Now playing Dragon Quest 8 again...

Checked my save data last night, My highest leveled character was at 40. The lowest was Jessica at level 36. Which is why I stuck her with Timbrel Duty.

I did the Vermillion Dragon (the first one) of the trials last night, and it was a really hard fight; his tendency to one shot one character a turn (he gets two turns, so he tends to means much of the battle is spent simply healing and reviving, rather than attacking. I was level fifty at the time, having spent three or four hours beating on MKS previous, so I cannot see how it'd be possible at all much before level forty five.

Forty five hours in now, and just finished up the S Class in the Monster arena and beaten the second Dragon in the trials. Oddly, my previous playthrough in the Monster Arena the three golem team made it a cakewalk, but this time they kept falling against Morrie's team, Mazin (the uber Golem) failing to land a decent hit against the Liquid Metal Slime. I ended up going back to the drawing board, and using a team consisting of Hev (Metal King Slime, obtained by beating the Dragovian Lord), Curer (cureslime) and Nohi (Robot, attacks 2xper round).

I won first time. Weird.

The second Dragon in the trials was also much easier than the first, because he didn't have any annoying status effect attacks, so I just tensioned up and hit him hard. It was over inside perhaps ten turns, Hero alone hitting for a pretty massive 4503 damage at one point (Super High Tension, Oomphed, Dragon Slayer attack, Dragonsbane sword).

I loved the monster areana. One of my favorite parts of the game. I loved using all three of the ninja robot guys (forget their names, nohi is one of em)

Thank god for the option to call your monsters into battles outside of the arena. I used them as shield when I fought with Dhoulmagus.

I had the Grey Mole, Statue Guy, and Dinosaur with an Axe during that fight.

I always used the three robot combo, i think there was a golem one to.

Yeah, the golems transformed. I remember being disappointed at the transformation's appearance, just a bigger golem.

The robots have a team attack, but it's not as good as the golem one. Yes, The Killer Robots team attack does a ton of damage, but the Golems fuse into one mega Golem, Mazin, with max HP and sky-high strength and defence. This also has the advantage that when you win, the Golems defuse with full health again. To my knowledge, no other team can do the same thing.

The only downfall of the Golem team is that up against Morrie's LMS even Mazin only does 1 damage with each hit, unless he gets lucky enough to use a Desperate Attack, which only seems to happen rough 10-20% of the time.

Of course, by using Hev the King Metal Slime I had the same advantage. None of Morrie's team's attacks could do more than 1 damage, and that's assuming they hit at all. Hev may only have 10hp, but it migh as well be a million; only a critical hit would ever defeat him, especially when teamed with the cureslime, who just healed him whenever his health got down to round half.

In any case, I agree with the general consensus; I had a crapton of fun with the arena.

Babby wrote:

Yeah, the golems transformed. I remember being disappointed at the transformation's appearance, just a bigger golem.

On fire.

But yeah, those teams did come in handy during boss battles, especially when you can call two. My first team had that green lizard you can get early on, that robot that attacks twice and a one of those stone statue guys. My second team was the three golems.

Did you finish this Simian?

Also man I really want a sequel to this on PS3.

On a vaguely unrelated note that studio ghibli RPG looks interesting if not just visually.

I finished the main story, yes. I was making my way through the Dragovian Trials when I got EDF and that has lived in my PS3 since.

I'm borrowing Dragon Quest VIII from a friend of mine so I'm going to start that soon. Any suggestions for weapon for Hero?

Fisticuffs

Do a full barehanded run. DOOOOOOOOO IT.

Wait is this the first time your playing?

Superbuu3 wrote:

Do a full barehanded run. DOOOOOOOOO IT.

Wait is this the first time your playing?

Yes. I've only ever played a bit of DQ1. But I heard you can equip different types of weapons on people.

Hero = Swords
Yangus = Scythes
Jessica = Whips
Angelo = Bows

That was my first run and it was a lot of fun I leveled up those weapons plus each characters personality trait.

Ellis wrote:

Hero = Swords
Yangus = Scythes
Jessica = Whips
Angelo = Bows

That was my first run and it was a lot of fun I leveled up those weapons plus each characters personality trait.

I used a axe with yangus i don't think i found many scythes in the game.

Scythes and Whips? I'm gonna have some fun with this game. Hehe

Superbuu3 wrote:

Ellis wrote:

Hero = Swords
Yangus = Scythes
Jessica = Whips
Angelo = Bows

That was my first run and it was a lot of fun I leveled up those weapons plus each characters personality trait.

I used a axe with yangus i don't think i found many scythes in the game.

Yea personally I think Axe is his best weapon choice. Scythes are just bad ass and you get some useful abilities with them like being able to steal items.

Fisticuffs man, you can never go wrong with a good punch.

Well so far I have Hero and Yangus (How do you guys pronounce his name btw? It hasn't been said on voice acting yet and don't know if it will). Got Hero and Yangus up to 7 by the time Geyser was defeated and decided on Swords and Axes respectively. That fortune teller guy has a very similar face to Mr. Satan.

Shalashaska (sp?) is the same VA as Mr. Satan. Swords and axes will be a nice weapn choice. You don't have to use the weapons you are leveling up either. There will be points in the game where you will go a while without an upgraded weapon that you have the skills for and in that case it is in your best intrest to use a weapon regardless of not being able to use skills.

Ellis wrote:

Shalashaska (sp?) is the same VA as Mr. Satan. Swords and axes will be a nice weapn choice. You don't have to use the weapons you are leveling up either. There will be points in the game where you will go a while without an upgraded weapon that you have the skills for and in that case it is in your best intrest to use a weapon regardless of not being able to use skills.

Well that boomerang in the beginning I'm going to pass over for money purposes. Hero is great right now because I made sure I equipped him with the best possible stuff (bar the boomerang). Yangus has good stuff as well.

All the weapons bar Knife and Club are genuinely useful. It's often worth spreading points between two or three, because the higher level skills aren't always worth investing in. Fisticuffs makes the early game very tough, but evens out after a while. *coughThinAirattackcough*

I got to Alexandria last night and both Hero and Yangus are level 10 and Hero has the best armor and sword possible at this point.