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Dragon Quest 9 |OT| Last chance* to shine

Oxx

Member
So, there a good chance that three of my characters will hit level 99 the next time I venture down into a grotto.

What's this revocation business about then? Does it happen automatically? Will I be stranded in the depths of a level 71 dungeon with three low-level characters if it does?

I still have unspent skill-points at the moment. Would they still be there after revocation?
 

Loto

Member
Oxx said:
So, there a good chance that three of my characters will hit level 99 the next time I venture down into a grotto.

What's this revocation business about then? Does it happen automatically? Will I be stranded in the depths of a level 71 dungeon with three low-level characters if it does?

I still have unspent skill-points at the moment. Would they still be there after revocation?


Revocation does not happen automatically. You need to return to alltrades abbey to revocate a job. You will receive an accessory for revocating a job for the first time. You will not lose any skill points spent or unspent when you revocate. You simply return to lvl 1 on that job.
 

ElFly

Member
Mockingbird said:
Have fun doing this while you still can. *Disruptive Wave*

The bosses don't seem to abuse this as much as they did in the previous Dragon Quest games. At least, in the main plot, dunno about higher level grotto dudes.

It's still pretty annoying. It'd be better if DW only worked on one char at a time, even if they spammed it all the time.

DQIX also has a lot of early bosses that can hit twice per turn. Weird.
 

Wichu

Member
ElFly said:
The bosses don't seem to abuse this as much as they did in the previous Dragon Quest games. At least, in the main plot, dunno about higher level grotto dudes.

It's still pretty annoying. It'd be better if DW only worked on one char at a time, even if they spammed it all the time.

DQIX also has a lot of early bosses that can hit twice per turn. Weird.
The first boss that used it against me was
King Godfrey
's second form. The majority of grotto bosses just love spamming Disruptive Wave.
 

Oxx

Member
Loto said:
Revocation does not happen automatically. You need to return to alltrades abbey to revocate a job. You will recived an accessory for revocating a job for the first time. You will not lose any skill points spent or unspent when you revocate. You simply return to lvl 1 on that job.

Thanks.
 
I have a couple quick questions - sorry if they have been answered before, but I haven't been able to keep up with the entire thread.

1. I haven't finished the game, but I can complete the level 1 treasure map I have. So far, I keep getting maps level 9 or higher, and the bosses are too tough. Will my level 1 map ever give me anything in the level 2-6 range?

2. Will it be obvious if one of my grottoes has metal slimes in it, or will I need to spend a lot of time waiting for spawns?
 

rpmurphy

Member
Clever Pun said:
I have a couple quick questions - sorry if they have been answered before, but I haven't been able to keep up with the entire thread.

1. I haven't finished the game, but I can complete the level 1 treasure map I have. So far, I keep getting maps level 9 or higher, and the bosses are too tough. Will my level 1 map ever give me anything in the level 2-6 range?

2. Will it be obvious if one of my grottoes has metal slimes in it, or will I need to spend a lot of time waiting for spawns?
1. There are only 12 grotto bosses (not counting legacy), and 3 of them will be available at the low level grottoes, regardless of the level. So don't worry much about getting a specific grotto level because the likelihood is that it won't change much except the floor monsters. Only when you start to level up your main character to higher levels and completing higher level grottoes will you start seeing new (and more difficult) bosses.

2. Each floor has a possible set of 4/5(?) monsters that spawn together, depending on the environment and difficulty. So if you see a bunch of different monsters on the floor and none of them are metal slimes, then that's all you're gonna see. Also, the monster difficulty set will increase a notch every 4 floors, so you don't have to check every floor.
 
rpmurphy said:
1. There are only 12 grotto bosses (not counting legacy), and 3 of them will be available at the low level grottoes, regardless of the level. So don't worry much about getting a specific grotto level because the likelihood is that it won't change much except the floor monsters. Only when you start to level up your main character to higher levels and completing higher level grottoes will you start seeing new (and more difficult) bosses.

2. Each floor has a possible set of 4/5(?) monsters that spawn together, depending on the environment and difficulty. So if you see a bunch of different monsters on the floor and none of them are metal slimes, then that's all you're gonna see. Also, the monster difficulty set will increase a notch every 4 floors, so you don't have to check every floor.

Perfect, thanks for the info
 

Oxx

Member
I didn't manage to reach 99 in the last grotto but there were a few suitably dramatic 'last-man-standing' victories down there.

Now I feel like making some better gear. I can't believe there isn't a single glass frit anywhere on the map.
 
Oxx said:
I didn't manage to reach 99 in the last grotto but there were a few suitably dramatic 'last-man-standing' victories down there.

Now I feel like making some better gear. I can't believe there isn't a single glass frit anywhere on the map.

I thought they were in the desert close to Gleeba. To the west I think.
 

Oxx

Member
They should have been there. And there should have been some on the south-west corner of the south-west continent as well.

Suuuuccccckkkksss.

Edit: Hmmm. I revisit both locations 5 minutes later and find 5 of them...
 

donny2112

Member
Okay, so I beat the main story now. I got access to
Lvl. 58 MKS map (loaded a save from online to another DQIX cartridge and tagged it over)
and splurged there for about 40 hours leveling up pretty much all my vocations for each character to get almost all the bonuses. Therefore, the last boss wasn't too terribly difficult. :lol

Time: 106:17
Multi: 1:08
Victories: 2263
Alchemy: 141
Accolades: 129
Quests: 44
Grottoes: 4
Guests: 16

I think I had killed
~150 MKS
by that point. :D

Post-game content with the quests and grotto quests are pretty fun, so far.
Does something happen if you beat all the 99 level grottoes (no, not every iteration; just every number), like put the Almighty back together or something?
Helping another player
(the one with the second cartridge)
currently. Put on good equipment, go to a Lvl. 1 vocation, and spam forebearance to help the other player get through bosses without taking all the experience points. :)
 

Aggrotek

Member
Definitely happy I bought this. I can see myself getting pulled in quickly.

On another note I am angry that I sold all my slimedrops... stupid guy in the castle needs one. =[
 
So I'm playing this game..

I can "call friends" at the inn, ie make new characters in classes I want to journey with me..

My question is - is this what my party will be made of? Dudes I generate in an inn? Or will I get main storycharacters? Am I supposed to just fill my party up with autogens right off? I don't really get that.
 
DownLikeBCPowder said:
So I'm playing this game..

I can "call friends" at the inn, ie make new characters in classes I want to journey with me..

My question is - is this what my party will be made of? Dudes I generate in an inn? Or will I get main storycharacters? Am I supposed to just fill my party up with autogens right off? I don't really get that.
Yes, yes, not really, and if you want. =3
 

rpmurphy

Member
DownLikeBCPowder said:
So I'm playing this game..

I can "call friends" at the inn, ie make new characters in classes I want to journey with me..

My question is - is this what my party will be made of? Dudes I generate in an inn? Or will I get main storycharacters? Am I supposed to just fill my party up with autogens right off? I don't really get that.
Yes. Until post game.

Be creative with your character creation or something. :p
 

Raw64life

Member
Think I finally hit a wall in this game where I just don't want to play it that much anymore. Recently passed 100 hours on the clock, as well as completed my 100th grotto. When I figured out that the grotto map you get from beating a boss is different every time, I started to just turn off the game whenever I got a map that was a significantly lower level than the map I had just completed. This was tedious, but doable for me when I was doing grottoes in the 30s and 40s that only had 6-8 floors. I just recently started getting grotto maps in the 60s and 70s and I'm finally starting to see new grotto exclusive enemies and/or treasure chests that actually give me useful things now. But now that I'm doing grottoes in the 60s and 70s that have 12-14 floors it's starting to drive me crazy when I go through a level 75 map and get a level 53 map for my efforts.
 
Raw64life said:
Think I finally hit a wall in this game where I just don't want to play it that much anymore. Recently passed 100 hours on the clock, as well as completed my 100th grotto. When I figured out that the grotto map you get from beating a boss is different every time, I started to just turn off the game whenever I got a map that was a significantly lower level than the map I had just completed. This was tedious, but doable for me when I was doing grottoes in the 30s and 40s that only had 6-8 floors. I just recently started getting grotto maps in the 60s and 70s and I'm finally starting to see new grotto exclusive enemies and/or treasure chests that actually give me useful things now. But now that I'm doing grottoes in the 60s and 70s that have 12-14 floors it's starting to drive me crazy when I go through a level 75 map and get a level 53 map for my efforts.

Umm, the higher the level doesn't necessarily mean the better the grotto.

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/937281-dragon-quest-ix-sentinels-of-the-starry-skies/55674123

For example: Silver Nest of Doubt Level 55 has some high level chests and its 9th floor is all Metal King Slimes; plus, it's first floor has Moai Minstrels and the last has non-boss versions of Shogum and Equinox -- I forget their names.
 

Johnas

Member
Mockingbird said:
Umm, the higher the level doesn't necessarily mean the better the grotto.

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/937281-dragon-quest-ix-sentinels-of-the-starry-skies/55674123

For example: Silver Mine of Doubt Level 55 has some high level chests and its 9th floor is all Metal King Slimes; plus, it's first floor has Moai Minstrels and the last has non-boss versions of Shogum and Equinox -- I forget their names.

Man would I love to have a grotto with an all metal-anything floor, I've finished over 100 grottoes and still don't have one.

I revocated for the first time last night, and it's painfully slow getting back up to 99 without one of those.
 
Johnas said:
Man would I love to have a grotto with an all metal-anything floor, I've finished over 100 grottoes and still don't have one.

I revocated for the first time last night, and it's painfully slow getting back up to 99 without one of those.

Yeah, it's a pain in the ass -- especially waiting for LMS to spawn at slime hill. I live in Japan at the moment so I've been getting tags and actually got the sweet Silver Nest of Doubt Lvl 55 from there. I also got the original Masayuki map. In US there's no chance of getting tags unless you attend an event, unfortunately. But even then, most of the tags there are gotten via saves/hacks =/

I've revocated twice so far. I think I'm only going to do it with my main chara cause he gets the accolade for it. It sucks cause to get all the accolades you'd have to do it for each class. To get all the benefits though you'd have to do it 10 times in one class. Even with a MKS map revocation isn't exactly an exciting process.
 

Oxx

Member
I found it hard baby-sitting a revocated character in a higher-level grotto, so I revocated another two of my party and went back to the Bowhole for a bit.

It was tough enough in some of the grottoes with a party of high-level characters, so I didn't really have many options left. A bit of a shame that 3/4 of my group would level-up at exactly the same rate and they all hit 99 together.
 

Risible

Member
Picked this up on a whim after the love it got here on GAF. I'm not usually much of a RPG player, as they tend to be slow going and I end up bored.

Holy crap is this good. I've been playing for 50+ hours and loving every minute of it.

My question: if I love this, what other DS RPGs should I look into? I love the class/job system of DQIX, so anything that has lot of classes to try out and level up would be good. Any suggestions?
 
Risible said:
Picked this up on a whim after the love it got here on GAF. I'm not usually much of a RPG player, as they tend to be slow going and I end up bored.

Holy crap is this good. I've been playing for 50+ hours and loving every minute of it.

My question: if I love this, what other DS RPGs should I look into? I love the class/job system of DQIX, so anything that has lot of classes to try out and level up would be good. Any suggestions?

They don't have the DQIX class system, but I loved both the DQ IV and V DS remakes - it may be worth checking those out. Also, V has the monster recruitment, which can get pretty addictive if you want a class system substitute.
 

Raw64life

Member
Mockingbird said:
Umm, the higher the level doesn't necessarily mean the better the grotto.

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/937281-dragon-quest-ix-sentinels-of-the-starry-skies/55674123

For example: Silver Nest of Doubt Level 55 has some high level chests and its 9th floor is all Metal King Slimes; plus, it's first floor has Moai Minstrels and the last has non-boss versions of Shogum and Equinox -- I forget their names.

Yea, I know that the level isn't directly correlated to how good the stuff you're going to see in the grotto will be, but it's still a pretty good indicator and more often than not you know exactly what you're going to get in there as soon as you walk into one. Through my first 100 grottoes or so I was able to just trudge through them but it's wore me down to the point where I don't care to go on any further.
 

HildyB

Member
Such a long and fun looking thread. Picking up two copies after work today so my wife and I can at least tag each other. :lol

Any tips for beginners and new comers to the series or is this pretty easy to pick up and go with?
 

DeVeAn

Member
Thought I would pop in a give my 2 cents. The game is fantastic, I love the art (DBZ fan) and have been waiting since DQ8 to play this. I love the little stories in each town. I can see myself playing this for a long time. I just wonder how much sweeter this could have been with better graphics and an ANALOG stick/pad.

Oh, online co op would have been sweet too of course.
 
HildyB said:
Such a long and fun looking thread. Picking up two copies after work today so my wife and I can at least tag each other. :lol

Any tips for beginners and new comers to the series or is this pretty easy to pick up and go with?

It's not a huge deal, but I was a little annoyed with myself for "wasting" some skill points early on. If you get frustrated by this type of thing, I recommend planning out which direction you want a character to go before you start slotting any skill points. Don't worry, though, you can't really break anything - I was just obsessing over efficiency!
 
Revocation question: (not change vocation)

To Revocate, I need to be Level 99 of a profession. When I do, do I just go back to Level 1 of the profession and nothing else changes, or do the skill points allocated to skills in that profession also reset?

Some really nice things to get again are things like the Martial Artist's +Fists and +Agility skills, etc.
The Sage's -25% MP cost would be nice to get again too.
 

Loto

Member
Loto said:
Revocation does not happen automatically. You need to return to alltrades abbey to revocate a job. You will receive an accessory for revocating a job for the first time. You will not lose any skill points spent or unspent when you revocate. You simply return to lvl 1 on that job.



Quoting myself
 

Koomaster

Member
Gaming Truth said:
Revocation question: (not change vocation)

To Revocate, I need to be Level 99 of a profession. When I do, do I just go back to Level 1 of the profession and nothing else changes, or do the skill points allocated to skills in that profession also reset?

Some really nice things to get again are things like the Martial Artist's +Fists and +Agility skills, etc.
The Sage's -25% MP cost would be nice to get again too.
No, the skills do not reset. So it's not like you can stack bonuses by revocating. That would be entirely game-breaking, or er post-game-breaking.

Anyway, you go back to level 1 in the profession, and your stats will go down again as well, but any bonuses you've earned won't go away. For instance normally a Gladiator might start level 1 with 50HP, but if you have gotten +100HP worth of skill seeds and bonuses, then when you revocate Gladiator, you will start off level 1 with 150HP.
 
Koomaster said:
No, the skills do not reset. So it's not like you can stack bonuses by revocating. That would be entirely game-breaking, or er post-game-breaking.

Anyway, you go back to level 1 in the profession, and your stats will go down again as well, but any bonuses you've earned won't go away. For instance normally a Gladiator might start level 1 with 50HP, but if you have gotten +100HP worth of skill seeds and bonuses, then when you revocate Gladiator, you will start off level 1 with 150HP.

That's good and bad to hear.

The bad is uber-side of me wanting to max out a character or two to ridiculous levels of power.

The good is sane-side of me knowing that I'm already 1/3 of a way to fully maximizing all four of my characters, and it only took about six hours or so of grinding, so I can now see light at the end of the tunnel. =p
 

Oxx

Member
I don't really know what to do with my revocated party of level 38-ers now.

Grinding The Bowhole bores me to tears and I don't really make much progress going through previously-completed grottoes.

I needs me some MKS floors in an easily accessible grotto!
 

Princess Skittles

Prince's's 'Skittle's
Oxx said:
I don't really know what to do with my revocated party of level 38-ers now.

Grinding The Bowhole bores me to tears and I don't really make much progress going through previously-completed grottoes.

I needs me some MKS floors in an easily accessible grotto!
Just keep beating your highest level grotto until you get a water grotto (I think it'll be a "crypt" or "marsh" grotto), at your level any one you get will probably have them.
 

thomaser

Member
Oxx said:
I don't really know what to do with my revocated party of level 38-ers now.

Grinding The Bowhole bores me to tears and I don't really make much progress going through previously-completed grottoes.

Grind Slime Hill instead? The encounter rate for Liquid Metal Slimes is much higher there, and you also often meet more than one of them at a time.
 

Princess Skittles

Prince's's 'Skittle's
thomaser said:
Grind Slime Hill instead? The encounter rate for Liquid Metal Slimes is much higher there, and you also often meet more than one of them at a time.
The encounter rate is about the same BUT oftentimes they're going to be hidden in the trees..

Before I got my water grotto, I found grottoes with liquid metals were more fortuitous. The downside to that is that there are two very strong monsters that can appear with them where they appear in a grotto (darkonium slime and some rhino thing, forgot its name). Both are taken out with a single hatchet man or thunder thrust though, which you'll already be spamming.
 

Oxx

Member
Princess Skittles said:
Just keep beating your highest level grotto until you get a water grotto (I think it'll be a "crypt" or "marsh" grotto), at your level any one you get will probably have them.

I have a 'Silver Lake of Fear' map that apparently has a 65% chance of MKS, but it's the other enemies I'm worried about.

Edit: Turns out I had nothing to worry about. My team of mid-levels are more than holding their own against the same grotto enemies I was taking on at 99.

Lots of MKS to slay. Shame that those Ugly Bettys take 4 Thunderthrusts to go down, though. Especially if there are two of them that keep Kazinging each other.
 

Oxx

Member
I fled from a battle for the first time ever because of those Slugsy Betsies.

It would take a good 4 Thunderthrusts to take one down and as soon as I did that the other one just used Kazing and the whole charade continued. For at least ten turns before I realised what a massive waste of time and MP it was turning into.
 
Koomaster said:
Slugsy Betty's are the worst, such a distraction!

A dangerous distraction that loves to OHK your Level 1s who you put in the front row. Yeah, I'm lazy, but what are the odds that they'd get hit? Worst yet, they drain MP when they hit you. MP is precious when leveling off MKSs. No one likes walking down 10+ floors to find them.

The way I deal with them is based on my party composition. I have two axe wielders who use Hatchet Man to kill MKSs. Once they're done, they use Helm Splitters to speed up killing the Betty's. The third character usually uses Falcon Slash and focuses only on Betty's. The fourth is the healer who's job is to heal/resurrect the characters Betty's kill. (Levels 1-10 are usually OHK zones for your newly classed characters)
 

HildyB

Member
Finally picked it up. Awesome game. Brings back memories.

BestBuy @Gamer mag has a coupon in it for $15 off the game! Buy the mag and use the coupon (saving $10) or find someone with it and snag it from them. :D
 

Koomaster

Member
Gaming Truth said:
A dangerous distraction that loves to OHK your Level 1s who you put in the front row.
That front row/back row stuff is BS. Maybe I have just had bad luck, but enemies seem to target my lowest level party member, even if they are sitting in the back doing nothing the whole fight.

At least they still get partial experience if they die.
 

HildyB

Member
rpmurphy said:
Sharp Shades and Silver Specs are available this week on DQVC.

So I've not found this option yet in the game. At what point and where can I access the DLC? I'm just about to leave the starting town and almost level 10.
 
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