Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Revelation, Chapter 12 - Epilogue

 

The final boss may be defeated, but we have one last battle to fight: Spike's feelings for Tania.

JUST KIDDING, it's an uberboss. And it's a DOOZY.

Why is Buddy looking through Tania's windows? It'd be okay if the cat was doing it, but he's not a cat, he's a man!

So you've decided to be an Orbiter and lurk around her until you can slide in during a moment of weakness?

Have you tried just asking her out?

Uh, I don't know if you know this but some guy is looking in your windows.

What?

Cool. I still don't know if the game is going for a subtle romance angle with these two, with its constant notes that Spike is adopted, and Tania acting exactly like RPG girls act when they have a crush on the protagonist. If they are, they need to cut it out.

Milly is happy to be reunited with her own brother. Lots of sibling duos in this game.

That pretty much leaves Spike and Ashlynn to head back to his hometown...only to find it empty.

No worries though, everyone is out partying. Meanwhile, Spike is an honest to God prince!

"This includes several scantily-clad boys who will fan you at all times with large leaves" says Queen Apnea.

King Somnus is overjoyed that he might have pink-haired grandkids soon. However, he's mistaken, Spike and Ashlynn aren't together.

...are they?

Now is the time on Sprockets when we dance! I see Buddy finally managed to slide into Tania's DMs.

Terry is the loner as usual, and wants no parts of the party. He's like an antisocial college student hiding in his room and "not feeling well" while his roommates party all evening in the living room.

"Let her know I can't work a 9 to 5. I see her crying, but girl I can't stay. So I'll be gone till November."

Ashlynn and Spike are FINALLY alone, only to have Ashlynn start turning back into a shade.

So basically, since she was a ghost in this world to begin with, she's turning back into one. It's kinda like how Buu Saga Gokou had a limited amount of time on Earth as a dead guy. Which was poignant on a number of levels. Until they just sorta threw that out and trivialized death and brought everyone back repeatedly anyway but what can you do.

Nice view here. That's about it for DQVI. Except...

After this screen, you can reload the game.

Head back to Alltrades Abbey and there's new stuff happening. Specifically an optional uber-dungeon with the strongest foes.

The uber-dungeon follows the same mold as other postgame dungeons in a lot of RPGs, in that it consists of a mishmash of areas from earlier in the game. After getting through several floors of difficult dungeon trekking, you arrive at a fake version of your hometown:

"Too bad you're late, they've already moved to the orgy portion of the festival. Ashlynn is wearing an Eyes Wide Shut mask and pleasuring Carver."

Go to the house where Tania usually is and some random NPC is here. Presumably Tania is off helping Ashlynn double-team Carver. I hope they high-five while they're doing it.

Oh, that explains a lot. Can I have a fiery-tempered Mediterranean wife with flowy hair who constantly challenges me and looks great in a black dress?

This part is interesting, because you actually get to choose what form the Fake Hometown takes. This change is permanent. "The near future" turns it into a DQIV town with DQIV characters, "the far future" turns it into a DQV town with DQV characters, and "monsters today" just populates it with monsters.

It was a tough choice, but I chose DQIV.

This gets you Taloon and everyone else. Here's a random shot of the DS version for comparison.

"Well...well...well. It is I, back for action one last time, with a round in the chamber and fully loaded. They want to talk about the past present and future? Well I had your mom, your sister, and your grandma last night. I am the one the ladies call Big Daddy, and the one who TRULY knows how to inspect her gadget, for I am the Quintessential Studmuffin and a goodness gracious great balls of fire God-damn handsome man, Torneko 'Just like a rubix cube, the more you play with me, the harder I get' Taloon."

"Now let me tell you the tale of the time I had a personal bull" says Taloon.

I gotta go. Godspeed Taloon. Godspeed.

Psaro and Rose are found in Spike's house. Psaro is his normal standoffish self, and who can blame him?

The way forward is this well, which Alena is considering rappelling into on her own. Her lurking orbiter Cristo is shocked and appalled at her recklessness.

If I could recruit any one DQIV character from this town it'd be her, hands-down. She's got BALLS. Unfortunately, there's no way to recruit anyone here.

Here's Bray from DQIV. He's old and likes Vodka.

And Ragnar! None of this really has a big impact on the game or anything but it's cool to get these last-minute cameos.

Hold on, let's not bury the lede here. The shopkeeper is a CAT.

Here's Maya, sitting on the world's luckiest barstool.

Eliza is alive here, and hanging out with The Hero, who we learn is named Solo.

This Bilderberg shrine to Moloch is where you can summon the secret uberboss of the game.

T...Toad??

Oh. Nokturnus, everyone! Please clap.

This guy... could demolish the final boss one-on-one. To make things worse, the party is underleveled (55-60 is recommended for this and we're averaging 50) AND we're weakened from fighting through the expansive uber-dungeon to get here.

He attacks up to THREE times per turn and his attacks are highly-damaging, almost all group attacks. This isn't going well. With him moving before anyone except Milly, it's very hard to recover from his attacks.

Yeah, this isn't working, I'm spending all my time trying to revive people.

I did the best I could but I got squashed. This is amazing because I was so OP for the final boss, yet this guy is on another level. He's way stronger than the uberbosses of the previous two games.

THIS...is the uberboss of uberbosses in this series so far. How am I gonna down such a foe?

At this point you can recruit a Liquid Metal Slime, Mercury. I wasn't able to find him, but I found something even better: This item allows a character to take on Liquid Metal as a class. It's the only one of its type in the game, but supposedly the final boss can drop more of them on a 1/8th of the time basis. That sounds kind of ridiculous. Farm the final boss over and over for a 1/8th drop? Naw I'm good.

If one lucked out and got one on their normal win of the game, then they'd have two for this point and that'd help. One of these should suffice for my plan, though. Turns out that Liquid Metal is the perfect tank class for the uberboss.

Time to take a look at these optional classes. Dragon is of course extremely beefy. However their attacks are AOE-focused and they don't have anything majorly damaging for boss fights. They mostly function as tanks that can revive.

Liquid Metal on the other hand...might be the best class in the game. Maybe. They get Magic Burst and other super-powerful spells. The only problem is that they start with 100 HP. However, being immune to breath/spell attacks and taking reduced damage from physical attacks goes a long way. As long as they aren't sustaining too many direct physical attacks at a time, their 100 HP is sufficient. Max the class out (which takes THREE HUNDRED FIGHTS) and their HP doubles which helps a lot. That's a requirement for the uberboss.

Much like Terry became Dragon (just to help with revives), Carver is going to be our token Liquid Metal. He's the most solid tank out of the group, and I have a strategy for the uberboss.

Note: It appears that Dragon and Liquid Metal aren't required to be maxed to reach the uberboss, since I fought him without either maxed and without having LM at all. So that means you only need to max all of the base classes to reach him. However, maxing the two secret classes to prepare for fighting him is a good idea in general.

Next up: Leveling. Lots of leveling. GOTTA GET ALL THE LEVELS. This is best accomplished right outside Mortamoor's castle. I might as well have done this before the final boss. Except for having to max out the LM, that is. You'll have to fight 300 battles after the final boss no matter what. Doing that at Spiegelspire would certainly be faster, but here we get massively more EXP.

Enemies that morph into the heroes are, sadly, the best time to really see what these people look like in this remake.

Wait, why is Ashlynn making out with herself? NO! BAD!

After some Metal King Slime grinding I decided to go into the uber-dungeon and grind there for slightly more consistent exp. In here I faced a new nightmare, the war against the machines.

Terry maxes out Dragon. It took a while, but I got a bunch of much-needed levels in the process.

Liquid Metal Slime takes the longest to master. It's 100 fights just to go from 7 stars to 8 stars.

Finally, a glorious moment. In addition to Magic Burst, the class also learns Big Banga which is a super-damaging attack. However, putting the class on Carver means he doesn't have the MP to make full use of these things the way, say, Ashlynn would have.

There's a reason I went with Carver though.

HP is doubled. Carver's defense is through the roof. He's ready to be the tankiest Liquid Metal Slime ever. You see, there's a Warrior class ability called Forebearance that draws enemy attacks onto the caster. Thing is, it also affects AOEs. So a character who uses it will get hit 4x by an AOE, saving the rest of the group.

Liquid Metal Slimes are immune to AOEs.

This SHOULD work against the big boss.

Another key thing to do: After maxing Dragon and LMS, head back to Alltrades Abbey to finally get the class-mastering reward.

This ring protects you from ALL random encounters. Course you can't get it until after the final boss. It is very useful for the postgame dungeon, at least, and lets you get to the uberboss at 100%.

Now with 6-7 more levels and a LMS tank, our heroes return to the uberboss for a rematch.

Going to use Forebearance to draw his AOEs. Will it be enough?

Yes and no. His AOEs are now useless, but he can still incapacitate Carver with physical attacks if he does a few in succession. It's imperative to cast Buff on the tank multiple times and keep it there after dispels.

Every time Carver falls, that's several turns of trying to rebuild the wall, as it were, by getting him revived and rebuffed to resume tanking. Ideally, level 60 is probably when you're supposed to do this fight. Considering the final boss comes with a recommended level of 45, it's quite a jump to be 60 for this fight.

Hard to believe I didn't get 60 from all that high-EXP grinding. Glad I didn't do it at Spiegelspire, I'd be like level 53.

Man, this is STILL not going well. He's got me on the ropes! This calls for every desperate manuever I have...

Holy light shines down as Ashlynn finally charges herself up and administers Magic Burst.

Ashlynn BURSTS ALL OVER EVERYTHING.

She's been storing that up all game.

My God.

I need a cigarette.

Somehow, I won. That was one of the hardest fights in DQ history, and definitely the hardest of the first six. We'll see what later games have to offer. DQXI had a few pretty ludicrous fights at the end of the postgame that would chew you up even with all level 99s. At least this one still has plenty of room to level if absolutely needed.

After winning, the game is all "lol you didn't do it fast enough"

Whatever. DQVI is going on WELL past its sell-by date already. Interested to see if DQVII's noted super-boss is stronger than this one.

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