----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Metal Slime FAQ Dragon Quest VIII (PS2) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Table Of Contents (Searchable) A) Intro/Explanation B) Slime Stats C) Equipment and Skills -skills- -equipment- D) Strategies By Location -General Encounter Strategies- -Ruined Abbey (MS)- -Trodain(LMS)- -Dragon Graveyard (MKS)- -Fly-to areas (LMS+)- -Slime Hill (ALL)- -Other Areas- E) Skill point strategies F) Dragon Graveyard the best? G) Thanks/legal ---------------------------A) Intro/Explanation------------------------------ Metal Slime hunting is the easiest way to gain experience (and thus levels) in the Dragon Quest VIII game. They are tricky to find and even harder to kill when you do find them so this FAQ was created in an attempt to educate players on where to go and how to kill them. This faq will not contain any plot spoilers but does specifically describe certain items, how they are obtained, and specific locations that you may consider small spoilers. If you want to be safe, I suggest only reading this FAQ when you have reached the end of the game. I will minimize the spoilers whenever possible and again, there is nothing story related here. Also, not everything in this FAQ is provable or concrete. A lot is my own opinions and findings. If you disagree with me, that's one thing but if you think some of my opinions can be proven wrong, that's another. This faq is intended as a resource to the community but it is still my creation. In absence of evidence to my discretion, I will keep my opinions in this FAQ. I am open to discussions though, and if good research improves our understanding of the information in this FAQ, I will certainly add/change it. -------------------------------B) Slime Stats-------------------------------- There are 3 kinds of metal slimes in the game and although they vary in size, they all have the same tendencies towards running away with the same extremely high defense. Below is combined from Red Scarlet's Appendix FAQ, Randy Price's Game System FAQ, and my own findings: /=======================================================================/ | <#036> Metal Slime (Slime Family) | | Experience: 1,350 / Gold: 5 | | Level: 13 | | HP: 3-4 | | MP: Inf | | Attack: 30 | | Defense: 4096 | | Agility: 65 | | Evade: 1/16 | | Normal drop: Seed of Defense | | Rare drop: Seed of Agility | | Where fought: Ruined Abbey level 1-4, | | beachy area before Wisher's Peak-day/night, | | Small Nameless Island northeast of Farebury-day/night, | | forest west of Royal Hunting Ground-day/night, | | Howlwind Hill-day/night | | Battle actions: Runs away, attacks, casts Frizz | /=======================================================================/ /=========================================================================/ | <#084> Liquid Metal Slime (Slime Family) | | Experience: 10,050 / Gold: 18 | | Level: 19 | | HP: 6-8 | | MP: Inf | | Attack: 65 | | Defense: 4096 | | Agility: 215 | | Evade: 1/16 | | Normal drop: Seed of Agility | | Rare drop: Elevating Shoes | | Where fought: Trodain, Trodain 1F, | | Small Nameless Island in southwest corner of the | | world-night, | | Godbird's Eyrie (Light World) level 2/6, | | flying spot south of Dragon Graveyard-night, | | flying spot southwest of campsite west of Argonia-night, | | Howlwind Hill-day/night, | | flying spot southwest of Dark Ruins-night, | | flying spot north of Neos-night, | | island west of Lakeside Cabin-night, Dragovian Path B2/B3 | | Battle actions: Runs away, attacks, casts Sizz | /=========================================================================/ /========================================================================/ | <#171> Metal King Slime (Slime Family) | | Experience: 30,010 / Gold: 240 | | Level: 34 | | HP: 16-20 | | MP: Inf | | Attack: 166 | | Defense: 4096 | | Agility: 255 | | Evade: 1/16 | | Normal drop: Slime Crown | | Rare drop: Orichalcum | | Where fought: Dragon Graveyard level 1, Howlwind Hill-day/night, | | Black Citadel level 1/5-2, around Tryan Gully-day, | | Dragovian Path B2-B4, Heavenly Dais level 2 | | Battle actions: Runs away, attacks, slams its body into a party member | /========================================================================/ Each metal has three battle actions. Running seems to be the most common and occurs about 50% of the time. Standard attacks are also fairly common at about 40% of the time. The third attack listed for each slime is much more rare, they select it about 10% of the time. Lets also point out here that metal slimes are immune to all status effects, instant death, or magic damage of any kind. That means needle shot, magic burst, dragon soul, etc are completely ineffective. ---------------------------C) Equipment and Skills--------------------------- Metal Slimes are immune to all types of magic. They also have an extremely high physical defense (4096) which makes conventional strategies fairly useless. Lets briefly mention all relevant Equipment and Skills and discuss how they can be utilized to gain some great experience from the metal slime family of enemies. Most of the following will revolve around 3 principles. 1) Attack multiple times (with tension when possible) 2) Get critical hits to 1-shot metals and 3) raise your agility which will let you go before the metal. -----Skills---- -Base attack- All characters Description: Your base attack which has a small chance of performing a Critical Hit. Explanation: Critical hits ignore defense, even metal slime's defense. This means that any time you get off a critical hit, even from a normal attack command, you will do full normal damage against a metal, killing them in a single turn. All characters can do this. Also, normal hits will often do 1 pt of damage to a metal. Finally, you can use multi-hit weapons like a falcon blade to get two attacks off. Each could critical or simply give you 2pts of damage. Metal slimes are fairly easy to kill from just attacking but larger slimes will require more strategy. NOTE: All the weapon trees give an "increased chance of performing criticals" at different points along the path. These will significantly increase your chance of performing a critical but it will still be very rare so don't count on it. -Metal Slash- Hero: Sword level 30 Angelo: Sword level 22 Description: Makes it easier to hit a metal enemy, and will cause 1 to 2 damage to it. All other enemies will take normal damage. Explanation: Possibly the most obvious of skills, metal slash allows you to effectively damage metals via a consistent damage output of 1-2 pts. Particularly effective against metal slimes (and not their larger cousins), the skill also improves with tension. With 5 tension, it will hit for 1-4 damage. With 20 Tension, 2-8 damage. With 50 tension, 4-16 damage. With 100 tension, 8-24 damage. Also, this attack can be used with a falcon blade type sword which gets two attacks and can further double the damage output. A full tension metal slash from angelo or hero with a falcon blade will likely kill a Metal King Slime in 1 turn! -Lightning Thrust- Hero: Spear level 59 Description: This ability replaces Thunder Thrust. It will always land a critical hit, but only hits about 50% of the time. Explanation: Critical hits 1-shot metal enemies since they ignore defense. Lightning Thrust has a 50% chance of hitting but will always critical which means that it has a 50% chance of killing a metal. Note though that even critical hits can be evaded (1 in 16 chance by metals) so it's not a guaranteed kill. The real chance is 1/2 * 15/16 or 15/32 or 46.875% of actually killing the metal. This skill is particularly useful against larger metals like the metal king slime since it only needs 1 turn to work. -Thunder Thrust- Hero: Spear level 12 Description: Has a high chance of landing a critical hit, but only hits about 50% of the time Explanation: Very similar to Lightning Thrust except it criticals only 50% of the time when it does hit giving a 25% total chance of performing a successful critical and is thus less effective against metals. -Executioner- Yangus: Axe level 66 Description: This ability will replace Hatchet Man. It has a 100% critical hit rate, but only hits about 50% of the time. Explanation: Critical hits 1-shot metal enemies since they ignore defense. Executioner has a 50% chance of hitting but will always critical which means that it has a 50% chance of killing a metal. Note though that even critical hits can be evaded (1 in 16 chance by metals) so it's not a guaranteed kill. The real chance is 1/2 * 15/16 or 15/32 or 46.875% of actually killing the metal. This skill is particularly useful against larger metals like the metal king slime since it only needs 1 turn to work. -Hatchet Man- Yangus: Axe level 19 Description: Has a high chance of landing a critical hit, but only hits about 50% of the time Explanation: Very similar to Executioner except it criticals only 50% of the time when it does hit giving a 25% total chance of performing a successful critical and is thus less effective against metals. -Whistle- Yangus: Humanity level 4 Description: Instantly puts you into a battle with enemies from that area Explanation: The best way to find metal slimes is to have them come to you. Wandering around a dungeon or map just takes too much time! Our goal is quick experience which means quick fights. Whistle helps us get into the encounters right away with less time between battles. -Accelerate- Jessica: Staff level 3 Description: Doubles your Agility. The spell will last the entire battle Explanation: The more your agility, the better your odds of going before the metal slime has a chance to run away. Accelerate does not take effect until the next turn but can be useful for the second or later turn. Also note that it is effected by tension which can be helpful. Finally, a note that your max agility is still 999 so although accelerate stacks, you will eventually reach maximum agility. The good news is you're always going to go first with 999 agility. -Twin Dragon Lash- Jessica: Whips level 23 Description: Causes a little more damage then a normal attack, and will hit a single enemy twice. If used on a group it may hit a single enemy or multiple enemies Explanation: Although not especially useful, it can help to get two attacks from jessica when hunting metal slimes. Twin Dragon Lash gives a maximum of two damage since it gives 2 attacks. Since it removes the ability to critical (because it's a skill), I find it only useful against metal slimes and not larger metals. jessica is mostly better off using Accelerate as well so that the next turn, the other 3 characters will have a better chance of going before their metal opponents. SKILL NOTES: Please keep in mind that many skills are completely useless against metals. Dragon Soul, for example, ignores defense but is still considered a magic attack so it will not effect metals. Also, many attack skills (like flame slash) have a 0% chance of making a critical which can make them actually worse than just using your base attack. Also, buffs like oomph have no effect. Also, there are some other notable multiple attack skills like Twin Dragon Lash, namely Multishot, Multihit and Crosscutter Throw. They are similarly effective but unlike jessica, the others get more useful skills. Metal Slash and the improved criticals from the spear and axe tree are much more useful. However, these other multi-attack skills are somewhat useful alternatives. -----Equipment----- Lets briefly list some very useful items you'll come across in DQ8 and how they can be utilized to get some nice experience from metals -Falcon Blade- Useable by: Angelo, Hero, Jessica (after knife level 30) Buy: Baccarat Casino Explanation: The falcon blade is very useful because it gives you 2 attacks. The best use is with tension as well using metal slash with angelo and hero which will give you good, predictable damage against even larger metals. The problem is that this takes a lot of setup work but when you can pull it off, it's very successful. I won't specifically list the falcon knife or the uber flacon blade but they are very similar and can be used in place of falcon blades. -Timbrel of Tension- Useable by: All Recipe: Magic Beast Hide + Sun Crown + Tough Guy Tattoo Explanation: As we've discussed in this faq, raising tension is very useful both for getting more damage from metal slash and in increasing the boost given from accelerate. The most effective way to raise tension is a Timbrel of tension since it works on the entire party raising everyone 1 level. There are two skull helms in the game which can be turned into two sun crowns which can then be turned into two timbrels. I suggest getting both as soon as possible. They're also very useful beyond just metal slime hunting. -Meteorite Bracer- Useable by: All Found: Given to you by Princess Minnie once you acquire 60 Mini Medals Recipe: Agility Ring + Agility Ring + Orichalcum Explanation: This accessory gives Agility +50 which will greatly help your chances of going before the metal enemies. I recommend four of these which will cost you some orichalcum but again, they're useful for more than just metal slime hunting. -Seed of Agility- Useable by: All Found: Waterfall Hut (bag), Tower of Alexandria (treasure chest), Boat (pot), Red's Den (treasure chest), Baccarat area (treasure chest on the field), West Argonia area (treasure chest on the field), World of Darkness (treasure chest on the field) Drop: Liquid Metal Slime(N), Metal Slime(R) Explanation: Raising agility again helps characters go before the metals. Seeds are common all throughout the game and can be useful as described against metal opponents so apply them to your characters! It's what they are there for! -Holy Water- Useable by: All Buy: Item shops everywhere Recipe: Amor Seco Essence + Rock Salt Drop: Firespirit(N), Lost Soul(N), Lump Wizard(N), Peeper(N), Winky(N) Explanation: This is really an early game useful item against metal slimes. It will do 1 damage guaranteed every time and can be effectively used early on, in the absence of other good skills and equipment. Once you get metal slash or some of the other skills, you'll find these less useful. -Metal Weapons- Explanation: Lets briefly point these out. There are a number of metal weapons in the game with names like "Liquid Metal Sword" or "Metal Wing Boomerang" that have a line regarding metal slimes. They all have an inherent ability to hit for 1-2 damage to metals on a normal attack. However, all these items are only gotten at the end of the game at which point you should also have access to more useful items like the falcon blade. You may find them of limited use though, for instance the Boomerang can be useful against mass metal slimes. However, by the time you get it, you will only be wasting your time going after regular metal slimes. EQUIPMENT NOTES: There are also many many other agility raising items in the game like the Mercury's Bandana, Mercury's Rapier, Argon Ring, or just a good old Agility Rings. These are useful like the seed of agility I described above. Try to maximize your agility when fighting metals. --------------------------D) Strategies By Location-------------------------- This is the meant and purpose of this FAQ. Now that you've got an idea of what you are up against and have a good list of tools at your disposal, lets get down to the business at hand of killing these pesky things! This section will be broken down into 5 locations, each with their own types of situations to deal with. Our goal is the best experience with the least work. ------General Encounter Strategies------ When hunting metal slimes, you're always going to be in a situation of trying to get your party into a rare encounter. The key is to minimize the time you spend NOT fighting metal slimes. This is done in two ways. The first way is to use whistle instead of just walking around. The second is to simply get yourself out of battles you don't want to be in. Run across other enemies? Don't waste your time! The quickest and easiest way to get out of these battles is to flee (run). However, many people complain that this will raise their statistic (boo hoo crybaby) or cause King Trode to insult you in the battle logs section (waaaaah). The second best option is intimidate which doesn't always work AND takes more time. However, if you are afraid of fleeing, that's your next best option. Fighting all the battles will waste your time and slow down your Experience gain. -----Ruined Abbey (MS)----- Here you'll find your first metal enemies in the form of Metal Slimes. This is also a very early location in the game which means you won't have access to many of the skills and equipment from the previous sections. Still, this is your first chance to gain some easy levels if you are well prepared. Your best bet here is going to be metal slash. I wouldn't bother with tension either, I find the best results from just going after them with the hope of two damage points. Jessica Can be used in a variety of roles here. She likely has accelerate which is useful if the battle lasts more than one turn but she also has twin dragon lash or just her regular attack. Experiment with all of these options, you'll find they all give about the same result. As you increase your level, your agility will be higher and you will have an easier time killing these slimes. Note though, that metal slimes are not a common encounter here so you don't want to waste too much time leveling at this point in game. I would also mention the Thunder Thrust and Hatchet man skills here although that they give a less than 25% chance of killing the slime. Hero is definitely better off using metal slash if he has it. Tension won't help you much here since the metal slime will likely be gone before it is relevant. Also, later in the game when you have more skills/equipment, this is not the spot you want to go back to due to it's low encounter rate and the fact that metal slimes really don't give too much experience for a late game group. Finally, you might try using a lot of holy water which will do 1 damage against metal slimes. Especially if you don't have the gear and skills, they can make your life easier. -----Trodain(LMS)----- Enter the Liquid Metal Slime. At nearly 10x the experience of the littler metal slimes and each giving more experience than any non-metal battle will ever yield, this is when things really start getting good. Trodain offers a rare encounter with LMS which can be very rewarding. Unfortunately, you're not going to have access to a lot of equipment at this point but if you went spear for hero or axe for yangus, you can probably make some good experience. Executioner (EX) and Lightning Thrust (LT) are what you really need due to the higher hp of liquid metal slimes. Jessica should use accelerate as much as possible and angelo is probably best using a regular attack and praying for a critical. If you don't have EX and/or LT, you're not going to have an easy time killing LMS. You can use a similar strategy as described for the ruined abbey but since LMS have twice the HP, you're going to have far less success. Finally, keep in mind that agility gear is very helpful. You won't have access to much at this point but as you get it, use it. -----Dragon Graveyard (MKS)----- Lets get down to it! The Dragon Graveyard gives the best experience of the entire game but is also fairly complex and confusing. Many players prefer other areas because a) they lack patience or b) they don't know how or c) they screw this method up. The confusion here is because we're not just going after Metal King Slimes (MKS), we're going after max XP. That involves kerplunk casting Beelzebuzz and MKS. It involves exploiting not just LT + EX but metal slash, falcon blades, and tension tension tension! Lets begin. The basic encounter here is just one MKS. The way you want to kill these is to have hero use LT and yangus use EX. Jessica should case accelerate and angelo should attack and pray for crit. If you have a timbrel of tension (called ToT), you might consider having angelo use it hoping to boost jessica's accelerate. Again, agility raising gear is very helpful. This isn't the ultimate xp gain here in the Dragon Graveyard though. Read on! The real fun comes in when you get MKS along with a few Beelzebuzz. The reason this is so great is because Beelzebuzz have kerplunk. If you manage to kill off the MKS and then have him brought back by kerplunk, you can kill him AGAIN and gain ANOTHER 30,000 xp. Effectively, each Beelzebuzz becomes another MKS worth of experience for you to get. Using this method, you can gain over 200,000 experience in a single battle (with a little luck) and although such boosts are rare, they happen frequently enough to make this the single fastest way of gaining experience in the game. When you find yourself in that lucky situation of seeing MKS along with some Beelzebuzz, use the following phases. For this example, we'll assume you are fighting 3 Beelzebuzz and 1 Metal King Slime. The encounters vary slightly but the strategy is much the same. Phase 1: Kill the MKS. The goal here is much like the basic MKS strategy. Use LT and EX to bring down the Metal King Slime quickly. Try to avoid killing the Beelzebuzz yet, I'll explain in the next phase. Phase 2: Now that you've killed the Metal King Slime, you want to buff yourself as much as possible. This means getting hero and angelo to 100 tension and using enough accelerates to get everyone to 999, assuring you'll go first. The key here is to not kill off the Beelzebuzz or leave only one because this will cause them to cast kerplunk too early. You want to make sure that you'll have the capability to kill that MKS in one shot with your fully tensioned, falcon blade swinging, metal slash using hero/angelo. Phase 3: Now that you're fully buffed, take yangus and kill off all but 1 Beelzebuzz. Make sure you keep track of which one he is. It will cast kerplunk and your MKS friend will be back upright. Next turn, send a metal slash his way and bring him down. Again, you'll want to have a falcon blade which will give two attacks without reducing metal slash's damage. At 100 tension, hero/angelo should 1-shot the MKS. At 50 tension, it's about 50/50 in my experience so you might want to use both. Try not to kill off all the Beelzebuzz though or you'll miss out on some of that XP. After killing the MKS for a second time, we're back into phase 1. Note that each Beelzebuzz only has enough MP to cast kerplunk once so make sure you leave each one alive on it's own at least once so it can cast it's kerplunk. Done effectively, the encounter with three Beelzebuzz and one MKS should result in over 120,000 xp. Complex? Yes. Easy to mess up? Yes. Fastest? YUP! Finally, a note about the dragon graveyard is that killing machines cannot be intimidated. If you refuse to flee (because you're a cry baby), you are going to have to kill them before progressing. You should really flee. -----Fly-to areas (LMS+)----- During the Night (night only, have I said that enough yet?), you can encounter Liquid Metal Slimes (LMS) in any area you can only fly to (besides slime hill). One such example is the plateau south of the dragon graveyard but there are several others. Look for the areas in the clouds. Much simpler and requiring less skills/equipment is LMS hunting. Any area you can fly to, at night, will feature encounters that may include multiple LMS. However, you should now have access to falcon blades and a Timbrel of Tension (or two). Since LMS come in multiples here, this is a great place to gain large experience in a regular fashion. Although not as fast as the dragon graveyard, it requires far less gear, far less patience, and is much easier. Also, it's still pretty good XP! The basics here are to utilize what we've got. Lightning Thrust (LT) and Executioner (EX) are still work great but now with falcon blades, we have other options. Metal Slash with a falcon blade will do up to 4 damage at normal tension and can 1-shot an LMS even at 5 tension with a little luck. Again, agility raising gear is quite useful here. Use seeds if you got em, use agility gear if you have it (or even go make some). Yangus doesn't have a sword or accelerate to deal with so he's only going to be useful if you have enough points in axe using Executioner (or god forbid, maybe even hatchet man). You could always do the "attack and pray" as well. He makes a poor timbrel user because he has such poor agility. I prefer to give the ToT to Jessica if I only have 1 but you might consider giving a second to yangus. Angelo doesn't have an auto-crit move like EX or LT so he's definitely going to be using falcon blade + metal slash. Jessica has two good options, she makes an ideal ToT user due to her high agility and she has accelerate. I mostly prefer the ToT approach as it increases the killing rate, even if most of the LMS get away. When fighting six LMS (fairly common), you can't expect to kill them all. Hero has both yangus's and angelo's options in metal slash AND LT. Both have their strengths. Generally though, most players will NOT have both. If they did, they'd likely not be wasting their time here and instead leveling in the dragon graveyard. If I had both, I'd probably use LT mostly, firing a metal slash + falcon blade off when his tension was high from a few hits with a ToT. This area also gets worse after a late-game event due to some other enemies getting mixed in to the encounter rates thus reducing the number of LMS you will see over a given time period. It doesn't require as much stuff as the dragon graveyard though so it makes a good place to start metal slime hunting. -----Slime Hill (ALL)----- OK, I'm only even putting this in here because so many people talk about it. Compared to either of the above locations, the experience rates are not any good. First off, not all the slimes you fight are metal. Second off, even normal metal slimes are not really worth your time at this point. Oh, and for those who don't know, slime hill is that area in the clouds near rydon tower. It's also the only fly-to-only area that doesn't feature the same encounters as dictated in the strategy above. Slime hill features MS, LMS, and MKS so you'll need to use all the strategies above (except there are no kerplunk casters so forget that). I won't go into detail but again you have LT and EX, as well as metal slash. Agility is again very important. Hit em with what you got. Move on to greener pastures when you get serious about gaining more xp. -----Other Areas----- MS, LMS, and MKS can be found in many other areas. I haven't listed individual strategies for each because they are mostly redundant. If you've read through the strategies I gave for each area, you should have all the knowledge needed to hunt any metal anywhere. Again, the fastest place is the dragon graveyard. Also keep in mind that many locations are simply not as good as the ones I've listed. Don't waste your time in places when there is better xp elsewhere. --------------------------E) Skill point strategies-------------------------- OK, so lets spend a minute talking about spending your skill points as you level up. You can go all fisticuffs if you like, and I'm sure it's a fun strategy to try, but you're not going to be able to hunt for metal slimes much at all. The key skills for metal slime hunting are listed above in section B and how many points you'll need. Lets talk about at what levels you COULD have access to these skills if you had some foresight. -Hero- Metal Slash COULD be learned as early as level 14 Thunder Thrust COULD be learned as early as level 8 Lighting Thrust COULD be learned as early as level 19 All COULD be learned as early as level 25 -Yangus- Whistle COULD be learned as early as level 5 Hatchet Man COULD be learned as early as level 8 Executioner COULD be learned as early as level 21 All COULD be learned as early as level 21 -Jessica- Accelerate COULD be learned as early as level 10 Twin Dragon Lash COULD be learned as early as level 13 All COULD be learned as early as level 14 -Angelo- Metal Slash COULD be learned as early as level 18 So, if you prioritize these categories, you can see very early on you get the skills you will need to metal slime hunt effectively. If you decide to focus on these skills or not is your business and your game but complaining you don't have a skill and thus cannot get good experience is mostly your own doing. Personally, I try to get all these skills by the mid 30s. Before that, I just don't see much benefit in metal slime hunting. By the time I reach the dragon graveyard though, I'm ready and able to gain all the xp I'll ever want. This style of play assumes you don't mind being at decent levels through most of the game. For those who intend to play though with low levels, metal slime hunting is really not for you. Not only will you not need the experience gains, but worse the skills listed are really not the ones you need to focus on and will be too costly a diversion. Many discussions about what skill builds to use for characters revolve around the skills above. Getting them early locks out other key skills that are very helpful for those who do not intend to level up -------------------------F) Dragon Graveyard the best?----------------------- Where the fastest experience gain can be gotten is a debate in nearly every RPG, DQ8 is no different. Particularly after the release of this faq, the discussion in the gamefaqs community has become fever pitched. I assert repeatedly in this FAQ that the Dragon Graveyard (DG) is the fastest place to gain experience and that has proven to not be universally accepted. I am adding this section to summarize the debate and my opinions on it. The basic premise here is that the fly-to-only areas mentioned above are actually faster than the DG. Proponents argue that the encounter rate of LMS is higher which makes up for the larger XP possible in the DG. I disagree with this due to my own findings. I have spent several hours fighting metals in each area and my experience has been that the DG is considerably faster. I'm not going to use the word "proven" anymore, but to me it is. I've been given threats, ultimatums, and misleading evidence but nothing that I feel changes my opinion. I think there are a number of contributing factors towards why people have the mistaken opinion that the fly-to-only areas are faster. First, is because the method for best exploiting the DG is complex where simply swinging away with LT and EX is fairly straightforward. Also, I think a lack of patience is commonplace. The DG encounter rates for MKS are small, and the odds of finding them with Beelzebuzz are even smaller. People then seem to loose sight of the long-term averages and base their opinions on short- term findings. Of course, there are those who DO understand the correct DG methods, who HAVE all the right skills/setups, and STILL think the fly-to- only areas are faster. Naughty Monkey has done some commendable analysis on this, lets go over his results. Despite refusing to actually provide data from his analysis, he claims to have completed 1000 encounters in each location, recording his results as he went. Although I have at least a dozen problems with his statistical analysis on the data (which is why I asked for his data), he claims the final numbers are that the "Dragon Graveyard gives about 450000 experience per 100 encounters while Liquid Metal hunting gives 670000 experience per 100 encounters." In addition to the statistical mistakes, the main flaw with this is the underlying premise that the encounter rates are of similar speed. Of course, most encounters in the DG will consist of fleeing due to the vast majority of encounters not including MKS and thus the rate at which you go through 100 encounters is much faster. In the end though, neither of us have access to the actual code in the game. Neither of us can give you a purely definitive answer. The experience gain in both locations is quite good, better than anywhere else. Either place should serve you well. In fact, as I have said in this FAQ already, the fly-to-only area "requires far less gear, far less patience, and is much easier. Also, it's still pretty good XP!". Maybe in the end, that's the deciding factor for you. -------------------------------G) Thanks/legal------------------------------- Thanks to Red Scarlet, Randy Price, and David Vreeland for the info from their FAQs. Thanks to the gamefaqs community and thanks to Square Enix for a great game. Info from other gamefaqs FAQs is copywrite by their respective owners. Dragon Quest VIII is copywrite Square Enix and everything else is mine. All rights reserved. For posting on Gamefaqs.com ONLY. Contact: EMAIL d _at_ mosc _dot_ com Version 1.0 - 1/26/07 - base version Version 1.1 - 2/2/07 - fixed spelling and added some useful feedback in Version 1.2 - 4/2/07 - Added discussion on DG, some other MISC stuff. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------