Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 3 notes #3

Story continued:

Chapter 5. This is a desert dust field (earth element). Go through the door to the village, and explore and talk to everyone. You'll notice two monsters that look like rag doll toys with button eyes. They are father and son, and they'll tell you there's a boss golem that has been stealing the children for experiments. And, that Rukia, a member of the Resistance, had dressed up as a rag doll and been carried away by the boss and hasn't been heard from since. You agree to take the kid's place, dress up in a rag doll disguise and climb into the golem's box. The golem returns, takes the box, and leaves. You find yourself in a prison cell with another rag doll prisoner. Get him some water from the sink, and he'll point to a hole in the wall that leads to Rukia's cell. Go through the hole, and you'll find an empty rag doll disguise.

Exit the cell and work your way to the stairs. One of the monsters will ask for your work pass. Tell him you forgot it, and he'll give you his. Go to the monster at the stairs, show the pass, and go up the stairs to the next floor. Explore as you can, and eventually you'll be unmasked (while you're doing this, try to get to the big doors at the other end of the prison cells on the ground floor, and push the button there. You'll be able to open the doors from this side, creating a shortcut to the village, where you can buy potions, and sleep at the inn). From this point, it's all fighting and running around. The rag doll monsters are being turned into cyborgs in processing tanks, and they'll attack you. They're a pain to fight now, so try to avoid them if you can. You can scout normal monsters, but not the cyborg dolls. Work your way upstairs, and you'll hear a voice over your reactor telling you to meet them in a specific room. Follow instructions, and you'll go outside to go up a set of stairs, and into a throne room where you have to go into a vent to finally meet Rukia, an old crone in a floating wheelchair. She's part of the Resistance, and she'll tell you to go back downstairs and free up all the prisoners on both floors of the cells. Do this, exploring, fighting and scouting as you like. When you get the last prisoner freed, you'll be told to go back upstairs. (If you see the big elephants with multiple arms, try to avoid them if you can, but they're really not that hard to kill.)

Follow directions, and you'll be at a control panel of a machine that produces Madulite for running the cyborger operations. Rukia plans to plant a bomb to blow it up, but the Golem arrives and stops her. Fight Golem. If you win, the Dark Master shows up and tries to capture you. Rukia has another bomb in her hover chair, and she yells at you to escape through another vent. She blows up the chair, killing Golem and making Dark Master run away. You wake up in the chapter village. If you pushed the button on the other side of the big doors here, you now have a shortcut back into the prison cells. You can take the elevator up to the 5th floor of the tower. Hunt around at the north end of the top two floors, looking for a secret panel in the north wall (use the reactor) (also, keep visiting the smaller side rooms every time you come back, because occasionally you'll find a mimic (looks like a chest, but the reactor will identify it as a monster). That will give you a small coin to give to King). Go through the secret panel in the north wall and inspect the control panel to activate the teleporter, and move the islands closer together again. Go through the north door and out to the teleporter to get to the next chapter.

Chapter 6 starts at the base of a volcano (fire element). Go to the closest door and talk to everyone in the village. They will tell you about Birdy, so go to the empty room. A large bird with three eyes will complain about strangers going where they don't belong, then will get excited at seeing you. He'll call you "Anesu", and pepper his language with "yuu" and "mii" (you and me). He'll tell you to meet him at the top of the volcano. Go the long way, following the walking paths in a spiral up the outside of the volcano. There are one or two really big monsters here you'll want to avoid, but that's pretty easy. Explore what you can reach, and fight and scout as much as you want. As you go up, at about the halfway point, there is a square, yellow steel girder-like structure up against the hill on your left-hand side (as you go up). Remember this place for after you get your first aerial-type ride monster. Get to the top of the volcano and talk to Birdy. He'll tell you to climb on his shoulders to fly across the gap to a second mountain peak. But, you'll immediately crash. He'll act stunned, and instruct you to visit the third monument to get your Class A Scout license.

This is another wave of three monsters that your party has to face. It should be easy at this point, but if not, breed stronger monsters, build up your skills, and level up some more. When you defeat the monument monsters, you'll be given an A-ranking, your first aerial-type ride monster, and instructions for using it. (Press the B button to flap once. You can only flap 5 times before you're forced to land and "recharge" the flap gauge. Generally, press and hold the button for half a second to get the most out of your glide time between flaps. You're not really able to "fly" all over everywhere on the map. You're just reaching slightly higher places or gliding farther out from a high point than you would with a walking-type monster.)

Ok, now that you can "fly", assign the monster you received to the cross-controller direction buttons via the Ride Monster icon in the main menu, exit the monument, and revisit the previous islands and villages to open up the chests you couldn't reach before, and to explore every part of the maps you can now get to. Keep using the reactor to search for stealth boxes. Go halfway down the mountain to that yellow girder structure and open the stealth box on top containing the cyborg slime spirit. Along the way, you should also find some Dark Madulite. Ace uses this stuff for animating the cyborg spirits. The next time you visit him, Ace will take whatever spirits and Dark Madulite you have in inventory and give you cyborg monsters in return.

DON'T breed the cyborg slime yet.

If you've been keeping up with the Scout Master Q quests, the Nocho-ra Q Master should have told you that you're amazing and he's waiting for new quests to arrive. He won't tell you to show him the cyborg slime until after the end of scenario 1. There are 5 different cyborg monsters, and 5 pieces of Dark Madulite. Also, the volcano map has lots of funny sequences outside, like monsters dancing around a circle, or playing around piles of bones. Check those gag sequences, too. Finally, since you can fly, go to B1 in Central and use the machine to enter the Metal Area disk. You can now reach the back wall, where all the liquid metal slimes hide (10,000 exp. each). When you start, be sure to capture a white ball of light bouncing in the middle of the room - those are experience faeries. They give you x2 or x4 (very rarely, x8) experience and gold at the end of your next battle. Sneak up on the liquid metal slimes from their blind side, or from above, and press the A button to attack and stun them before fighting them. This increases your chances of killing all the liquid metal slimes in the enemy party before they can escape.

When you're ready, use the Ruler icon in the main menu to teleport to the last Ruler marker you memorized, and make your way over to the other mountain top Birdy had been trying to reach. Inspect the marker post there to open up the door. Inside the mountain you'll see magma flowing down the wall. Use the reactor to find the hidden entrance. Work your way through the passage to the opposite end, fighting and scouting as you like. Avoid the red dragon for now. Go through the opposite door, and save your game. Talk to Lena-te, and she'll say that you are not really Anesu. You're a clone, one of many (check them all out in the lab around you). The real Anesu is in a medical pod in the middle of the room, and looks like a young boy. Birdy goes into shock and becomes useless for the rest of the game. When Lena-te is done talking, Dark Master appears and sics one of his cyborg creations, Prometheus, on you. This should be an easy battle by now. When you win, Dark Master complains about not being able to make the perfect life form and runs away to try again. Lena-te tells you to meet her at the entrance of the Core. Inspect the terminal to activate the last teleporter and move the islands to all connect together again. Go to the teleporter at the top of the mountain and beam up.

Chapter 7 starts at the ruined mouth of the Core. Lena-te tells you to fight all the cyborg monsters and work your way to the center, where Mother is waiting. Easier said than done. The skelegon cyborgs are a bit difficult to beat now, unless you've bred some good monsters of your own. Just about everything in here is cyborged, and cannot be recruited. When you get to the water pool in the middle of the Core, you'll encounter a big whale. It is scoutable, but is ranked at 5 stars (or so). Use the best scouting meat you have, and prepare to do a lot of healing. Otherwise, just follow the map on the screen. Use the reactor to determine which parts of the laser alarm barriers are fake, if you don't want to be attacked all the time. When you get to the pool entrance, switch to your aquatic ride monster and go swimming. Come out the other hole from the pool, and continue down the hallway to the octopus cyborg. This is going to be the hardest fight so far, so save the game and level up the strongest monsters you have. When you beat the octopus, go up the stairs into the main Core area. There's a force field barrier cutting off half the room, and stronger cyborg monsters here. You need to use the reactor to look for three crystals that glow a little bit more than the others. You'll know them when the reactor puts an "information" marker over them. Touch all three crystals to bring down the barrier. One of the crystals will be hidden in a room above you, reachable only by going through a hole in the ceiling.

On the other side of the barrier, go up the spiral stairs to the second floor and a second barrier. Again, look for the three crystals, one of which you have to go through a hole in the ceiling to get to. There will be some big monster cyborgs guarding chests in those hole rooms. They are a little difficult to beat, but not impossible. When you have the second barrier turned off, go through it to the entrance to Mother's heart. Beat the mini boss, activate the Ruler marker, save your game, and go inside the heart. This is a big, open room that looks tissue-like, and has sleeper pods along the walls. Explore around for chests and drop items, then join Lena-te at the big platform where she's waiting. Definitely save the game here, and talk to Lena-te. She'll try using a star-like item to wake up Mother, but instead, the monster from the end of Joker 2 comes out. It's angry with how you treated it in the last game, and had infected Mother in order to keep itself alive, become more powerful, and get its revenge on you. It's not one of the more powerful bosses, but if you have trouble with it, level up more, and try experimenting with giving different skills to your main party. It may also help to only use the bigger 2-slot monsters with higher HP and Def stats. When you defeat this guy, Lena-te will save everyone by merging with Mother and sealing themselves together.

This is the end of the first scenario. You'll get the closing credits, and the game will save. When you get control again, you'll be lying on the grass on the first chapter island, and Rukia will call you on the reactor. This will be a computer-generated hologram version, but you will be able to meet her again. I forget the order for becoming an S-Class monster scout, but there will be one more monolith you have to face (I think it's in the Woodpark hut on the grassy island), and another three waves of enemy to defeat one after the other. When you succeed at this, you'll get a giga monster (takes up 3 slots on the party line) that you can assign to the down button on the cross controller through the Ride Monster icon in the main menu. You'll also get the Flight Signal. Go into the main menu and look at your items inventory. Scroll to the bottom of the inventory and you'll see Flight Signal there. Select it, and you'll be asked if you want to use it. Say yes. You'll now be on your new ride monster on the World Map.

Continued...