got quite lucky there.
Now with those few monsters I was able to get a nice boost to my pve progression (now on episode X in offline story, somewhere chapter 4 in online story but mostly just lacking tickets there, beat the last SCB except for lvl 3 extreme), although there are obvious walls to hit (okkult case 1, fight 8 was quite close to beat even with my team not using poison at all, so not suffering any penalty there), which I guess is just something time and a wider roster will fix.
What I struggle with most right now is what to invest, and what to invest in. I was able to gather all the RP rewards in the current pvp run while also getting 60 wins - I only plan on stocking up to 70 to grab that potion thingy and doing 1 fight in phase 2 to get ranked, if I understand that correctly - which leaves me with 3 Ocarinos that I never thought I would get this soon. While I am pretty set on unlocking the secret skill for Tezcacoatl as he carries a lot for me currently and I guess those 3 fodder-monsters in my lineup are somewhat embarrassing, I don’t know if it is worth getting the secret skill of Stratustrike.
While I see it’s power, I simply doubt I will be able to get more easy Ocarinos anytime soon - without the pvp special rule of 150 cost limit, I am pretty sure I will be far less successful in pvp for a few months. Therefor, I suspect getting new monsters as soon as another festival hits will create a need for Ocarinos and I’d like to avoid regretting spending those.
On the other hand, I take it the next festival should be around Easter, so it might also be a mistake to let the Ocarinos sit unused for that much time and hinder my progression, so I would love to hear from more experienced players what their advice would be about spending those resources or even how fast I can expect to get new ones in.
The second big point is which of my current monsters are worth evolving and even feeding, as I am having trouble getting enough fruits and to an extent even silver (probably depending on whether or not I unlock secret skills) to train more than 1-2 monsters at a time before evolving them. Until now, I mostly used the tier list to decide, but especially with my first steps in pvp I realized I cannot forego teambuilding aspects.
On that note, tips for my setup are of course also appreciated. I’m guessing my setup is pretty self-explanatory so I won’t go into even more wall of text right now, but if useful I can of course elaborate on how I usually go about things (also, I use this for pve and pvp so far without changes really, mostly for lack of strong options).
Another thing on my mind - when the next festival comes (which is the “only” time to spend gems as far as I gathered here due to the increased chances), does it make sense to wait for certain monsters that go well with what I have to be featured or should I just focus on stocking up on as much strong monsters as I can to broaden my options at this point in the game? Likely related, following the discussion around 6* ticket usage around here, I feel like Dusycion is still a solid choice for a newcomer like me as first pick, but with probably 3 months to go until I have 6 tickets I feel like it’s useless to fixate on a pick right now, as my setup might change drastically up to that point.
And yes, as soon as another Omegamid hits, I will get that Huskie evolved, that’s why Lavahawk has to wait despite being used already.
Thanks for your help and also the massive amount of information already available here, really enables me to enjoy the game a lot more 
