Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 3 notes #9

Skills:

Ok, last thing. The skill system.

Obtaining skills and assigning points:
At the beginning of the game, you just get the skills your monsters come equipped with. The monsters you scout in chapter one should all be at level 1, and therefore won't have any skill points assigned to the skills they have. As they level up, they'll receive between 4 and 8 points every other level (there may be a couple dry spells where they don't get points for 3 or 4 levels). When any of the primary party monsters get skill points, the assignment screen will open up. Select the monster you want to assign points for, the skill to apply the points to, and then press the cross controller Up button to assign the number of points to each skill you want. Press B when you're done, and continue with any other monsters you care about. For your secondary party, go into the main menu, select the sideways Trident, select the monster, and assign points as described above.

Breeding skills:
Offspring inherit the skills of both parents. If any of the skills have points, half of the points will remain on that skill for the offspring to use. If both parents have the same skill filled with points, the offspring's skill will be filled as well. That is, say both parents have AtkUp-1 at 50 points. The offspring will get AtkUp-1 at 50 points, too. At the same time, if both parents have the same lower-level skill, such as AtkUp-1, the offspring will receive the next higher version of that skill (i.e. - AtkUp-2), even if there are no points assigned to the parents' skills. Obtaining certain skills requires one parent to have one skill and the other to have a related but different skill. That is, if one parent has AtkUp-3 and the other has Master Fencer, the offspring will receive those two skills plus AtkUp-SP.

Now, 1-slot monsters can only equip 3 skills. If both parents have completely different sets of skills, and some of those skills combine to trigger the creation of all new skills, then the offspring could have up to 8 potential skills that you have to pick from. I think the rule is, if a skill you don't pick has half the maximum number of points assigned to it, the book for that skill will go into your inventory after the offspring monster is generated. So, if you want to keep a really good skill, but just not on this specific monster you're currently breeding, be sure to max the points assigned to it before you breed the parents together.

Buying skills:
After you restore power to Central, the Skill Scrolls Shop will open up (next to the Inn shop). The shop will initially carry some low-level scrolls for a few hundred gold each. Don't bother buying any of them unless you really want them on your monsters. Later, as you go through the game and explore the fields, you may find some scrolls in chests or stealth boxes. Bring these back to the Skills Shop, and the Nocho-ra there will take them from you and use them to create all new, higher-powered scrolls that you can buy (up to 20,000 gold each). Whatever you buy will go into inventory.

Assigning skills from inventory:
To see what skills you have, open the main menu, select Items (the sack), and scroll down about halfway through the list. If you select a scroll, a menu will open showing the monsters in both parties, and indicate whether anyone has this skill assigned already. Select the desired monster. If they have an open slot available, the skill will be assigned immediately, otherwise you'll be told you have to pick a skill to discard. Do so, and the skill gets assigned and the game returns to the Inventory list. Keep in mind that doing it this way will throw away the discarded skill and any points previously assigned to it. It may be preferable to breed that monster with something you don't want to keep, and just leave one skill slot empty, then assign the skill from inventory. Although the new offspring monster will now be at level 1, it can quickly be brought back up to max stats with one or two runs through the Metal Area, or a few minutes in the Golden Area (just use a Ko Genkidama on the party, find a x2 or x4 exp. faerie, then scout the Golden Area for a 300,000 exp Gold Slime to jump to level 60 or 80 in one battle).

Skill Basics:
Lower-level skills can take up to 50 points total. As you assign the points, you unlock higher and higher abilities, stat improvements, attacks and magic. This part is pretty intuitive. The better skills can be 75, 100, 150, 200 or 250 points total. To get enough points to max out all of the skills your monster has may require that you breed it a few times and raise it to exp. level 100 each time.

Skills can be task-specific (only boost Atk, or only boost HP), mixed for a "job" (the healer gets to recover HP on an individual or the party, remove ailments, and add certain kinds of buffs), or mixed for an element (a "water" skill can include water-based healing, MP and Mnd boosts, a water-based attack spell, and guards against water attacks). While you can not alter the things a specific skill provides, you can match skills on an individual monster so that it has MndUp-3, Water Guard and Water Magic (for example).

One of the things I hate about attack-based skills is that there are a couple that have a physical attack that damages the attacker for the same amount of damage the target receives. It is difficult when assigning skills to monsters to determine which ones these are. This is important for automatic battles where you can't force the monster to use other attacks, or you lack sufficient healing from the other monsters, because effectively your monster is helping the enemy to kill itself. This two-edged attack doesn't seem to be present in magic attack skills. With magic, you do have to be a little careful of monsters with "reflect" or "mirror" skill abilities, but those aren't common. What I do like is having monsters with the innate "Counter" or "Miracle Body" abilities (assigned if the monster is Rank SS+100), where they counter after receiving physical or magical damage (this is not a skill-based thing, though).

I really haven't been able to figure out what a lot of the skills are or do. The explanations given when I press the Y key of a given skill line item are incomplete, and I don't want to take the time to individually test every single one and take extensive notes. I like "All Recovery", which includes a "Healing Rain" magic to heal the entire party, and "resurrect" to try to restore a downed party member. One of the Warrior skills includes occasional percentage pluses for scouting monsters. And AtkUp-SP adds close to 300 points to Atk. As for everything else, who knows.

That's all I want to write about for DQM:J3 right now.