Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 3 notes #4

Story continued:

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

Chapter 8. The world map lets you fly to each of the islands on giga monsters (those that take up 3 slots of the party line). There are also a number of smaller unnamed islands you can visit, both by going down the map, and by going up. These small islands have challenges for locating one stealth box on each. The challenges range from having to fight a gigantic monster guarding the box, or flying along hidden paths and avoiding monsters that attack you in midflight. For some of the paths, you just have to explore the area by air, using the reactor to locate invisible platforms. In these cases, look for monsters flying around out in space for clues as to where part of the path is. When you're ready, fly north to the first main island, which is enclosed in a huge black smoke barrier. It's dominated by the chapter 1 boss, who is now cyborged. He should be an easy win. The barrier will go down, and you can land and take off from the futuristic ruins island now. (You can't save in-flight. You have to land on any of the islands, first.) Continue north, and each of the remaining main islands will have its own cyborged boss. Defeat each one, and continue north. When you free up the Core, you can keep going north to Point Zero. This is the floating ruins of a space ship (presumably the one that brought all the colonists here). Inside is the Rukia hologram. She updates the hologram to turn into Aroma, which is what she used to look like when she was much younger (very attractive).

Rukia used to be on the science team that created an energy thing that can be used to restore Mother, and rescue Lena-te. However, to keep it safe, the source was divided into three parts, and each part was given to a powerful monster to protect. The monsters are on individual sections of floating debris out past Point Zero. To get to them, you first have to prove your worth by returning to B1 in Central, and using the disk system to get three different accessories. So, go back to B1, where the disk system has been upgraded to allow you to create new disks. The idea here is that the system accepts 3 codes, and these are the codes you've been unlocking every time you get an achievement announcement (i.e. - collecting 10% of all zombie types, or amassing 100,000 gp in the bank). These are also what the gold, silver and copper medallion icons at the top of the main menu screen represent. The number of code words you can select from for each code slot depends on how many achievements you've accomplished. In any case, Code One is for the types of monsters you'll face in the disk you create (Slime, Zombie, Cyborg, Dragon, Special, etc.) The monster type icons you see on the screen here match the icons shown when you look at your monsters in inventory, or when you are breeding them. Code Two says what kind of quest you want to be on (battle, fighting scout masters, relay chase, etc.) And Code Three identifies the kind of reward you want at the end of a successful quest (items, gold, monsters, experience, or accessories). Unfortunately, the only accessories you can get are the fire, water and wind wards needed for the Point Zero chapter. Trying to come back later and getting other accessories only resulted in me getting the exact same things all over again. If there is a way to win other, different accessories, I don't know how to get it to work.

According to the Japanese walkthrough page I've been using, most of the quest types are designed to slow you down so getting an S-rank result at the end is nearly impossible. You can choose anything for Code One, but it's best to make sure it's a silver medallion level. For Code Two, select one of the silver "競争" words (relay chase). And for Code Three, it's one of the three words at the end of the list for Accessories. Now, "level" shows the starting difficulty of the disk you create. Starting at level 1 only costs 20 gold, but your chances of winning the prize at the end is 0.1% for an S-rank completion. Starting at level 40 costs close to 40,000 gold, but you're getting closer to 25% for winning the prize with an S-rank ending. Both times I played the game, and for all three accessories, I started at level 40 and won the ward pendants on the first try each, so I'm thinking this is kind of a "gimme." Starting at level 100 costs over 100,000 gp to create one disk, making it expensive, and risky if the machine assigns a prize you don't want (you don't learn what the prize is until after the disk is created). Once you assign a code word to a disk, you can't use it to make a second disk. You have to delete the first disk first, to be able to reuse a desired word again for a different reward. This is important, because at this point in the game, you may only have three Code Two words for 競争-type quests.

Now, the relay chase quests, essentially, have you running from point A, to B, to C, etc. Silver level chase quests require you to reach 8 point marks. Gold level chases only require 5 point marks. I don't know about copper, but I expect it to be maybe 12 point marks. When you reach the finish point, you are graded on how many monster battles you ran into. 0-1 is S-rank; 2 is A-rank; 3 and over are C-rank or worse. I'm been stuck in chases where I was forced into 6 battles, and they all ended with C-rank ratings. Your percentages for winning the stated prize go down drastically the worse your ranking. On the monster quests, at level 100, with an S-rank ending, it was still only 50% maximum for getting the prize. If you don't get the prize, you receive a "ko genki dama" (small energy ball). Ko genkidama are actually good in the Gold Slime disk area, because they double the experience and gold you receive from one battle. More on this later.

Lastly, after you create the disk, you can then choose to play it either as a quest to get the prize, or just to explore the area and maybe scout minor monsters you don't have yet. Playing the disk will cost you energy units equal to the level. At this point in the game, the bar can go up to 150 units, at about 50 units in 4 hours. You can opt to pay money to recharge the bar to 150, or to spend 100,000 gold for a 24-hour free pass (unlimited plays of the disks for one day real-time). I've found that playing the Metal Slime area disk for an hour or two will rake in 100,000 gold, which lets me bring my party members up to exp. level 100, and recoup my money for buying the pass. Then, I can also do the quests as many times as I need to for getting the three required accessories, and maybe chase after SS-Rank monsters (more on this later).

While you're in the Central building, do go up to the main floor, too. Give King any of the metal coins you've found for the accessory and monster rewards you've earned. Visit Queenie (to the left of King) to find that she's opened up some new accessory item quests. And, go to the Scout Master Q window to get some new scout quests. The scout quests are important now. One of the quests, which you could have done earlier, involves customizing your monster's color palette when you breed it. The idea here is that after you receive this quest, minor monsters you defeat can get angry. When this happens, you'll get a notice saying that that type monster's behavior has changed. Search the area for a monster with flickering black flames. Use the reactor on it, and in the lower left corner of the screen you'll see a new indicator bar that shows how angry the monster is. Fight that monster and it will flash next to you when you defeat it again. Keep using the reactor on it to watch the color bar inching to full. After about 10 battles, the color bar will max and the angry monster will turn black. Scout it now, and you can customize the color palette when you breed it. More importantly, when you breed the "angry monster", at the end of the breeding process, you'll also receive a Color Fondue monster, and this is what you're really looking for. See, Color Fondues create clones when you breed them, and those clones start at the same Rank+number of the monster you're trying to get. If you keep breeding the Color Fondue, it will hit SS+100 rank, and any other monster you breed that Fondue with will present you an offspring that's at SS+100 rank. Do this to every single monster in your primary and secondary parties, and use the Metal Area disk in B1 to bring your party back up to exp. level 100.

Why go through this work? Well, when an offspring is born with rank+100, you can customize its inherent abilities. Say you have a 2-slot monster that has AI2-3. This means that it can take 2, and sometimes 3 actions in one turn. And if you breed it with a 1-slot monster that has "Renzoku-3" (each physical attack hits 3 times), you can create a 1-slot offspring that can attack 2-3 times per turn, for 3 hits each. I mentioned earlier, you want monster types with high Atk caps for your fighters, and that often this means the lizard classes. If your lizard monster party member has Renzoku-3, and you breed it with something that has AI2-3, pick the lizard offspring option, then go into the monster's abilities to specifically pick Renzoku-3 and AI2-3. Now you have a level 1 lizard with AI2-3 and Renzoku-3. Then, if you have one of the dirty bunnies (found in the cyborg tower), which can cast Lovely (paralyzes monsters randomly at the beginning of the round), breed that with the lizard, to get a lizard with Lovely, AI2-3 and Renzoku-3. You can really amass exp. fast in the Metal Area disk now, by being able to wipe out liquid metal slimes in one round, and if you miss one, there's a chance it got paralyzed and couldn't escape, so you can try again in round two. Think about this - if you have four 1-slot monsters all equipped with AI2-3, and you want to scout a monster that's normally hard to scout, suddenly you've got that monster being hit between 8 and 12 times in one round. Scouting gets much easier now.

You can also choose to change the monster's size, if the parents are of different sizes from the offspring. Say you have a 3-slot dragon, and a 2-slot golem as parents, and the offspring is a 1-slot slime. Go into the body size option and make it "mega" or "giga." Now you have a 2-slot or 3-slot slime. There is a drawback, though. Increasing body size only increases HP and MP by maybe 50 percent. The other stats, like Atk, Def and Mind can actually go down. Same with assigning AI1-2, AI2, AI2-3, etc. By making the monster bigger, or giving it more actions per round, you're also making it weaker. This can be overcome by putting AtkUp-3 and AtkUp-SP skills on the monster, but it's still not ideal. To be honest, having four 1-slot monsters with AI2-3 and Renzoku-5 was best for leveling up, and scouting monsters for breeding some of the rarer SS-rank monsters. For battles, I sacrificed AI2-3, and focused on Lovely, Tension Vampire (steal from the enemy's tension bar and add Tension 25 to your monster for the next attack), and Renzoku-5. Even with this, though, and some really good rare monsters in the party, I couldn't get past round 4 of the Arena Battles. On the plus side, say you have a lizard with Renzoku-5, AI2-3 and Tension Vampire. On the first move, it may attack and hit 5 times for 125-150 HP damage each (600 HP damage total, with a cap of 999 damage on one hit). If Tension Vampire doesn't miss, then on move two, you're at tension 25, doing 250-300 HP damage five times (if you get lucky, you may get a critical hit for 750 damage), for a total of an average 1,300 damage. Have 4 lizards in the party, and that's good enough to beat most bosses now.

Ok, to recap, you need to use the disk system in Central B1 to get at least one each of the elemental ward accessories, and I recommend using the color bar anger system to scout a few monsters to free up 4-5 Color Fondues. Breed the Fondues up to SS+100 rank, and then breed them with your main party monsters to get them to SS+100 as well. And, start breeding your main monsters to alter their abilities to have Lovely, Renzoku-5 and Tension Vampire. Finally, return to the Scout Master Q window to get the next scouting quests. Hopefully, you still have the Cyborg Slime monster. Put it in your party to clear that hurdle. After this, you can breed it with other normal monsters to create new rare cyborg monsters (and do the same thing with any other cyborg spirits and Dark Madulite you've managed to find). The highest Q quest is 15. Quests 14 and 15 require breeding all new, extremely rare monsters. I won't get into the details here, but realize that it's much, much easier to win them as prizes from the B1 disk system than to create them through breeding.

The quest 15 monster needed 4 super rare monsters as intermediaries. Just breeding one of the four intermediary monsters took close to 4 days. Instead, I recommend going to B1, and select a silver-level Code One word that can give you a cyborg monster reward. Pick a silver Code Two word for a chase relay quest. And, pick a gold Code Three word for an SS-rank Monster-type prize. Start at level 1. The screen will tell you what the monster reward is. If you don't want it, delete that disk and try again. As far as I can tell, the choice of monster is random and is unrelated to the code words you pick, or how much money you spend to make the disk. Just keep experimenting until you get something you like, then play the quest until you work up to level 75 or so. This may take 1-2 hours, and be EXTREMELY frustrating, but you can get lucky and win that monster at 25% odds. Otherwise, you're receiving a lot of ko genkidama stones that double your exp. and gold from one battle, and that's useful when you're breeding monsters for customization and need to level up quickly in the metal slime disk area.

When you're ready, return to Point Zero, talk to Aroma, and fly out to the first piece of floating wreckage, and the first mini-boss fight. I did have all three accessories equipped on my primary party for both the first and second times I played the game. The first time, reducing the elemental damage that monster received did make a difference because I didn't know how to breed and customize monsters very well. In the second playthrough, the elemental wards equipped were pretty much unnecessary. Having 4 strong 1-slot monsters each with AI2-3, Renzoku-5, and Tension Vampire, plus AtkUp-3, AtkUp-SP and one other skill that gave Atk stat bonuses, all maxed out on skill points, was good enough.

Beat all three Point Zero mini bosses, and Aroma tells you to meet her at Mother's heart in the Core. If you're doing the Queenie accessory, and Scout Master Q quests, finish them if you like. Explore all of the island field areas, scout the more difficult to obtain monsters, breed new monsters, and everything else you want to do. At this point, you may have also picked up some of the Master Road stones. These are used to activate the weird-looking dead posts you probably noticed before. Run around the fields, looking for floating islands that have a dead post on them. I've counted 6, but the one Japanese walkthrough I've been using seems to document only 5 of them. Maybe you can only get 5 of the 6 to work per playthrough.

Anyway, these Master Roads are puzzle challenges you have to negotiate (similar to the ones on the world map). If you screw up, you're sent back to the beginning and asked if you want to try again. If you reach the end of the Road, you have to fight the "guardian monster" there. If you defeat it, you get that monster to add to your inventory. The Gold Golem is used for synthesizing one of the monsters for the Scout Q quest, and you need four of them (i.e. - four playthroughs of that Master Road). The motorcycle robot just makes for a cool ground-type ride monster, and the aerial robot is a fun flier ride monster. Better yet, though, both the motorcycle and flier robots have the "super fast start" ability, which you can use for custom-breeding your main party so every one of your monsters are guaranteed to get first-move at the beginning of the battle rounds.

When you're ready (two), use the Ruler icon in the main menu to teleport to the end of the Core. Go to where you lost Lena-te, save your game, and talk to Aroma. She'll try to use the energy thing you made at Point Zero, but it's a trap. Dark Master pops in, stops you, and you have to fight him in two versions. The first version can be tough if you're not prepared. If you win, he morphs into a full-blown nightmare and attacks again. Still, not that hard to smash into the ground. If you lose, just reset the game and level up some more. When you win, you've beat the second scenario, but you don't get the end credits again. Return to Central, and talk to everyone. You'll be told to visit different people in different places, resulting in some cut scenes. Aroma and some of the others that had been in the cold sleep capsules decide to take some of the single-person rocket capsules and go exploring in space again. After all this is done, you'll be told to use the elevator in Central to go to B2. There, you'll discover that Aroma built you a very large battle arena.

Explore the arena to get some more items, then talk to the Aroma hologram in the middle to be offered two fight options. The second one is a computer-controlled fight against waves of monster parties. You can fight them as often as you like, but each victory will take you to the next harder round. You can't use items, you can't scout the enemy, you can switch in your secondary monsters, but you can't issue orders. You can ride one of your monsters (adds a little to its attack and defense stats) and you can change the monsters' strategies (attack full out, use healing skills if you have them when you need to, act defensive). When you finally lose a round, you're given money based on how many rounds you went. At level 100 you get one rare monster, and every 10 levels after that you get a Color Fondue. (If you get a lot of money, you run the risk of hitting the upper cap and losing what you make afterward. Go to the bank in Central and save what you don't plan on spending.)

The first Arena option is the once-a-day battle event. As the name implies, you can only enter this battle once a day. In the first round, you face off against Ace. Second round is King, and the reward is the Gold Area disk (which lets you fight King Metal Slimes (30,000 exp. each) and Gold King (one per time in the area, located somewhere on the highest cliffs at the back of the area, worth 300,000 exp. If you have an exp. faerie working for you (x2 or x4), and a ko genkidama (x2 for one battle), that's 1.2 to 2.4 million exp. in 30 seconds). Round three is against Lena-te, and the reward is card 3 of 5 for obtaining a rare monster (one of the four other cards is in a chest under Point Zero, and the remaining three cards are in chests on the fields of some of the other islands). Round four is against the real Anesu, and Round five is against Aroma. I've NEVER been able to get past round four. Also, though, beating each round of the Event battles gives you one gold Code Word, 2 silver and three copper Code Words for the B1 floor disk system.

Regarding the Gold area disk - the field is shaped like an upside-down slime. The gold slime appears randomly at one of what are essentially the "midpoints" of the "box" outline of the area. That is, at the middle of the top of the "head", down at the "chin", or at the midpoints where the "ears" would be on either side.

And this is pretty much where I've stalled.
Continued...