The bestiary system seems poorly designed in my opinion.
I’m a fan of lore and the art of the series and for something that is supposed to be a fun little lore addition with some really cool creature art the ability to receive duplicate pages and random nature of the system does not fit with the intent to immerse you in the universe. I appreciate grinding in a diablo game but this system I find obnoxious, frustrating, and just not all that fun.
My suggestion:
-Remove the ability to get duplicate pages. It doesn’t make sense, the character already gained that knowledge they don’t forget it and have to relearn it suddenly.
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Unlock entries based on interaction with the given monster. This is more thematic from the perspective of the function of a bestiary (it is a repository of knowledge based on interacting and studying the monster) this encourages farming different monsters and different areas.
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Since you only offer the player the option to buy a pack upon the first completion of a dungeon how about unlock the bestiary entry for the boss monster as a neat free reward for the first time you kill the elite monsters.
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For rare and common monsters make the player kill a certain amount of that monster type to unlock the entry.
I feel like something around 100 for rares and 1000 for commons would be reasonable.
You can keep the monster essence globe drop idea but connect it to something else like perhaps there is a witch or alchemist merchant in each town and you turn the essences into them for the random reward and exp and after the first three each day they give you a consumable potion that provides a random temporary buff that you would normally get from a shrine but say it lasts a bit longer like 3-5 min.
Ultimately I feel like this system is just one example of the many potentially neat systems in diablo immortal that are either hampered by a slimy psychologically manipulative tactics to get you to spend money or just a complete lack of thought on what might be fun and thematic for the player. There is good stuff here, it’s just drowning under a layers of shady business tactics or the feeling that it was tacked on without much thought. I feel like making the bestiary system more thematic and less frustrating would be low hanging fruit to improve the player experience and it wouldn’t even effect the scummy money making tactics
At least we get BP points for duplicate pages.
There is so much potential for a bestiary in RPGs, and especially in a game like Diablo.
The D:I bestiary is just disappointing.
Agreed. The random structure is weird.
As for the design, imo beyond the artwork, which is a nice on its own, you could offer various information on the enemies as unlocks (strengths, weaknesses etc.), as well as various rewards; gain additional special/rare crafting mats from the enemies for example, or like in Grim Dawn, unlock new elite or boss monsters of that enemy type.
A mix between
yeah, this is supper annoying!! I have gotten 28 duplicate pages already… that just means im that far behind everyone else who doesnt do essence gathering. however, I probably have gathered more and turn in more essences than 3 servers combined. One day I turned in 100 turn ins… yes, 100, only getting credit for 3 a day and all 3 are duplicates = a wasted day (but thats how i got so much loot/paragon) 
if its a duplicate page, you shouldnt use up one of your 3 a day.
The duplicate page needs to go away. Bad game design
The limit needs to go away. Why is there a limit in the first place?
I am no math major but how many thousands of these would one need to fill out the entire book on average?
yes!
I have turned in roughly 930-950 essences already since game released and I cant say what my book is at since the game is down but I believe I am about half finished completing it.
Well the closer you get to finishing it the harder it will be to NOT get a duplicate. You are looking at another 5000-12000 essences. But Like i said, i am not a math person
im sure there is some formula to figure it out, and the worse part about finishing the book… we probably wont even get anything but 100 hilts for it… hahah
Yes, these are great examples! And I agree regarding more facts surrounding each one like location they are found and weaknesses. The Witcher 3 one is a particularly good example you gave that I’m familiar with, as I think it does a really nice job of providing a reference on how to fight a given monster appropriately.
That being said I get that the diablo series isn’t exactly known for taking a ton of strategy into account for slaughtering monsters so perhaps the use of the bestiary as a strategy reference isn’t as pertinent in this case but I still really like the lore aspect.
One other side not just in case a developer reads this I’d really like the little expand text button moved off of the image, as in some cases it blocks a little portion of it. It would also be neat if you could expand the image as well to get a full screen look at it, just a suggestion.
Aren’t there games with bestiary systems where you gain extra damage/defense against monsters after finding enough of their “essences”?
My guess is they did it this way, without targeted farming, to just have it as an incentive to play and kill stuff. Although that goes against everything else the game does so probably not…