Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 3 notes #2

Story continued:

Correction: I originally thought the drumsticks with faces were the Norochoi. Actually, they're the Nocho-ra.

The next island is Monster Land. Inside the gates is a town run by monsters. You'll see a ghost trying to get outside and then hiding in the town. Follow the ghost until you can talk to it, and it will tell you there's a castle at the end of a graveyard, and to get into the castle you need to defeat three monsters that are tied to gravestones in different parts of the field. Once you have this information, go through the exit from the town to the graveyard. There are no really dangerous monsters here, so fight and scout everything you can. You may notice metal slimes occasionally. Make sure you're on your ride monster (which is faster than walking on your own, anyway) and try to sneak up behind it, then press the A button to stun it. 1-slot monsters used for riding are able to stun other 1-slot monsters prior to battle. This lets you attack on the first round, and the metal slimes can't escape before you can attack). They represent a fast 1,000 exp. Make your way to the right end of the field, and explore everything, looking for stealth boxes. You'll notice on the map three exclamation marks. These are where the monsters holding the keys to the castle are located. Save your game first if you want, and approach the first gravestone. The monsters will ask different questions about whether you want to fight them, so pick your answers accordingly to say "yes". Defeat them, and keep going. You may also notice that some monsters will walk into the poison ponds and turn into skeletons, poison slimes, and so on. Attack and scout them, too. You will find a big yellow dragon monster - you might be able to scout it, but it will ignore you if you don't approach it directly. It may be too early for this, but if you had enough money, you can buy scouting meat from the Nocho-ra in Central. If you look at a monster through the reactor, you'll see the Scout Difficulty rating of 1-5 stars. The more you successfully scout a monster in one day, or the higher the difficulty, the less the Percentage meter increases during the scouting attacks. Before you select Scout in the battle menu, go into inventory and select a Scouting meat, then press Scout. This will give you a slight percentage boost at the beginning of the round. Generally, you can feed the monster once each round for 2-3 rounds before it gets full. If you fail to scout it, you'll get either a "It's angry" or "It's watching you" message. When it gets angry, just kill it to end the battle. If it watches you, try scouting it again, feeding it until it gets full.

Eventually, you'll get to the front of the castle. You can go around the outside to pick up drop items, but eventually you'll have to go through the doors. Try scouting the gargoyles on the tops of the gate entrance as well. Inside, there's another ghost, and a trapped Nocho-ra. Follow the instructions by going up the stairs to find 4 statues. When one statue turns, it shoots out energy balls down the nearest hallways to make the next nearest statues turn in the same direction (clockwise or counterclockwise). You have two tries to get all four statues to face the middle of the building. If you get it wrong after the second try, the statues reset. If you get it right, a door opens up on the ground floor. Go down and through the door. Be careful of the bones on the floor. These are Skelegons, and they have a skill that can instant-kill your party. It's best to avoid them right now.

In the basement, talk to the ghosts and the Nocho-ra to learn that you have to turn 6 statues now. Some of the bookcases in the middle of the room give clues, but they're not all that useful. Turn the statue at the lower left, the upper left, and then the middle right (I think, I didn't write this down). You get three tries to get all 6 statues to face the middle of the room. Scout and fight as you like, and use the reactor to look for secret rooms. If you turn the statues correctly, another door will open up, taking you to the chapter boss. Visit him to get more info from Lena-te, and another boss fight. If you have strong enough monsters and you've been working on leveling up as much as you can, this will be an easy fight. Inspect the control panels to activate the teleporter and move this island closer to the next one in the chain. Story-wise, you're trying to link up with more of the Resistance, and largely, Lena-te, yourself, and a flying Ride monster named Birdy had been fighting a growing army of enemy monsters rising up against Mother. When you're done here, go upstairs and to the back of the castle to press a button in the back wall to reach the teleporter.

Chapter 4 takes you to the Ice World. Go down the ice steps to the entrance to the ice town, and activate the ruler marker here. Use the Ruler icon in the main menu to return to Central to heal for free, buy more items, and breed more monsters, if you want. Then Ruler back and go inside. Talk to everyone, and loot any chests you can reach (some will need a flying ride monster, which you get in chapter 6). Talk to the Walrus, who will complain about the leader of a rival town next door. To get there, you'll need an aquatic type ride monster, which requires a side trip to the next monolith. Make sure you have your best team ready, then go inside and face another set of three waves of opposing monsters. If you win, you'll get a free aquatic type monster. Assign it through the Ride menu button and practice with it (the B button lets you dive. Releasing the controller lets you rise. The A button stuns 1-slot enemies before fighting them. Lateral movement is the same as walking). Congratulations, you're now a B Rank master. Use your new ride to go through the water pools to reach the east village. Talk to everyone, and the village boss will go attack the Walrus's people. Go check that out, then return to the east village. You can now go down a side passage to a bunch of sleep chambers that "colonists" or something have been trapped in suspended animation or something. Open the one chamber to release a ghost, and follow it to the end of the passage. You'll see the real east village leader trapped in ice, dead. The one fighting the Walrus is an imposter. When you exit the passage, be sure to grab the flashing thing on the ground near the end. This is a data disk that lets you enter the Metal Slime Area from the console in the B1 floor in the Central building later. Go back to the west village, and the imposter will steal the Walrus' half of a reactor. Combined with the half it already has, the imposter can now try to destroy the teleporter controls. Visit Central, talk to everyone. Advance the accessory and Scout Q quests as much as you can, and breed more monsters. I think, at this point you can get to B1 in Central. Go to the console and activate the disks you have. The first one will be just a "fun" romp through a chase field, and the other will let you stalk metal and liquid metal slimes for really fast leveling up. Be sure to try to stun them from behind if you can to improve your chances of getting experience from them. Both disks require energy (the fun disk starts at level 27 (? I think), and goes up as you successfully finish the quest, which is usually to find a black "time and space eye", go inside and defeat the scout master there. The reward is a small amount of exp. that increases as the level goes up. The metal disk uses 50 energy units and you can stay in the disk for 10-15 minutes. The energy bar increases in real time (50 units in 4 hours, I think), or you can pay gold to recharge the bar faster. The cost to recharge the bar depends on how low it is. Or, you can spend 100,000 gold to get a 1-day free pass.

When you're ready again, return to the Ice World, and work your way through the water pools to the back end of the field. There, you'll find another control building. Inside, there's a room with stairways down extending in different directions. Fight and scout what you want in this room, then explore the stairways, fighting more monsters, and looking for hidden rooms. One of the underwater passages will take you to the next room to the east, and you can push the button next to the door to give you a shortcut back out. This room is similar to the first, so explore the underwater passages again, and work your way one more room to the right. Push the button next to the door there to open that, save your game, and go through the dark stairs to the right. You find the imposter boss again, and get a little more back story about the bad guys trying to destroy science experiments the Resistance has been conducting for Mother. Beat this boss (if you can't, just reboot the game, go back to Central to breed stronger monsters, and level up more). Once you're done, check out the console and the reactor glasses to activate the teleporter and move your current islands over closer to the next one in the chain. Use the Ruler icon from the main menu to teleport to the western ice village, and go through the dark passage to get to the teleporter outside.

Continued...