Warrior Solo Game
Part One

Xena began her foray into the wilderness by killing off the unfortunate Hero and then got to work with monster slaying. All of those Strength seeds gave her excellent starting damage, though her Luck was so bad that she was losing 20% off the potential damage that could have been done if she'd been able to exceed the hidden Luck target. For example, the pictured attack against this unfortunate Bunicorn would have dealt 42-46 damage if Xena had been rocking Luck at least 10% above the expected target, or at least 38-42 damage if she had been close to the hidden value (13 Luck here at Level 5). Instead, Xena could only muster 11 Luck which relegated her to the "low Luck" set of damage values, only 34-38 damage which was clearly a lot less. I'd be able to equip some Luck-boosting accessories later but for the moment she was out of, ummm, luck. To some extent none of this really mattered since Xena was still one-shotting everything (the Bunicorn only had 10 HP) however it was definitely something worth understanding and planning around.

Another major issue was the fact that Xena could not target more than a single opponent at a time! Whereas the Hero and Monster Wrangler classes both adopted whips as soon as they reached 2 mini medals and then swapped over to boomerangs as early as climbing Dreamer's Tower, unfortunately the Warrior class couldn't equip any of those weapons and remained stuck stabbing things with swords and axes. This caused Xena to take more damage in each combat due to the monsters getting more rounds to act, even though nothing could hit for more than a single point of damage at the moment. Regardless, I scouted out the various sparkling and secret locations around Aliahan, picking up several seeds and a Shell Armor which had a better defensive rating than anything else available thus far. Xena was more than prepared to scale the first dungeon of the game, the Dreamer's Tower:

She had plenty of health to survive the pinpricks from the monsters that she encountered along the way, plus Xena was still leveling quickly enough to restore missing HP along the way. There was another phenomenon worth mentioning though: Xena's terrible Agility stat resulted in the monsters getting to strike first much of the time. I was used to my previous solo characters always getting to act first in every combat, since their Agility stat quickly increased to the point that it was more than double what every opponent happened to have. (The turn order formula is Turn order = (Agility + 20) * RAND(0.5 - 1.0) and gets calculated each turn for each combat participant.) Xena was lumbering along with an Agility number that had barely climbed into double digits and that caused many of her woodland opponents to be speedier out of the gate. I expected that this problem would resolve with time, from eating several dozen Agility seeds and if that wasn't enough then from wearing the Meteorite Bracer, however it was pretty annoying at the moment. Between Xena's slow attacks and her inability to hit more than one target at a time, these random encounters took notably longer to play out in real-world time.

This was what a typical level up looked like for Xena as she claimed the Thief's Key and moved on to the Path of Promise. It was a story of two different categories of stats with half of them growing at an outstanding rate while the other half languished in a stupor. Xena's Strength growth was absolutely beastly, with that Bodybuilder-boosted power causing her to pick up 3, 4, even 5 points of Strength at a time. I can attest that this is far better than normal for most characters and the Hero is pretty much the only class that enjoys anything like this. Resilience and Stamina were also both excellent and manifested in strong HP growth, though I expected Xena would crash into the 999 HP cap and waste much of that Stamina potential. Then there was the other side of the coin, where Xena's Agility, Wisdom, and Luck were all dismal. I know I've been talking about this repeatedly but it still felt useful to illustrate these stats with some numbers. One point of Agility, one single point of Wisdom, and then a massive two whole points of Luck came from this particular level. These numbers were already bad and getting even worse - Xena needed regular infusions of bonus stats from the seeds for help!

On that note, the Thief's Key allowed Xena to open some additional doors in Aliahan and Reeve. I actually discovered a Seed of Magic that I had missed on previous playthroughs and added it to my reference spreadsheet, worth another 3 max MP for Xena. She also found a Rousing Ring accessory with another 7 points of Luck on it, which I was more than happy to wear for the moment. Soon after, she opened a treasure chest in the Path of Promise with a containing a Rabbit Tail accessory worth another 8 Luck; sure, why not. That bonus Luck took Xena from the "low" Luck penalty into the "high" Luck territory and was therefore worth 20% more damage, though of course she was still one-shotting everything along her path. Amusingly, Xena was swinging back and forth between high, medium, and low Luck as she turned up more Seeds of Luck along her journey. It was almost like she was running a race against herself in this regard, one which she was always losing absent outside intervention.

The Path of Promise took longer than usual to complete due to Xena's inability to hit more than one monster at a time. Some of the enemies were starting to be able to deal more than a single point of damage and that upped the challenge level a bit, though things were still far short of truly dangerous territory. Xena continued to level quickly like all other solo characters and gained her first useful Warrior ability in the form of Mercurial Thrust. This is an ability that helps offset the plodding nature of the class, an attack that will always take place at the outset of the combat round before anything else happens. You can always guarantee acting before any of the monsters take their turn, something that obviously holds a lot of utility value against speedy opponents or those metal creatures that try to escape from combat. The downside was that Mercurial Thrust didn't actually increase Xena's damage in any way, only caused it to happen at the start of the fighting, which meant that it was less useful here in a non-party setting where Xena was getting all of the Agility seeds anyway. Nevertheless, it was better than anything else Xena had at the moment and I did get some good use out of this new trick.

The teleportal in the Shrine of Promise transported Xena right next to Romaria castle so I did take the time to explore the town thoroughly and loot it of everything valuable. I did not spend any of Xena's limited gold inside, however, even though there was superior equipment for sale. Instead, I decided to do a bit of minor sequence breaking and headed south across the bridge to Asham and Ibis:

The party is intended to travel north out of Romaria to the towns of Khoryv, Norvik, and the Faerie Village. There's nothing that prevents the player from heading in the opposite direction, however, aside from the deadly monsters inhabiting the regions to the south anyway. I didn't want to waste money on inferior equipment when there was better stuff available in Asham and Ibis so off Xena went on a perilous journey into the unknown. I tried my hand at fighting the monsters along the way using her new Mercurial Strike ability and discovered that Xena was indeed still one-shotting everything with her physical attack. The Warrior class gets so much natural Strength growth, magnified by Xena's Bodybuilder bonus, that she had no difficulty killing the Jackanapes and Vampire Cats and even the Crabber Dabber Doos along the way. The problem again was the fact that Xena could only hit one of them at a time while the monsters in turn were absolutely teeing off on her. Enemies were routinely hitting for 15-20 damage at a time since Xena's modest level and Aliahan-quality armor were absolutely not cutting it for defensive purposes.

It still wasn't that difficult to reach Asham though, with Xena able to defeat most of her opponents at the cost of taking grevious injuries herself. She could win most battles and then was able to run away from the combats that looked the most unfriendly; I think that I tried running two or three times and escaped successfully on every try. After a pit stop in Asham, Xena had a longer walk across the vast deserts of Ibis where she was still killing most of her foes along the way. The whole process cost Xena nearly all of the Medical Herbs in her stash but she did make it to the desert oasis town without perishing. Ibis had the superior Strong Medicine item for sale (though Xena could also have accessed the item in Khoryv) along with a new equipment bonanza:

Ibis apparently specialized in iron production since so much of the new gear turned out to be iron-based. Xena immediately purchased the Iron Axe which was the best weapon that her class could use for the moment, worth 21 additional points of Attack and producing a very satisfying "chop" sound effect whenever it was swung in combat. Then she added a full set of iron defensive gear as well: Iron Armor, Iron Shield, and Iron Helmet which together added nearly 30 more points of Defense. The Iron Armor was actually a mistake as Xena should have bought the Magical Skirt instead. That item had a mere 3 fewer points of Defense while carrying the extremely useful property of 25% less damage taken from enemy spells. I would soon enough realize this error and grab the Magical Skirt over in Asham, though unfortunately items only sell for 1/4th their purchase price in DQ3 and gold was extremely tight at the moment for Xena. She legitimately needed the 2400 gold prize money from winning the first two monster arena tiers back in Romaria to be able to purchase all of this new gear.

I also made certain to pick up the Meteorite Bracer hidden beneath Ibis castle which finally ensured that Xena was faster than nearly every opponent. It was nice to be back to acting first in every round again. This still left the other accessory slot open for Xena and the obvious choice for a long time to come was the Hen's Tooth also pictured above. This bizarrely-named item grants a huge bonus of 20 Luck to the wearer which was exactly what Xena needed. It also carried the option of wearing the accessory in the top slot for a temporary personality change:

There are a whole bunch of accessories in DQ3 that can potentially change the personality of the wearer; this only takes place when equipped in the top accessory slot, so they can be used in the second slot without any effect on the user. Up to this point I had always used a neutral accessory in the top slot for my solo characters, stuff like the Meteorite Bracer, to avoid shifting their personalities around. Xena was now going to do the opposite though: put the Hen's Tooth in that top accessory slot so that she would temporarily shift her personality over to Lucky Devil. This is one of the most interesting personalities from the whole set, as it essentially keeps everything else at the standard 100% and then gives a massive 150% increase to the Luck stat. I had run the math on Xena's stat growth earlier and my plan was to use this personalty for 20 level ups before swapping back to her default Bodybuilder. I had calculated that this would grant her roughly 25-30 additional Luck over using the Bodybuilder personality which would allow her to hit the expected Luck target at the end of the game. However, I did not want to use Lucky Devil for the whole game as this would sacrifice a lot of Strength potential in exchange for unnecessarily high Luck. My hope was that this temporary personality swap would be enough to get Xena to the "neutral" Luck category where there was no damage bonus or penalty, then she could equip the Elevating Shoes if needed to boost her into the "high" Luck category. And the best time to gain that extra Luck was right now, as the expected Luck target grows extremely quickly from Level 20 to Level 50 before greatly slowly down thereafter. Becoming a Lucky Devil would hopefully keep Xena afloat on her Luck stat until I could boost it further with more seed help.

With her new equipment setup in place, Xena now returned to the methodical task of stripping the landscape bare of its available treasures. There were tons of sparkling and secret spots to visit, mini medals to collect, stat-boosting seeds to hunt down, and friendly monsters to recruit. Obtaining all of these rewards helped out Xena substantially from a numbers perspective, not to mention selling all of the unneeded junk from the sparkling spots helped fix her empty pocketbook. She took more damage than my other solo characters due to her lack of mutitargeted damage, which meant a need to use more items for healing, which of course cost even more money. It was a vicious cycle to be sure, though all the while Xena was continuing to train and amass more XP from slaying monsters. When Xena gained some levels with her new personality in place, the effects were extremely obvious. Strength growth remained excellent due to the natural base power of the Warrior class, but now Luck was also increasing at a much faster pace. Xena was routinely gaining 3-4 Luck per level and occassionaly even picked up 5 Luck at once! The plan seemed to be working thus far.

Once everything had been cleaned out around Romaria and Khoryv, Xena continued further north until reaching Norvik and the Faerie Village. She ventured into the Underground Lake dungeon where I used the healing spring inside to test out her newest class ability. This was named Double-Edged Slash and it dealt 160% of Xena's Attack value as physical damage to a single target. This damage output was outstanding but it came at the cost of rebounding 30% of that damage back onto Xena herself (as usual, the in-game tooltips refused to provide any exact numbers on what was going on). Cool as this ability might have sounded, it wasn't very practical for a solo character. Because there are no healing items better than the Special Medicine in DQ3, boss fights for solo characters are all about damage mitigation and trying to avoid taking damage at any cost. An ability where the Warrior class dealt massive self damage was, uh, not exactly what I was looking for. And while the 60% Attack bonus would scale really well into the lategame, the self-inflicted damage would only scale that much harder as well. Amusingly, the damage from Double-Edged Slash doubled in both respects from using Oomph Powder so it was entirely possible that Xena could one-shot HERSELF when using this ability, heh. There would be far superior Warrior abilities down the road that didn't involve Xena stabbing her own flesh.

Xena continued from the north down to the Asham and Ibis regions once again, spending much more time on this second trip to claim all of their hidden goodies as well. I found that Xena was confidently defeating all of her foes with major overkill damage, however she still continued to take heavy damage herself in the process, almost as if she were a glass cannon character. That wasn't the case though since she was wearing heavy armor and her Resilience stat was increasing at a good rate. No, it just felt as though Xena was weak from a defensive standpoint because she was getting hit so much more often than my first two solo characters. They would wipe the battlefield on either the first or second round of combat, every time, clearing the field with their boomerang throws. Xena had to cut down each foe one at a time, getting punched in the face the whole time, and those hits added up quickly. Even though I might have been playing another physical damage solo character here, the experience felt notably different from before.

I waited to tackle Skyfell Tower until Xena had completed every optional task on the world map, just to ensure that she would be as strong as possible before facing the first boss. This meant that she was a bit overleveled by the time that she visited the tower and none of the enemies inside could deal more than a single point of damage when attacking. The biggest annoyance continued to be Xena's single target damage, causing each random encounter to drag out much longer than I was used to seeing. I actually learned a bit more about the AI routines of each individual monster because I saw so many more rounds of combat with each one (rather than them getting blasted to pieces by a single boomerang toss). This could be a particular issue for the enemies that called in reinforcements, especially these stupid crabs that loved to call for their buddies. Each Crabid randomly took 1-2 actions per round and any of them had a low probability of being used to call for reinforcements. Xena often found herself chopping down one crab only for another to take its place, over and over and over again. In this particular combat, Xena had started out facing four Crabids only to make it up to "Crabid M" (the 13th crustacean) before the fight mercifully came to an end. It was bad enough that she had to target the Crabids first in each battle to avoid drowning in the red critters.

All antics with shellfish aside, Xena did have to face Robbin' Ood at the top of the tower which constitutes DQ3's first boss encounter. While this is intended to be a bit of a joke boss, Robbin' Ood is no laughing matter for solo characters since he can break out the monster version of a critical hit at any point in time. Sure enough, on the first very round of combat, Robbin' Ood used his Brutal Strike to pound Xena for 56 points of damage, ouch! With very few means of healing at her disposal, Xena couldn't take too many more blows like that one. Her tactics for this fight were simple and direct: Oomph Powder on the first turn to double her physical damage, then the basic Attack command until the boss was defeated. This worked like a charm as Robbin' Ood took 302 damage from the initial strike followed by another 300 damage on the second turn to end the battle (for reference, he has 510 HP). Xena was able to one-shot the three minions even without the Oomph buff in place and they had been irrelevant to the outcome as usual. Now this was about as routine as it gets, however things could have been much dicier if Xena had come here earlier before she had scaled with more levels and items and stat-boosting seeds. I take any opponent with the ability to critically strike seriously in this game - don't mess around with them. Even something as weak as the Vampire Cats would randomly hit Xena for 100+ damage when they started rolling desperation strikes in a random encounter.

Xena returned the stolen crown back to the king of Romaria (which is necessary to advance the plot as otherwise the path over to Portoga is blocked), though she never went through the little side tangent where the Hero temporarily takes over as monarch. Instead she headed back to the deserts in the south where the Pyramid was next on the agenda. This is the first really big dungeon of the game with two separate paths to take, the mandatory climb up to the top for the Magic Key and then the optional trip down into the hidden second basement for the Golden Claw. I had decided that Xena would make the attempt to steal the claw from its cursed tomb, as the item sells for a hefty 6000 gold which would really help Xena's cash flow. The escape sequence after robbing the item from its tomb proved to be difficult to complete, as Xena was attacked relentlessly by Mummies and Shades in huge numbers. On both of my first two attempts, Xena was killed just before making it out of the Pyramid, the second time from a monster critical hit that did 93 damage - oh come on! This was especially annoying because any death suffered while trying to escape forced a reload from before opening the cursed tomb, unlike every other point in the gameplay where you can retry the same battle over again. I was sufficiently irked to keep trying this process until Xena succeeded on the third attempt; the money she raised from selling the Golden Claw paid for another 99 bottles of Strong Medicine.

The rest of the Pyramid wasn't as dangerous as the sprint out of the underground floors. I used this opportunity to mess around with another one of the Warrior class abilities: Pressure Pointer. This ability had 25% odds to kill an opponent instantly and dealt half damage if it failed. Unfortunately this was another ability that didn't seem to have much use for Xena's current situation, as she could already kill any non-boss opponent instantly with a single attack, and of course the insta-death property wouldn't work against bosses. She actually had enough physical damage that even the failed Pressure Pointer blows were still sufficient to one-shot most of the Pyramid's denizens, heh. I made a note to try this ability against Metal Slimes later where the reduced damage wouldn't matter and perhaps the insta-death effect might do something.

The Ripper of the Rift and its two Kylla minions guarded the treasure chest up on the third floor holding the Magic Key. I knew from past experience to stack Xena with lots of anti-wind element defense equipment, with the Magical Skirt and two Aerofoil Earrings combining together to reduce damage from Woosh and Swoosh spells by 75%. To be honest, I was much more concerned about the two Kyllas here than the Ripper itself, since the floating eyeballs would cast Crack spells that dealt ice damage and had the Lullab-Eye ability that inflicted a guaranteed Sleep status. Xena's tactics were very simple here: use Oomph Powder and then start attacking, taking down the Kyllas as quickly as possible. I caught a break on the first turn of combat when Xena buffed up with Oomph only to be hit with instant Sleep status from the Kylla... and then get knocked out of it on the very same turn by the Ripper's physical blow, hah! Two normal attacks were then sufficient to take down each Kylla, with Xena unfortunately falling a little short of being able to one-shot their 314 HP. She was able to get off a final Oomph-boosted attack on the right Kylla followed by a normal attack which was enough to down the thing.

Once the Ripper was alone, the rest of the battle was quite easy. The demon's wind spells were hitting for minimal damage while its physical blows were landing in the 15-20 damage range. Xena calmly used a Special Medicine for 82 health restored when she was tagged with the Dazzle debuff, then used the Defend command until it wore off. She reapplied a second Oomph Powder and then hacked the Ripper to death, winning the battle with 260 HP remaining, easy stuff. Clearing the dozen trapped treasure chests on the fourth floor of the Pyramid proved to be harder than the boss fight, as Xena was wiped out several times in those fights. There was one encounter where she had to fight five Mummies, an enemy that could use the monster critical strike or call for more Mummy reinforcements, and one such fight started with two enemy crits plus two additional reinforcements on the first turn. Yeah, Xena wasn't winning that encounter. Fortunately I could just redo the fight over again at no penalty where Xena experienced better RNG the second time.

Xena spent the next bit of time running around opening doors with her Magic Key, with nearly half a dozen seeds to be found in various places that were previously unreachable. She was finally able to visit Portoga where she purchased a Light Shield for some additional defensive rating; I could have picked up the Full Plate Armor as well but opted to stick with the Magical Skirt for the moment, as 25% reduced damage from spells was more valuable than slightly more physical defense. Xena's path then headed back east again through the dwarf's cave where I did some testing with the remaining Warrior skills that I hadn't used earlier. The most interesting of these was Cop Out which is an innate Warrior ability that Xena had possessed since Level 1. Cop Out puts the Warrior into a defensive stance with the following effects: 5/8th chance to pass damage to an enemy, 1/4th chance to damage ally, 1/8th chance to fail. This can be surprisingly useful against opponents that use heavy physical attacks and I was amused to watch this strike from a Whackanape get reflected back and one-shot the green Lump Mage. On the other hand, Cop Out does have a decent chance to fail (the 25% odds to damage an ally are treated as a failure when playing a solo character, so 37% odds to have nothing happen) and it does nothing against spells or enemy abilities. This looked to be too niche of an ability for Xena to use it much, not least because her own physical attacks were so strong already.

For the curious, the other two Warrior abilities pictured here were utterly useless for a solo game. Whipping Boy redirected damage from an ally onto the Warrior for a turn, like the Cover ability from some of the Final Fantasy games. Forbearance was the same thing as Whipping Boy only for the whole party, redirecting all damage dealt to everyone onto the Warrior for a turn. These are useful abilities in a traditional party setting and I found myself using them in some boss fights with my initial variant group, however they were completely pointless for Xena's solo venture. The Warrior class has several really, really strong abilities that don't unlock until hitting a very high level for a non-variant game; this is a late-blooming class since all of this early game stuff is pretty underwhelming.

I explored through Baharata and Alltrades Abbey, and even took the time to have Xena clean out everything in the Kidnapper's Cave while skipping the Robbin' Ood boss refight for the moment. She continued onward to the Tower of Transcendence where the monsters were just barely doable without getting wiped out. Xena's need to defeat every opponent one at a time had her taking a real pounding throughout the tower, winning a series of random encounters with under 100 HP remaining. She never quite hit a game over screen though she was definitely pushing her luck at some points. The issue was never her damage output, with Xena able to one-shot even these Ethereal Serpents which are treated a bit like minibosses by the gameplay. If she could ever hit more than one target at a time, her life was going to become immensely easier! Anyway, the nominal reason for traversing the tower was to find the Words of Wisdom book that allows a character to class change into a Sage. While that may have been pointless for Xena, she did find two useful new pieces of gear inside: a Silver Tiara for some additional points of Defense and the Battle Fork weapon which let her stab things even harder. Note that the Silver Tiara and the Magical Skirt are both female-only equipment items in DQ3; the women simply get so much better equipment options throughout the game than the men, I really don't understand it.

Xena did claim the Words of Wisdom as a keepsake and then continued marching eastwards. She traveled past the Wayfarer's Shrine and all the way to the village of Mur where the land finally came to an end. Xena was claiming the usual goodies along the way, sparkles and secret spots and mini medals, and I actually discovered that my reference spreadsheet didn't have one of the sparkle locations marked. I made that correction to avoid walking around in circles looking for it in the future. This was also the point where Xena reached Level 35 and I ended her 20 level run as a Lucky Devil, swapping the order of the Meteorite Bracer and Hen's Tooth to return back to being a Bodybuilder once more. Her final level up was worth 7 points of Luck (!) as a fitting conclusion to this whole Luck experiment. Now the real test would be seeing where Xena's Luck stat ended up at Level 99 and whether my estimates would prove to be anywhere near accurate.

With nowhere further that could be traveled prior to unlocking the ship, Xena now returned back to the Kidnapper's Cave to challenge the boss inside. Robbin' Ood was dangerous for one and only one reason: his ability to pull out a Brutal Strike at any point in time which would ignore Xena's otherwise sturdy defenses. The three minions were also irrelevant, it was only the boss himself that posed any danger. There was nothing fancy that Xena could do in terms of tactics for this battle, only buff up with Oomph Powder and start attacking. I found that Robbin' Ood's non-critical attacks were landing for a little under 20 damage at a time, which increased slightly to about 25 damage once the minions had debuffed Xena's defense with their Kasap spell. Meanwhile, Xena's gigantic Battle Fork lashed out for nearly 400 damage, then actually went critical at 2% odds on the second attack to deal 480 damage. One final attack sped up with Mercurial Thrust sealed the deal and took down the boss; Robbin' Ood had attacked three times and none of them went critical. That made this boss fight appear to be a complete cakewalk, though things could have looked very different if Xena had attempted the battle earlier. Like I said before, I take any opponent that can use critical strikes seriously.

Xena could now claim her ship and set sail out into the rest of the world. If my understanding of this class was correct, the hardest part of the game was coming to a close and things should start to become easier moving forward. How would the Warrior class stack up relative to its other solo peers? The journey would continue onwards to answer that question.