Dragon Quest XI: Tips & Tricks for Beginners

Dragon Quest XI Tips & Tricks For Beginners

Search the World High and Low

The number one tip we can possibly give you for Dragon Quest XI, is simply to explore and look everywhere you go. The world of Erdrea is teeming with secrets and treasure to find, both in and out of towns. Sparkly spots dot every field you make your way through, rewarding you with valuable items for crafting. You can even see the locations of these spots by opening up the map with square, then selecting map menu, and looking for sparkly spots.

Towns, in particular, are exceptionally detailed and have tons of things to find. Keep an eye out for treasure chests hidden away, open up wardrobes to find items, smash pots and barrels to find items. You can also inspect any bookshelf with a red book, which sometimes leads to the hero reading a book and learning story or lore, and other times can lead to you getting a recipe card which teaches you new items to make at the Fun Sized Forge.

Outside of items and equipment, the citizens of Erdrea just have interesting things to say and stories to tell, and often side quests to give. It really is in your best interest to explore the world in every way you can. 

Dragon Quest XI Tips & Tricks For Beginners

Try Out Different Party Combinations

In Dragon Quest XI, every single party member gets experience from every battle. Because of this, you don’t need to worry about swapping someone in to get experience, as everyone will stay steady around the same level the entire time. With this in mind, you still should swap out party members often and get a feel for how everyone’s skills work together, what pep powers they have, and what strategies you can come up with.

For example, Veronica functions as the offensive mage of your party with devastating spells and stat reducers, while Sylvando can function as a combination of melee attack and support. Meanwhile, Rab and Serena are healers so you may not want them both in your party at the same time, except for really tough battles. Each character has a specific set of pep powers they can use when pepped up, but they may not have a power to use with one ally or another. You can view the full list of everyone’s pep powers by going to attributes on the main menu then hitting X until you get to pep powers on your selected character.

The experience system in Dragon Quest XI means you have the luxury of trying out anything and everything you might want to, so definitely take advantage of that.

Dragon Quest XI Tips & Tricks For Beginners

Focus Each Character on a Specific Weapon

While everyone does gain the same amount of experience, each character has a ton of unique skills to unlock, most of which are based around specific weapons. While you’re free to sink your points in whatever you want, it’s generally a better idea to focus each character in on a specific weapon and give them a specific role until later in the game. You won’t get enough skill points to unlock everything until very late, so in order to expedite getting strong skills you can focus on one weapon and power that one up.

For example, if you want Serena to have strong healing capabilities, focus her on wands and shields, as there are a ton of skills in her wands category that boost her magical mending. The same can be said for Rab and Heavy Staves. For the hero, if you want him to have high defense focus on swords and shields, whereas if you want him to have high attack focus on greatswords. Each character has different areas they can specialize in, some gaining attacks that can hit groups of enemies versus single enemies, like Erik’s boomerangs versus knives.

Dragon Quest XI Tips & Tricks For Beginners

Use the Fun Sized Forge to Craft and Improve Items

The Fun Sized Forge is an incredibly important part of Dragon Quest XI, as it’s how you’ll consistently get access to the best current equipment throughout the game. As long as you’re doing your due diligence in exploring you should uncover a ton of different recipes for the forge, as well as the materials to make them. Make sure to stop at a campfire every once in a while and see what you’re able to make, as more often than not it’ll be better than your current equipment. As you gain levels throughout Dragon Quest XI, you’ll also gain levels for the forge getting new skills to use during the mini-game as well as more focus.

One aspect of the Fun Sized Forge that’s easy to overlook, however, is the fact that you can use it to improve any piece of equipment you get in the game. The rework option on the forge menu lets you retry items you failed at, but it’ll also let you reforge any piece of equipment in an attempt to get it to a +3 stat. You’ll need Perfectionist’s Pearls for this, which you get every time you forge a new piece of equipment, or you can buy them with gold at L’Academie de Notre. This can be a great way to give your party members a little extra boost, especially if you’re having trouble with a specific section or boss.

Dragon Quest XI Tips & Tricks For Beginners

If You See a Metal Slime, Focus on Them

Experience is a precious commodity in Dragon Quest XI, and leveling up your characters is by far the best way of dealing with the game’s challenges. To that end, there aren’t a ton of ways for getting experience fast outside of grinding. However, there is one thing to keep an eye out for: metal slimes.

These metallic variants are a series mainstay and reward you with heaps of experience that can instantly level up characters. However, they generally try to flee battle so you need to hop on them quickly. If a metal slime appears in battle of any kind, absolutely target them first and foremost. Don’t bother with magical attacks as they’re useless against metal slimes, and physical attacks do 1 to 2 damage. The metal slimes only have a few HP, so basically you need to hit them with physical attacks fast. Skills that let characters hit multiple times in one action are best here, like Falcon Slash with a sword, or Multithrust with a spear. You can try and inflict status elements like sleep on the slimes, but that generally doesn’t work, so it’s better to just go fast and hard.

There’s not really any rhyme or reason as to how metal slimes appear, but you’ll stumble upon them randomly throughout Dragon Quest XI, and they can be a tidy little surprise if you do it right.