Underestimated/Overlooked Monsters?

No, kid Bianca starts with one, but they don't go on sale unlimited until gen 2. I suppose there's a chance they're like the cautery swords in DQ4 chapter 3 and if you re-sell it they then go on sale unlimited but I very much doubt it. It never even occured to me to think about that possibility until right this moment.

Yes, thanks, already done with the Scaraburrowers. They spawn much more frequently than the Screwball Pitchers. Also the Boring Bugs and Burr Babies in the Whealbrook Adit, the Brrrrattling Snakes alongside the Drackeemas in Winter Palace, and the Funky Ferrets in the field. I finished the Brrrattling Snakes when I still needed about 150 more Drackeemas.

I've also figured out which are the most important of all the shop items to have 99 of because they stop being for sale after Gen 1. I don't think any of the gear is actually truly missable because of monster drops, but it's much simpler to just buy it, and racking up that many mind-numbing monster kills also racks up a tremendous amount of money to spend on 99 of each item.

An oddity: in the extreme late game, when you go back through the painting in the Faerie Palace and revisit childhood Whealbrook, the shop is actually completely viable. Anything you buy there, if for any reason you happen to want to buy a Bone Stake or anything else, is for sale, and you keep it when you come back forward in time. So none of that particular shop's wares is permanently missable in any way.

This topic is a pretty good one for a quick missable monsters reference:

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/942423-dragon-quest-v-hand-of-the-heavenly-bride/50624821
---
Frazee uses the lunch!

My LMS killing procedure was to have four characters as my main party, and four that just had the poison needle equipped at all times. I was going about it in the lowest level nearest Gotha of the Gotha cave, where you have the wagon with you and you're also dealing with Minidemons and Samiginas who could potentially get in the way of the LMS recruit.

I would have my main party wander and destroy the non-LMS parties, then when one containing a LMS came along, I would throw out my LMS squad. A couple were at or near max agility, but a couple weren't. This actually worked to my advantage, because when it was a mixed party and I needed minidemons or samiginas out of the way first, I did my two fastest regular characters, who happened to be hero and Starkers, Starkers wearing a meteorite bracer, and my two slowest poison needle people, who were a man o war and a healer. If I got a second turn without the LMS either fleeing or being instakilled I would throw out the full poison needle squad. It seemed to work pretty well. The percentage of LMS encounters that did not result in a recruitment eligible chance was acceptable to me.

I assumed that the non-LMS encounters with samiginas and minidemons would eventually yield that I'd have three of each and it would get simpler because I'd then just throw out the four poison needlers right away, but that never came to pass. The LMS stood up when I only had one extra samigina (who I decided to keep for grins) and no extra minidemons. It was at 193 total LMS kills, which probably translated to someplace around 150 or 160 eligible chances, reduced to that by the occasional times the poison needle killed one on the first shot and the agility went screwy and there was still something else eligible in the way, and the times there were actually two killed in one battle, which happened every now and then. I want to say somehing in there calls for cureslime as reinforcement, which befouled my procedure a handful of times, too. Suddenly a cureslime that wasn't there is the eligble recruit after an LMS goes down.
---
Frazee uses the lunch!

Poison needle gives instakills sometimes and is a guaranteed 1 HP, so even if you don't get any instakills the LMS will be defeated by midway through the second round if he doesn't run away if you have all four in the party using them.
---
Frazee uses the lunch!

The DQ series as a whole is not without a bunch of wry and dry humour, including they themselves in regular battles against you, what with the way the one torches himself with sword lightning and the other falls down and so on. So that very well could be their purpose. They've existed in other DQ games along the way as well.

I would say getting one of those casters up to the area of 150 to 200 MP would put him into the conversation for viable, and 250 to 300 would clinch it. That would still require a lot of seeds of magic even if the seeds-along-the-way trick proves as fruitful in the long run as we hope it is.

Doing so would be a lot of work but would allow for some silly hijinks with party configuration. Somebody on some thread a while back talked about having a dream to 15-turn the bonus boss with the hero and seven pips and conks. That would obviously need the super boosted MP for the casters to even be remotely contemplatable, but I would say at some point quite a while down the line I may try it.

For my part lately, I've had a few unsuccessful Barbatos hunts on the one file, and I'm up to 895 Screwball Pitchers on the other. I'm hoping to get at least one session per day of 10 to 15 Screwballs and finish that off before the end of the month. Short bursts. Then I'll be able to start gauging whether Eyelashers are gotten 10 or 15 at a time or if they show up often enough and in large enough groups that it can be more like 50 at a time and go quicker.
---
Frazee uses the lunch!

Yes, double posting is allowed; I've done it myself on numerous threads. Sometimes I've even triple or quadruple or more posted when I've been the only one with anything to say or I keep remembering additional details.

I was going to come post on his thread today anyway, because there's a small measure of news on my part. Nothing on my nearly finished file; still no success hunting Barbatoses there; a 1/256 recruit joins when it joins, and I already have four out of five of them in the game, so I know it'll happen eventually.

My uber-completion file: I increased the lengths of my playing sessions these last few days so I was getting 15 or 20 Screwball Pitchers per session rather than 5 or 10, and just finished that hunt a short while ago. 999 Screwballs. Of all the monsters I've actually counted 999 of thus far, that one was by far the most arduous because its encounter rate is low. I can now start in on Eyelashers in the Ancient Ruins in earnest.

I've thought about using this thread to post a log of sorts of all the completionism things I've finished so far on that file; I'm not sure it needs to be its own new thread because it's so slow going. Plus, whether the previous one was completely truthful or not, another log like that would have a "been there done that" feel to it, which is why in all these months I've never made a big deal about that I'm doing it, anywhere near the way I have with the DW3 medals.

Also unlike the previous log, this one would not have all the timings because I haven't bothered keeping track of those. Between the 999 monsters and the 99 items plus the fixed battles, though, I am up to 37 items that I've felt are worth writing down; what I've written down is the month I accomplished them. Maybe later today I'll post that stuff here. If I do, I might end up doing a double or triple or quadruple post of my own.
---
Frazee uses the lunch!

NFrazee28's DQ5 ongoing log of completionism in many parts. As I've said above while talking about this, this has been a very slow-going process, and one that I've only worked on here and there for a few minutes at a time.
Part 1: June-August 2011.


JUNE 2011

1. Purchased 99 Cypress Sticks while building the Whealbrook Adit monster totals. (maxed gear #1)


JULY 2011

2. Collected 99 Medicinal Herbs without needing to buy any. Between the 1/8 Boring Bug drop and the 1/16 Burr Baby, Slime, Dracky, and Hammerhood drops, this happened well before anything was to 999. (maxed tool #1)

3. Puchased 99 Bamboo Spears. (maxed gear #2)

4. Defeated 999 Burr Babies. This happened when Boring Bug was at around 850 kills. (maxed monster #1)

5. Defeated 999 Boring Bugs, completing Whealbrook Adit. I only hand-counted the missable monsters; I'm guessing there's a strong chance Slime might also have gone over 999, while Dracky and Hammerhood maybe but probably not and Bunicorn definitely not. We'll wait for the Big Book of Beasts much later to see. (maxed monster #2)


Moving on to Roundbeck, then, with Bone Stake, Oaken Staff, and Copper Sword unfinished in the Whealbrook weapon shop. Roundbeck has three shops; I'm not worried about any of the tools because all of them are perpetually available everywhere, just the equipment. Of all the Roundbeck gen 1 store equipment, six of them are "store missable", meaning even if they're available in the future from monster drops or TNT boards or treasure chests or whack-a-slime or anyplace else you can think of, buying them in a store is missable after here. Those six: Hairband, Wayfarer's Clothes, Silk Apron, Leather Dress, Bronze Knife, Thorn Whip.


AUGUST 2011

6. Purchased 99 Hairbands. (Roundbeck store-missable #1 of 6, overall maxed gear #3)

7. Purchsed 99 Wayfarer's Clothes. (Roundbeck store-missable #2 of 6, overall maxed gear #4)


At this juncture I had not yet ventured into Uptaten Towers and was just around the field all around Roundbeck, Whealbrook, Uptaten, and all points between building Funky Ferret totals and also attempting to get at least one drop from every monster. Funky Ferret, Combatterpillar, Mental Pitcher, and Dirty Rat all drop various seeds at 1/128; the Funky Ferret, Mental Pitcher, and Dirty Rat dropped theirs quicker than I would have expected such that I never started counting, but a little ways in I started counting eligible Combatterpillar drops and purposely killing him last to facillitate the drop. Once I started that, this drop came after the 171st counted battle, so the actual total was somewhat higher than that.


This will be continued sometime later with starting with September 2011.
---
Frazee uses the lunch!

Part 2: September-December 2011


September 2011

8. Purchased 99 Silk Aprons. (Roundbeck store-missable #3 of 6; overall maxed gear #5)

9. Purchased 99 Bronze Knives. (Roundbeck store-missable #4 of 6; overall maxed gear #6)

Sometime during this process is when I decided to venture into Uptaten Towers and I fought an...

10. Optional Boss Battle against one Living Statue, obtained his 1/1 Seed of Resilience drop.


October 2011

11. Purchased 99 Thorn Whips. (Roundbeck store-missable #5 of 6; overall maxed gear #7)

12. Defeated 999 Funky Ferrets. (maxed monster #3)

With the ones in the field and inside Uptaten Towers added to the ones in Whealbrook Adit, there's no doubt sometime during September or October I also slew 999 Drackies, but I never counted so that won't become officially listed until I get the Big Book of Beasts much later.

13. Unavoidable Plot Battle against three Wax Murderers who try to eat us for dinner. This did happen to beat the 1/16 chance and yield a bronze knife drop, but it wouldn't have mattered if it didn't.

14. Purchased 99 Leather Dresses. (Roundbeck store-missable #6 of 6; overall maxed gear #8)

With all six Roundbeck store-missable goods bought out and Funky Ferrets maxed, I felt like I could safely move on to Faerie Lea so I fought a...

15. Boss Battle against one Haunted Housekeeper. She did not happen to drop her exceedingly rare Seed of Strength drop, which, again, didn't matter to me. This cleared Uptaten Towers and awarded the party the Golden Orb. Also, along the way in Uptaten I obtained the three parts to the Toff's Tea Set, but I have in mind to not list knick-knacks as completionism achievements until I place their final versions into the knick-knackatory.


November 2011

I managed to not do any completionism achievements during November 2011!

A couple miscellaneous notes upon entering Faerie Lea, which I obviously would have done in October, then it seems to be that I moved quite slowly there for a while:

When the Bianca character left the party, she was at L29 and had about 6,000 XP to go to level to 30. It will be interesting to see if this exact total carries over to adulthood. Phil was at L27 at the time. Bianca had caught up someplace around L19 or 20; usually she catches up earlier, but usually people don't get 999 of things in the Whealbrook Adit.

Faerie Lea store-missables: there are nine bits of equipment available from the Armour guy and the General Store guy in the Inn; when we return to Faerie Lea in Gen 3, the General Store guy in the Inn is long gone, and the Armour guy has all different stuff. Of the nine available now, two are store-missable right now: Leather Armour and Scale Armour.


December 2011

Before any gear was bought out or any monster killed 999 times, I...

16. Leveled to maximum level the childhood generation incarnation of Spot the Great SaberCub. I always name him Spot; it feels best to me. The SaberCub cap is L20, but when he returns in Gen 2, he's a L99 max, so leveling him here to 20 isn't a finished process for the game as a whole, but it's finished for now. A note on this: he ended up with 19 wisdom, which annoyed me greatly. I reluctantly used one of my two or three Combatterpillar Seed of Wisdom drops (one or two more ultimately dropped after that 171st battle one referred to above) so that he would actually obey me. It didn't make much difference in Faerie Lea, but it made a huge difference eventually in Coburg always having him fight and hit who I wanted him to hit rather than defend or hit the wrong monster all the time.

17. Purchased 99 Leather Armours. (Faerie Lea store-missable #1 of 2; overall maxed gear #9)


To be continued in part 3 starting with Jauary 2012.
---
Frazee uses the lunch!

That is truly awesome. This bodes extremely well for what I'll be able to make out of those guys in my uber-completionism file when that time comes in several months or a couple years or whenever that is. I already have 11 seeds of magic in my bag right now in the early part of the Eyelasher hunt. I think but am not totally certain that the breakdown was like this: 3 came from mental pitchers, 7 came from screwball pitchers (both monsters as 1/128 drops) and one is a fixed treasure in a drawer or jar or something someplace in gen 1. Two came from Screwballs within about three battles of each other when I was around 960 Screwballs just a few days ago; I was very pleased when that second one in short order dropped.

I know Quadraheads drop them at 1/64, and I think there's at least one more monster that drops them at 1/64, plus they're possible ground finds on more than one TNT, though I don't know at what odds. My initial thought before this was to farm my way up to 99 of them before using any, but this research indicates there's a proper pace to using them for the pips and conks to maximize their efficiency and that I can worry about getting 99 in the bag after that process is done.
---
Frazee uses the lunch!