Topic: Dragon Quest VII

[Fatty The Hutt]

Beat the boss of island 2 and text is telling me I am having a wonderful celebration, lol
slowly, slowly

[sudoshuff]

Well, I picked up this game a couple of weeks ago on a whim (never having played a game in the series before).  I'll confess that I didn't really like it at first--mostly because the battles seemed too easy and repeated character models/terrain textures seemed pretty boring.  However, the game has picked up significantly and revealed a lot more depth after my third or fourth island.  I'm really enjoying it now!

[Fatty The Hutt]

Did some concentrated playing over the past few days and I have finally reached Alltrades Abbey!!
I have now reviewed Oedo's earlier advice and am ready to dive into my first vocation switches. So excited.

I wonder, is there any room to have a laugh and go for some of the goofier vocations early on, just for fun, or should I stick to clearly mapped paths to final boss victory?

Keep in mind I haven't actually tried to speak to the vocation-change guy yet so I am not totally clear about what I am asking. I just noticed from other players' comments that you can be, like, a dancer or jester or, i dunno, YouTube make-up artist or something. (I may have invented that last one.) Those sound like potential for laughs and funny costume changes.

[sudoshuff]

Did some concentrated playing over the past few days and I have finally reached Alltrades Abbey!!

How long after the Roamers section is this?  I just made it past that.

[Fatty The Hutt]

Did some concentrated playing over the past few days and I have finally reached Alltrades Abbey!!

How long after the Roamers section is this?  I just made it past that.

Directly after. You're almost there. Go talk to the King, lay the fragments you've found, and you're there!

**EDIT**: Hmmm, I may have spoken a little too soon. You'll see.

[sudoshuff]

Did some concentrated playing over the past few days and I have finally reached Alltrades Abbey!!

How long after the Roamers section is this?  I just made it past that.

Directly after. You're almost there. Go talk to the King, lay the fragments you've found, and you're there!

**EDIT**: Hmmm, I may have spoken a little too soon. You'll see.

Thanks, I made it there!  Glad you told me because I had planned on setting the game aside for a while after the Roamers section.

[Oedo]

Did some concentrated playing over the past few days and I have finally reached Alltrades Abbey!!
I have now reviewed Oedo's earlier advice and am ready to dive into my first vocation switches. So excited.

I wonder, is there any room to have a laugh and go for some of the goofier vocations early on, just for fun, or should I stick to clearly mapped paths to final boss victory?

Keep in mind I haven't actually tried to speak to the vocation-change guy yet so I am not totally clear about what I am asking. I just noticed from other players' comments that you can be, like, a dancer or jester or, i dunno, YouTube make-up artist or something. (I may have invented that last one.) Those sound like potential for laughs and funny costume changes.

I decided early on which advanced classes I wanted to pursue with each of my party members and mostly stuck to reaching those as quickly as I could. However, I mastered them a good while before the final boss, so there should definitely be some room to try out the other classes early on if you want (just make sure you avoid fighting enemies that give you a ton of exp and make you level up really quickly, like metal slimes). In the case of Dancer and Jester specifically, they're actually useful classes because:

Mastering the Jester, Dancer, and Troubadour classes opens the path to the Luminary class, and mastering the Luminary and Sage classes (the latter of which is opened after you master the Priest and Mage classes) leads to the Druid class. Druid is the most powerful magic-using class in the game, so if you plan on leading one of your party members down that path, you'll have to master those two classes with that party member anyway.

Beyond that, the other early classes can still be somewhat useful because all the abilities you learn in the beginner classes are retained (even after you switch to another class). There's really no penalty for switching classes most of the time, so you can even try them out for a few battles and then switch to something else if you want.

By the way, you guys are at what I thought was the hardest part of the game. Once you push through this part and really open up the class system, it should be smoother sailing from there.

[Fatty The Hutt]

Thanks, Oedo!
Yeah a really interesting curve-ball just got thrown our way, not sure where it's going to go.
Just got my ass kicked in a fight that I could see the game obviously meant me to lose, so I didn't bother trying to use up healing items or anything, just let it happen. At least my money was retained.

On the subject of money, I decided to deposit about 2/3 of my considerable accumulated cash before that fight, even though it didn't matter in the end. I didn't know an un-winnable fight was coming I just did it out of caution seeing as my party was in a new, unusual position where anything could happen. It was the first time I used a bank in this game and I wonder if it is really needed? I can see it being useful if you do die, then half your cash won't be wiped out. But I can also see it becoming a pain if you want to purchase new items but don't have access to your cash and then you have to backtrack all the way to some bank and I don't have their locations memorized or anything (it's like life!)

So, banks or no banks? Whaddya all think?

[sudoshuff]

Interesting, I'm also curious about banks.  Every time I accumulate a lot of money I'm able to find some piece of gear or two that enhances a party member's stats.  I've never lost money because I almost always spend it as soon as I find a new weapons/armor/item shop. 

[Fatty The Hutt]

**Minor Spoilers Ahead**


Well, I'm over 140 hours into this game now and almost ready to move to what I assume will be the end game.
I have of late spent a lot of time (obviously) grinding vocations. I made a conscious decision to do this for fun and as an experiment. It's been quite fun and I have no regrets but I recognize this is a crazy way to play. I have achieved the grinding by using traveller's tablets since they have no level cap on accumulating battles that count toward vocation levelling. I am fairly close to having all my chosen party members masters of *all* advanced vocations, and then some. I have found a few tablets that I typically return to because they have a nice mix of gold and experience that they hand out for battles. But yeah, I'm probably way over-levelled for whatever may come next. I also have a huge bank account at Alltrades Abbey. But like I said, no regrets.

I don't actually know where I am in the game. I seemingly have all the "regular" coloured tablets completed. Now there are "grey" special tablets to deal with (I think?) and you have to go to a special place for that. I'll figure it out when I'm ready to move the story along but so far I've enjoyed messing around with vocations and tablets. I've tried some of the download tablets too and some of them are just brutal. Fun, but brutal. Oh, also I haven't reached the point where Maribel could come back but I already know I'll let her go since Aishe and Mervyn have mastered so many vocations.

Great game. I love returning to it in spurts when I feel like it and messing around with the systems. Truly an epic adventure. Wonder how much more of it here is?

[pokepal148]

I need to get this game.