Things I Wish I’d Known Before Starting Dragon Quest XI
It’s Best to Focus Each Character on One Weapon
Dragon Quest XI’s ability system gives you a wide array of different things to choose from. There are tiles that boost stats, ones that unlock new abilities in combat, ones that up their chance of getting pepped up, and more. Each character has at least two weapons they can use, and two sections of their ability grid correspond to these weapons. Realistically, you could try and be a jack of all trades and invest points here and there, but it’s a much better idea to have each character double-down on one specific weapon type.
Doing this allows you to really power up that weapon, and learn a wide array of abilities. Ability points aren’t super abundant and as you progress through the game, spots on the ability grid will cost more and more. It’s best to focus on the slots that boost your attack damage when wielding, then try and get specific abilities, and then once you’ve completed that seep over into the other sections on the grid.
The other thing that might not be obvious in Dragon Quest XI, is that if you do decide to change gears and put a different weapon type on a character, you can reassign all of the ability points you’ve used. By going to a church or save point and choosing the “reactification” option, you can get back all points used on a specific section and reuse them, for a small fee of gold. Because of this, it’s easy to rebuild a character in another way.
