Topic: Dragon Quest 9: Sentinels of the Starry Skies

Just a comment about the Martial Artist... once you get to Alltrades Abbey and can change professions, switch to everyone that you can(Thief, Priest, Minstrel, Warrior, etc. and get them to about level 21. It takes me about an hour at most to get to level 21 fighting outside Swinedimples or vs Metal Medleys in the Bad Cave but feel free to go higher to get more skill points if you need. Save the skill points and then max out your shield skill and switch back to being a Martial Artist. This makes them extremely hard to hit and while it can take a little effort to grind the levels out it is worth it in the long run. Ive done the same for my Gladiator who can now use a shield as well, which makes up for his lack of def. Grabbing Fire and Frost Fource from the Armamentalist is vital for your mage too. Priests are useless to me except for stacking their skill points for other vocations.

@sykotek I may have tried to work out some way to get a shirt that day, but I was in a hurry, and didn't really time to argue with the guy in the store. I'm hoping to make it to the mall event in my area, and I'm hoping that I'll get enough tags to unlock the rest of the Inn. As I understand it, you only need 30 tags to gain access to everything, though, honestly, I'm not sure where I read that.

@Birdman13 The game was definitely made for Japan, and, because of all the reasons you listed, the tag mode works very well there. I guess I'm just a little bummed that 1) there aren't more people playing this game and 2) there aren't more non-Nintendo events. I mean, GameStop has in-store events all the time for various games (some stores have regular Pokemon events for people to battle and trade and there was a Madden tournament happening THE SAME DAY as the Dragon Quest event at my GameStop), why can't they have a more routine DQIX event schedule. I would think it would help them sell games.

Going off of what GreenSpleen said (kind of), here are some reccomendations for some helpful early vocation skills. I personally prefer grinding for levels against Gold Golems in the Gleeban desert for their high amount of gold dropped and the repeatability of quest #29 (Fool's Gold). For all of these, switch to the appropriate vocation and dump all skill points into the specialty vocation (Focus, Fource, etc.)
Martial Artist - War Cry, (If it lands, opponent loses next turn), +10 agility at 10, a Tension-building move at 16 and +10 strength at 22.
Thief - 10 for Half-Inch (chance to steal an enemy's item).
Gladiator - 4 for an extra 10 HP.
Armamentalist - A Fource ability at 4 (Raises attack & defence one stage), +10 stregth at 10, another Fource at 16 and +20 resilience at 22.

@GreenSpleen - I have to disagree with you about Priests. When you face tougher bosses later in the game, you'll be thankful for Multiheal, and their melee damage, while not incredible, is useful for stacking combos on.

@Birdman - I agree with you about Multiheal, its just personal play preference really. Useless was probably the wrong word for the priesty.

You shouldn't forget about fullheal and omniheal. you could be at 5 hp with about all your people (it happened to me once against Corvus when he used magic burst which does 200-300hp to everyone and can't be reflected) and then you are at full health. It is a life saver but used for last ditch only because it takes 128mp but multi heal could also help.

This is such a great game. Totally addictive!

I've been item farming (still mid-game, just past Gleeba dungeon) and I was wondering about item drop rarity. Snakeskin and flurry feathers seem to be 'common' items judging by the numbers needed in some of the recipes, yet for all I plug away at the appropriate snakes/birds, they never drop (I've had one snakeskin and no flurry feathers) and half inch very rarely works as well. At the same time I only need to look at a bewarewolf, badboon or badjar to get a ton of magic beast hides.

Is it randomised which items are rare on which cards to encourage link up play? Is anyone having trouble finding magic beast hides, but stocked with snakeskins? I hope not because I can't see any way I'll ever be able to play link up if it's local only sadly. Just to check I've understood, there is no friend code, online mode for this right? It's line of sight, bluetooth link only?

Half-Inch is the way to go. You just need to work on your deftness (which affects your steal success, hit success and I believe, dodge rate too).

I'm currently in a seemingly endless cycle trying to get materials - I want to steal, but I fancy more deftness, so I'm changing vocations to increase that, THEN I realise I want to kill some metal slimes to increase my rate of levelling (I use a critical attack, which is quite accurate when coupled with a high deftness level), so then I change to a mage to build up my MP (via the class skills). All so I can get a high level character with good thieving ability.

I'm at the end of the game, but with having switched several characters a lot, some of my characters are under-levelled.

@edhe...how many hours have you logged so far? I'm just wondering how long the game is?

Thanks edhe, I guess I'll have to keep half inching! I've been neglecting it to be honest because it so rarely hits (less than 10% I'd say) and has never got me an rare item. I've found it more fun to pound through battles as fast as possible, picking up dropped items as they appear. The success rate might not be higher than 10% thinking about it, but the gameplay is more rewarding!

What I haven't done yet is let more than one character learn half inch. I'll work on that.

77 hours, roughly and completed!

Just to confirm what edhe said for any players in the same stage as me- half inching is definitely the best way to gather items! With all four characters half-inching every turn, it doesn't take too long before the stats work out in your favour and you get a success.

Just out of curiosity (and I don't want to read through the past 11 pages for an answer, spoilers and all that), what's the level cap, if there is one?

The level cap is 99. It'll take a while to get to.

this.
but according to my friend, it has reincarnation, whisch basically means that once you reach the cap in any vocation, you can start that same vocation over in lvl1 but keep all your allocated skill points so you can max all the skills out eventually

Please ignore my ignorance but...where do I find/get an alchemy pot to alchemise items?

Once you've progressed enough in the game, when you enter the Stornway Inn, Erinn will show you Krak Pot. It will always be on the counter next to Erinn for you to use whenever you want from that point on.

Thanks for the tip.

The consensus on Gamefaqs seems to be that Deftness helps in stealing (although it isn't confirmed in the manual), although I was wrong about it governing hit rate - it increases the chance of a pre-emptive strike (not so useful if you decide to go with agility, which affects your speed) and the chance to strike a critical hit (mighty useful when battling metal slimes).

And I notice you were looking specifically for flurry feathers.They spawn in significant numbers on the map if you want to bolster your number. Bloomingdale for one has a good source of feathers.

Can anyone answer me this though? When I go around to harvest things, sometimes nothing shows up. It doesn't matter if I haven't visited the spot for days (or even at all), but materials seem to be too rare for me. I hear most respawn after an hour of play, but it doesn't seem to be the case.

@edhe - I have that problem sometimes as well. Iusually find this occuring after I haven't visited a region for a couple of real-world days. What usually works for me is to visit the site then come back in a few real-world hours and the item(s) have usually respawned by then.

There's definitely some random element to the items respawning. I was having a hell of a time with Finnessance and Aggressance, because the fisticups south of Stornaway took FOREVER to respawn. Now I've reached the spawn site south of Batsureg, fisticups there respawn almost as soon as I go away and come back, while the Stornaway site still hardly provides any. So it's not the same rule governing every item spawn point as far as I can tell.