We continue the quest of Erdrick as she emerged from the teleportal shrine to find herself in a completely different part of the world. The nearby castle town was named Romaria and the designers clearly based it on real world Rome, complete with (bad) Italian accents on everyone inside the town. This wasn't much of an issue in the previous versions of DQ3 where everything was text-based, however it was a bit more annoying with the voice acting given to important characters here in the HD-2D remake. Erdrick visited the king who tasked her with retrieving his stolen crown, a somewhat bizarre mission which is core to the plot of this game and can't be skipped. The villain in question was named Kandar in the NES translation and has since been changed to Robbin' 'Ood in this remake; I really detest this name and the remake has some exceedingly strange naming choices that probably sounded better in Japanese.
There were more mini medals to be found in Romaria which allowed Erdrick to travel back to Aliahan and turn them in for the next reward: a superior Edged Boomerang with 13 more points of Attack. She would use this weapon for a long time as it was the only option that hit everything on screen. The enemies outside Romaria were stronger than the ones back on the starting island, with enough additional health that it would often atake two rounds of boomeranging the monsters to defeat them all. The ones on the left hand side continued to die instantly, yet that damage penalty applied to each additional target often caused the final monster or two to survive for a second round. The combats were still quite easy though and Erdrick didn't find herself in any danger here in the parts of the map where she was supposed to be.
So let's change that, shall we:
I mentioned on the previous page how Romaria is where the gameplay begins to open up in DQ3 and allows the player to explore the map more freely. The party is supposed to head north here, where there's another town named Khoryv before the path continues to the west where those thieves have taken the king's crown. However, nothing stops the player from heading east instead to the Fertile Crescent part of the real world where there's another town with stronger monsters and some improved gear for sale. I thought it would be fun to try this little sequence break and sent Erdrick off towards the town of Asham, during which she was jumped by these three Jackanape monsters. The gorilla-like beasts had enough health to survive a hit from her boomerang and then lashed out in return for heavy damage, about 25 damage per swing. That was pretty nasty but the second boomerang toss finished them off, followed by Erdrick using her Heal spell to restore the missing HP. She fought several other random encounters along the way and none of them were as dangerous as this first battle, making it to the town without further issues.
Erdrick also hit Level 14 from one of these combats and learned... four different spells at once?! DQ3 has kind of a weird system in which characters only have a CHANCE to learn a new spell upon hitting a new level, with the result not being guaranteed unless the character in question has very high Wisdom. For example, the Hero class has the possibility of learning the Zoom spell starting at Level 14, then another chance to learn it at Level 15, and it's guaranteed at Level 16 if they miss it on the first two levels. Erdrick ended up with these spells overlapping on the levels and hit on four of them simultaneously to create this message. In terms of what they did, Zap was single-target lightning damage, Fizzle was an attempt to stop the enemy from casting spells (like a Mute effect), Zin had 50% odds to revive a party member at 1 HP when cast, while Zoom was a spell that unlocked fast travel:
The HD-2D remake of DQ3 essentially brought over the fast travel mechanic from Octopath Traveler and tied it to this spell. It costs 0 MP to cast and allows the player to travel to any location in the world that they've previously visited. This is a notable change from the original NES version, where the spell was called Return, did cost magic points, could not be used indoors or inside dungeons, and only allowed the party to travel to other towns, not dungeons or other points of interest. Oddly, the game still retains the Evac spell (named Outside in the NES version) which simply exits from the current dungeon, even though the spell now serves no purpose whatsoever with Zoom being usable everywhere. The game clearly intends for the party to make use of the Hero's Zoom spell for movement around the map, though thankfully there's an item called the Chimaera Wing which does exactly the same thing for use in potential future variant setups. I can't deny the convenience of this ability to fast travel anywhere on demand though it does trivialize some portions of the later gameplay where certain parts of the map were intended to be difficult to reach.
Readers might also notice the shape of the world in that screenshot above. Look familiar? DQ3's world map is heavily based on the real world, everything except the starting island of Aliahan which occupies an empty part of the South Pacific. I used to think that it was supposed to be Australia, except no, there's actual Australia further to the west where the people in this remake speak with (poor) Aussie accents. Erdrick had traveled from fake Rome to fake Baghdad and she'd be spending her immediate future romping around in this game's version of Europe where the next few dungeons were located.
I was a bit disappointed at the equipment for sale in Asham, where I'd been anticipating the opportunity to pick up some better armor and didn't really find anything that useful. Instead, the most useful new item was this Hen's Tooth accessory which granted 20 points of Luck while equipped. Each character gets two accessory slots in DQ3, a change from the NES game where accessories basically didn't exist outside of one or two special items. There are about 40 accessories to choose between here in the HD-2D remake, which provide boosts to various different stats along with resistances to various status ailments and elemental damage types. One interesting aspect to the accessories is that many of them will change the wearer's personality, like this Hen's Tooth offering Lucky Devil personality to the wearer. However, these personality changes only take place if equipped in the first accessory slot, not the second one, which allows for some flexibility in equipping these things. I wanted Erdrick to retain her Vamp personality since it offered the best stat gains, therefore slotting this Hen's Tooth into the second spot. 20 additional Luck was a very big deal for this stage of the game and Erdrick would wear this item for a long time afterwards.
I spent the next hour or two poking around in the lands to the north of Romaria, exploring the town of Khoryv and taking time to visit all the sparkly and secret locations in the area. There's another town further north named Norvik where all the residents have been put to sleep, and then a semi-hidden village of faeries way up in what would be Scandinavia. Again, all of these regions had their own mini medals to find and monsters to recruit and then seeds to save-scum for the maximum stat benefit. By the time that Erdrick had cleared out all of this side quest stuff, she had gained several more levels and even picked up the Midheal spell which I would be using a lot for health restoration.
The next dungeon in order was Skyfell Tower which was notable for having the first boss fight of the game. The random encounters inside were basically a joke since the developers didn't intend for the player to have the extra levels and boosted stats possessed by Erdrick, with her boomerang cutting everything down in a single round. Up at the top of the tower was Robbin' 'Ood (sigh) and his three henchmen, each of which is listed individually as a separate group to make it harder to employ stuff like whip attacks. Erdrick had a bit of a trick up her sleeve though, having purchased an item called Oomph Powder during that diversion over to Asham. This item casts the spell Oomph when used in battle, a spell that had the much cooler name "Bikill" in the NES version, and it has the simple but powerful effect of doubling the user's physical attack. I should point out that the effects do not last for the full battle, however, something that holds true for all buffs and debuffs in DQ3. All of them run out after a set number of turns which tends to make them weaker than in other RPGs. Oomph only lasts for the next 3-5 turns (and yes, this is also a random duration) so Erdrick had to make that duration count.
It was absolutely worth spending the initial turn of the boss fight using this item since Erdrick's next boomerang attack flattened two of the three henchmen. They have 106 HP so she barely missed getting all three of them at once. This forced me to use another boomerang attack on the following round of combat that wiped out the last minion and dealt another 200 damage to Robbin himself. The boss was not going quietly into the night as he kept spamming a "Desperation Attack" which was essentially a monster critical hit, something that was smashing Erdrick for 50-55 damage per round, ouch! With the minions gone, she countered with a Flame Slash into the fire element weakness on Robbin, an attack that hit for 413 damage and ended the battle. I learned a good bit about how to manage this fight from Erdrick's experience, with the biggest takeaway being to ignore the minions and focus on Robbin himself. They were plinking her for 6-8 damage per attack while the boss himself could hit for 50+ damage - it was clearly better to ignore the small fries.
The player is required to take the stolen crown back to Romaria where the king throws a curveball: he abdicates and makes you the new king! 
This is something that took place in the NES game as well, where the Hero's sprite would be replaced with the king sprite and the rest of the party would disappear. You had to figure out that the old king was off gambling at the monster arena and then ask him to return to the throne, something that takes place again here in the remake but with other NPCs prompting the player where they need to go. Erdrick was temporarily given a long flowing dress and every NPC in town had different dialogue when talking to her during this brief period where she was the king. The whole thing is basically pointless but it's a fun little part of the gameplay and really threw people for a loop back in 1990.
In terms of progressing the gameplay, the next step was heading further north and sorting out the problems in Norvik. The whole town was put to sleep by the nearby faeries after one of the town's teenagers eloped with a young faerie, and the only wake to wake them up is to retrieve another MacGuffin named the Dreamstone from the Underground Lake dungeon. (Fun fact: using the Dreamstone in battle will paralyze the entire party, heh.) The monsters inside this cave yielded good experience for Erdrick and still weren't much of a threat, occasionally landing a blow that was hitting for about 6-8 damage. More dangerous were the spells that some of them cast, with the vampire enemies casting the ice spell Crack that dealt about 25 damage. When Erdrick took accumulated damage, she could heal it back with the Midheal spell that traded 5 MP for 80-90 health. She continued to be in no real danger and it's not as though she was going to run out of magic points given that 168 MP total.
The Dreamstone was waiting at the bottom of the cave where Erdrick learned the fate of the two young lovers. Having discovered that the world refused to accept this match between human and faerie, they went full Romeo and Juliet by casting themselves into a watery grave at the bottom of a lake. The party brings this tragic news back to the Faerie Queen, who has just learned about the death of her daughter, and then follows it up with:
Take this "wakey dust" back to Norvik? What in the world is going on with that name?! 
The tonal shift here was just unreal, with the previous few sentences discussing how this young couple committed suicide, only to switch over to this baby-named item which will awake the people of Norvik from their slumber. The whole English translation is full of these bizarre names, with spells having names like Tick-Tock (swaps day and night), Cock-a-Doodle-Doo (cures sleep status), Tingle (cures paralyzation), and Thwack (multi-targeted instant death spell). All of this stuff sounds idiotic in English and as far as I'm concerned the localization team should have swapped these names out in favor of more natural choices. Which sounds better for the basic fire magic spell: "Blaze" from the NES version, or "Frizz" in this remake? Sometimes it's not a good idea to do completely literal translations.
Afterwards, Erdrick made her way back to Asham where she was pleased to find that she was now strong enough to one-shot those Jackanapes that had roughed her up earlier. More levels and better equipment and a whole bunch of additional seeds had served to scale Erdrick past this level of enemy threat. She scoured the lands around Asham snapping up all of the rewards from the sparkly and secret sites, acting more like a ravaging army of ants as the map was wiped clean of every treasure. Then Erdrick continued into the vast desert region to the southwest, the location of the real world Sahara, which was the home of an oasis kingdom. This one was originally named Isis and, uh, that had to be changed after the Islamic State caused so much devastation in the 2010s. This kingdom is now named Ibis and draws heavily on Egypt for inspiration, despite the fact that it's located at the southwest edge of the desert closer to real world Timbuktu. One of the most important accessories in the whole game can be found in a tomb located underneath the castle:
The Meteorite Bracer has the special property of DOUBLING the wearer's Agility stat! This is the only accessory in the game that functions multiplicatively, everything else provides a flat bonus to individual stats. If you're wondering why this accessory acts so differently from everything else, it's because this item existed in the NES game (when it was the Meteorite Armband) where it did the same thing and was the only accessory in the entire game. It's an iconic item for Dragon Quest 3 so the developers kept it around even though it's clearly overpowered compared to everything else. There's no way that this item would ever appear only a third of the way through the gameplay if it were to be designed today. Therefore while most other accessories were granting 5-10 points to various stats, and even the Hen's Tooth was providing 20 points of Luck, the Meteorite Bracer was worth fully 110 points of Agility for Erdrick, a number that would continue to climb as her base Agility also increased. The Meteorite Bracer also doesn't change the wearer's personality which allowed Erdrick to equip it in the first accessory slot without worrying about losing her Vamp status, helpfully allowing any accessory in the second slot without having to worry about a personality shift.
For solo character purposes, the existence of the Meteorite Bracer has the effect of devaluing Agility as a stat. Anyone can equip this thing and be insanely fast so there's no need to choose a personality with high Agility growth. That should open up some additional possibilities if I run solo games with other classes later on. For that matter, Erdrick had so many points of Strength accumulated from leveling and eating all those Strength seeds that her weapon choice almost didn't matter. She had a total Attack of 163 points at this moment: 24 from the Edged Boomerang and the other 139 points (!) from her base Strength. So while she could swap over to a different weapon like the Steel Broadsword and pick up another 8 points of Attack, obviously it was better to use the boomerang and keep hitting everything at once.
It took some time to clear all of the various mini medals and seeds and whatnot from Ibis, as the kingdom contains both a town and a castle to explore. This is also the home of the next two tiers of the monster arena where Erdrick pitted her most recent recruits against the Pokemon teams of the townspeople. The tier 3 arena was easy to beat, however the tier 4 arena proved to be a harder task. Erdrick was fielding a team with a Bubble Slime, an Antgobbler, and a Healing Slime together. Each arena challenge consists of four consecutive combats fought in a row with no healing or MP recovery in between them. When I tried the tier 4 arena, the unfortunate Antgobbler was focused by the enemy team in the second combat and died. I figured there was no chance of success from that point, with my pair of slimes fighting against enemy teams with the full three combatants. And yet... both the Bubble Slime and Healing Slime could recover health with their abilities. Both of them just kept healing, and healing, and healing some more. Their offensive output was weak but their regenerative power was amazing. They outlasted the second combat, then the third combat, then the fourth and final one to deliver Erdrick a victory! The whole thing was completely ridiculous to watch in action and I loved it. Then the reward was three Seeds of Defense and three Seeds of Magic, each of which stubbornly required many rounds of rerolling to hit the max stat value - I did not love that part.
The dungeon in this part of the game is the Pyramid which is the first serious dungeon in DQ3. It's a big location with seven floors in total along with puzzles to solve and traps to avoid. Erdrick started by descending down into the basement levels which have the special property of not allowing magic to function inside. This was also the case in the NES version and it can make life exceedingly difficult for a spellcasting-based group. There's a hidden second basement floor which contains the Golden Claw, an item that bears a curse: upon grabbing the thing, the random encounter rate goes up dramatically as the tomb's inhabitants try to hunt down the grave robber. I remember this sequence from the NES game and it was faithfully reproduced here in the HD-2D remake, with mummies and shadow demons attacking constantly as Erdrick tried to make her way outside. Seriously, the random encounter rate after this curse goes off is insane, with battles every few steps. I think Erdrick had to face something like two dozen fights before she made it back to the entrance where magic functioned again and she could Zoom out to sell the Golden Claw. This item is almost certainly not worth the effort and I might have to skip this sequence with future characters since Erdrick was in some real danger during these fights.
The main treasure in the Pyramid is the Magic Key, the second of the three keys that unlocks additional doors around the world. This item was guarded by a puzzle in the original game, with the player needing to push several switches in the correct order to open the door to its treasure chest. Although that puzzle still exists, the HD-2D remake has added a boss fight against this flying demon named the Ripper of the Rift and two accompanying Kylla minions. This can be a difficult boss and my initial non-variant party was wiped out the first time that they made it here. The Ripper uses a lot of wind element magic while the Kyllas spam the ice spell Crack; I should have thought to bring some Aerofoil earrings and Anti-freeze earrings from Asham, two accessories that would have reduced the damage from those element types by 25%. Anyway, I had a plan here: I swapped Erdrick over to the Steel Broadsword for slightly higher Attack value, then I would use her Oomph Power on the first turn and one-shot the two Kyllas, followed by concentrating on the Ripper. I went to use the Oomph Power and... ummm... I guess I forget to put it in her personal item bag. Whoops. 
See, the way this mechanic works in the HD-2D remake of DQ3 is that there's an item bag which has unlimited space, and in which items will stack together. However, the item bag cannot be accessed from the combat screen, which only allows characters to use items that they are personally holding in their own inventories. Each character gets 20 item slots in their personal inventory; this does include their weapons and armor and accessories (which will eat up six of those slots) and then any consumable items DO NOT stack together. If you want to bring five healing items, that's five of your twenty slots taken up. I like this gameplay system a lot since it does a good job of bridging the gap between the NES version and a more modern remake. In the NES game, each character had only eight item slots, which included their gear, and items didn't stack together either. The HD remake is much more flexible, and allows for unlimited stacking of items outside of combat, while still retaining some of the limitations of the original game.
I had stupidly forgotten to move some of Erdrick's Oomph Power into her personal inventory and therefore couldn't use it for this battle. Rather than reset the fight and correct this mistake, I did my best to fight on anyway. Erdrick broke out her Lightning Slash ability against the two Kyllas, a lightning element version of the same Flame Slash that she had used earlier, hitting them for 30% additional damage above her normal base amount and targeting the lightning element weakness on these things. The Kyllas have 314 HP apiece so two slashes did them in, then Erdrick could start working on the Ripper itself. It had been pounding her with Woosh and Swoosh spells, the first two tiers of wind element magic, with the later spell hitting for about 30 damage when cast. The Ripper's worst attack was the pictured Wind Sickles, an ability (not a spell) that also had wind element property and dealt about 45 damage when it hit, though Erdrick actually dodged it once with her evasion. She healed up using Midheal and was therefore never in any real danger, though other solo classes who lacked that spell would have a lot more trouble here. Then a series of Lightning Slashes against the Ripper cut through its 880 health until it too was dead. This would have been way easier with the Oomph Power, and I probably should have used the boomerang instead of the single target sword. Two Oomph-boosted boomerangs would have defeated both Kyllas and also put some real damage on the Ripper; there's definitely room for improvement as I learn these boss fights better.
The Magic Key and the boss fight are located on the third floor of the Pyramid, with two more floors above it. The fourth floor holds a room with 12 treasure chests, each of which is trapped and forces a fight against undead opponents before yielding up its prize. I'm mentioning this because in about the tenth instance of these fights, Erdrick actually died for the first time! She was put to sleep by another Kylla (which appears here as a normal enemy) and then inexplicably remained asleep for five rounds in a row as a pair of mummies beat her to death. The odds of that happening were catastrophically low: Erdrick almost never fell asleep in the first place thanks to her high Luck stat, then there's a chance for characters to wake up after every round, and also after every time they take damage. Somehow she failed to wake up something like 15 times in a row and died as a result. Fortunately this remake of DQ3 is exceedingly generous about getting wiped out: it autosaves after every battle and the player can immediately pick back up from the last autosave. I fought the same battle again, Erdrick didn't have the same bizarre sleeping outcome, and she continued on her way like it never happened. This is honestly a little too forgiving for my tastes but it certainly was helpful not having to re-fight the Ripper again.
With the Magic Key in hand, Erdrick could return to some earlier portions of the game and unlock previously inaccessible areas. There were several additional seeds to be found in Aliahan and Ibis, as well as meeting with the queen of the desert kingdom when visiting at night. The reward for finding an entry to the queen's chambers was this Recovery Ring, which DQ3's gameplay seems to think is a great prize. I disagree: the Recovery Ring is an accessory with a paltry 2 Defense rating that restores 1 HP for every 5 steps taken. That does absolutely nothing in terms of combat and it's extremely easy to restore health out of combat with the unlimited size item bag - what's the point of this item again? At least the Palace of Ibis is as gorgeous as everywhere else in this game, and this report doesn't do a great job of conveying how fantastic the HD-2D remake looks. I really encourage anyone reading this to try it out for themselves at some point.
In terms of plot, the Magic Key unlocked a passage west from Romaria over to Portoga, and you'll never guess which real world country this seafaring nation located on the Iberian peninsula is supposed to be. The King of Portoga has a request for the player to find Black Pepper which is only located off in the far east. He'll trade the deed to a ship in exchange for this pepper, something which sounded ridiculous to me as a child but makes a lot more sense to me after having written a dissertation on the British East India Company. A letter from the king allows the party to pass through a cave which was formerly blocked by a dwarf in another delightful bit of JRPG silliness, passing under the mountains into another area that roughly corresponds to Central Asia. There were new enemies to fight here, of course:
These were Rottenweiler monsters, zombie dogs with yet another of the naming puns which are so common in this game. I took this screenshot because it seemed like a good chance to discuss how critical hits operate in DQ3. Every class has a base critical hit chance which then gets modified by the Luck stat of the individual character. Most classes in the game have a base crit chance of 2% which never changes; since the Hero class has to be superior in every way though, the Hero starts at the same 2% chance and then has this increase by 0.5% for every 5 levels gained. Erdrick was Level 30 at this point and therefore had 4.5% base chance to crit, which was about to increase to 5% the next time that she leveled. This base chance is then modified by comparing the character's Luck stat against a predetermined table that looks like this:
Match up the character's Level with the numbers in this table to determine how much Luck they're "supposed" to have. Since Erdrick was Level 30, her predetermined Luck number was 105 as measured against an actual Luck stat of 152. All of those Luck seeds along with equipping the Hen's Tooth accessory were helping out a lot here. Then the base crit chance gets modified by the ratio between predetermined Luck and actual Luck: 152 / 105 = 145%. Thus Erdrick's effective crit chance was 45% higher than the base rate, or 4.5 * 1.45 = 6.52%. (I later discovered that whip and boomerang attacks have their crit rate cut in half as a way of balancing out their multitargeted nature so Erdrick had more like 3% odds here.) The crits frequent enough to be quite noticeable, especially with Erdrick hitting every monster on screen with each attack; whether or not the boomerang attack went critical was calculated separately for each enemy. Crits themselves are fantastic because they ignore enemy defense completely in the first half of the damage formula. It looks like this:
Normal baseDamage = attack * (1700 - attack) / 2000 * (1700 - defense) / 2000 * 0.7 * randrate
Crit baseDamage = attack * (2000 - attack) / 2000 * 0.7 * 1.2
If you look carefully, the formula is the same except it removes the defense portion of the calculation and sets the randrate to 1.2, which is the maximum value for that portion of the formula. To make a long story short, crits were always fantastic when they showed up and Erdrick's crit rate was slowly rising over time. While I could never control the appearance of any single critical hit, I could create the ideal conditions for them to show up by maintaining a high Luck stat.
I was also experimenting here with the mechanics of how spell damage work. This particular portion of the map is heavy on monsters that cast fire-based spells, with these Hell Ninos spamming the tier 2 single target fire spell Frizzle and Rumble Bees casting the tier 1 group targeted fire spell Sizz. (I still think these names are really dumb.) These spells were common enough that Erdrick was taking significant burn damage in every battle, making it a priority to cut down on the effects from these spells. It turns out that all of the spells in this game do slightly less damage when cast by enemies as compared with when cast by party members, such as the pictured Frizzle dealing 56-70 base damage for the player but a modestly lower 52-62 damage for these Hell Ninos. Erdrick had two different pieces of equipment that reduced damage from fire element: a Magical Skirt that reduced spell damage by 25% and then the Asbestos Earrings accessory that had the identical 25% reduction property but only for fire element. I tested out getting hit by Frizz with neither item equpped and took 59 damage, matching the listed monstery damage. Then I tried equipping just the Magical Skirt, resulting in 46 damage taken, followed by both the skirt and the earrings which printed out the pictured 29 damage. Success!
This was a really big deal since mitigating damage would be absolutely necessary to defeat some bosses. Not so much for Erdrick, of course, who had tons of healing available but other classes wouldn't be so lucky if I were to run another solo challenge. I needed to do more testing once she had additional elemental resistance gear to determine if the items stacked additively (25% resist + 25% + 25% = 75% resistance) or multiplicatively (25% resist * 25% * 25% = 58% resistance). Obviously additive would be better for solo characters and there were enough items with these properties to figure out which was the case down the road.
Getting back to the main storyline, Erdrick wandered through the countryside clearing out sparkly and secret areas until reaching the town of Baharata. Located in real world South Asia, this area was heavily inspired by India and the presentation here in the HD-2D remake is a bit cringeworthy. Everyone spoke using (bad) Indian accents and it's painful listening to text like the above screenshot performed using voice actors. Even more bizarrely, everyone in Baharata has pale white skin which doesn't match most of the inhabitants of South Asia; this whole area just feels off, something that worked a lot better in 1990 than it does today. The plot direction here is to chase after the kidnapped Tanaya, who coincidentally happens to be the granddaughter of the merchant who sells Black Pepper, amazing how that worked out! I love it when a fetch quest comes together.
The Kidnappers' Cave could be found a short distance to the north and Erdrick headed there after doing her best to loot the countryside of everything valuable. This dungeon was noteworthy for having an enemy named the Hoodie, a palette swapped version of Robbin Ood who spammed the same Desperation Attack. That's the monster equivalent of a critical hit and it kept landing on Erdrick for 80 damage at a time! I think those things only use that attack when their health gets close to dying, which unfortunately happened a lot as Erdrick hit everything on screen with her boomerangs. She gained a powerful new tool in her arsenal while exploring the dungeon, the Fullheal spell at Level 33 which does exactly what its name suggests. Erdrick's max HP had ballooned to more than 400 points and it seemed doubtful that anything could deal that much damage before she'd have a chance to cast Fullheal and restore back to full status again.
The second boss of the original NES game, and the third boss of this HD-2D remake, turned out to be Robbin Ood yet again. This was obviously done for space limitations in the first version of the game, using a color-swapped version of the same monster design, and the Robbin Ood refight played out in very similar fashion to the initial confrontation. This is an all-physical opponent so I had Erdrick use her Dodgy Dance ability, granting her 50% evasion against all physical attacks for the next few turns. She didn't roll particularly well on her 50/50 dodges though and I might have done better simply to attack right away. This time I did not forget the Oomph Power, using it on the second turn and then proceeded to Boomerang the enemy group to death. The minions had 256 HP and died on the second round of combat, leaving Erdrick alone with Robbin Ood. He reprised his earlier actions and spammed that same Deperation Attack move which was hitting for 110 damage at a time - curse you critical hits for ignoring Defense! While I'm confident that Erdrick could have gone all-offense and wiped out Robbin Ood before her health gave out, I took the safer path and restored back to max HP with Fullheal, then hit the boss with a Flame Strike for 476 damage to finish him off. I really wish that Erdrick's evasion had been more useful here as this fight could be tricky for less overpowered classes.
Originally, rescuing Tanaya and her hapless boyfriend (who also managed to get himself kidnapped) resulted in the party receiving the aforementioned Black Pepper. Here in the HD-2D remake, however, the party has to head northwards to a place named Alltrades Abbey to receive the precious spice. This is one of the most unique places in DQ3 as the sage of this abbey allows characters to change into another class! The only requirement is that the character in question must be Level 20, afterwards they go back to Level 1 again with their stats cut in half but retaining all of their learned spells and abilities. Or at least, everyone other than the Hero can do this:
Erdrick was specifically told that this was off-limits, no class changing for the Hero. There's also a Slime here who can change the appearance of your characters, allowing the player to pick one of the other options from the start-of-game character building system, except that the Hero's not allowed to do that either. Way to kill all the fun, sheesh! I've never done much in the way of class changing in DQ3 because it tends to be pretty grindy; starting over again from scratch requires doing a lot of XP farming, though it can theoretically result in some superpowered characters with insane stats and every spell/ability given enough time. I should also point out that the stats legitimately do get retained at their halved values after class changing here in the HD-2D remake, and then grow normally when leveling in a new class. Back in the NES version, every class had predetermined stats that they were "supposed" to have at each level. If you class changed, the character in question would basically gain zero stats until they caught up to those predetermined numbers which made the whole mechanic somewhat pointless. Seeds also worked the same way in the NES version, meaning that if you used seeds to boost a stat then it simply wouldn't grow on leveling until catching back up to where it was supposed to be! Thankfully stat gains from seeds have been made independent of stat gains from leveling here in the HD-2D remake, whew.
There was a new boomerang for sale here named the Gusterang which had 22 additional points of Attack over Erdrick's Edged Boomerange. I did *NOT* make this switch, however, since the Gusterang would also have the property of changing Erdrick's attack over to wind element and that was something I didn't want. Most monsters don't have much physical (Strike) resistance however elemental resistances are quite common. I didn't exactly want Erdrick's boomerang attacks to have their damage cut by 75% any time she ran across something that resisted wind element, and 22 points of extra Attack was somewhat less important when Erdrick had 202 Strength operating in the background. There was a better boomerang that dealt physical damage coming down the pipeline soon enough anyway, with no more boss fights until after it was an option.
At this point, Erdrick could have teleported back to Portoga to turn in the Black Pepper and receive her ship deed. However, there's an optional dungeon near Alltrades Abbey that I decided to clear out first, with Erdrick continuing to check off the recruitable monsters and seeds and medals on her list. This place was the Tower of Transcendence and the big treasure inside is a book that allows any (non-Hero) character to class change into a Sage. That's the semi-secret class in DQ3 and no one can begin the game as a Sage, only class change into it later using one of two methods: use this Words of Wisdom book or start the game as the useless Goof-Off class. Sages can cast nearly every spell in the game, getting the full list of both Priest and Mage spells, making them a superior combination of both classes. They were even better in the original version of DQ3 before other classes started getting their own abilities in the remakes.
Erdrick couldn't change into any other classes so this was purely an optional exercise for her. For that matter, the entire Tower of Transcendence is a total side quest area even in a non-variant setting, as there's nothing related to the main plot of the game inside and it's always skippable if desired. The tower itself is one of the most confusing dungeons in the game, with lots and lots of staircases and teleportals that lead the player in circles. In order to claim all of the treasures inside, the player has to jump off the upper walkways onto lower floors which is not at all intuitive. There were some tough monsters in here as well, with flying Ethereal Serpents that liked to spam a Wildfire breath attack and had enough health to survive the first boomerang attack. They were worth a lot of experience for Erdrick's troubles (1350 XP apiece) and then occasionally these Metal Slimes would pop up as well. The infamous metal creatures had absurdly high defense and often ran away from combat, but when Erdrick was able to kill a pair of them as displayed here, she was rewarded with nearly 10,000 experience!
The geography of this world continues eastwards past Baharata and Alltrades Abbey until finally reaching a terminus in the frozen northeast. There was a village named Mur located there, somewhere around the vicinity of real world Vladivostok, with everyone speaking with (bad) Russian accents. This village is also completely optional and nothing related to the plot takes place inside; I remember skipping it entirely sometimes when I was playing the NES Dragon Warrior 3 as a kid. The HD-2D remake gives Mur some individuality by having everyone in the village talk about your father Ortega, who apparently spent some time here a decade earlier. There's even a cut scene where Ortega saves the village from attack which definitely didn't exist before the remakes. I like how the HD-2D remake highlights the tragedy of Ortega's journey, repeatedly emphasizing how he had to leave on his quest to save the world... but also left behind a wife and infant child that he missed deperately. Ortega spent all his time in this village playing with a young kid which is just heartbreaking to me as the parent of two young kids myself. The poor guy. 
Aside from the usual seeds to collect and monsters to recruit, Mur also had an Ice Shield for sale which reduced damage from fire spells. That allowed me to stack a full set of fire resistant gear: the Magic Skirt (25% reduced damage from spells), two pairs of Asbestos Earrings (25% reduced damage from fire element), and then that Ice Shield which had the same 25% fire protection property. What would happen if Erdrick wore all of them at the same time? I went back to her former stomping grounds against the Hell Ninos and:
Success - COMPLETE fire immunity!!! The damage resistance property on this equipment was therefore additive and not multiplicative, the better of the two potential options on how the math could have worked. Erdrick had to give up the Meteorite Bracer to achieve this feat but that tradeoff would still be worthwhile against certain bosses, plus she would only have more options to mix and match her equipment as the gameplay progressed. This was absolutely fantastic news and it made me much more optimistic about being able to complete future variant with classes that aren't as overpowered as the Hero. It seems as though proper planning ahead of time will be able to neutralize a lot of what these bosses can do.
So to close out this portion of the gameplay, Erdrick now finally claimed her own ship:
This little cut scene of the party boarding the ship is suppose to have the other three characters present, and it looked rather lonely with only Erdrick on board. Could she really crew a ship of that size all by herself? Anyway, this is where the main questline of DQ3 further opens up and the player can go basically anywhere and do the remaining events in any order. I'll continue this journey on the next page as Erdrick began searching for the six orbs scattered across the face of the earth.
