Dragon Quest IX guide

It's Dragon Quest IX. There's questing and you can fight dragons. This shouldn't be too  unfamiliar. For quite a few people, this is actually their first Dragon Quest. For the OGs, we've been around the block a few times, and this is a neat trip through nostalgialand while adding enough fresh content. Then you have people inbetween, who have some DQ experience under their belt, but not alot. I hope this guide can help everybody. There are a few off-site pages I will link to just because somebody already did a certain job better than me (such as the Alchemy recipe/ingredient search engine, truly a helpful tool at any point in the game), but for the most part, most tips and advice in this is going to come from personal experience, advice and experiences from others, and of course, the DQ9 manual and Guidebook. Trust me, even with online FAQs, specialty pages such as this one, and whatnot, it's always handy to have the guide (plus it has lotsa purty pictures, just like the good old days). This is a real oddball for both /v/'s wikia "protip" pages and Dragon Quest. Mostly because of how social the game technically is, both online and in real life. As such, this may feel like an FAQ more than our typical tip pages. Nonetheless, there will also be a separate page set up soon for any experiences and what not that anyone on the wikia (even you!) can leave any sort of GAME-RELEVANT notes at. As such, please leave this page be for the sake of players looking for tips and use that one for particularly notable information, such as news of sponsored-events, map downloads, and possible real life "hot-spots" that have tagging pop up often, such as game conventions. That said, it's time to get down to business!

Stat Info and How to Take Advantage of Each
 -Strength- 
 * This is mainly to clear up what does what, especially since a few new stats were altered from old ones or added.

Boosts the physical damage you dish out. Pretty much your base offensive capabilities, which can make even weaker weapons hit harder(in addition to the weapon skill tree bonuses). Definitely pump this up for multiple-hit skills you may use (even if a weak ally hits multiple items, it won't mean much if they don't have the muscle to deal significant damage).

 -Resilience- 

Pretty much a fancy word for physical defense. Keeping it high is good if you change vocations to a less armor-inclined one. Example: Going from warrior to mage. Even if your armor sucks, you can make up for it some with this stat.

-Agility-

Raises the odds of a character taking action first. Due to the way turns work, the order of actions is not definite as there is a slight range of probability depending on agility, what your character will be doing (attacking, healing, etc.). Boosting your agility DOES help put the range in your favor that you will likely go first though. A great stat for healers who need to heal the party early, and nice for speedy attackers to consider.

-Deftness- Alot of people aren't sure about this, but you can rest easy, because here it is, straight from the fucking instruction manual itself: "Governs a character's ability to make preemptive strikes, perform critical attacks, and flee from battle." Now here's what they don't tell you: It also helps boost your steal rate, but only so much and so slightly (something's better than nothing...) and "spells going haywire"/"spells getting a significant boost" or "Critical Magic Hits". Yes, in DQ9, even magic can do critical hits! This works for damaging, healing (as in healing extra than usual), status ailments, stat debuffs, and anything else applicable. For ailments and debuffs, it's a far better chance of inflicting them and sometimes they may work better than normal. Example: "Sap", a spell which may lower one enemy's defense one level may end up lowering that enemy's defense TWO levels when critical-spelling.

-Charm-

How "attractive" your character is. Similar to Jessica's "Sex Appeal" in DQ8, this helps stun monsters into wasting their turns, regardless of the character or enemy's genders. This is a VERY helpful stat, as it even works on bosses, so definitely try to raise it up when you get Vocational skill trees that give you the opportunity to. There is an item known as a "Pretty Betsy" that raises a character's natural charm a slight bit; but, outside of the one you get in a quest, they can be variably hard to find. You might just want to use them on your hero/main character, just in case, especially since you can't take your self-made allies with you in multiplayer.

-Magical Might and Magical Mending-

Boost the capacity for your spells' damage (might) and healing (mending) respectively. Even weaker spells can be quite handy if you raise these high enough. Which is great since some of the strongest spells are quite expensive.

- MP Absorb  -

Only seems to come about with wands. Smack an enemy with a normal attack and you can drain some MP from it. How much you steal depends on this rating, which takes an amount from how much damage you do. Skills DO NOT count. However, you can still boost your damage by using spells or skills that raise your strength and attack, thus boosting the amount of MP you also drain. Do note that if an enemy has no MP, you won't drain anything.

-Block Chance and Evasion Chance-

Block chance affects how often you will nullify all assaults with your shield. Don't get too excited, as the rates are pretty low, even with great shields and Block chance boosting skills. Never hurts to have it though, and shields do still give extra Defense (and elemental resistances for a few). Evasion chance is just that. Your (also low) rate of potentially dodging all assaults. This is boosted by gear, clothing, a few skill trees, and so forth. Depending on the types of skills and characters you may be using, you may choose to equip a shield or raise evasion or NOT to, as some skills require you to get hit and take damage to be effective, which is you may avoid with other skills.

-Attack and Defense-

Strength + Weapon, accessories, etc. = Attack; Resilience + gear, clothes, etc.= Defense; as noted before, the base stats of Strength and Resilience are most important as Attack and Defense WILL fluctuate depending on your weapon equipped, skill tree bonuses, current vocation, and so forth. Don't think you can use your weakest gear non-stop though! The better your equipment, the better your chance of survival.

-Style-

Charm + Fly Threads (gear, clothes, etc.) = Style. Style can also help force enemies and bosses skip turns by "stunning" them with your fashion sense. Generally, the cooler and/or sexier your outfit is, the better. Some of the clothes you can get from Special Guests (Alena, Angelo, etc. from older DQ games) tend to have naturally good style bonuses, so be sure to pick those up when you can.

-"Where's the "spell resistance" stat?"-

There isn't one. Spell damage IS reduced by wearing certain clothes and gear, along with using certain spells and skills during battle though. Enemies and Bosses may have resistances to a few elements, but typically tend to be weak against some as well. Some are easy to get, such as Fire and Ice working well on each other, but others aren't immediately obvious, such as slimes being resistance to light/"holy" damage.

Vocation (and General Vocation Skills) Breakdown
-Vocation -

Role

+Vocation Skills+

Weapon (and General Weapon Skills) Breakdown
-Weapon- 

Role +Weapon Skills+

Alchemy and Ingredient Breakdown
-When is it first available?-

Krak Pot, your sentient little alchemy pot buddy, becomes available after fully completing the Wight Knight ordeal (beating the Morag, talking with the king and princess of Stornway after doing so, etc. You'll know when you're done.). Go back to the Stornway Inn/Quester's Rest and talk with Erinn. She should bring it out after doing so (If not, then you probably need to wrap up something you missed with the king and princess.). Sadly, you cannot take it with you, but the good news is that it does INSTANT alchemy for a combo up to nine times at once. To clarify: If you have 18 Medicinal Herbs and you wanted 9 Strong Medicines, all you have to do is "Use a Recipe" and tell Krak Pot that you want 9 of it. Alternatively, you CAN use "Try Your Luck" to set the values yourself, but you must have the proper numeral pairs for the product, and can only add 9 of them that way, as opposed to recipes where you can make them regardless of the total number of ingredients, just no more than 9 of the final product.

-Where to find what ingredient on the overworld -

(a copy of that alchemy map picture will go here)

-"Why is this ingredient respawn taking so long?"/"Why am I getting so little of this ingredient?"

There's a reason for that. Respawn times and ingredient quantities vary per a number of various factors, each of which seem diiferent per each save (or cart). You may find much more of a certain ingredient much more often than somebody else might. In addition, from one day to the next (likely REAL day, but not necessarily to count out the in-game days), you may find an abundance of an ingredient that you found so little of before. There's no real rhyme or reason to these rates, the ingredients just pop up or they don't. However, they are all consistent in each and every game as to where they spawn and are located.

'''-Why can't I find [ingredient] on the Overworld? -'''

Some ingredients: must be bought, must made by Alchemy, can only be found in blue chests, are rare monster drops, and lastly, some ingredients must be alchemized already before they can be used. Here is an example of the last one: In order to make the Apollo's crown, you must first have the Sun Crown ingredient, which comes from alchemizing a "Skull Helm" and 3 "Saint's Ashes". I'm not sure about each myself, but as soon as I know them, I will post them under this section. I do know that Sorcerer's stones fall under this though. If you're lucky, you may be able to steal an ingredient from enemies and certain post-game bosses. Good luck with that though.

General Advice
 -Tips from Others- 

More on this later.

Links of Interest
-Websites and stuff-