Why must grotto bosses be so much harder than the grottos themselves? I finally took down Equinox, but now I'm faced against Nemean, who can pretty much one-shot party members at will.
Edit: On the plus side, I got a Dragon Whip from Equinox. The map lists it as a 10% drop, so does that mean I got lucky there or something? How exactly does grotto loot work, will the boss eventually respawn and I can try again for a shot at the same loot? Now that I can take down Equinox, can I get additional maps from the first grotto, which might have easier bosses?
You got somewhat lucky. Bosses in grotto can drop 3 things, a map, a 10% drop which you can usually find somewhere / alchemize, and a super rare and often awesome 2% drop item.
As for how it respawns, it's pretty easy. Once you're out, close the map with Y. Next time you'll open the map, the boss and chests will have respawned.
So are there female warrior gloves or will my full set be incomplete for my main? Because at Bloomingdale I could get all the warrior armor for my heroine except a chest piece and gloves. I assume the chest is from the level 15 warrior quest, but the fact that the gloves say something about how they're suited for many adventurers and yet they're male only gets me pretty miffed.
Final boss is infuriating. The guy has like 15 attacks to choose from and a warrior all alone on the front line who'd be happy to eat them, but nooooo. All he ever does is sleep/paralyze my Priest and Minstrel and kills them before I can fix them up. Or he simply WTFpwns them by using his two most powerful nukes in quick succession. Or he gets a critical virtually every time he attacks one of them. All while ignoring the goddamned tank, whose aggro-drawing abilities don't ever seem to work against bosses.
Part of the problem is that I've got kind of a bad team dynamic. Warrior's good, but I'm given to understand that a Pally is way better at drawing aggro. I was expecting the Minstrel to be the weak link, but she's actually very useful for secondary healing and damage. Priest pretty much falls over whenever someone sneezes on him -- he seems to get hit by crits more often than anyone else on the team, and has the lowest health. Thief is fucking useless, jesus. How was I supposed to know that his two upper-tier abilities don't even function in grottoes (or on any blue chests for that matter), which is pretty much the one thing I was expecting him to be useful for? Terrible stats on him... he's only good for his coup de grace. What a worthless class.
How possible is it to grind up levels before the post-game? I'm thinking I need to respec my Warrior into a Pally and my Thief into something non-shitty.
Meh. The passive steal scroll is cool, but works so rarely that it doesn't seem to be that worth the effort. I think I'd have been better off temporarily multiclassing all my guys until they learned the steal ability, and then moved on.
The only redeeming quality I can see in leveling the thief skils beyond that is to getting the permanent speed boosts.
The section on the Tower of Nod in the guide is pretty funny, the narrator sounds pretty excited about finding them some Metal King Slimes. Even then it's not very clear, it seems to expect you to run into them by the 3rd or 4th floor.
It's not much to go on, but there you go. I myself have yet to see one of the metallic menaces meandering about, but I didn't stick it out long.
Hey so, is there any way to make money with alchemy? I figure something's gotta be worth more than the sum of the parts. I find myself in need of a huge amount of cash so I can catch up on gear, and accessories that I can alchemize but not buy. Stupid liquid metal slimes and their 40g.
Where in the Tower of Nod do Metal King Slimes appear?
5th Floor. They don't have their own sprite there, though. Just a chance to be in a fight with other things.
As for fans being great Metal Killers, there are fans that, outside of the very rare dodge, never miss metal slimes so a few of those + Fandango for everyone...
Ear Cozies are easier at the start. Your ultimate goal is to get one of the 3 ingredients up to 99, then 2. That way you only have to make 1 run to the store per cycle for 2-3 times. Eventually, you'll be able to carry 99 of each item required, t that point you can start doing it 11 times in a row, and once you get to about 200-300k, you can move over to gold mail.
Gold mail is easier due to all it's parts being equipment, so you can just hit buy, then left, to get 99.
You can do the same thing with all the parts for Ear Cozies if you fill up your character's hands with items, like medical herbs.
Hm pretty slim margin but it's better than losing money at it. I'll take it up when I've got enough cash to put together 10 sets at a time and start from there. Zoom exploitation HOOOOOOO!
EDIT: That was a comment about the mail but if I read my numbers correctly it'll take dozens of trips to make enough profit to justify the time. Thanks for the tip about Ear Cozies.
Where in the Tower of Nod do Metal King Slimes appear?
I'm interested in that info as well !
Who was calling you a cheater? o.O? And what for?
Stella has a comment on the Battle Records if you've never wiped where she's like "What!? All these battles and you've never wiped out? Is that even flapping possible!? You're not cheating are you?"
Where in the Tower of Nod do Metal King Slimes appear?
5th Floor. They don't have their own sprite there, though. Just a chance to be in a fight with other things.
As for fans being great Metal Killers, there are fans that, outside of the very rare dodge, never miss metal slimes so a few of those + Fandango for everyone...
Where in the Tower of Nod do Metal King Slimes appear?
5th Floor. They don't have their own sprite there, though. Just a chance to be in a fight with other things.
As for fans being great Metal Killers, there are fans that, outside of the very rare dodge, never miss metal slimes so a few of those + Fandango for everyone...
So trying to get a grotto map deep enough to have Minstrel Moai's in it is proving, vexxing. Its the last damn thing I need before I change over my class composition for probably the last time.
The parts of an ear cozy cost 550g, 240g and 180g, and you need one of each. Given an amount of money, what would be the expression that tells you how many ear cozies you can make? I'm making a terrible mess of trying to work it out on my own. Once I have enough cash to buy full stacks of each component it won't matter but until then I'd rather stop mostly guessing and coming up short on one or another bit.
The parts of an ear cozy cost 550g, 240g and 180g, and you need one of each. Given an amount of money, what would be the expression that tells you how many ear cozies you can make? I'm making a terrible mess of trying to work it out on my own. Once I have enough cash to buy full stacks of each component it won't matter but until then I'd rather stop mostly guessing and coming up short on one or another bit.
x = 550+240+180
Where X is equal to 1 ear cozy. 970, that is.
Thereofre, take your amount of money and buy Money/970 worth of each piece.
OR, go to buy the first part, the 550, and buy exactly half of the number of those you can afford, maybe chopping off 5 or so for the imbalance, and the numbers equal out about right (550 for that part, 420 for the other 2). You'll have extra bits left over the first few times you do it, but you'll gain about 10% of your money back each time, and very quickly will end up just buying 99 of everything.
Masayuki's map has those stupid Minstrel Moais in it, which brings up a hard question. I used less than ethical means to get Masayuki's Map -- is using it cheating? It's pretty much considered required over in Japan, and having tried to find slimes in the Tower of Nod / having tried to grind off Liquid Metal Slimes post level 30, I can see why. My concern with it and the Locker is burning past the early, hard parts of the postgame. Hell, I'm having a hard time even justifying using grotto location maps to try and simplify finding the damned things.
If I toss out Masayuki's Map, can I ever get it again?
For the record, BTW, Masayuki's map is L87, and the Minstrel Moais don't start appearing until the middle levels, which means you should start seeing them around L80 maps around floor 15.
Are we getting a new DLC quest today? I connected to DQVC, it said downloading, but I got... nothing. The shop is there, but the same items as yesterday (and I bought all of them then).
Edit: Saying I connected today, hope I didn't bugger up the DLC by connecting during maintenance.
I've heard about this DLC problem. I'm not that far yet to actually use it yet, but what exactly is the issue? You connect once at a bad time, and your DLC is forever boned? Or it's just screwed up for the day, and you have to wait for the next day's batch? The latter is an annoyance but manageable, but if it's the former... well now I'm scared to even try logging on.
The Wolfman on
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
It's not a permanent mess-up, I think the last time it happened it happened to everybody at various times of the day. I think it was messed up for everybody for the whole 24 hours, because I only heard about the new quest going up the next day. I don't think anybody got the quest that same day.
I hit harder. New record: 6896. 100 Tension, Double Up, Life Fource, Blind Man's Biff. MIGHT have been a critical on top of that. Next time I'll lower his defense twice and see if I can't hit 9999.
He dropped a Steel Mine grotto map, will have to try that tomorrow.
God, what? So I'm fighting this Gum Shield and it uses that annoying sidestep thing where you practically are guaranteed to never hit them, and my thief and priest both get their attacks evaded. But when his turn comes around he gets enthralled, and my warrior kills him because he doesn't dodge. That is some blatant cheating right there, how did he get into that counter stance without actually doing it? Because he obviously did to counter my first two attacks, and then magically he's out of it. I hate that move and this just confirms for me that it exists solely for the computer to cheat with it.
Huh. That's an odd bug, Gilder. I imagine the way it worked was:
AI decides he will use sidestep
Sidestep effect starts
Your moves miss
AI's turn
AI rolls to be enthralled, fails
AI is enthralled, but WOULD have used the ability
...
Profit.
Wonder what happens if your Paladin is knocked out of Forebodance.
I can sort of see how it makes sense, but it works in the sense that the enemy is given all the turn advantages. Basically the way I understand it is that that move has priority like defend, which I find crap anyway for it to have that priority, and that the computer doesn't roll for enthrallment until it's their turn. That way it technically was able to use the move because it wasn't affected yet and because it has such high priority it still got it off. I would say this also works in favor for your team, like if you use defend and get paralyzed before you technically used defend, but it's different because in that example there's no chance for enthrallment with the enemy. So it's really not the same.
tl;dr: Fuck that sidestep and counter move, especially on gum shields. They don't need defend, sidestep, AND a random chance of blocking the move entirely. Oh and also I've been fighting these guys a lot for money, so in addition to those moves I want to state that, from my findings, that sidestep is 100% impenetrable. There's a chance on the wooper guys to break it, but I have not once successfully broken a gum shield sidestep.
A helpful warning to people who are playing on a DSi/XL. When the system is in sleep mode, be careful when you pick it up. Evidently, the system has a safety mechanism in place, where if you so much as graze the card slot and depress it in slightly, the system will turn itself off. With all the unfortunate ramifications there-in.
At least the contagion boss was pretty dang easy. Though I'm more chuffed at having to redo that slow walkabout that follows.
The Wolfman on
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
For some reason Ranger is a bit underwhelming. I went boomerangs (because I fell in love with them in DQ7 and used them all throughout DQ8) and she's now level 11 but barely doing any notable damage still. She's got an edged boomerang and we're at Bloomingdale.
Also, there's like...no armor for her right now. It's kind of off putting since Bloomingdale has class specific armor for every other class I have right now.
Also, the best place to fight metal slimes other than if you want the kings is the plateau directly northeast of Angel Falls (you have to be post-game). That place is awesome, you get fights with shit like 5 liquid metal slimes. One time I got a fight with 4 liquid metals and 3 medleys, and only missed one of each. In general it's way nicer too because even if you're rarely able to kill all the slimes that show up you usually get at least one or two. Not to mention it's like on top of a town instead of in a crappy dungeon somewhere.
Are you talking about the place with a bunch of normal slimes and king slimes, with a cave? I wasn't there long enough to see if there were metals.
Posts
You got somewhat lucky. Bosses in grotto can drop 3 things, a map, a 10% drop which you can usually find somewhere / alchemize, and a super rare and often awesome 2% drop item.
As for how it respawns, it's pretty easy. Once you're out, close the map with Y. Next time you'll open the map, the boss and chests will have respawned.
You use it, it hits you with sap and 2 doses of Oomph. Lasts for a very long while.
For advanced jobs: It's usually who unlocks the job.
For weapons: Swinedimples
For everything else: All over the place.
Part of the problem is that I've got kind of a bad team dynamic. Warrior's good, but I'm given to understand that a Pally is way better at drawing aggro. I was expecting the Minstrel to be the weak link, but she's actually very useful for secondary healing and damage. Priest pretty much falls over whenever someone sneezes on him -- he seems to get hit by crits more often than anyone else on the team, and has the lowest health. Thief is fucking useless, jesus. How was I supposed to know that his two upper-tier abilities don't even function in grottoes (or on any blue chests for that matter), which is pretty much the one thing I was expecting him to be useful for? Terrible stats on him... he's only good for his coup de grace. What a worthless class.
How possible is it to grind up levels before the post-game? I'm thinking I need to respec my Warrior into a Pally and my Thief into something non-shitty.
The only redeeming quality I can see in leveling the thief skils beyond that is to getting the permanent speed boosts.
DQ6 and DQMJ2 and DQMBRV are all more likely the more DQ9 sells.
Is it wrong that i went and wiped my team just so Stellar would stop telling me i was a cheater ?
I'm interested in that info as well !
It's not much to go on, but there you go. I myself have yet to see one of the metallic menaces meandering about, but I didn't stick it out long.
Gold Mail:
Silver Mail from Bloomingdale
Gold Ring and Gold Bracer from Llaffan
Total cost: 4570
Sells for: 4900
Total profit= 330g.
As for fans being great Metal Killers, there are fans that, outside of the very rare dodge, never miss metal slimes so a few of those + Fandango for everyone...
3DS: 1607-3034-6970
Gold mail is easier due to all it's parts being equipment, so you can just hit buy, then left, to get 99.
You can do the same thing with all the parts for Ear Cozies if you fill up your character's hands with items, like medical herbs.
EDIT: That was a comment about the mail but if I read my numbers correctly it'll take dozens of trips to make enough profit to justify the time. Thanks for the tip about Ear Cozies.
Who was calling you a cheater? o.O? And what for?
3DS: 1607-3034-6970
Holy crap, wow. That's scary awesome.
Is it "5th floor or above" or "just 5th floor"?
Holy crap, wow. That's scary awesome.
Is it "5th floor or above" or "just 5th floor"?
Zoma fight in DQ9:
With the best DQ Boss fight music ever.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woMc_vJ6tSg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKCZtwVXW3M&feature=related
The parts of an ear cozy cost 550g, 240g and 180g, and you need one of each. Given an amount of money, what would be the expression that tells you how many ear cozies you can make? I'm making a terrible mess of trying to work it out on my own. Once I have enough cash to buy full stacks of each component it won't matter but until then I'd rather stop mostly guessing and coming up short on one or another bit.
x = 550+240+180
Where X is equal to 1 ear cozy. 970, that is.
Thereofre, take your amount of money and buy Money/970 worth of each piece.
OR, go to buy the first part, the 550, and buy exactly half of the number of those you can afford, maybe chopping off 5 or so for the imbalance, and the numbers equal out about right (550 for that part, 420 for the other 2). You'll have extra bits left over the first few times you do it, but you'll gain about 10% of your money back each time, and very quickly will end up just buying 99 of everything.
Masayuki's map has those stupid Minstrel Moais in it, which brings up a hard question. I used less than ethical means to get Masayuki's Map -- is using it cheating? It's pretty much considered required over in Japan, and having tried to find slimes in the Tower of Nod / having tried to grind off Liquid Metal Slimes post level 30, I can see why. My concern with it and the Locker is burning past the early, hard parts of the postgame. Hell, I'm having a hard time even justifying using grotto location maps to try and simplify finding the damned things.
If I toss out Masayuki's Map, can I ever get it again?
Edit: Saying I connected today, hope I didn't bugger up the DLC by connecting during maintenance.
Were people who connected during the maintenance period screwed? I wish they had some feedback here. "Server down, maintenance, etc".
I hit harder. New record: 6896. 100 Tension, Double Up, Life Fource, Blind Man's Biff. MIGHT have been a critical on top of that. Next time I'll lower his defense twice and see if I can't hit 9999.
He dropped a Steel Mine grotto map, will have to try that tomorrow.
Edit: Also, I was wrong about the Minstrel Moais:
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/937281-dragon-quest-ix-sentinels-of-the-starry-skies/55674123
If my math is right, they're rank 8 monsters, meaning you'll need to see a dungeon with a Copper or higher prefix.
AI decides he will use sidestep
Sidestep effect starts
Your moves miss
AI's turn
AI rolls to be enthralled, fails
AI is enthralled, but WOULD have used the ability
...
Profit.
Wonder what happens if your Paladin is knocked out of Forebodance.
tl;dr: Fuck that sidestep and counter move, especially on gum shields. They don't need defend, sidestep, AND a random chance of blocking the move entirely. Oh and also I've been fighting these guys a lot for money, so in addition to those moves I want to state that, from my findings, that sidestep is 100% impenetrable. There's a chance on the wooper guys to break it, but I have not once successfully broken a gum shield sidestep.
At least the contagion boss was pretty dang easy. Though I'm more chuffed at having to redo that slow walkabout that follows.
I got a quest last night, but I guess I'm too low level to accept it
Also, there's like...no armor for her right now. It's kind of off putting since Bloomingdale has class specific armor for every other class I have right now.