Dragon Quest XI - Echos of an Elusive Age

That stumped me for a while, and now just annoys me.

Just got to the point where things open-world up a bit. Not to be spoilery.

Just wow. Though, with cutscenes and the boss battle, it was like 1 hour w/o saving, which was pretty annoying as I needed to stop just then.

Just arrived in and explored the desert kingdom with a big circus. Haven’t actually kicked off the main plot there. Needed to investigate every corner of everyone’s houses to purloin their goods. . .

I love the fact that there’s only a few widgets that can be interacted with, otherwise I’d be spending so much time searching Every. Single. Item.

Meh, I’m not big on gambling and I’m very irritated at having quests tied up in winning jackpots. At least when I just needed to make some tokens I could just put a slime quest machine on autoplay.

No way to autoplay the roulette or even speed it up as far as I can tell and after 20 or 30 minutes of boredom I guess this is one quest that’ll never get done.

I’m thinking, or at least hoping I just went through the same extended period without save points after the boss battle, and I was supposed to be heading to work. Not that I really wanted to go to work, but I rather it be my own procrastination rather than game design that delays me.

7 hours in an just added the 3rd and 4th members of my party. I do not want to rush this game.

Man, you guys are having fun. I need to buy this.

I broke and got it. Enjoying it so far although last night’s play session ended in a hard crash, which is worrying…

For what it’s worth I’ve had no real stability issues, though it definitely gets a little laggy if I leave my browsers running (which, to be fair, they do consume like 1.5 - 2 gb of RAM apiece). I’ve generally heard it’s a solid port. Still, fingers crossed for ya, m.m!

Thank you sir! I will give it a crack again tonight. I have a slightly tuned system so I am logging all my temps to see if that might be the problem. That said, my system is generally rock solid with most other games. Who knows…

My performance is the same as @ArmandoPenblade, with the exception that I probably have more browser stuff going in memory when I play. Mostly runs ok, occasional laggy bits.

66 hours in and not a single crash or glitch. Some frame hiccups during certain attacks with certain weapons (two I can think of, both spears), but otherwise no problems.

I never over clock anything, except light OC of my Memory, so that may cause issues, I’d have no idea.

I spent an hour or so in the Casino last night. It was mind-numbing. I wanted to get the Princess some nice claws, but the whole experience really sapped my desire to play. I’ll need to remember that going forward. The rest of the game is so fun.

Don’t bother with the casino, especially the first one. The prizes are fine, but you will get the high end stuff (and better) eventually, and you’ll have wasted your time. Imagine how you’ll feel the first time you get to a new town and see a pair of claws being sold that are better than the +3 ones you got, upgraded, and used from the casino.

There is a later casino with higher stakes and it’s a LOT easier to get tokens from there, with also great rewards that… eventually you’ll replace.

Do the casino only if it’s fun, or you want some of the low end stuff like the recipe book, which are all very easy to get.

Which reminds me: stop crafting shit five seconds before entering a new town, Randy

Then again, I kinda figure there’s gotta be some kinda crafting achievement I can strive for if I just make everything. . .

Honestly you need to as a source of pearls until you get to a point where you can comfortably buy them later in the game. But yeah, best option is generally:

  1. Go to new town.
  2. Check store.
  3. Ransack town for loots and more importantly possible recipes.
  4. Go to camp and craft all the things.
  5. Rework as needed.

I enjoy the crafting so much that I don’t mind crafting all the things.

The gambling quest annoyed me so much I decided to start hard mode now in case I run into other things that make me not want to do a second playthrough.

One of the options I chose was no shopping. I enjoy the forging and since I’ll have to grind more for levels I should get plenty of items with which to craft.

It is a bit funny to me that the one “shop” you can still use in no-shopping mode is the casino, the one that chased me to hard mode in the first place.

This is where I’m at as well, and to be honest I didn’t think I’d get into crafting - I rarely like “mini-games” like this - but for some reason I got super into it, and every time I got a new crafting ability or enough forge points to try for a harder difficult rework that previously confounded me, it was every bit as satisfying as taking down a tough boss or finding a better suit of armor in a chest or something. Very cool.

I think there are a few decisions that make this a well done system as opposed to one where frustration could overwhelm some/many gamers:

  1. You simply cannot fail. A base level item might be disappointing (i.e. not an upgrade), but you still get the item. And you can just rework it later. Or right then. Or whatever.

  2. The actual whacking mechanic wasn’t designed in such a way that you’re not stressing over “fuck, I am at 600 degres. I could lightsmack now and I think that might get me a gold, but I might need to use another hit elsewhere first to lower the temperature” decisions.

  3. And there’s no strict perfection requirement beyond “land in all the red areas” and “nab a few golds”. There’s no “you must get half of them to gold to perfect” e.g. I assume it’s just some hidden score you need to hit.

  4. Unless you go insane with “I must perfect all the things”, you won’t run into too many crafting walls.

  5. It never completely overrides finding/buying gear but also compliments those things perfectly with reworking.

It could be an absolute garbage system. IMO they did a great job with it, though. So much so that one assumes it will feature in the next proper Western release of DQ: 2029’s DQ XVII.