Breath Of Fire: Dragon Quarter

Always keep a backup of your saves. Using the quit option makes a temp save that disappears immediately on loading and something bad always happens on Ironman runs.

You only heal from using items and a Skill you can miss. Buy 9 items in a stack at a time. You may get another and not use up one space.

Don't open every box the first time. You are supposed to fill up inventory and run back to sell it. The game throws lots of items and tends to have long stretches without seeing a merchant or lock you off from going back.

Traps can reduce enemy health to small amounts and sometimes allow for instant kills on weaker ones. Always buy stacks of traps. Dynamite is for throwing at enemies while the others are best tossed near them to be set off in battle. I'd ditch explosives the instant prox mines are sold.

Spend your Party XP. There is a system that allows replays from saves where you can farm them, but it isn't required. Save the XP if you intend on using Sol:Restore after farming bosses.

There are two places where you can gain Party XP the fastest: The boss fight in Storage and at the end on the elevator. The latter one is done most efficiently by killing three sets of enemies and the boss in that turn.

Lin can scan enemies in range.

Look up a combo guide for your Skills. Lin has more than a dozen that adds ailments/steal or combo into large damage.

Items with an EX icon are passive boosts you keep in your inventory. The Gold XP item stacks up to 20 times.

The Explorer job in the Faerie Village is a trap job that kills your Antz. It doesn't let you find valuable items you couldn't already find.

There is a boss weapon that levels up each time you clear the game. Another weapon hidden near a giant corpse that levels according to your highest D-ratio, up to 1/8. A third weapon is hidden in a doll that levels after every couple of resets in New Game+.

D-counter

• Assuming Dragon Form during battle (1% increase)
• Remaining in Dragon Form during battle (2% per turn)
• Using Vortex (1%), Hurricane (1.25%) or Twister (1.50%)
• Using D-Charge (2% per Charge)
• Using D-Breath by holding down the button (2% per second)

In addition, D-Dashing now causes the D-Counter to rise roughly 1% every second, while simply moving normally causes it to increase by 0.01% every 15 or so steps. It also increases by 0.01% every turn in battle (not counting EX Turns). You can tap to D-dash and it increases by the hundredth.

Give up

There is an option in the menu called "Give up" where the screen goes blood red and warns you about continuing. This is called Scenario Overlay, where you can do one of two things: SOL:Restart/SOL:Restore. SOL:Restore lets you return to your one saved game with the following intact:

PARTY XP
Money (Unless you have less than 300 Zenny, in which case the game will raise it to that amount)
Anything Ryu or other characters have equipped.
Any skills Ryu or other characters have learned.
The contents of the Item and Weapon Lockers.
The game timer.
Faerie Village progress.

SOL Restart does the above and resets the game, your second counter, and you to level 1. Both of them has your backpack items replaced with some heals, tonic, save token. Both of them can be used to power level and collect items you may have missed.

New Game+

At the end of each playthrough, Dragon Quarter generates a new D-ratio that you take into New Game+. The value of this ratio is determined by a number of factors including:

A} Game Clear Time

Within 8hrs  = 10 Pts
 8 -  9hrs  =  9 pts
 9 - 10hrs  =  8 pts
10 - 11hrs  =  7 pts
11 - 13hrs  =  6 pts
13 - 15hrs  =  5 pts
15 - 17hrs  =  4 pts
17 - 20hrs  =  3 pts
20 - 23hrs  =  2 pts
23 - 26hrs  =  1 pt

B} EX TURN Acquisition Percentage

95 - 100% = 10 pts
90 -  95% =  9 pts
85 -  90% =  8 pts
80 -  85% =  7 pts
75 -  80% =  6 pts
70 -  75% =  5 pts
65 -  70% =  4 pts
60 -  65% =  3 pts
55 -  60% =  2 pts
50 -  55% =  1 pt

C} Map Completion Percentage

98 - 100% = 10 pts
96 -  98% =  9 pts
94 -  96% =  8 pts
92 -  94% =  7 pts
90 -  92% =  6 pts
88 -  90% =  5 pts
86 -  88% =  4 pts
84 -  86% =  3 pts
82 -  84% =  2 pts
80 -  82% =  1 pt

D} Number of Opened Treasure Box

The ones in Kokon Horay do not count.

Above 42 = 10 pts
39 - 41  =  9 pts
36 - 38  =  8 pts
33 - 35  =  7 pts
30 - 32  =  6 pts
25 - 29  =  5 pts
20 - 24  =  4 pts
15 - 19  =  3 pts
10 - 14  =  2 pts
5 - 9   =  1 pt

E} Number of Saves

  0     = 10 pts
1 - 2   =  9 pts
2 - 3   =  8 pts
3 - 4   =  7 pts
4 - 6   =  6 pts
6 - 8   =  5 pts
8 - 10  =  4 pts
10 - 12  =  3 pts
12 - 14  =  2 pts
14 - 16  =  1 pt

F} Kokon Horay

  B50F     = 10 pts
B46F - B49F =  9 pts
B41F - B45F =  8 pts
B36F - B40F =  7 pts
B31F - B35F =  6 pts
B26F - B30F =  5 pts
B21F - B25F =  4 pts
B16F - B20F =  3 pts
B11F - B15F =  2 pts
B6F  - B10F =  1 pt

Final D-ratio

100+ Points = 1/4
95 - 99 Points = 1/8
90 - 95 Points = 1/16
85 - 90 Points = 1/32
80 - 85 Points = 1/64
75 - 80 Points = 1/128 
70 - 75 Points = 1/256 Opens all locked doors
65 - 70 Points = 1/512
60 - 65 Points = 1/1024
55 - 60 Points = 1/2048
50 - 55 Points = 1/4096