[evnvnv]

i'm having SUCH A HARD TIME with the boss of the weird harry potter pastiche chapter.

he just kicks my shit all over the place Every Time :(.
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The text will not live forever. The cup are small

[Awkward Map]

evan you may have gone there too early I found out later that that's like the 5th? or so place to get fyggs from but I went there first. Course, I found that out after having grinded on stacks of metal slimes and beaten the fucker, so. Try doing Alltrades Abbey or some other spot first.

Did anyone else have a tough time with Corvus' final form? I swear to got I only did like 3 hours tops grinding mentioned above. After that shit I coasted through the rest of the game using Oomph on melee dudes, then healing as necessary. Guys are level 40ish right now, party is sword wielding Minstrel, claw wielding Martial Artist, club wielding Cleric, and staff wielding Mage.

Decided to go do quests to unlock classes because of that. =(

[8128]

yeah I breezed right through everything up until that

then he killed me and I lost like 60K :(

I beat him on my third attempt though, no grinding
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[hyouko]

The guy who's currently giving me grief (near end-game) is the third Gittingham lieutenant. He OHKO'd my healer in the first round, then demolished my remaining characters in short order. Is there any way to block/disable his uppercut attack? Also - at what level will my healer finally get multiheal? It's tough cleaning up after group/multi-hit attacks when I can only heal one person at a time, excluding items.

[Awkward Map]

As for that guy I don't know how to stop his pretty much auto-kill swings when he does them. He also has the bs disabling strike he does. I had to bring several people back with Zing during the fight.

Multiheal was like, late 30s.

[BalbanesBeoulve]

Guys, this is dragon quest. If you are dying you should go grind.
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[evnvnv]

[HarveyQ]

man i remember grinding like crazy using king metal slimes in DQ8 and temporarily getting so far ahead of the experience curve i was able to run from every battle in the next dungeon. helped me beat the game faster, it did!
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ghosts appear and fade away

[BalbanesBeoulve]

Where the hell is the casino?
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[Awkward Map]

Yeah, is there one in this game? I want to watch monsters fight to the death while throwing down cash on who wins the bloodsport.

[LandRoverAttack]

Well K-mart is having a deal - buy DQIX get Zelda: Spirit Tracks free. A couple of my (INCREDIBLY UNSCRUPULOUS) friends have taken advantage of this and Walmart's (lax) return policy in creative ways to get DQIX for free. Just sayin'
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[HarveyQ]

man spirit tracks is so bad :(
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ghosts appear and fade away

[Intentionally Wrong]

[Persona-sama]

Aren't succubi Scottish in origin anyway? Or maybe I'm just confusing it, because Morrigan's last name is Scottish.

Sup guys, I started playing this! I'm 6 hours in, lv 14 at Coffinwell. It's hard to not make your character look silly with the armors they give you early on. :/
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[LandRoverAttack]

[BalbanesBeoulve]

[Swimmy]

So I beat the snot out of this game, and the post-game stuff is, uh. Ok. They really want you to focus on the grottoes, and the grottoes are not actually very good. However, it is possible to randomly stumble upon a really great grotto. . . for instance, one that has an entire floor with nothing but Metal King Slime spawns. The only way to do this would be to beat grotto after grotto until you get very lucky, all the while having no better way to level up than hanging out on Slime Hill, or, god forbid, the Bowhole.

Or you could do it the cool kid way, which is what I'm working on now. The Treasure Maps for grottoes are exchangable between games, so I am downloading a ROM, editing a save game to have some great treasure maps, and as soon as the only other person I can find with a DS pops by, giving myself the reward.

Am I cheating? Hellz yeah. But as far as I can tell this is the only major benefit of multiplayer, and the game was originally intended in Japan to have these maps passed around all over the country after a few people discover them. Since that'll never happen here, I'm just, uh, replicating the experience.
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[bza]

All of my dudes are lv 18 now and look like they lost a fight with a sadistic fashion clown. I am able to change jobs now but I'm not sure if it's worth it to grind all my dudes back up... I haven't been having much trouble with bosses with my Minstrel/Mage/Thief/Priest team, but how the heck do I do these class quests? Use Wizard Ward then kill 2 metal slimes :( :(
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[boojiboy7]

teach your minstrel wizard ward by having him be a mage, then metal slash it up.

[evnvnv]

i think i kind of turned against this game... i was expecting it to go on a lot longer, then i was suddenly at what was obviously the last dungeon and had to turn it off. are there enemies in the higher level grottoes that are actually difficult enough to require insane leveling, or does the whole game just get easy after lvl. 40? maybe i should just dig up my ps2 and find dq8 somewhere....
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The text will not live forever. The cup are small

[Swimmy]

[secondpillow]

[Swimmy]

Not sure what you're doing against the last boss. A recommendation:

Thief or warrior (mine was a thief), falcon blade (get it on your ship). Use Falcon Slash.
Gladiator, any good axe. Use Helm Splitter. Helps to have a meteorite bracelet, but not necessary.
Priest, weapon irrelevant. Use Multiheal. Use Care Prayer at battle's start, if you have it.
Mage, weapon irrelevant, use acceleratle so the priest acts before the boss. Keep oomph on your thief and gladiator. Heal priest's MP if needed. Yggdrasil leaf if needed. Frizzle otherwise.

When Helm Splitter gets his defense down completely, and Oomph is on, you should do around 750-850 damage a turn (he has 4800 HP), and if your priest has Faith maxed you'll probably keep everyone fully healed. I beat him within a couple minutes, and I'm sure nobody was above level 45.

At this point in the game for grinding, you have access to Liquid Metal Slimes in The Bowhole B3, which can give everyone around 10,000 a pop. If you need more skill points, get them by level-busting a useless class.
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[Swimmy]

[secondpillow]

My party's lineup is very different than yours, but the continual casting of acceleratle won me the battle.

None of the slime grinding before the post game seems remotely acceptable. I watched video of someone doing it in the bowhole. Sitting around and waiting is for the boredom of real life.

[BalbanesBeoulve]

I beat the game and can fly anywhere now. Should I keep playing?
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[Swimmy]

You don't have to sit around and wait in the Bowhole, it's just the option that forces you into the least number of non-LMS battles.

Balbanes: Not unless you are interested in Legacy bosses (see my spoiler text above).
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[BalbanesBeoulve]

Yeah, i'm gonna move on.

I also heard that to complete the game you need to get 30 tags to upgrade the inn. Thats not happening.
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[Intentionally Wrong]

Yeah, all the slime-grinders kind of miss the point in that it actually takes less time to gain the same amount of experience by just fighting everything you come across in areas that are actually kind of fun to play, like grottoes.
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JSNLV is frequently and intentionally wrong.

[Ashura]

So Amazon put up a pdf of the little booklet just in case anyone wants a quick overview of what the game is about:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/C1gRTnqejbS.pdf

[HarveyQ]

[BenoitRen]

I'm playing this game too. So far I've made it to the castle town (Stornwood?) and recruited a priest in the inn to assist me. But when I encountered the Wight Knight today, he kicked my ass. Do I really need to make a full team?

Also, how far should I play before joining an ad-hoc session? Me and a bunch of friends will be playing together.
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Get Xenoblade Chronicles!

[Swimmy]

Yes, you really need to make a full team.
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[evnvnv]

i'm kind of disappointed in the grottoes right now--the enemies seem underpowered and the bosses overpowered. I guess the best thing to do is fight through the grotto with underleveled classes, then switch right before you get to the boss? Do all bosses get stronger the more times you beat them, or only ones in later grottoes? Also, will I get a new map every time I beat a boss? It has happened twice on the same boss... weird.
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The text will not live forever. The cup are small

[Swimmy]

You get a new map every time you beat a boss, unless you're fighting a legend boss, in which case you'll get a mini medal. The other percentages for treasures found are for items the boss drops while still in the battle screen, so on a few runs you will get a treasure map plus a weapon or item or whatever. (These are rarely as good as some of the treasures you can find just by scouring the dungeon itself.)

The grotto's level (and hence the levels of the enemies you'll fight) are determined by some complicated formula of what level your main character is at, how many times you've revoked classes, and some other stuff. Best I can tell only the legend bosses get stronger, and only if you choose for them to, but there are tiers for the grottoes such that you won't encounter the low-level bosses anymore after you hit a certain level dungeon map. (Until you hit a high enough level, at which point you can find any boss, any dungeon.)

And yeah, for a while the enemies will be easy. Get a map that's around level 60 or so and you'll change your tune. There are lots of monsters that are grotto-only, and they're almost all stronger than any of the monsters you can find in the rest of the game. To give you an idea, a lvl 60-ish dungeon I've been running around has Gigantes in the early floors, which can hit me for around 50-90 HP. By the time I reach floor 9 there are some unique grotto enemies, which can hit me for 200 HP.
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[evnvnv]

that's so fascinating! the grottoes are like a completely different game. i still haven't beaten the final boss yet... is this also the only DQ game where you don't get the ability to fly around the map freely until after you 'finish' the game? Another really bizarre and kind of cool choice.
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The text will not live forever. The cup are small

[scratchmonkey]

WISE FWOM YOUW GWAVE

I'm finally coming back to this with the goal of actually finishing it. First of all, man, the DS really holds a charge well. I dredged the machine out of the depths of my desk and I've been playing the game off and on on my commute for a week and the battery still hasn't really budged from full.

Anyhow, this pretty much is Dragon Quest alright. It definitely has the disconnected narrative flow of DQVII where each little area is its own (heavily telegraphed) story that you need to resolve before moving on to the next. There's a fair amount of running into creatures in fields (traditional (read: invisible) random encounters come back when you're in the ship) until you can afford incrementally-better equipment that you will probably replace one or two towns down the road, and for gaining levels, especially since changing jobs involves starting from scratch.

That...doesn't sound so great laid out like that; however, I'm really enjoying the game because DQ is basically a meditative experience. You get into the groove, something that is helped by the briskness of the experience (although the animation issues that, along with the music loading, made DQVIII a bit of a pain to play compared to the earlier titles, are still around) and really, by the overall meaninglessness of the experience. It's not that different for me to play it on the subway as opposed to playing a match-3 game on my phone, just a different style of physical interface, the same basic level of cognitive investment that means that you get into the "flow", just at a much slower, deep-REM kind of situation.

Plus making your character look like how you want and putting clothes on them is fricking great.