[LP] Dragon Warrior Monsters, "What is a Shota?"

We remove our anteater from the active party, replacing it with a mischievous gremlin.

This is actually really great for this point in the game as Gremlin provides both an all-enemy attack and the same healing spell that we keep Hale in the party for. He can also learn 'Stop Spell' later on, a technique which is... of questionable use. If you cast it in the same turn that an enemy uses a 'Magic' ability, then it'll shut it right down and waste their turn!

You will absolutely never see this happen when you command your monsters directly unless you are extremely good at guessing or just plain lucky! You might get some use out of it letting a monster with a brain the size of a planet act on its own, sort of cheating, since the computer knows what the computer is doing. Otherwise, it's a technique slot better used for something else. In practical terms, the other two techs are what you want Gremlin for.

With that said, at level two, he isn't going to fire off that fireball spell too many times. But between him and Dran's fire breath, we only really need him to toss it once per battle.



The screenshot might not show it well, but you can tell whether a gate has a boss behind it or has been cleared by whether or not it's in 'motion'. Cleared gates are static. There's no purpose to going there to progress the story, it's just for grinding xp and collecting items.



Checking the map shows that the game is already starting to slowly scale up the... well, not difficulty, but tedium, of its dungeons. The first couple are four floors and the boss. This one is five. Thrilling.

Also, since I didn't show it before...



In the menu, you can both change the order of your monster trio, though it doesn't effect much, and set their Plan without wasting a turn in battle. We go ahead and do that.



And I'm gonna admit, this is a pretty nice drop. It's not the best meat around, but it's better than anything we can buy. The best, of course, is a high quality Sirloin steak. If you want to be super-sure, then four of those are all but a guarantee of an enemy join-up.

Like the gate of Villager, Talisman has some new monsters behind it.




Army ants we haven't seen, but Spookys we have. We've already mentioned their families, but they're nothing spectacular. One can put you temporarily to sleep, the other can stun you for a round with its giant, wet, sloppy tongue across your face, ahem.

Goopi, however, are of the Material family which we haven't mentioned. As the name suggests, they're mostly made of stone, mud, or brick. Solid. As such, they tend to have high resistances to both fire and ice attacks, and have high base defense to boot. The best way to handle them is usually, as with stone, weathering them down with enough attacks. With that said, Goopi isn't much better than you can expect from the environs, and we have no real reason to go out of our way for one yet.



:

We now interrupt your irregularly scheduled update for a dose of kickin' awesome.

Sometimes, behind the gates, you will find other NPC's like this wandering around. Talk to them, and they decide to pick a fight with you for one reason or another. This one apparently recognizes us. We're famous! ... We've only cleared G-class in the prelims for a tournament that's a long time away, and we're famous!

Oh wow, we have a crazy stalker.



I'll note.

If you are not absolutely sure of your situation and what you are doing, you want to give these people a wiiiide berth. These people do not fuck around. I'm reasonably sure that every one of the monsters you see her bringing to bear right here? ... well, maybe not all quite the same level of a threat as the boss. But close.

All together, the fight is significantly harder than I can expect the boss to be, but hey, I'm a little overleveled still and have a sack full of pocket leaves. And meat! I don't mind saying, the real winner in here is the Ice Man to the far right. But either the Lizard Man on the left, or the Fireweed in the center would still be great to have, even if they are a heck of a lot easier to get ahold of through other means.

Yes, you can absolutely poach other Masters' monsters out in the wild. Why would you not be able to do that? 8)

They're more attached to their Masters than wild monsters are to living in a hole in the mud somewhere, of course.



It's a tough fight.

I have to hope that my monsters know what they're doing, because I can't command them directly. I need Jack's action every round, either to throw meat at the opposition or rub a pocket-leaf in someone's face.

Still, after a lot of rounds duking it out, we pull the win.



You'll note? A really nice xp-gain from a single normal battle in this region is something like 10-15 xp.

So that's something.

You know what you aren't about to see, though? A join-up screen. One rib, two pork chops, and four beef jerky strips just don't cut it, I'm afraid, and I'm not replaying the fight just to hope I can find a free turn to stuff a little more meat down something's throat.

I'll take the xp.







I'll also take those!

XP isn't the only thing you get from the more difficult fights that wandering NPC's represent. Most often, you'll find warriors like this, who will give you two or three random items. Admittedly, the warpwing isn't great, but the defseed is, as those of you familiar with Dragon Quest know, a permanent defense increase item.

It's best used on something you plan to have in your party for a looooong time... but for the most part, stat increases are never entirely lost. At least a little of your monsters' stats will carry on to their offspring through breeding.

In any case, there are three other NPC's I can recall offhand. A Bard, which upon defeat will randomly increase your monsters' attributes permanently. A wizard, who will teleport you to what I think is just the exit to the next level and not the exit of the last level, because if he did he would be the greatest full stop. And a wandering priest, who... will heal your party to full.

Which, yeah, would be great just now. But if you need full healing, then fighting an encounter that you can reasonably expect to be significantly more difficult than the random monsters is sort of...

Anyway.





Thanks to that, most of us are significantly higher than the level they expect us to be at. Our dragon, unfortunately, suffers from the problem common to the Dragon Family. They're somewhat the inverse of Birds, you see. Strong fire and ice attacks, and you can generally expect one to be somewhat more powerful than another monster of the same level... but they increase in level more slowly than other breeds.

It's a shame, but nothing that can't be fixed by grinding for more xp.

In the meantime, should I use that Seed on one of my monsters now, for immediate benefits, or actually make use of the bank a little later and save it for another monster down the line? I wonder...

 

Beats me. Feed it to dragon, I guess.

 

Save it for a better healer. Survivability of the squishy medic is of paramount importance, and most early medics are quite squishy indeed..

 

Keep it in the bank. At the very least, save it for the Sky Dragon.

 

Save it.

 

Save it.

 

Amusingly, just a step to the right.



We find one of these.

I swear these things are rare, and it left me fumbling for a moment before I decided that if we're saving one, we can save both of the magic acorns.

With that said, much like the Gremlin are the winners of the normal encounters in the other dungeon, there's supposed to be a monster here that's better outright than the rest of the dross. Unfortunately, I can only say 'supposed' because either I'm mistaken in my information, or the encounter rate is incredibly low, because I would estimate around two hours worth of walking around on the last level, which would have driven me nuts without the speed-up button, and I didn't see it once. It doesn't help that, this being a point where you actually want as many encounters as you can in order to level your monsters, the encounter rate is kind of low.

It's fun. When we don't want a lot of fights, and there's nothing we're looking for in specific, we're going to start absolutely tripping over things every other step.

With that said, I eventually let the monster-hunting drop because it should show up much more commonly in a later dungeon.

On to the boss.



As someone mentioned, a lot of the boss stages are blatant mock-ups of memorable encounters in other Dragon Quest games. Here we have Golem, guarding a walled village entry! Aaaand we have that jerk Warubou!

They talk, or give the impression of talking, for a few moments and-



Golem sends him flying with a solid junk-punt.

:



: "You. I like you."

Unfortunately, our goodwill is not reciprocated, as when Jack tries to check out the village proper, Golem goes on the offensive.






This ends about as well as you would expect for him.

And about here I weigh my options for a bit. Usually, I'd drop whoever I had as my third here and take Golem into the arena, but at the moment I'm in the unusual situation of having a gremlin in my party that actually has a couple of levels on this guy.

It comes down to a decision about whether I want to weather attacks or just kill things faster so I don't have to take so many hits. In the end, I have the next arena level locked either way, and I go with the second one just to blitz through it a few rounds faster.



The king always has something to say when you beat a boss. It usually isn't important at all!



Aaand I can't remember why I took this shot. It's a mystery to everyone, folks. Showing off levels and hp of our party, maybe? The level 8 dragon still beats out the level nine gremlin very slightly, since the teeny devil has a touch more mp, but I think fire breath costs a touch less. A bigger level gap will change things, but right now they're on even footing.

And Hale is at level ten. An important level, actually. Though, there's still an important skill I want Hale to learn before that level becomes relevant. And the arena.



And there's this guy. Now that you're past G-class, his insider information and tips have more use. He tells us who we'll be fighting in the final match, what their monsters are, and generally something to watch out for or take advantage of. In this case, two pieces of advice. The magic kangaroo will sap your defense and, startlingly, the bird will fly.

The first couple of matches are also predetermined, but you don't get information on those. Which is fair because they're generally just schlubs softening you up for the real fight.



Like this. I wouldn't say a full party of slime monsters is a bad call, really... but using a party made entirely of the same monster three times is questionable even if it's a really good monster, and Spot-Slimes... aren't, really. Their biggest problem is that they have a 'calling for help' skill that might hurt a bit, and maybe they'll be able to duplicate an attack you use on them if they survive. This can be a problem if they do, but if you're using the big guns that could be trouble for you to eat, then they probably aren't going to live long enough to throw it back in your face.

This aside, they can stun you with a lick, but they're mostly just here to force you to use mp killing them and maybe shave your hp down a hair.



The second fight is a similar batch of jobbers who can at best hope to annoy you as you pass through.

The dangerous one is that unicorn rabbit in the middle. It might deal some damage to you. The mud dolls on either side, however, are the frustrating ones that you want to hope go down first. You see, they will spend their turns devouring your mp instead of attacking.

Let this fight get drawn out and you'll still win, but you'll be prepared to eat a loss in the final round. These guys have to know that there's no chance of victory, either, and that they're just there to lose a couple teeth getting in your way. Got to be kind of a depressing job.



This is the final fight, and the only really serious one. The zombie dog didn't get mentioned in our friendly tips, but it's probably because there's little to say about it. It's thematic and fills a slot. It's only really trouble if the skull kangaroo murders your defense stat.

The raven does fly in battle. This can be trouble, if you're trying to nail it with physical attacks, and is probably the biggest reason not to go with golem if you have other reasonable options. Stack of bricks will always try to punch the damn bird first and waste his turns. Between fire breath and fire balls, though, all three of the enemies drop after only a few rounds.

Dragon is being unusually sparing with the breath attacks, though. Not sure what's up with that.



And so we advance in rank, but still do not receive any form of payment for our efforts! There are, as ever, a couple of changes around the Great Tree to commemorate our efforts.



To start, that nervous guy from before? Bit the bullet, ground a few levels, and skipped in front of us to E-class. He's kind of gotten a bit of a swelled head over it!



More importantly, it means that little brat's given up and stepped out of the way, leaving us with free access to the bottom level of the Great Tree.

: "I can't imagine what mysterious wonders await. ... Does anyone smell something a little funky?"

 

When was the last time you took a bath?

 

I suspect Jack is about to investigate the king's secret sex dungeon.

 

This isn't in the NSFW section. It will be the king's secret 'playroom', instead.

You just happen to use it to breed monsters.

 

There's a few different rooms here. We'll start with the nearest.



It's the family home of that brat who was blocking the stairs. The father is full of misplaced pride for his daughter, and the mother only has an interest in the gender of your next-door neighbor. Really. I... guess it's to simulate small talk? Though I'm not sure how many people come out and ask if you're one hundred percent sure what gender the people living next to you are, to break the ice.

More importantly, in the corner, there's a traveler's gate.



And hey, it's easy to tell where the brat got her annoyance. It's an inherited trait, I guess! There's no getting past this guy right now.



But on the plus side, we can rob a tiny medal from these people, so the room is a net positive.

There's another room to the right, containing...



: "..... And that is?"

This lady talks to the baby monsters inside their egg. No really. There's reasons to do this sometimes, mostly because it determines which gender it is. More usefully, she can also 'bless' your egg. The only effect of this is to change which gender the baby monster is when it hatches, in case you didn't like what the random numbers decided. It's actually pretty important, because the worst thing is to accidentally hatch the wrong gender for something you're planning to turn into a better monster. It can easily be fixed, but it still feels like, and is, a huge waste of time.



Down near the stairs, we have a rabid dude with a sack on his head that insists we can't come in because we'll steal 'his Betty'.

... not going here. Remember kids, no matter what Twilight says, there is in fact a pretty solid line between 'romance' and 'creepy stalker'!

Let's go downstairs instead.

: "Pyeew.... it smells a lot stronger down here than when I came out..."



: "I'm the Master Monster Tamer. No I'm not competing in the tournament! Against the rules. I run this... ahem. 'Shrine'."

: "What's with the air-quotes? And, no, more importantly... what's the smell."

: "Sorry, sorry. There's this thing the king asked us to do with orcs and a bubble slime... well, let's not get into it. We're airing out now, and it should be mostly like it was before inside a couple of days."

: "Holy cow, what happens in here."

: "Well, my boy, I'm not sure how to handle this. But you see, sometimes when one monster loves another very much.... or you have an intense matchmaking program to see through to the end, or you're incredibly infuriated over something-"

: "Stop! NO! I don't want to know!"

: "Eh, the short of it is that we 'wed' monsters here. And then an egg happens. You don't get the married monsters back, I'm afraid."

: "They go on honeymoon?"

: "It's really less marriage and more complete genetic recon.... you know what? Yes. Yes, they go on honeymoon. Forever."

: "Neat!"

This is where you go to breed your monsters. As mentioned, you get an egg out of it, but you don't get the monsters back. Choose wisely!

The monsters have to be at least level 10 to breed. Because Reasons. And while you can breed them the second they turn ten, it's usually better to wait a little, or a lot, longer than that. You see, skills and stat points carry over from parents to child, and it's better to have as many of both as possible. So you want to increase levels as much as you can. There's an individual level cap, though, that only gets raised by a '+#' mark, which you get through breeding... so there's also something to be said for throwing monsters into the shrine quickly, and increasing that modifier, so that you can increase the usefulness of a mon you want to keep in your party through plain old traditional level grinding.

In any case, of our monsters, only Hale is ten or above, so we won't be using the shrine much yet. So we climb up a pillar of ivy that stops clinging to anything really quickly, up to the farm.



For the most part, that's all we can do with the shrine. We can hatch the egg, but I'm not sure we want the SkyDragon jus-pft, yeah, I'm joking. This egg is pretty great, and we probably want to swap our normal Dragon out with it pretty soon. I'm gonna need a four-character name and your choice of gender for the Sky Dragon and I'll make that happen.

Now that we've been there, though... the Queen will actually give us the time of day.

Along with an imperious Crownly Command.







As far as royal demands go, this one is pretty easily fulfilled. Some monsters are tricky to get ahold of, you have to breed precisely this monster with exactly that one, and one or both might be something that you already have to plot a perfect monster-schlupping course through treacherous and musky shrine-stink waters to get ahold of.

Wing Slime, however, is one of the majority that are easily made by just breeding any of one monster family with any of another. In this case, it's Any Slime, bred with Any Bird. The order is important, switch that around and you'll get something completely different.

I'll fulfill this reasonably soon, but like I said, there's another skill I want Hale to learn before I play any shrine-based tentacle merging games with him. Once he gets that, free game for breeding! I have a post-Wingslime plan half mentally charted out too, so no trouble.

Again though, Name and Gender for the Sky Dragon folks.

 

[X] Hong
[X] F

 

The Green Dragon is male, correct?

[X] Haly
[X] F

 

[X] Shen
[X] Female

Opposite gender of Dran, so we can breed them and make a Sky Dragon +2

 

Unless I'm drastically misremembering breeding sequences, I have a much nicer final result in mind for those two than just that. Well, it wouldn't be super-hard to get a second Dran through breeding, though.

I could well be totally misremembering things, though, and have to fumble to find the right combinations again!

 

What are you planning on getting?

 

It'll take a while, but the Divine Dragon is a hell of a drug.

.... huge xp-to-level costs, mind, but it's not like you're going to watch me grinding up a hundred xp to go from level one to two.

Metal King, or Gold Slime if I feel like pushing it that far, is pretty loltastic too. I don't feel like catching enough Metal Slimes to breed it up the 'right' way, though, so I'm thinking of taking the back-door route I half remember, advancing Slib to King Slime and breeding it from that. I'm pretty sure that gets you one with nice HP too, which makes it even more hilarious.

Not solid on the third, beyond "It's not going to be one of those crazy Final Boss Family monsters". There's just... jesus, I have limits. Hilarious as going through the tournament with Zoma, Pizarro, and Deathmore 3 might be, I don't have the billion years it'll take to breed those monstrosities up.

 

Battle Rex + Golem = Andreal
Devil Monster + Dragon Monster = Medusa Eye
Andreal + Medusa Eye = Orochi
Orochi + Sky Dragon = Divinegon

God bless Google. Also, thanks for the idea for my party. Now I have a Divinegon, King Slime, and a holder monster until I think of a good third one.

 

Selias, can I have the link to that please?
I remembered making a White King, Gold Slime and the monster that is Rose-something, but I forgot the exact name of it.

 

http://www.ign.com/faqs/2005/dragon-quest-monsters-rare-monster-breeding-tipsfaq-586973
Rosevine?

 

Yes! Thank you! :3

 

No problem.

 

Hm, I recall Dragon + BattleRex = GreatDrak. And GreatDrak subbing in for Andreal, but with better techniques and stats to carry forward.

That could just be my memory going, but while they give you one 'correct' breeding path for some of these things, there's sometimes other paths to reach the same-ish result. Like that Metal King, if I remember right, probably won't have all of the ludicrous defense from breeding four metal slimes together, but at the same time it won't suffer from the miniscule HP that will carry forward.

 

There's actually a couple of people that I had completely forgotten, hanging out directly next to the ring. They're actually fairly useful! Since this is going to be a little short, I'll mention them.



Apparently, these two are veterans, and they've been behind a lot of the travelers' gates. As those gates become relevant, they give you information about them, mostly the monsters you can regularly find.

Here, she mentions Goopis, Pillowrats, Dragonkids, Catapilas, Pickys, and Fairydraks. We'll probably want to catch a dragonkid for the barbecue thing, since I'm half-thinking of things to do with Gremlin. The rest I'm seeing are a lot of shrugs and well-maybe's.

Sometimes they mention a specific monster to watch out for.



She warns you that they can call for help, which is frankly actually kind of worth the warning even though you might have already seen that in the arena. It's a much bigger problem in the wilderness, with limited healing, than as the first fight of three.

She also mentions the boss, which I won't go into detail here now except that we'll be seeing him first. He's strong and fast, but compared to the other boss, the fight is simple, direct, and easy. He also has less hp.

Anyway. ... The evaluation really needs to be seen once, at least, to appreciate it. Here goes.







This is a pretty good reading! Though, it seems to relate more to stats than actually referring to how fast the monster grows. More increases per level, rather than actually leveling faster. We were already looking forward to that a bit, because this is a dragon!




And this is also good to hear, but in a material sense that means I don't have to pay a little extra for in-vitro transexual magic to get the right gender out of this! Things are coming up nicely, even if I have to shell out to the wizard downstairs because of course eggs don't just hatch on their own why would you think that happens?





Haha, look at those level one stats. You'll probably see much better newborns later on, but this is still very nice. More MP just out of the egg than Dragon has at level eight!

This is actually really important, because it means that Hong will be belching more fire, for much longer. Especially when levels increase and stuff happens with skills. Sustainability, folks!

I'll probably have to shoot through a cleared dungeon once or twice to get the levels right to venture in a boss-controlled area, mind you, and xp looks like Hong is going to level at roughly the same rate as you could expect from a dragon, sadly. Well, it'll be worth it, though.

 

Hey Chibi!
I found a another comprehensive guide for the breeding part~
Now I'm on my way to create a Slime King!

 

Yay! Meiling will be proud!

 

Brief notes on Things That Happened While Grinding.



An ArmyAnt joined! I didn't feed it any meat, though. I'm starting to wonder if I might have exaggerated join rates, or if it's just that I'm still in early dungeons where beef jerky would mean anything.



That monster I was looking for started showing up!

It seems like it's the opposite of gremlin: the MiniDrak shows up more often on the first couple of levels, rather than the gremlin showing on the last one(s?).



I keep running into enemy NPC's!






It's good for the XP, at least! These guys get a lot less concerning if you don't have a boss at the end of the levels to keep in mind, and they're at least somewhat scaled to the gate. Would be awesome if any of their monsters would turn coats, but no such luck so far.

It seems like the warriors always give you a wing, in the spoils, but the other item is random. In this case it's a book. I use it on Hong because I can't remember what it does, and hey, it changes personalities!

I cant' remember what personalities do, so I look. Apparently they play a factor I've never seen in link-cable breeding? But otherwise they're entirely related to the Battle Plan and how well a monster acts with it.

If you'll remember, Hong is a Rebel. Rebel is... a pretty shitty personality, when all's said? Ranging from shrug-worthy to outright bad. To be honest, you can crush the game without giving a single crap about monster personalities, but supposedly they also effect little things.

A monster good with Charge plans might inflict more criticals, where a monster bad with them might take more critical hits, to start. For mixed, on one end they might ignore resistances while on the other they might ignore what you say and do whatever they please. Similarly, a good Cautious monster might sometimes heal without spending MP, where a bad one, fantastically enough, might use another monster as a meat-shield. Which would be kind of hilarious to see.

In the end, I've never actually seen any of these things happen one way or the other! Though since I normally just put attackers on Charge and healers on Caution and then mash the fight button, I guess I might not have. Some of it seems kind of subtle.

Fortunately, while your levels are still low (pre-11), it's reasonably easy to change personality. Just keep wasting your turns giving instructions to follow a specific plan, and it'll eventually change. Since I'm just going to mash the fight button anyway, it doesn't hurt, though I might want to keep that in mind later on to run through a weak dungeon a couple of times to get the personality in good shape before I hit a stronger one and clear a dozen levels in a single battle.



This thing joins! Still not throwing any meat at the randoms.



And Hong is now a HOT BLOODED SHOUJO THAT TALKS IN ALLCAPS though she doesn't actually talk in allcaps. She does yell a lot though, as you'll see.



Remember I said I keep running into NPC's? They're supposed to be rare, but there's this guy and there were a couple of negligible priests that I don't screenshot.

I confirmed, this guy is mister fantastic. Beat him and he'll drop you on the last level of the dungeon, or twenty levels down, whichever he finds sooner.

Dungeons can wind up being significantly longer than twenty levels, incidentally. It's how they pretend this game is getting hard, later on.

And before I finish, I'll show the one thing that I did remember that Personality does effect.

Tea party conversation.



Reckless. Kind of good, but mostly bad. Doesn't matter, since this thing is fusion Breeding fodder!




Cool/Calm. Okay to mostly good. Suffers slightly on the offense, but we want Hale buffing and healing anyway, so it works out.




HOT BLOODED SHOUJO SCREAMING. But Hong is quick to chill down and reassure you that things are fine. Hot Blood is apparently the best personality, somehow good in all areas. Since Hong is only ever going to have three skills, she won't make much use of the personality, but I thought it was funny.

STAY TUNED, as we resume story progression. Next time!

 

We have a hot-blooded dragon in our party. Now we can make an anime out of it.

 

.....

I see Jack riding into battle on Hong's back, that little bat-bird thing on his head, all screaming. Meanwhile, Hale has a trench-coat and fedora off to the side, quietly smoking a cigarette and waiting for the opportune moment.

 

We will do that when we rescue our sister