Tips for New Players

**This guide has not been updated since September 2020. While parts may still be relevant, many parts are likely out-dated. Any veterans are welcome to make corrections and delete this disclaimer.**

**Tips for brand new players:**

* DQotS Wiki Tips page - https://dragonquest.fandom.com/wiki/Dragon\_Quest\_of\_the\_Stars/Tips
* u/juntaru “A little tips & tricks guide (for beginners)” - https://www.reddit.com/r/DQotS/comments/fab3pw/a\_little\_tips\_tricks\_guide\_for\_beginners/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=ios\_app&utm\_name=iossmf
* FAQ

**How to choose and level up vocations:** See our Vocation Guide.

**Main types of weapons and armor and how they are obtained for a new player:** Your gear is the primary way to improve your character.

* **Featured Banner Gear:** Usually the best gear available, although banners vary wildly on if they feature good gear. Generally, the best banner released so far is Rubiss, if this banner is available, it is probably best option. All new players should also strive for 2-3 metal weapons, so if metal banner is available, that is probably a really good one to pull on. Many will eventually be able to be upgraded via Alchemy.
* **Other Banner 5\* Gear:** In addition to the featured items, banners also have 5\* gear that is available across all banners. Generally, this isn’t as good as featured gear, but is still good for new players. Very few of these get Alchemy upgrades.
* **Event Gear:** Drops from both limited and permanent event banners. Right now, the only permanent event is Guided By Rubiss’s Light (GBRL), which drop DQI, DQII and DQIII gear. These can be good starter gear, and the best part is it doesn’t require gems to obtain. The bad part is that you have to grind a lot of them to max evolve them to be close to equivalent to other 5\* gear. The Tantagel set from DQI is currently the strongest. The permanent event under the Keys/other tab Guided By Rubiss’s Light is best place to farm. Generally speaking the Hero's version from each game (Tantegel, Midenhall, Alihan, Zenithian, Gotha, Somnia, etc.) receive alchemy. If you are looking to farm a specific set, that game's Legendary boss on multiplayer is always the best level to farm the gear. For example, if you want any piece of Tantagel gear, you should farm Legendary Dragon Lord. If you want any piece of DQ3 gear, you should farm Zoma. Ignore the "Boss Drops" on the top right of quest screen, it isn't helpful.
* **Trash from Banners:** All 3\* and most 4\* gear pulled from banners can be sold without worry once you have something stronger.
* **Dungeon drops and Story rewards:** almost always 1\* and 2\* gear and always just trash to sell on Bushy Bazaar.

**Currency and Best way to spend it:**

* **Gems** - the premium currency can be spent on various things, but should be saved for banners with good items. Even better, save for meta 10% 5\* drop rate banners, but those are much less frequent. If you want to know if a banner has good items, ask on Discord, until we can convince u/Imbapunch to resume his Banner Review videos. Initially, completing the single player story is the best way to gems. Besides that, gems are obtained primarily from the maps released with events, and the early- mid- and late- monthly maps. Also monthly friend points reward. If you spoof for maps (described below), you can get friend maps giving 50, 30, or 10 gems. It isn’t much but if you are doing 3 maps a day you could be collecting close to 3k gems that way per month.
* **Gold** - obtained from doing story and selling items, used for upgrades. Not a bottleneck at all, don’t have a fear of spending it.
* **Weapon and Armour upgraders, Skill and spell orbs, Armour skill Uprgaders** - May be scarce when starting out, but once you have been able to to do the limited time event “Upgrade Hallway” for a couple weeks, they are no longer limited supply. The only exception to this is Armour Skill Upgraders, which do remain hard to come by. Weapon and Armour upgraders can be evolved, which is more efficient. This is encouraged when starting out, but not needed after a while, when it is better to just sell them for Bushy Bazaar Points.
* **Bushy Bazaar Points** - obtained from selling armour 3\* and up. They can be used to purchase various items, but are the only way to obtain Arder Jewels, which are important for evolving rare gear, so it’s best to save these up.
* **Daily Quest Tickets** - you get 1 a day for completing an easy dungeon. New players should buy the Battle God set, then the Mottled King Whistle, then the aforementioned rare Armour Skill orbs forevermore.

**What are a new player’s priorities?**

1. Main Story and side quests - Stamina is increased through playing story. It is also one of the best sources of gems, used to pull for new gear, the primary way of strengthening your character.
2. Limited Time Events should be ran as far as you can for some accessories and gems. Ideally, you don’t even spend your own stamina on event, join others’ multiplayer hosting for free runs with more powerful players.
3. Certain Limited Time Events are worth dumping stamina, such as Upgrade Hallway. If none of these are up, and Main Story and Limited Time Events are completed, Alltrades is best place to dump stamina until you get to 90+ in an Advanced Vocation, at which point you can farm Legendary bosses in multiplayer.
4. Each day, make sure to do your free Alltrades (with a preferred class if possible, even if it is a standard vocation), Daily Ticket, Free Lucky Chest Draw, Map Draw

**Map Sharing Sucks**

Yes it does. But there is a workaround with a little effort.

1. On your PC, download the application Bluestacks. It can be found with a simple google search. It is an android emulator.
2. Once bluestacks is installed, you will have to create or login to your Google account to access the Google Play store.
3. Backup your DQotS data from your primary device to a Square Enix account
4. Download DQotS on Bluestacks from Google Play store
5. Open game and load your DQotS data on Bluestacks
6. On the buttons on the right side of the Bluestacks window, find and click the Location button.
7. Search for Taipei, Taiwan, and click in the city to set a new location.
8. Navigate to map sharing and click shake in DQotS.
9. On the right side of Bluestacks menu find and click the Shake button to simulate shaking your device. Sometimes I have to click this multiple times for it to work.
10. Enjoy your maps! Depending on time of day, you should get around 100 maps. I usually get about 6 S Level maps. If you do this every day, you can collect 3 50 gem S level maps each day.

**Other General Tips:**

1. For a new player, the Battle God set is excellent. You may be tempted to evolve your 3 copies of the sword, but later, when you inevitably have stronger swords, you may regret not having multiple copies of Battle God Slash skill to place on other swords. I would recommend not evolving your BG Swords but breaking them down and Extracting the skills.
2. For bosses, defending is invaluable. Watch bosses’ skill/spell cast bar/dial and defend before it fills. Also, when you drain a health bar to make it change colors, commonly called bar breaking, bosses will often use a skill that should be defended. Having trouble with Alltrades? Are you defending against his skills and spells and bar breaks? Check out our guide in the Boss Strategies section.
3. Discord is a great place to ask questions and find groups to run content with, and collect friend points for monthly gem rewards. Find link on the Main Page under Other Community Resources.
4. When deciding between skills, damage output isn’t everything because skill usage reduces other skills’ CT by about 25%. An easy guideline can be total damage divided by CT. For example, let’s compare Battle God Slash (390%, 20 CT) to Orochi Slash (500%, 35 CT). While Battle God has overall lower damage, it does have a higher damage per CT (390/20=19.5) than Orochi (500/35=14.3). Not to mention BG also has the bonus to apply oomph.
5. Regional Specialty locations provide free crafting resources, and are unlocked by doing side quests. Click on the location and you can upgrade it to provide multiple items every 2 hours. There are dozens, but they can be collected very easily from the Craft Counter by clicking the green “Retrieve” button towards the top.
6. There is minimal benefit to completing all 3 crowns on most quests. Unless the reward is gems or a skill you don’t already have, you should not waste stamina redoing a quest just to get 3 crowns. It isn’t even feasible to get 3 on every single mission since so many require killing a metal or liquid metal slime, which may rarely appear.
7. Free Lucky Draws and Free map runs (like daily quest and Alltrades) reset each day at UTC+0 (8pm EST). Shaking for a new map, expiring shared maps, free daily stamina refresh from Star Pass, Squirrel Station free coins and challenges all reset at UTC+4 (midnight EST).
8. New content usually drops each Tuesday at UTC+0 (Monday at 8pm EST). There is maintenance about every other Tuesday beginning at UTC+0 (Monday at 8pm EST), usually for about 7 hours.
9. A significant part of endgame revolves around status and spell and breath resistance. Accessories become very valuable to make up for what your armour doesn’t resist. So you should not sell your 5\* gear just because you pulled something stronger. Pay attention to that armor that has resistances despite having lower Defense value. You may need it for event bosses down the road.
10. Monthly Star Pass free 5\* weapon: You get 1 draw each month you are subscribed, that expires if not used when you renew. Note that it doesn’t expire when the month ends and the draw pool changes. This means if your subscription renews on July 10, but you don’t like any of the July weapons offered, you can wait until August 1 when new items are offered. Then you will have an opportunity to draw one item between August 1-9, and then you will get another draw on August 10, giving you 2 items from the August pool.
11. Great info on CT thanks to u/biokebong: https://www.reddit.com/r/DQotS/comments/fdq6s4/psa\_charge\_time\_and\_you\_how\_to\_efficiently\_use/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=ios\_app&utm\_name=iossmf
12. Excellent overview on the status ailments and spells by u/imbapunch (we miss your videos Imba!)
	1. Spells: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEbRoCbifOM&list=PL3GOuKZcmQ\_73eP0MYi54SJga3oHmhc7U&index=5
	2. Status ailments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxiBtqqDT44&list=PL3GOuKZcmQ\_73eP0MYi54SJga3oHmhc7U&index=7
13. I’ve never had to farm for a specific item, but if you are looking for something, u/emoneypitt has done an excellent job keeping this list updated: https://www.reddit.com/r/DQotS/comments/g31qz4/farming\_locations\_updated/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=ios\_app&utm\_name=iossmf
14. You will be swimming in healing items if you do some crafting. Be generous with them in both solo and multiplayer. If you do 3 S level maps each day as described above, you’ll also have plenty of Ygg leaves, revivify stones, and LM Keys. Ygg Dew is my rarest item, and I still have a couple dozen of those.
15. If you are hosting multiplayer, you can kick people by clicking on the magnifying glass under the player. Useful for people that are under leveled or not putting up food. There is also a botting issue, where people join (usually SuperStar), don’t put up food, and barely use abilities. Feel free to kick these from your group or block them if you get stuck with them.
16. Japan has had this game out for over 5 years. There is a gigantic wiki called Game8 (https://game8.jp/games/426) that has tons of information. The problem is that you will have to use a translator extension on your browser to use it. The free Microsoft translator app works well on mobile.
17. Strategic Item Usage from Booski: Items when tapped to use take immediate priority for player actions. This means that using an item will break a chain if others are queued up. They don’t go to the end of the chain like skills do. If you want to use an item tap it as the last skill is in the middle of being used. Another thing most people haven’t noticed. When you break a bar the boss immediately can interrupt a chain. If they anger though, ONE player action can go in between the anger and their bar break skill. Sometimes if you break deep enough that one move can kill it. If you panic item that will take the slot of the 1 action and it can cause some serious damage to be dealt to the team. In general when using an item try to always use it either before anybody attacks or during the last attack in a chain.