Day 12 of The Twelve Days of DQsmas arrives. Whew, that was a haul.
With the big optional dungeon / superboss still remaining, I've got lots and lots (and lots) of grinding to do.
Franco makes a sound point. Unfortunately, the game pulled a fast one on me, and the "clear game" save returned me to my last manual save spot rather than actually saving anything I did after that. So all the equipment I got in Deathtamoor's lair poofed, and everyone's levels bounced from 50ish down to 45ish. This is very irritating because it took a while to farm those 5 levels. If I'd known it was gonna bounce me back, I woulda evac'd out once I got to the end and saved in town before running the dungeon again. Or just made a save state and returned to that after the credits, I guess.
First thing's first: Going to Amoru Cave (one of the two versions of it) and searching in this one obscure spot gets you the second and final secret class, Metal Babble.
Now I face the difficult decision of figuring out who to make a Dragon / Metal Babble. Dragon has generally better stats than Hero, as seen here.
End up going with Barbara for the Dragon (since she needs the stat increase the most, given her poor HP and defense). Dragons get some very potent attacks that cost zero MP and aren't considered magic, as well. So this makes Barbara essentially a non-caster damage-caster, if that makes sense.
Metal Babble is a tougher choice. This class functions as kind of a "tank" class since it avoids/absorbs pretty much everything and takes minimal damage. However, the things that do damage it tend to decimate it, with its low HP.
Hassan is the best choice for this since it builds on stats he's already got higher numbers on than everyone else. Congratulations Hassan, you get to tank the uberboss!
When the class gets maxed-out, Metal Babble HP doubles, which is crucial for it being useful. So that's the next thing I need to do: Max it out. Only problem is, it takes longer to max than any other class, at an entire 300 battles. Have to grind these classes anyway, since the secret dungeon requires having all classes at level 5 (of 8). I've got 'em all maxed besides these two new ones so it's whatev.
Best place to grind? Still Deathtamoor's Castle, due to the healing tile a few rooms into the place. Set up shop outside that room and use Whistle to summon enemies. Over...and over. This is where 4x emulator speed really becomes handy, since I don't have airline flights to spend grinding on my phone like I did with the DQ6 remake. Spiegelspire could work for getting the two classes maxed really fast, but I need EXP as well. Especially after the clear game save totally F'd me over.
Emulator rewind is very useful for slaying the Metal King Slimes. In short, modern QOL makes this WAY less of a hassle than it would have been for Super Famicom players in the late 90's.
"Show a lot of things, happening at once! Remind everyone of what's goin on!"
Don't get these Metal class titles at all, but at least they didn't go for heavy metal puns. I'm still not over them naming all the Ranger class levels after Power Rangers.
Barbara is ascending through the ranks of dragonhood! All of these breath attacks are zero MP and hit everything on screen, which combined with the high stats makes Dragon a great class.
Farming Satan's Generals until I was sick of looking at 'em.
Thanks to this healing spring I was able to go all out with MP on every fight.
Madante is the "Magic Burst" of this game and consumes all your MP to do one big mega-attack.
It's actually not a bad thing for Hassan to use since his tanking abilities are all zero MP. This gives him one good damage round before he commences tanking.
Finally got my levels caught up to where they were before I beat the game. Lame thing is, I could have been 4 or so levels higher at this point if I didn't have to redo this.
Also had to repeat most of Deathtamoor's Castle to re-get the Metal King Sword and everything else it has. So annoying.
Unlocking the secret dungeon is a simple matter of going to the basement of the Shrine of Dhama and activating all the class torches (by having them all at level 5+)
And the secret dungeon is........another cave. I don't know why I expected something cool.
But wait! There's a recreation of Lifecod a few floors in, called Deathcod. This place is an illusion, but you can warp to it with Return, which is a huge plus at this point.
Tania has been replaced with a redheaded version of herself. "Are you ready?" she says before doing leaping chops in the air like X-Pac.
Thanks, we figured that out by now.
Now for the single coolest thing in this entire bonus dungeon:
::Godfather's theme plays::
Taloon: "Well...well...well. It is I, the lettuce and tomatoes between the Betty and Veronica sandwich! The banana in Cheryl's fruit bowl of love! Boy, does this series suck without me, or what? I'm the hero who has arrived to save The Twelve Days of DQsmas and a Goodness Gracious Goddamn Handsome Man, Torneko 'Your wife, mistress, sister, and grandma can only finish when they think of me and my stache' ...Taloon."
Another cool moment has Sancho of DQ5 fame showing up.
And make no mistake, these are supposed to be the DQ5 characters. It's a nice bit of nostalgia-bait.
"...play my legendary Super Famicom game: Taloon's Mysterious Dungeon!"
Not right now, dude!
The shop here sells Dragon books, so I can turn Hiko and Muriel into that class now as well. Unfortunately I already did most of my leveling (and had to to even get in here due to the class requirement) so they won't be maxing the class out before the last battle (as much as that would help).
"Fun Fact! Nintendo named the planet in Metroid Prime after me to boost sales for that little-known series!"
I don't think that's... also pretty sure it was Tallon IV, sir.
Speaking of maxing, Barbara gets the class maxed, and with that... Crystal Breath, a zero-MP ability that is essentially an ice-element Explodet and about 50% more powerful. In other words, this move is pretty damn awesome and obsoletes almost every other attack in the game under most circumstances.
Maxing out Metal Babble gets me the BIGU BANG ATTACK which is probably the strongest move in the game (besides Madante of course), but costs a hefty 30 MP.
It absolutely nukes everything onscreen, though. With how low Metal Babble MP is, I won't really get any use out of this unless I change him back into a different class. However, the game's just about over at this point.
Super-crucial item that's hidden in Deathcod and easy to miss. This is a massive boon against the superboss. With this, a character's spells always cast twice. So they can do two HealUs in a row to fix up the party, or two Lightning in a row do deal huge damage, and so forth. Don't think it works on abilities.
The next area is a lava cave with the toughest foes in the game. No healing spring, so I'd still go with Deathtamoor Castle for lategame leveling.
This gets us to a strange altar.
The "fiiiithos" spirit that was summoned earlier in the game finally returns.
Not sure if this guy is supposed to be Duran, considering Duran said something about having a rematch with us when he reached full power. Doesn't seem to have anything to do with him, though.
You're supposed to be around level 70 for this fight, and here I am trying to do it at 52/53. Problem is, it takes ages to level. Took me hours just to get from 46 to 53/52, and that's with 4x emulator speed. Could have been mid-high 50's but nooo, and I'm not spending any more time grinding. Luckily, I have a foolproof strategy for this fight. It worked in the remake, it'll work here.
It's simple: Have your (maxed) Metal Babble use the Warrior ability Protect (Forebearance in the remake). This causes him to tank everything.
This causes nearly all of the boss' AOEs to only target Hassan and thus be completely deflected/nullified. He has a couple of moves that still get through or can OHKO Hassan, so you need to be on the ball. This isn't a "win button"
The other key is Crystal Breath. Barbara is able to spam this for the entire fight and it does tons of damage. Between this and Hassan absorbing everything, I was able to (very) slowly make progress.
What were the other two doing, you ask?
Pretty much spamming either Lightning or healing, depending on the need. Was also crucially important to keep Buff on Hassan to keep his defense maxed-out. At this point in the game, one cast is enough to max it out with like +183 defense.
Muriel has the Echoing Hat, so she's able to do a ton of damage over the course of the fight. However, once she runs out of MP, she can't do any more, while Barbara is still going and going with her impressive stamina. At that point Muriel switches to Hustle Dance to top us off.
The biggest issue here is that he occasionally tries to AOE sleep the party and it can really mess up your strategy. Luckily it misses most of the time and doesn't last long when it does land. King Hydra in DQ3 HD-2D is much worse.
After a long, long, LONG fight, I finally take him down. Barbara's crystal attacks made all the difference, and were often the only damage I inflicted in any given round.
Yeah, whatever, I won the fight and I'm out.
Final stats for this game. Like I said before, they really should have been significantly higher, if the game hadn't swindled me at the 11th hour with not keeping my levels from Deathtamoor's Castle.
With DQ6 finally wrapped, will I do DQ7? I don't know, but I've officially cleared the deck for some new projects either way. We'll see what shakes out of the tree.
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