How are Monster Variant appearances tied to the in-game progression?

Question

In Breath of the Wild, there are different variations of some of the monster types in the game, usually determined by colour. These are primarily Bokoblins, Lizalfos, Moblins, Lynels, and the Hinox.

Apart from the Hinox, these monsters seem to "Level up" as you progress through the game, appearing as blue, black, and silver variants. In particular, I generally avoided the Lynels (for obvious reasons), until very late-game, where they all (apart from the one on Ploymus Mountain, which appears to remain as a default Lynel) were Silver Lynels.

I have been trying to do my best to fill the Hyrule Compendium 100%, which would include all of the Lynel variants, and the Lynel variant gear. So that would mean I'd need to get all of the default Lynel gear, the Mighty Lynel gear, and the Savage Lynel gear.

So, what "progression" in game causes the appearances of higher level monsters (health/story?) and is there any way I can find lower-tier variants once the higher-tier monsters appear?

Answer 1

According to this reddit thread* the enemy levelling has nothing to do with any kind of character progression through the game. This is entirely due to the number of enemy encounters; i.e. the number of monsters you kill.

The enemy progression works on a "counter" system, and whenever you kill enemies, they contribute a certain amount of points to this counter. (There are a few rules, such as once a certain tier has been reached, certain enemies no longer count, etc.). This is the "Tier list":

0: Starting level
1: Bokoblins --> Blue Bokoblins
2: Moblins --> Blue Moblins
3: Blue Bokoblins --> Black Bokoblins
4: Lizalfos --> Blue Lizalfos
5: Black Bokoblins --> Silver Bokoblins; Blue Lizalfos --> Black Lizalfos
6: Blue Moblins --> Black Moblins
7: Lynels ---> Blue-maned Lynels
8: Black Lizalfos --> Silver Lizalfos
9: Blue-maned Lynels --> White-maned Lynels
10: Black Moblins --> Silver Moblins
11: White-maned Lynels --> Silver Lynels

So, putting it simply, once you reach enough points to reach a new "tier", the higher level monsters will appear to replace the lower levelled monsters (again, this does follow a system, monsters are replaced in a certain manner, so as to not just level up all monsters at once).

In the case of Lynels, however, once the tier to replace the Lynel with Blue-Maned Lynels is broached (I.e. Tier 7) all Lynels (again, apart from the one on Ploymus Mountain) will become Blue-Maned Lynels.

So at my point in the game, the only way I will be able to complete the Compendium, is by purchasing the entries from Symin.

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^{*Thanks to l I for providing the link}