Dragon Quest XI: Beginners tips for your massive journey

Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age is now available worldwide on PS4 and for the first time in the franchise for a mainline entry, PC. Square Enix has brought out one of the best JRPGs here and you can read my full spoiler free review of it if you’re unsure about the game here.

It is definitely one of the games to play in September which is pretty packed as usual. Dragon Quest XI is a massive undertaking just like Persona 5 and these tips will help you set forth on the right foot when you begin your adventure:

Explore:

There is a vast and gorgeous world for you to explore split up into gorgeous towns and huge fields and deserts. The developers have smartly hidden various items across the lands and many of them are off the beaten path. When in towns, make sure to explore and look for ladders and anything that will let you climb onto rooftops and the like because there is usually a treasure chest or important item waiting for you.

Read Books and Open Cupboards:

While exploring towns and houses, make sure you go into each and every room and open every cupboard you see. I found some super useful gear early on through this. Bookshelves with a red book usually give you some important information or let you learn recipes which in turn make your life a lot easier with crafting.

Break Pots and Barrels:

Break every pot you can interact with and destroy the barrels in a similar fashion because you usually find money and basic items. There are loads of these scattered across each location in the game.

Visit each Campsite:

Since you can only save (outside the auto-save) at Churches and statues, make sure you visit each campsite you see in new areas. This lets you make use of the various Church features like removing status ailments in addition to saving and unlocking a fast travel point for use later on.

Use the Fun Sized Forge:

Each campsite also lets you use the Fun Sized Forge after a bit of gameplay and this lets you create new equipment and improve other equipment through a series of minigames. You unlock new recipes through story progression, side quests, reading books, and more.

Experiment With Skills:

You slowly unlock skill points that let you learn new abilities and skills across each character’s own skill tree. While you can slowly learn different abilities from various sections, your best bet is to focus on a single section or weapon type and learn more skills. If you don’t like the particular weapon type, you can always use a goddess statue to re-allocate skill points for a small fee.

Use Pep Smartly:

When you’re pepped up, your attack, defense, and critical rate goes up. Use this to your advantage. You can always use a Pep Power alongside a party member but that will use up your current Pep state.

Side Quests Are Worth Your Time:

Each new location and even some older ones have side quests available with a purple indicator that often reward you with useful items or gear. Make sure to try and do these when you can because the payoff is almost always worth it. Most of them are rather easy early on and they are well worth your time.

Have fun with First Person Mode for Screenshots:

While the game lacks a true photo mode, you can go into first person mode and then hide the UI to take screenshots of the gorgeous vistas or the lovely character and enemy models here.

Dragon Quest XI is a massive and magnificent JRPG. Hopefully those tips help you out as you dip your toes into the best game Square Enix has released since NieR: Automata.