Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age

General Tips

• R2 can be used to sprint.

• DLC/Preorder stuff is unlocked in under Misc. > System Settings > Claim Special Rewards

• Try Classic Camera under Gameplay Options as it's more cinematic.

• The game autosaves when you zone.

• You can eventually reset your skill points at church. Not only should you play around with different specs, some nodes will unlock bonus skill points.

• For some reason The Attribute tab for each character lists all skills they can purchase, including those that are locked on the skill board.

Combat, Gear, Quests

• Zap is really good for a very long time.

• The AI is overall pretty smart. If you don't feel like micromanaging, you can leave it as is. Just be aware there are times where your party will rather kill a critically hurt enemy than use or cast an AE skill/spell.

• Use Mix-it-Up if you want to see more status effect skill/spells from your characters.

• While looking at gear, you can change pages to the upgrade tab to see what the benefits are for each level. There's quite a few pieces that you should upgrade that you are not able to craft including the pre-order items.

• There's no real need to save-scum when crafting gear. You cannot "fail" at crafting and at worse you just craft a +0 piece of gear.

• You can eventually purchase upgrade pearls and their cost will be a non-issue.

• Quests that require peps to complete can be tricky. You can always help trigger peps by moving a character to the front of the line so they are attacked more often.

• On the final turn of a pep, you will see the aura on the character's portrait begin to fade.

• Swap party members to save their pep.

• As far as whether you can sell old equipment goes, there is a quest later in the game that involves equipping stuff based on riddles, but I think the stuff is fairly easy to get. Otherwise, there are a few pieces of equipment that are used for crafting better versions, but there's only a few, and you'll know it because you are unable to upgrade them in the forge (some very late game stuff and the DQXIII armor you start with). Otherwise, everything can be sold.

• Keep all your ingredients though, you never know what you'll need (even the gold bars, which are used in some very powerful equipment, despite being told you can just sell them for money)

Exploration

• In any new map, check for Sparkle Points in the Map Menu to make life easier.

• You might see little bullseye targets around the map. You eventually get a tool later to take these down.

• Some monsters only appear at night or certain weather conditions.

• If you cannot fill out the Monsters Found In Region under your Tips Menu, it's either part of the metal family or a "Rarefied" monster.

• "Rarefied" monsters are heavily RNG dependant for their spawn rate. They also are more prone to casting insta kill spells (Whack).

• Just like monsters some harvesting points appear only at night. Check your map to see the locations.

• Hit up Gold Ore nodes as often as you can. Gold Ore is useful throughout the game.

• You can dash through weak monsters on your horse.

• Explore. There's no really challenging battles or monsters that roam the world. Beat up everything big or small.

Story

• Red locked magic doors become available to unlock in the main story. Silver locked doors are very late game. Super late game.

• There's places and loot you cannot obtain until much later in the game. If you see a chest across a lake or broken bridge, know that you can eventually access them.

• Talk to Party gives you some extra flavor text and insight to how your party responds to events around them.

• There's a few unwinnable story battles. The first is not very obvious and it occurs when the game takes away your party and forces you to fight with Eric.

• Ignore the advice given to you after that first unwinnable battle regarding beelining to your next objective.

• The first time you enter the Casino aim to get the 500pt recipe book. Abuse the auto-save feature and move on. Don't bother with the other prizes until the high-stake tables/machines unlock.

• During the story's Casino quest all the points you win will be taken away. The Love Potions are the only thing worth buying, the rest of the prizes are to troll the player (poop being the most expensive).