Dragon Quest IX-The Elusive Solo Run (4): Tips and tricks for the road

Here come the fourth and final post of my Dragon Quest IX Solo run feature, in which I will provide a few tips to help you make the most of it, before giving my final thoughts on the matter. Without further ado, let’s get started!

Tip#1: critical hits are a loner’s bane

The biggest threat to the smooth progression of your Solo Run lies in the critical hits, which can be devastating when fighting a boss. These dangerous blows can drain your HP in tremendous amounts, forcing you to waste precious time and resources to heal yourself—that is, if they don’t knock you out entirely in the first place. Since critical hits are bound to land on you during every single boss fight, you cannot count on luck alone to avoid them, and must find a surer way to do so. And fortunately, there is one in the game. The only way to forever get rid of the critical hits threat is to raise your Shield Skill to 100, and then equip a shield at all times. By doing so, your shield will automatically deflect any critical hit aimed at you, leaving you totally unscathed, with the added bonus of the enemy losing one turn. You don’t even specifically need to trigger this skill during a fight, for it remains active at all times—which makes it even sweeter, if that’s even possible.

Tip#2: become your very own private tank

In a classic Party Run, you can have one character acting specifically as a shield and protector for the rest of the team by taking all the nasty blows aimed at other party members. This character is usually referred to as a “tank”, and sure enough, there is a class dedicated to that function in Dragon Quest IX, which is the Paladin. The problem is, you cannot use this class to protect yourself in a Solo Run, for it is specifically designed to protect others. Yet, you still have to protect yourself as efficiently as possible. It’s especially true in some of the boss fights: some boss have regular hits that are nearly as devastating as critical hits in term of HP cost, and can basically force you into a vicious circle of having to heal every single turn without ever being able to attack them. The best way to avoid such a nasty turn of events is to make good use of what I would call the “deflecting abilities”. There are two skills in the game that are designed to fire the enemy’s blows back at them, leaving you fresh and untouched while hurting the enemy in the process. The first one is “Back Atcha”, available in the Shield Skill Tree at the 82 points mark, which deflects physical attacks. It only lasts one turn, and has to be activated again for further use. The second one is “Magic Mirror”, also available in the Shield Skill Tree at the 40 points mark, which deflects magical attacks. Its effect lasts for a few turns, allowing you to conveniently land hits in the meantime. Those two skills should be put to good use, for they offer great protection to the Solo Runner and can even allow you to win boss battles that may have seemed impossible at first. 

Tip#3: Spear, Axe and Silver

One of the most beloved staples in the Dragon Quest series in the presence of the infamous Metal Slimes. These elusive beasts, which are seldom spotted and are notoriously prone to escape, can reward you with a ridiculously high amount of experience points if you manage to take them down. But that is not a feat easily achieved, for these slippery metalized slimes have a strong tendency to flee from battle after only a handful of turns. The most common way to beat them on a classic party setting is to have your whole team ganging up on them with attacks tailored against anything metal and destroy them before they can even stand a chance to escape; but that is obviously not a viable option for a Solo Run. You will usually only have two or three turns to attack before they run away, and no metal-tailored attack is strong enough to take them down in so short a time. In order to do so, you must resort to a duo of very specific attacks, designed to aim a critical hit when they succeed, the probability of doing so being of 50%. It may seem low, but it’s a much better and surer way to wipe out metal slimes than any other attack you could use. These two attacks are “Thunder Thrust”, available in the Spear Skill Tree at the 58 points mark, and “Hatchet Man”, available in the Axe Skill Tree at the 58 points mark. They come quite cheap compared to the amount of goodness they can reap, and landing a successful critical hit on a huge Metal King Slime by using one of these two deadly moves will bring a tremendous amount of satisfaction, along with an equally tremendous amount of XP. 

Tip#4: be Swift

Agility is an important ability that tends to be often overlooked. Your Agility stats, compared to the ones boasted by your foe, determine who will attack first: the one with the highest Agility gets the first turn. Now, you can imagine how crucial high Agility stats may become in a Solo Run: it can basically make the difference between a good and a bad start in a fight, by giving you time to cast a welcome shielding ability before your foe gets the chance to land a hit on you, or slice that Metal King Slime in two before it manages to escape. The best way to raise your Agility is to get 100 points on the Martial Artist’s Focus Skill Tree. Doing so will grant you 100 extra Agility points, which will be enough to give you an edge over virtually every single enemy, including Metal Slimes. 

Well, that will be it for the tips! Hopefully they will be of some use to any aspirant loner, and will help turn a future Solo Run into a great and memorable experience. I really encourage any Dragon Quest IX fan to try this way of playing at least once, especially since it may very well have been the very way the game was designed to be played in the first place. Now that may seem a little weird and far-fetched to assume such a thing, but think of it for a second: it’s fairly well-known that Dragon Quest IX was originally intended to be a more action-oriented RPG, with a strong focus on multiplayer. It would then seem logic to assume that it would feature a single character created and trained by the player, interacting at will with others characters also created and trained by others players. (This makes even more sense given that, as I mentioned earlier, Action-RPGs usually tend to be solo affairs.) This direction was then abandoned due to irate fans protesting against it, and Dragon Quest IX ended up as a fairly traditional turn-based RPG, much like the other entries in the series. Yet, the possibility of recruiting your own party of computer-created characters strongly feels like it’s been added only as an afterthought to content long-time fans and make them feel more at home. Had it been planned from the very start, the teammates would have been included in the storyline, much like in Dragon Quest IV or VI. Yet they are not, and are actually little more than a pis aller for players who want to play the traditional way on their own without resorting to the multiplayer option. So here’s my point: by playing Dragon Quest IX solo, you may actually be tapping at the game’s forgotten and deeply buried roots, and rekindle the way it was supposed to be played in the first place. This is only my own theory, and I may be entirely wrong; but the Solo Run is such a smooth and rich experience that it’s really hard to believe that the game was not, indeed, initially designed to be played that way. “Try it and see for yourselves, and have loads of fun doing so!” will be my final words on the matter, concluding this Dragon Quest IX Solo Run feature. Thanks for reading, and be my guest anytime!