I own the core box, the game masters toolkit, signs of faith, the adventurers tool kit, and the winds of magic. I am currently running the adventure in the core boxed set for a couple of friends. The idea of having the monster stats on cards instead of in the books appeals to me (less flipping back and forth between pages). So, I am curious, if I buy the creature vault will I be able to make sense of the stats on the cards without the creature guide, or are the stats on the cards in some way designed to require the corresponding guide? Also, are the stats for cultists, villagers, and beastmen, present in the vault?

I have just the creature vault and it works fine. There are some explanations of the traits on the cards in the guide, though, but I think you can find them online somewhere as well.

-L

Vault works just fine without the Guide, only thing missing is what Actions monster should have but that you can also find in your core set + expansions and also a list here in the forums.

I think if you have core set you can use vault on its own quite a bit, though some things will be harder to make out such as some standard "baseline abilities" (not cards they get, rather other features) for completely new creatures. These are generally on the creature cards but not always explained or explained among a family of similar creatures on different cards within the family.

It's a tough call because the guide is rather annoying in repeating alot of information (it divides treatment of monsters so it speaks to them all twice and repeats some of what it says when doing this) and not having a key list of what actions are standard to each creature. So it's not the best value for money even though it has some value.

I for example use the cards when prepping and then just check the guide so it's 80% cards and 20% guide.