Dragon Quest 8 - I'm getting my hero ass handed to me. Need help. [MINOR SPOILERS]

[ninja666]

So, a few days ago I started playing Dragon Quest 8. Holy fuck is it hard. I'm currently at the quest to explore the ruins of the old part of Maella Abbey to be able to access the abbot's mansion from behind and meet the jester. I can't do it, though. No matter how well I fight, I either die or end every fight, even with the trashiest of jobbers, critically wounded. Does this game expect me to run around and grind to infinity in order to have an appropriate level for each and every quest or something? I haven't been grinding at all since the beginning and managed to get by just fine, but the moment I stepped out of this goddamn ferry, the difficulty spiked up so rapidly it's unbelievable. Any advice? Currently my party looks like this:

Hero - lvl 12
- Copper Sword (14 in swords, 9 in courage, 0 in everything else)
- Leather Hat
- Scale Armor
- Scale Shield

Yangus - lvl 12
- Stone Axe (16 in Axes, 13 in Clubs, 9 in Humanity, 0 in everything else)
- Pointy Hat
- Chainmail
- Scale Shield

Jessica - lvl 10
- Thorned Whip (4 in Whips, 3 in staves, 2 in Sex Appeal, 0 in everything else)
- Feathered Hat
- Silk Robe
- Scale Shield

EDIT: I'd also appreciate some advice on how to make Jessica useful cause as for now, she sucks at everything.

 

[ninja666]

It's been a couple of years ince I last played it, do you have the monster summoning ability? It can really help out in some scenerios.

If it's a spell for someone, then no, I don't. However I remember getting the Whistle skill for Yangus. I'm pretty sure that's not it, though, since I can't use it in battle.

I'm pretty sure Jessica should only have staves since she's the black mage of the game, whips aren't that helpful and Hero and Yangus are responsible for damage, the 4th party member should focus on healing and support.

[...]

Keep giving the Hero sword skills, I'd recommend giving Yangus only axes.

All right, I'll keep that in mind. Although I wonder why even bother with giving you 4 weapon types for each character to use, when only one is viable, while the other 3 suck?

 

[Comic Sans]

I had trouble with this section my first time too. I would grind to around level 15, and upgrade your gear when possible. Check the sellers at Peregrine Quay and Simpleton and make sure your gear is up to snuff. Craft yourself some stronger healing items. Putting two herbs in the crafting pot is a cheap way to boost healing and conserve MP. As for character builds, I am not a crazy optimizer or anything so I'm not gonna comment much on it. Except that Sex Appeal is only any good if power leveled, as the abilities tend to drop off hard. I leveled it and Staves my first time through and almost never used Sex Appeal abilities. I'd say for Jessica the best two to level up are Staves and Whips. Staves give good spells and support options, and can give a lot of extra MP if you wanna cast a lot. Any spells you learn from the spell tree are kept even if not using a staff. Whips are great on her for the damage. They are a little weak early, but early on you get a whip ability called Twin Dragon Lash that is crazy strong against single enemies, especially if she's psyched up or has a damage buff cast on her. So having points in both Staves and Whips is probably ideal so you can deal with different scenarios.

There is some grinding required in this game but generally it's not too bad. This is one of the few areas I needed to since as you said it's a difficulty spike. General rule of areas is to have upgraded a characters gear every two shops or so and level up a few times every area. Generally around 5 levels total between bosses will keep you safe.

 

[Arpegus]

Yeah, all I can say about Dragonquest games like 8, is that the best skills are unlocked later in each skill tree. Thus, you want to focus in putting ALL of your points in one tree early on, so you can get those powerful abilities earlier. The reason for possible variety, I believe, is that a generally bad weapon tree might be super helpful later for certain types of enemies. Late in the game, the only real way to level grind is to kill metal slimes, and those are much easier to do with spears and claws, despite those weapons sucking for most of the game.

Dragonquest 8 is a great game, but I wish there was more of an option to unlock all skills like there are in other games of the series.

 

[ninja666]

I had trouble with this section my first time too. I would grind to around level 15, and upgrade your gear when possible. Check the sellers at Peregrine Quay and Simpleton and make sure your gear is up to snuff. Craft yourself some stronger healing items. Putting two herbs in the crafting pot is a cheap way to boost healing and conserve MP.

[...]

There is some grinding required in this game but generally it's not too bad. This is one of the few areas I needed to since as you said it's a difficulty spike. General rule of areas is to have upgraded a characters gear every two shops or so and level up a few times every area. Generally around 5 levels total between bosses will keep you safe.

Thanks for the advice. Looks like I have to mentally prepare myself for a few hours of grinding, with some alchemy inbetween, then.

As for character builds, I am not a crazy optimizer or anything so I'm not gonna comment much on it.

I'm not one either. I just want to play the game, progress, and not die.

I'd say for Jessica the best two to level up are Staves and Whips. Staves give good spells and support options, and can give a lot of extra MP if you wanna cast a lot. Any spells you learn from the spell tree are kept even if not using a staff. Whips are great on her for the damage. They are a little weak early, but early on you get a whip ability called Twin Dragon Lash that is crazy strong against single enemies, especially if she's psyched up or has a damage buff cast on her. So having points in both Staves and Whips is probably ideal so you can deal with different scenarios.

I guess I'll focus on levelling up the Staves skill, then cause I'll have more use of Jessica as a caster. In her case, no melee is a viable option, no?

About the monster team, on your way to Pikham (I don't know if you've been there already) you'll find a guy with striking resemblance to Mr. Satan, do his quest and you get and awesome ability.

When I saw Kalderasha, I said to myself "It's fuckin' Mr Satan!" and now you're telling there's a guy out there who looks even more like him? Lol, can't wait to meet him.

 

[anthony87]

If I remember correctly, around that area is where Ding-a-Ling's will spawn. You can cheese these guys to get some good early game grinding in. What you do is let them keep calling more of themselves until there's 8, kill 7 of them and then let that one summon more until there's 8 again, rinse and repeat until your sanity runs out and you can get yourself a few levels.

Also, have you unlocked Super High Tension yet?

 

[ninja666]

If I remember correctly, around that area is where Ding-a-Ling's will spawn. You can cheese these guys to get some good early game grinding in. What you do is let them keep calling more of themselves until there's 8, kill 7 of them and then let that one summon more until there's 8 again, rinse and repeat until your sanity runs out and you can get yourself a few levels.

That would work, if Ding-a-Lings actually spawned themselves. I don't know if it's my shitty luck or not, but the only thing they spawned was the yellow dinosaur thing holding a jar (forgot its name).

Also, have you unlocked Super High Tension yet?

Nope. But don't spoil when or where it unlocks. I'd like to have at least a partial element of surprise.

 

[aozgolo]

To be honest Level 12 sounds pretty low for that area, if you're at the Maella Abbey area, try going a bit past it to the Ascantha region, there's even a church next to the bridge over a river that's a great hub to go get XP, you can go out and fight, then run to the church when you need to heal up or revive someone.

Alchemy is EVERYTHING in that game, if you want to have powerful heroes you really need to use it. I tend to cheat a bit and look at recipes online but just by searching in-game you can find a lot of really good ones, try to make as many weapons and armor as you can, and always have AT LEAST the best armor from shops before going into dungeons.

As for builds, there is no wrong build, all paths are viable, and there are excellent end-game weapons for each route. I would advise sticking to 1 or 2 paths at a time though to unlock the various skills and bonuses associated.

As for grinding, some is required, but not a crazy amount, how much is kind of up to you, you can beat the game probably around level 45-50, but can grind all the way up to level 99 if you want. The key to combat is more in tactics, even normal random battles after a point you can't really expect to just spam attack through them. Definitely rely on using magic, tension, items, and the like to do the trick. Also try different weapons for each character. Boomerangs and whips hit more enemies but deal less damage, but are great for dealing with multiple enemies, not so good for bosses though.

Each character also has their specific areas of expertise, the Hero is kind of a jack of all trades, good at fighting, magic, and healing, but Yangus will always be your best fighter, Jessica is your mage, her potency is unlocked through spells, not through melee combat, and the last character is best used as a primary healer.

Don't be afraid to waste magic on trash mobs, MP isn't so valuable you should run out and while magic regenerative items are rare they are not impossible to find, and you can even craft them in alchemy.

There's a lot of great game there, and you're probably not even 1/4th of the way through it now. I understand not wanting to use guides to not spoil anything but I would recommend perhaps using one later on with alchemy just to discover which monsters have ingredients you need as rare drops.

 

[Maximum Bert]

Im not gonna be much help I finished the game when it came out and havent played it since (loved it though). I always found the first boss the hardest after that I just grinded like crazy and destroyed the rest of the game no problem think I was lvl 64 when I defeated the ultimate optional boss with his many forms in one.

I do remember using the ding a ling method mentioned to level Jessica at around this point because for me she was pretty weak to start with but later on she certainly became a force to be reckoned with.

Its not a grindy game in comparison to really old RPGs but there is more grind needed than some might expect. Really if you are stuck completely grinding will get you through its a simple and boring solution but its also pretty much guaranteed way to easily progress for much of the game. Things seem hard grind until they are easy and move on (or look up a detailed guide on how to win with under levelled parties).

 

[ninja666]

Its not a grindy game in comparison to really old RPGs but there is more grind needed than some might expect. Really if you are stuck completely grinding will get you through its a simple and boring solution but its also pretty much guaranteed way to easily progress for much of the game. Things seem hard grind until they are easy and move on (or look up a detailed guide on how to win with under levelled parties).

As much as I hate grinding, I can do some of it as long as it's not MMO levels of grinding, where I absolutely have to grind in every new location for a few hours because otherwise I'd get stomped. It's not like that in this case, is it?

 

[Maximum Bert]

Its not a grindy game in comparison to really old RPGs but there is more grind needed than some might expect. Really if you are stuck completely grinding will get you through its a simple and boring solution but its also pretty much guaranteed way to easily progress for much of the game. Things seem hard grind until they are easy and move on (or look up a detailed guide on how to win with under levelled parties).

As much as I hate grinding, I can do some of it as long as it's not MMO levels of grinding, where I absolutely have to grind in every new location for a few hours because otherwise I'd get stomped. It's not like that in this case, is it?

I can only speak from my experience and that is once through the game defeating every possible boss during that playthrough I did a farir bit of grinding quite possibly for a few hours in every new location although really what I did was if I was struggling I just grinded until the enemies were easy even if it took hours which at the start it did or if I found a place to get lots of exp pretty quickly I grinded for a few hours there (such as the ding a ling method).

Dragon Quest is purposely resolutely old school that doesnt mess with the classic formula much (its not FF) and one of those throw backs is grind. But no you are not gonna find the ridiculous level of grind that you find in many MMOS they dont need to keep you around to get more money off a subscription or buy tat in a real money shop. I dont know what your level of tolerance is exactly so its difficult to say if you would consider it a lot of grinding.

I personally grinded like crazy at the start but found I needed to do that less and less as the game got substantially easier the further I went in. At the very end I did grind a lot again until it got stupid as there is literally a few rare enemies that give XP worth a dam after a certain point and they are near invulnerable without the right skills and some luck (also they like to run away a lot). I dont think you will need to bother doing that though unless you want to murder the ultimate optional boss and hes not that hard as I said I gave up on the grind around level 64 and by that point the hardest enemy in the game was a cakewalk.

If you really hate grind though just check a guide for the parts you are struggling with and see what they recommend odds are there were better strategies than I was using which was simply overpower everything with brute force.

 

[LordLundar]

All I can say is welcome to the world that Dragon Quest. The game really was designed to kick your ass and essentially force grinding.

 

[go-10]

if you're at the Abbey and at level 12 you're too weak, I'd suggest you continue advancing until you get to the monster arena and ignore the Abbey the monsters in that area should help you grind to level 25 at least. Also invest all of Jessica's points into Knife/Swords so that she can use the same weapons as the hero, Yangus should have equal axe and club skills and the hero should be spread evenly in swords and spear, courage should be around 5 points below Sword skill

 

[ninja666]

if you're at the Abbey and at level 12 you're too weak, I'd suggest you continue advancing until you get to the monster arena and ignore the Abbey the monsters in that area should help you grind to level 25 at least.

You're kidding me, right? As much as I find the game fun and interesting, I have neither time nor patience to sit and grind that much.

 

[Autumnflame]

Yes the game is hard early on.

getting the heroes and yanguys to get a heal spell is handy.

also are you boosting tension which is very important for boss fights

 

[ninja666]

also are you boosting tension which is very important for boss fights

What do you mean by that, exactly? Is this a stat or a skill you can boost by levelling up that I don't know about, or do you mean consecutive psyching up during fights in order to be able to hit with a power attack?

 

[go-10]

also are you boosting tension which is very important for boss fights

What do you mean by that, exactly? Is this a stat or a skill you can boost by levelling up that I don't know about, or do you mean consecutive psyching up during fights in order to be able to hit with a power attack?

he means to continue boosting until you get super saiyan 100% boost level (it's not always successful and it might take a while to get) I never really had too much trouble with bosses and found boosting to be too high risk since a single attack can bring you down to zero


If you really want to make things a bit easier just follow the road beyond the Abbey and keep going until you see a large castle to your left, go to that castle rest and save and grind in the area outside of it until you have enough money to buy the armors and weapons offered there. You can also go talk to the king and begin the quest in this area which is part of the story and considerably easier than the Abbey since there's no poison enemies, so this can help you level up and get some much needed gold, you'll be getting Angelo pretty soon too and the game gets considerably easier from here on out.

one last advice is to not fret the Abbey is the hardest part of the early game once you advance further things get easier since you'll have a full party jsut don't bother leveling anything for Jessica that isn't Knife/Sword or Magic... same goes for Angelo

 

[And Man]

Get a boomerang. Boomerangs are really strong early game; they hit all enemies, and earlygame boomerangs have high damage. You generally shouldn't put any skillpoints into boomerangs though (unless you specifically want to do a playthrough using boomerangs), because later in the game, their damage really falls off. But they are excellent early. Also, there's a boomerang you can make that will help out a lot (which I will put in spoilers in case you don't want to know, since you don't learn the recipe until after Maella Abbey):

Spoiler

Boomerang + Iron Nail = Reinforced Boomerang.

It's an amazing weapon for Hero early on, and you should use it even if you don't have skillpoints in boomerangs.

As far as weapons and weapon skills go in general, you can pretty much use any weapon you want, but Boomerangs for Hero and Knives for Jessica are generally pretty weak (aside from earlygame boomerangs), so you generally shouldn't put points into those. Every other weapon type and skill tree is more or less viable. Even fisticuffs is pretty decent. I dunno how much you care about spoilers for skills, so I'm just gonna throw the next section in spoilers, just in case.

Spoiler

There's a fisticuffs skill called Thin Air that Hero, Yangus, and Jessica can learn that does damage to all enemies for 2 SP, which can help out a lot in the first half of the game. Yangus and Hero learn it at 42 points into Fisticuffs, and Jessica learns it at 68. If you do wanna get it, I'd recommend only getting it on Hero or Yangus though, since Yangus gets tons of skill points early on and Hero already has an amazing ability he learns at 11 points in Fisticuffs. But again, if you do decide to get it, you should probably only get it on one of them.

Also, there are some weapon trees for which you learn some of the best skills early on, such as Swords and Whips (Whips in particular), so you shouldn't feel compelled to dump all of your skill points in just one weapon type. It certainly helps to focus on one weapon type per character, but it's not really required.

Edit:

Forgot to say this before, but yeah, the game can be pretty rough early on. It gets a bit easier though as you progress.