Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Revelation/Job Class Grinding

Preamble
The rest of the guide will assume that you are planning to go into the post-game. In addition, it will assume that you have been keeping your levels low, as recommended. If you have not kept them low, however, you will want to consult the "Area level caps" page to see where you will want to grind. With that in mind, you will want to accomplish the following goals in this section:


 * 1) Get Leg Sweep for Rex, Milly, Nevan (Remake only), and Ressa (SNES only)
 * 2) Master the Mage class for Milly. If on the SNES version, master the Warrior class for Nevan.  Otherwise, master the Mage vocation instead.
 * 3) Gain Focus Strength and Double-Edged Slash for Carver and Amos (4✮ Warrior)
 * 4) Master Priest for Carver (8✮ Priest)
 * 5) Get Knuckle Sandwich and Kabuff for Amos (5✮ Fighter and 5✮ Priest)
 * 6) Master Gadabout for Rex immediately, and make headway on Dancer (8✮ Gadabout, ?✮ Dancer)
 * 7) Get 6✮ Monster Master, and get as far as you can on Thief
 * 8) Get Milly started on the Priest class. If on the SNES version, get Nevan started on the Mage class.  Otherwise, get started on the Warrior vocation instead.

First of all, the Mage vocation has a 40% HP handicap; this is absolutely crippling for anyone who wishes to survive with any modicum of ease. On the other hand, it also has extremely powerful offensive spells like Boom, and you need it in order to get Sage anyway, so grinding it up is a necessary evil. Therefore, it's better to take care of here than it is to work on it throughout the game, where the monsters will only get more and more powerful.

As for Amos, he is by far your most resilient character right now, and Rex's own durability will take a nose-dive for as long as he is working on the Gadabout and Dancer classes. For this reason, you will want to replace him with Amos until Rex learns Zap much later in the game. So for now, give Rex the Gadabout vocation, give Carver the Priest vocation, give Amos the Fighter vocation, give Ashlynn the Monster Master vocation, and give Milly the Mage vocation.

In regards to Nevan, we need at least one person to master the Armamentalist vocation; it's not strictly necessary to do so in the remakes, but it's still extremely helpful against the post-game boss. Unfortunately, going down that path means that the magic user will have to deal with either a massive HP penalty (Mage) or a massive MP penalty (Warrior). There are ways of working around this in both versions however; SNES players will get to recruit monsters now, and Remake players will have access to a virtually unlimited supply of Magic Waters (thanks to the Casino). In any case, warp to Madame Luca's, and go southwest into the Dream Grotto once again!

Dream Grotto (Grind here until Carver reaches Level 16)


First of all, be sure to go to Floor 2 before grinding; Floor 1 only has an Area Level Cap of 14. Secondly, start using Whistle once Rex learns it; it will immediately summon another random encounter upon use! Finally, put the A.I. on either Show No Mercy or Use No Magic; you will more or less fly through the random encounters with it on!

If you are playing the remakes, you can simply stay here until Carver is Level 16. However, if you are playing the SNES version, you will want to take a short trip to Scrimsley once Ashlynn reaches 2✮ Monster Master.

Recruiting Healie (SNES only)


The mechanics of monster hunting are very simple in the SNES version: you are either able to get your monster, or you are not. There are 18 monsters to be captured on the SNES version, and each one needs a certain level of mastery in the Monster Master vocation in order to be recruited; Healie needs 2✮ mastery, while other monsters need more. After that, there is nothing you can do to increase your chances; Healie only has a 1/16 chance of joining you, and other monsters go as high as 1/64, or even 1/256! There is nothing you can do about that; not even a full party of 8✮ Monster Masters will have any better luck than a party with just one 2✮ Monster Master.

However, one does need to be in your Active Party by the time the battle ends, or else you will not get any chance at recruiting the monster. In addition, the monster in question has to be killed last, just like in Dragon Warrior Monsters.

Naturally, you will have to run from quite a few battles before you will finally find Healie, and you will generally have to fight quite a few Healies before you finally get one to join you. For this reason, it is recommended that you have only Amos in your Active Party until you find an encounter with a Healsime in it. This way, Amos, our most durable character, is the only one getting hit; this greatly decrease the amount of heling you have to do after each battle.

Recruiting Ress (SNES only)
After you get Healie, you have one of two options: continue grinding in the Dream Grotto until Carver hits Level 16, or go to the Isle of Murdaw (Real World) after you get to 3✮ Monster Master. Go inside, recruit a Lesser Demon (1/4 chance of joining), and put it in the Mage vocation. This is not something that is very important to do; in fact, it is technically slower to do this than it is to recruit Healie.

However, it's nice to have someone else to fill out that empty slot in your party, and Ress is actually a neat extra spellcaster to have. It has more than double the Resilience of Milly and Nevan, it has great equipment selection, it automatically learns Lightning and Bang as it levels up, and it has a ton of very helpful resistances. It's strong against a wide variety of status ailments, and even has some slight resistance to Frizz and Sizz!

It does, however, become obsolete midway into the mid-game, and it's HP lags quite noticeably compared to Milly and Nevan. Let it go Vocationless once it masters Mage, and gets Poof from the Priest class; you won't be using it long enough to get much benefit out of it.

The Underkeep
At some point, Carver will hit Level 16, and be unable to earn anymore job experience. When this happens, Nevan, Milly, and Healie should have learned Boom, Ashlynn should have learned Flame Breath, and Amos should have learned Knuckle Sandwich. So make Amos a Priest, put him in the reserves, and make this party...

1st Slot: Rex

2nd Slot: (Random Boom user)

3rd Slot: Ashlynn

By making three people, you are ensuring that the A.I. will be less wasteful when you put it on Show No Mercy; otherwise, it has a bad habit of spamming spells like Frizzle instead of casting Boom. This is also why we don't have Amos in the party; an Edged Boomerang strike from him isn't strong enough to kill an entire enemy group in one swoop, but a Boom spell is. If he goes before one of your Boom users, he will only waste time.

Once you run out of Boom MP, your next move depends on what version you're playing. If playing on the remakes, you can simply tag Amos in, and just rely on him, Rex, and Flame Breath to kill almost all the encounters in 1 turn. But if on the SNES, the enemies have too much HP; you'll need Boom to kill them in one fell swoop.

At any rate, your SNES vocation line-up should look something like this at the end...

And your Remake vocation line-up should look something like this...