Firebrand said:
So did I make a mistake in having my priest be a guy? Most mending gear in the shops (at the third town now) seems to be for girls only. Should I even have a dedicated healer?
You didn't really make a mistake, so long as you haven't spent skill points randomly, because class changing becomes available to you pretty soon into the game, at which point you can make this person into a heavy fighter or whatever job you think better suits his appearance. You can earn skill points in any job, and then spend them in any other job, so a job that you use and then get rid of pretty much has no lasting consequence (or benefit for that matter, besides the skill points you earned).
But then you might be lacking a dedicated healer. How you balance your party is up to your own playing-style preferences, but I think it's a safe bet to say that most people will always want a dedicated healer.
And ideally you will be stuck with these characters for a long time, so appearance is very important. If I were you, I'd go back to the Inn and drop off your male healer (and anyone else who doesn't click with you) before you invest too much time into him, and make a white haired little girl, or whatever you think looks better. In the long run, it won't matter that they're behind a few levels. They'll catch up in levels reasonably quick, and with class changing (which reverts people to level 1) you'll be doing a lot of catching people up anyways.
This is my first DQ game so I don't really know the game systems yet, which weapons to use etc.
Pick one unique "signature" weapon for each character (it doesn't matter much which ones you pick), and dump skill points into that weapon. Don't spread points across multiple weapons per-character. If you don't have a weapon equipped, the points spent on it are useless, and you can obviously only equip one weapon at a time. When you've spent 100 points on that weapon type, it becomes available to equip in any job class.
It's also a good idea to dump points into shields, because when you spend 100 on them, you can equip shields and get the defensive boosts while in any job.
You can spend points on the fifth options (the ones that are unique to whatever job you're in) without worry, because those abilities and stat boosts always carry over. Those "fifth option" abilities are how you carry something positive from an old job along with you.
But just remember, you can earn points in one job, and spend them in another. So you can spend days going to level 50 as a white mage, become a fighter for 30 seconds, spend all of your accumulated points, then become a warrior and have all this great agility that came from being a fighter... for about 30 seconds.
And should I prioritize defense or evasion? Looking at some boots in the shop I see some have only defense, while others have only evasion.
IMO, the defense point boosts you get from shoes are puny and will become almost insignificant when you get some better armor. But a 2% chance of dodging an attack is a 2% chance of dodging an attack, and will be so for the rest of the game. It will never get old. I'd go for evasion.
