I just ran into a metal Slime! (Two actually but the first ran away) and was rewarded other 4000 exp!

?...how does one turn on Tag Mode?

Talk to Erinn in the Quester's Rest and choose "Canvass for guests."

and to answer to the question about the usefulness of armamentalists, the fource power apply an elemental attack and defense to your characters, but this isn't very useful until you finish the level 40 quest and get the ability to apply the fource to all characters at once, and even then only boss battles really warrant the use of the fource.

Thanks muchly!

For quests where the enemy is smart enough to want to run away from you, Snooze is a great spell to use. Have your priest or armamentalist cast it while you boost the tension of whoever holds the sword in your party. If you cast it on a monster who's already sleeping, they might fall into a deeper sleep! Skills like Pratfall and War Cry don't hurt either, and you'll probably have someone who can use those, seeing as those are skills you keep even if you switch vocations.

I like the minstrel so i'll stay as one!

Sorry for bugging you guys, but my Dad is STILL not sold on the idea of DQIX. How do I convince him that Dragon Quest IX is an awesome game?

Biggest bang for the buck. You'll play this game for months if you like RPGs.

Ive never played a real DQ game (only wars off of DSiWare) but I really love RPGS (even though im no good at them) and I really want to DQ 4, 5, 6, and 9 for DS, I know DQ9 is probably the best one, but since im not that good at RPGS what one is the easiest?

Just got this game last week and im lovin it.

I do like RPGs, but my dad says that it "looks iffy." HUH?

by iffy, is he referring to the ESRB contents or something?

It's published by Nintendo, not Data Design Interactive. Nintendo Life gave it a score of 9:

http://ds.nintendolife.com/reviews/2010/07/dragon_quest_ix_se...

Metacritic says 8.7 (critics) and 9.1 (users):

http://www.metacritic.com/game/ds/dragon-quest-ix-sentinels-o...

@pikmaniac: no, and @Zaphod Beeblebrox: He doesn't want me to "waste my money," and thinks that i should save up for an iPod Touch, but I want this game more. My old man loves games, but he isn't a serious gamer like me.

@labrat7 - Does he know a lot about the multiplayer? If he thinks it's like Pokémon or something, no wonder. If you both have it you can work together to get through harder parts of the game, even if it does feel a little like cheating. Also, even if he thinks an iPod Touch would be a better investment, as long as it's your money you should decide what you should spend it on. By the time you're done with DQIX (if you ever "complete" the game), you should have saved enough money to get an iPod Touch. Or a 3DS.

I get 15 bucks a month for allowance, so maybe in the next two months I can piece together enough to order it off Amazon. Thanks for convincing me, and i'll be back later to discuss with u guys!

I'll be driving about 100 miles to a Dragon Quest IX event in about 8 hours. What's awesome is I just so happened to grind out a new grotto that is useful for quests 118, 120, 129, 130 and has the first appearance of Metal King Slimes in my game, so I'll be passing that one out in tag mode later to help others out! I hope I get some good stuff too. =]

For some reason, I dunno if its the equipment, but my martial artist has a insanely high hit % rate on Metal enemies, so a few Fandango attacks on Metal King Slimes and its 30,000+ EXP per character. Once you find a Metal King Slime, your levels just skyrocket. I haven't changed vocations at all, I'm still running with high 80s-mid 90s Minstrel, Martial Artist, Priest and Mage team, but I'll revocate once I hit the level cap.

This game is fun. =]

That's fantastic! Hope you get some good gear!

Before you revocate, consider simply switching to a different trade. That way you can switch back to the level 99 trade whenever you need a high-level specialist. Revocation is, um, irrevocable. I'm not going to revocate anyone until I've got all their trades to 99. Then I'll revocate a character's least useful trade.

(Edit: deleted my potentially worthless guess about the martial artist)

You shouldn't wait that long to revocate one of your main character's classes. You don't have access to the highest rank dungeons until you revocate at least once.