Raising money in the casino short of winning the jackpot requires regular save-scumming, incrementally building wealth with small victories until you get the one big enough to push you over the hump and give you the tokens you need to buy what you want. The casino is typically the location in the game which has one of the strongest swords in the game, and often you can earn other useful items like better armor than what is currently available or rare consumables. These casinos have a number of minigames which allow you to try and raise tokens in order to purchase rare items. Most Dragon Quest titles feature a location in the game world with a casino. It’s been an interesting change of pace to be able to progress through the game a little more quickly, but the time finally came when I encountered a more familiar grinding element. I rarely need to raise additional gold in order to buy items in the towns I visit (this is helped in part by the crafting system, as keeping up with quests and learning recipes makes it pretty easy to make your own high-power equipment).

Even when I enter new areas I tend to find the monsters in those areas running away from me. As a result, my party has been pretty consistently overleveled throughout the game. It seems that the game has been balanced to be more generous with both experience points and gold. That grinding experience is typical of many JRPGs.ĭragon Quest XI has been different for me. During those battles you also gain much-needed experience points for growing in level, adding to your skill points and learned spells. Each shop has new weapons and armor that enhance your ability to take on the boss of the next dungeon, but raising the gold to pay for those weapons and armor takes a repeated series of battles against the local monsters.

The typical difficulty curve in Dragon Quest is focused on the equipment available in shops. I remember spending hours exploring the game world, talking to NPCs in towns, building the skill trees for my characters, and of course battling monster after monster in the overworld and dungeons. The first experience with a Dragon Quest title that I have a strong memory of (AKA I was older than ten) was Dragon Quest VIII.

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