@Scotch_Lufkin, you are worse for my wallet than Brian Rubin; purchaissed.
Anyone know what the refresh is on sparkly bits and resource nodes?
Oh, and it looks like companions on deck get the full amount of XP the active ones get. You can also swap them in during combat, but they don’t act until the next round. And if your party wipes, the ones on deck will jump in to continue the fight.
I’m still not sure if it’s based on actual in-game time spent or “days” (where you can refresh them by just resting repeatedly at a campsite), as I haven’t tested it. I don’t think every sparkle is on the same timer either. I’m testing one right now. It’s been 3 sleep to dawns, with some grinding (2-3 encounters) in between, and still no refresh on the one I did just before starting this. Tehre’s another one nearby that was already unharvested and it’s still not back, but it yields a “better” resource.
FWIW on that earlier test the “more common” sparkle respawned on day 4 and the “rarer” one had not. I did have a decent amount of idling between them, but I suspect it’s based on something like in-game days or steps or something like that.
I got everyone to 16. I purchased a series of upgrades but lacked the pearls to rework them. I could have cranked out items from outdated recipes for pearls but I didn’t want too. The levels gave Erik a crucial skill I based my entire strategy around. He gets a “put to sleep” attack, and a separate followup skill that can do up to 6x damage to a sleeping enemy. With Veronica casting Sap, MC and the healer gal on healing (and she would buff when allowed), and Sylvando getting off auto attacks, I thought this would carry the day.
Not quite. Some reading revealed there are people who think this boss is vulerable to sleep. That may be3 true on normal but I think I only managed to sleep him once in 3 tries. And the sleep spell the MC has never worked. Sylvando woke the fucking boss up every time I slept it, so I never got to use the followup skill. Still, between Erik and Syl I was getting 60-70 damage off when the boss was sapped. MC was still killed in like round 4. But I got the boss to orange before some rough RNG lost me erik. I switched Veronica over to sapping and then using offense spells when not sapped. I swear the fight must have gone another 15 rounds, and I came very close to losing Veronica or Healer 3 or 4 times, which would have been game over. But I did it.
Being level 16 was not mandatory but I wouldn’t want to do it - on hard mode - below 15. The boss has an attack - not often used - that always crits and crits ignore all defenses. the attack would do 70+ damage. I had the two casters at over 80hp at this point. Neither was ever targeted by this attack (I lost the Mc to a combo with it + a followup), but that was somewhat lucky. I pulled Erik back from the brink after receiving the attack a couple of times. Too low level and either is facing a potential one-shot. The beef benefited from the leveling too though, with a greater hp buffer and Erik’s damage got better (and was good thanks to sap).
TBH this would have been easier without the guest character, although once MC and Erik were down Sylv’s steady damage (with sap up most of the time) was nice. I could pick damage spots with V while keeping debuffs up.
Darn. I skipped playing this last night thinking I had been playing it too much too soon and now I wish I had played it. And tonight it’s #$%#@$%$ date night…sigh.
So many little touches I keep finding as I play. From the varied battle environments that line up with where the fight is initiated, to the attention to detail in everything. I found you can dig deep into items to get various information, like bonus abilities and what you will gain from upgrading said item, for instance.
Also, the sheer variety in enemies and animations is staggering. I’m particularly fond of putting Hood enemies to sleep. :)
Agreed! I love the way you move past and through spider webs, tall grass that hinders vision, mountable bad guys, and the 2 types of death animation: one for when you just kill them, and one where you just devastate them to oblivion.
I hit the 23 hour mark this morning, my characters are level 26-27, and I was feeling pretty good about being around halfway through the game.
Nope.
So, here is a thing that is maybe worth watching - Tim Rogers, of the famous Kotaku review for DQXI, did a 2 hour stream over the weekend and what I liked about the first few minutes (all I’ve seen so far) is he’s giving some fun details I missed or wouldn’t have picked up on (like the title screen reflecting your progress in the game). Very cool stuff.
But he loads up a “game right at the mid-point” in the story, and it’s … 49 hours in with his party being level 37. Haahaha.
Yikes. This one should last me quite a while.
E: He does go on to say he’s trying to complete everything in this save, collect all the things and complete all the quests, so 50 hours for 50% of the game is probably not what most folks should expect.
I’ve been having a lot of fun with this so far. Just got the 3rd and 4th characters and am around lvl 13. Thing is, it’s been crazy easy so far without the stronger enemies Draconian Quests setting. Am thinking about restarting with that on.
Reading up on the hard mode, however, I worry that I’ll run into some serious walls. The general feeling is that normal is too easy and hard mode is right on the edge of too hard.
Anyone have any further thoughts on this? I realize some of you have already touched on this a bit; please feel free to elaborate along the lines of … “normal was really easy for a while but then I started to run into challenges”, “hard mode was touch and go until I got over the hump…”, etc.
Thanks!
Don’t. I’m a bit further and it’s getting harder. And I got a total party wipe last night in a really hard boss fight, not too far from where you are in the game.
Hard mode got too hard for me pretty quick, and I didn’t want to resort to grinding with an already large game. It’s better to take it easy and have fun with normal mode. Sure, the average encounter isn’t going to be a challenge, but then it’s just a normal encounter. Some encounters, even then, can get dicey if you get like a lot of foes and a good mix of foes to boot, with area effect status abilities and big damage swings.
Boss fights feel about right on Normal, is why I took Hard mode off. Boss fights with hard mode on felt way too hard.
I agree with @rhamorim - the further into the game I get the more potent the enemies, and while I’m about leveled to where I need to be and as such find most fights trivial, that also affords me the ability to let auto-scripts/attack work for me while I enjoy the game and watch Netflix or something, pausing for big battles and story beats. :)
I fear that my obsessive need to see/collect everything in a single run is going to leave me massively overleveled for the fighting, but then again, I’m pretty okay with being a massive badass!
edit: on that note, I wish some GameFAQs style guides existed yet. I’m scared of missing early Mini Medals/quests that I won’t be able to backtrack to :(
Is it possible to make yourself underleveled by not getting into many fights outside the boss fights? That worked well to keep the boss fights challenging in Final Fantasy X, which is still my favorite JRPG. I loved that I could regulate the difficulty by how much of a hurry I was in.
Big Hurry = hard game.
All the time in the World = a game so easy, the bosses don’t even get to show all their modes.
I don’t have the same need for everything but I fear my love of killing most things I see* will overlevel me in normal.
So far, two big recommendations for sticking with normal!
*in game as in life!
Totally. I hardly ever engage in normal fights, usually just when I see an enemy type I’ve never seen before or if they are guarding a chest or sparkle point to loot - though on the ship you can’t see them to avoid them (more old school that way). You could also use the draconian mode to reduce easy enemy XP or even eliminate it, which would help when you just want to get more gold but not accidentally over level, I suppose.
Also, it’s worth mentioning that the main character is VERY powerful the more he levels up, and not using him can be a way to reduce the difficulty a bit, as well.
This is a really good idea, I’m finding out. But I’d still have to restart to enable it.
Far be it from me to tell anyone how to enjoy a game, but I’ve never thought of the Dragon Quest games as difficult experiences, I wouldn’t expect something like a Dark Souls or even an Ultimate-like experience. I am looking forward to checking this out sometime and immersing myself in its world and characters - maybe I’ll just pop DQ VIII back in the old 3DS for now.