Leaving Aliahan with no Thieves' Key

For the last few weeks I have been chipping away at my last challenge quest for Dragon Quest III. I will attempt to finish this game with no items or equipment, save for 18 items that you cannot finish the game without getting.

I did this previously in Dragon Quest I and II. Like Dragon Quest II, this game has a spell which allows you to bypass keys. However, unlike Dragon Quest II, there are doors you need to open very early in the game. To accomplish this objective, you need to get a Wizard to level 35 fighting enemy groups that average less than 50 experience points per battle.

As daunting as that seems, I've determined that it can be done in approximately 100 hours of game time. That's less time, for example, than it took me to play Dragon Quest VII through for the first time. It's also considerably less time than it took me to finish my 100% items, max-levels-on-all-classes-playthrough of Dragon Quest III a few years ago.

It was a bit slow starting out, due to the struggle of fighting enemies without equipment. I started with my expected end-game party, two Goof-Offs to turn into Sages later. That was a mistake. I underestimated how much time it would take till my Wizard could survive with less than a full party. I could have breezed through that faster with two Fighters instead. But by the time I realized that, there wasn't much to be gained by switching.

At level 7, when my wizard learned Firebal, I was able to drop my two extra people and fight with my Wizard and Hero. This is advantageous because of the way experience is distributed. You get twice as much experience per person in a two-person setup as you do with a four-person setup. You get twice as much again if you have a single-person party. But the wizard just can't survive solo until around level 12 or 13. Learning the spell Bang is when I was able to go solo, but it was still tenuous for a level or two because at that point you don't always go first, or second or third.

But the Agility gains of the Wizard also picked up around that time, which increases both your speed and your defense, and I've only rarely died since. My Wizard is now level 20, and hasn't died in a few levels. At this point she usually goes first or near first, and has enough agility and HP that a couple of hits don't bother her. The only time she's ever in danger is when a Spiked Hare enemy group hits her with a sleep spell. But even then they usually run away before dealing enough damage to be truly threatening. This was still pretty dangerous a few levels ago, but I've mostly graduated past any real threat level.

That's good, because dying is inconvenient in this challenge. To get the full experience from the battle for my Wizard, my Hero needs to be dead. Otherwise each member gets only half. But if my Wizard, fighting solo, dies, it's the Hero who gets automatically resurrected. So I have to spend time having the Hero attack himself to kill himself off again, which is a minor annoyance. But it's been some time since I've had to do that.

I have a spreadsheet to keep track of my progress. I have around 11% of the experience points I need to get to level 35. It takes nearly two hours at this point to gain a level, so it's pretty monotonous and slow-going. I watch TV while I'm playing to keep from getting too bored. Last night I also took a break to play some Dragon Quest V for a short bit. I've been spending a lot of time thinking about Dragon Quest in general, and the challenge isn't going to fill all my Dragon Quest appetite for the time it takes to finish it. So I may play a bit here and there on some other games.

Unfortunately, my conservative estimate, based on the time I have available to play, puts getting the open spell as late as mid-August, assuming I keep up on it that long. We'll see if I have the stomach to keep going that long.

Challenge Complete, New Challenge Started

I beat Dragon Warrior III with just the Hero. It took me till the following Monday to work my way through Alefgard, with no particular difficulty. On Tuesday the 2nd I faced Zoma for the first time...and the second, and the third, and the sixth time.

I had a nice niche of time that evening where I got home from work a little early but my family was doing something else out of the house. So I got to try the fight several times. The first fight was actually that morning, but didn't count for much because I accidentally triggered the fight before I finished healing, and actually forgot to bring the Sphere of Light, so I died in two rounds. The first three fights of the evening were meant to get a feel for what I could and couldn't do, trying out different strategies to see what would be most effective.

Here are some things I learned:

First, the encounter with Zoma seems to automatically trigger if you step on any square adjacent or immediately diagonal to him. Since I was trying to step on every square, I accidentally triggered this fight twice before I was ready, before I deduced the full zone of triggering the fight.

Second, it is likely not viable to kill Zoma with physical attacks at 196 Strength. Here's an interesting fact that I had learned some time ago when testing out a no-equipment fight against Zoma: his freezing waves nullifies his own negative status effects in addition to your party's beneficial ones. As a consequence of this, using the Orochi Sword is not an effective strategy. But without it, I don't think it's possible to overcome Zoma's regeneration in the long term. There might be a statistical non-zero chance, but I suspect it's rather low. I tested both the Falcon Sword and the Sword of Kings. At that strength score, the Sword of Kings appears to do better against Zoma, but still not good enough.

Third, at someone's suggestion, I tried using herbs against him. I wasn't expecting this to turn out the best option, and it didn't, but it was better than I thought. This is probably a relatively obscure fact: both Medical Herbs and healing spells will damage Zoma after you use the Sphere of Light on him. And herbs can do anywhere from single digits to over 200 damage against Zoma. Someone pointed out that as little as four herbs followed by a lucky Lightning spell is theoretically enough to beat him if you're lucky enough to get max damage each time. But I doubt that the chances of that happening are any better than beating him using just Healall against him.

I actually got over 100 damage each with all four Herbs, the last one doing over 200. But the total damage for all four rounds was less than Healall does in four rounds. Furthermore, you can't take 4 herbs with you without leaving most of your armor behind. On that try I definitely had to heal more often than other tries, which has a huge impact on the battle.

Another thing I definitely learned is that the battle does rely a large degree on chance. Whereas Baramos' attack pattern is scripted and therefore completely predictable, Zoma's (after using the Sphere of Light) is anything but. He uses a pretty strong physical attack, a comparatively tamer breath attack, and his freezing waves attack, at least. I don't remember if there's at least one more, but those are the ones I do remember. Furthermore, it's random whether he attacks once or twice in one round. Because of this, you can't predict effectively how many rounds you can go without healing yourself. This makes it difficult to predict effectively whether a given strategy can work.

But, my experience in a few rounds of trying pretty much confirmed what I had read in numerous places: the most effective strategy is to cast Healall on Zoma every round, except for the rounds you cast it on yourself.

Healall does a surprising amount of damage on him. I think it's over 75% of the damage Lightning does on him, typically somewhere between 140 and 180, but at less than 25% of the MP cost of Lightning. It's plenty to wear him down, as long as you don't run out of MP. But that's where it gets difficult. This relies on Zoma's attack pattern, which is random. I had hugely different results between my last two tries using the same strategy. (I can infer from my experience combined with what I've read that this battle's difficulty likely drops considerably if you have higher max MP--every 7 points would likely make a notable difference.)

One caveat I discovered: it's extremely easy to accidentally heal yourself when you meant to use the spell on Zoma. But it's also a devastating mistake to make; doing it even once can decide the fight. Just one unnecessary round of free regeneration for Zoma is way too much.

On my last try of the night (it was going to be my last try anyway because I needed to get to sleep) I got very lucky. Zoma started using almost nothing but freezing waves on me for several rounds straight, with his low-damage breath a couple of times in between. I went eight entire rounds without healing, and my tracking had over 700 damage against him before I finally did heal.

But even with that lucky streak, it came down to the wire. After a few more cycles, I found myself out of MP. My tracking had him pretty close to 900 HP down after regeneration. With no other choice I did a physical attack. I was using the Falcon Sword and, the two hits totalled 111 damage. It was enough. Zoma went down.

I felt quite lucky. Even the last attack was on the very high end of what I had tested the Falcon Sword with. And Zoma's regeneration was likely a little on the low end, since he has 1024 HP. If I had known I would have to rely on at least one physical attack, I probably would have equipped the Sword of Kings instead. But the Falcon Sword works much better against the King Hydra and Baramos Gonus, so I chose it as my weapon since I was using magic on Zoma. The weapon came through for me in the end.

The solo challenge ended up being difficult, but still not as difficult as I expected given everything I read. I think I got lucky on my natural Strength, which is probably a big part of it. But I also think that the documentation available for this challenge is far too spotty and incomplete. I hope that anyone who tries this challenge in the future and searches for information will find what I've written either here or on Gamefaqs.com message boards.

Anyway, having completed this challenge, I have finally started my "minimalist" challenge, to mirror my efforts on Dragon Quest I and II. I'm only at level 5 and feeling the struggle already. More about that to come.