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Introduction 1. Basic Grotto Generation 2. Advanced Grotto Generation 3. Grotto Identification Lists 4. Although there are only locations where a grotto may be, there are hundreds of thousands of different grottos accessible from those places. As such, it is impossible to find a grotto until you open a map that unlocks that specific grotto.
Grottos are randomly generated according to a number of rules, so it is usually very difficult to ask how to find a particular grotto. Grottos with the same name and level may be very different inside, even if they're found in the same location. There are two types of grottos available in Dragon Quest IX. One type contains only a single floor with a Legacy Boss waiting inside. These Legacy Bosses are storyline bosses from previous games in the Dragon Quest series, and are generally rewards from specific quests, particularly DLC ones.
This document, however, will cover the second and most common type of grotto, which are true random dungeons with treasure to be found and a grotto boss available at the end. We shall discuss how they are created, what may be found inside, how best to identify them, and other related topics.
Unlike every other normal grotto map in the game, the reward for this is fixed, and will be a specific grotto "Granite Tunnel of Woe Lv. Each grotto of this type will have a boss at the very bottom floor. Defeating this boss will almost without exception give you a treasure map to a new random grotto elsewhere in the world, as well as a chance at a couple of rare items that each grotto boss may drop. The quality of this new grotto is, however, based on the level of the grotto and the level and later revocation level of your main character, so at the start, you will only be able to get low ranking grottos.
This is considered a teaser into grottos: you are not expected to be able to complete it straightaway, as the first grotto boss is generally not easily taken on until you level up to mids or higher, and future bosses only get more difficult. On top of that, although you than the very lowest rank of grottos until at least L30, and even that requires a lot of luck and having earned the highest level grottos of the bottommost rank.
While you can tackle them earlier, the game intends that grottos be left until after you have defeated the final boss of the storyline, where you will be better prepared for this postgame content. The rewards from grottos can eventually reach rather lofty heights, especially given that each grotto boss can drop equipment that can be alchemised into some of the best in the game. All of this does require a lot of exploration and levelling though, as the highest ranks are only unlocked from high quality grottos.
And even though you will have defeated the final boss by now, this is by no means the end of the game, as there are still many DLC quests and the Legacy Bosses to tackle. However, I will be using terminology from the Glossary Section 1. Furthermore, asking on the GameFAQs Message Board will often give a more direct response if there's a particular point you don't understand. Other than the grotto you were given by Collapsus at the end of his quest, the locations of all grottos are randomly chosen from one of possibilities.
While lower rank grottos can only pick from the first 47 of these locations, this still leaves a rather large number of possibilities. Since the location of any grotto is random, it is almost impossible to tell you where you'll find a specific grotto, especially if all you tell us is the name.
This is the ingame order and is used to precisely identify specific locations for grottos. Since I'm unaware of a site that lists the location images labelled in decimal format, I will use the hexadecimal IDs in Section 4 "Grotto Identification Lists", even though the decimal IDs are used elsewhere in this guide.
For example, you could select only those maps that have water and don't have trees. While not completely accurate I noted at least one map that has mountains but was marked as not having any , it can be way to quickly narrow down the possibilities. Both Treasure Eye Land and Nose for Treasure only work on red treasure chests which never reset and always have set rewards. Since grottos only contain blue treasure chests which have random contents and can be opened multiple times , these abilities will not detect these chests.
Treasure Eye Land will, however, detect the staircases in uncompleted grottos, which can allow you to reach the bottom of new grottos a bit faster than you might normally. Why wasn't the boss there when I reached the bottom of the grotto?
When the boss of a grotto is defeated and you leave the grotto, the grotto stays completed until you reset it. You can reset it very easily by simply closing the treasure map or opening up a different treasure map.
Naturally, this also means that since treasure maps start closed when you reload at a Church, that all grottos are reset at this time. Why didn't I get a new treasure map after completing my grotto?
You can not get normal treasure maps from this boss as a result. It does have a small chance of dropping the treasure map leading to the Dragonlord Legacy Boss though. How can I find a grotto with Moai Minstrels?
The absolute minimum Base Quality required for Moai Minstrels is 93, at which point you have a 0. This quickly improves to 5. Higher quality beyond this produces continually better chances at seeing them, with it levelling off at just over a third of all grottos containing them by BQ.
To reach BQ, your main character's highest level in any vocation added to the level of the grotto you completed to get a new map must equal It's difficult to see grottos that are high level enough for this before your main character is at least L How can I find a grotto with Bling Badgers? Furthermore, the minimum Base Quality required is , which gives you a starting chance of 0.
By BQ, the chance has increased to 1. There's always the chance that you could find one early though, so keep a look out for any promising Water-type names. How can I find higher level grottos? The short answer is usually 'level up'.
The higher your Base Quality, the better chance you have of getting higher level grottos. And the only ways to increase your Base Quality are to increase your main character's highest Vocation Level or to complete higher level grottos.
You can also revocate reset a L99 vocation back to L1 to get bonuses to Base Quality, but by the time you can revocate, you're nearing the limit for grotto level anyhow.
It is, of course, possible to get as far as, say, a Grotto of Level 68 without levelling higher than L To help answer questions on how high you have to level to reach certain level maps, here's a couple of tables related to this.
In this table, 'Rv1' stands for 1st Revocation: it's impossible to get Rank 12 Grottos before you have revocated for the 1st time. Grotto Rank Quality Level Range Min VocLvl Req Rank 1 2- 55 1 - 23 Rank 2 60 4 - 32 29 Rank 3 75 7 - 38 29 Rank 4 80 16 - 53 32 Rank 5 19 - 59 32 Rank 6 31 - 68 34 Rank 7 40 - 80 42 Rank 8 46 - 89 50 Rank 9 49 - 92 59 Rank 10 58 - 99 74 Rank 11 46 - 99 85 Rank 12 55 - 99 Rv1 The second table shows the minimum levels required to have a particular chance at higher level grottos.
And getting a L99 Grotto never has a decent chance, and requires a very high level for even the remotest possibility. A lot of this analysis assumes that you're looking for these maps yourself, though. If you trade with friends, then you can potentially skip a lot of the hassle, or at least split some of the work.
For more details, see their descriptions further on in the Glossary. Quality: All grottos have a Quality, which is a number between 2 and that helps determine how difficul the grotto will be. Grotto Rank: Solely based on the Quality of the grotto, this is a number from 1 to 12 that dictates what ranges of Monster Rank, Grotto Depth and Boss may be generated within the grotto.
Seed: The Seed of a grotto is an identifying number that controls how that grotto is built. It is a "random seed" see Wikipedia for more info that causes the random generator for grottos to create the same map for that specific number.
Maps with the same Seed and Grotto Rank will be the same unique grotto, right down to floor design, locations of chests, encounter chances and so forth. All grottos found are unique grottos, and can be found in any game. However, sometimes we wish to specify a unique grotto because it has certain things about it that make it advantageous to find, like an abundance of chests or being easy to farm.
In this case, being able to generate a unique grotto requires careful consideration of Base Quality and a lot of luck. More information about this will be covered in Section 3. Location: Each Grotto, regardless of how unique it is, can be found in one of up to locations around the world of DQ9.
Lower quality grottos are more limited in which locations they can be found in. There are three ranges of Quality that determine these locations, and each unique grotto Seed can be found in up to 3 different locations per Quality range.
It is the primary method that the player has of identifying a grotto. As an example, the first grotto you will usually find is "Granite Tunnel of Woe Lv. The Prefix for this map is Granite, and this gives a clue of the starting Monster Rank of the grotto.
The Locale of this map is "Tunnel", and this refers to both the Depth and Environ of the grotto. The Suffix is "Woe", and this is linked to which of the 12 Grotto Bosses can be found at the bottom. It is possible to use a grotto's Name and Location to help narrow down which particular unique grotto you have. However, sometimes even this is not enough to completely identify a grotto.
Other things that can help identify a unique grotto are its Base and possible Final Qualities. So a Main Character that has no higher than 1 in all of their vocations and no revocations, that completes a Lv. Similarly, a Main Character that has at least one vocation at 99 and a vocation that they have Revocated 10 times, that completes a Lv.
BQ is the part of the formula you can control, and is therefore important when we start looking at the chances of finding certain unique grottos. FQ is the actual Quality of the grotto that is created, and is important to the grotto generation code because it dictates what grotto you get. FQ Final Quality : Final Quality is another name for the Quality of the grotto, and refers to the Quality that the grotto is created with. Due to the way grottos are generated, there are a limited number of combinations of BQ variance, Seed and Location.
As such, to get a particular FQ for a unique grotto will often require that you have a specific BQ. Some FQs for particular unique grottos are even impossible to get, due to the way grottos are generated.
More information about this will be in Section 3. Depth: The depth of a grotto is simply how many floors deep it is. This number does not include the Boss Floor, so a grotto with a Depth of 16 would have its Boss Floor on the 17th floor. Depth is one of the factors that determines a grotto's Level. As the Monster Rank increases, the monsters chosen will be more difficult, and many of those found at the highest Monster Ranks can only be found in Grottos.
Monsters also differ according to which Environ they're found, so Rank 12 Monsters in Ruins will be different to Rank 12 Monsters in Ice grottos. Each Grotto has a starting Monster Rank which dictates what Monster Rank can be found in the first four floors.
For every four floors you descend, the Monster Rank increases by 1, so a grotto that has a starting Monster Rank of 9 would have Rank 12 Monsters on floors 13F to 16F. Starting Monster Rank is one of the factors that determines a grotto's level. Boss: There are 12 possible Grotto Bosses, which lurk on the Boss Floor at the bottom of each grotto. They also each have two other items they can randomly drop, the rarest of which can usually be alchemised into some of the most powerful equipment in the game.
Characters gain EXP based on their level relative to the rest of the party. The opposite is true as well. Great Trolls can be found in the Realm of the Mighty the game's final main dungeon. If you're incredibly lucky, you might stumble on a grotto that has them before you reach RotM, but I didn't have such luck. The best you can do is switch vocations and grind extra skill points from vocations you may not use. You can also revocate when you reach level 99 in your specific vocation, returning to level 1 in the vocation but keeping your skill points, allowing you to get more.
K so my ppls r in the low 30's and i hav like no new vocations under use and all the bosses keep kickin my butt down and back any tips? Do plz post bout soon. Just get 3 characters that can kill liquid metal slimes then go to slime hill and level your low person up that you are trying to get up the persons VUST.
Well you have seasonal references in your party. To be honest, you're probably going to have to grind out more levels. The normal progression for grotto bosses is:. The way I see it though, you might be better served by just exploring grottos for now. You'd be surprised how much experience you get from them once you find one with Liquid Metal Slimes and aren't actively looking at your party levels.
After that, I got Murdaw to level I'm trying to get him to drop the Dhoulmagus Map. After that, I'll probably beat on Dhoulmagus a bit and then publish an article about him. It's what I usually do.
But yeah, my party was in their mid 50s when I took on Murdaw at level 1, and now they're about 15 levels higher for Murdaw at level 16, so I assume that you'll need to be in your mid 60s to low 70s to take on Dhoulmagus. Get enough points in the Shield Skill tree to learn Magic Mirror this is the ability equivalent of the spell Bounce.
Get enough points in the Paladin Skill tree Virtue to learn Forbearance. This allows your Paladin to take all attacks meant for your other party members. With those two skills and decent armor, everytime Elusid casts a spell, you'll just reflect it back at him 4 times in the case of Kaboom or Kacrack. Alternately, you could just get Magic Mirror on your whole party and just fight normally from there same effect, but you run the risk of Elusid using a physical attack and attacking your weaker characters.
Simulation Games. Mobile Games. Elder Scrolls. Final Fantasy. Dragon Age. Fire Emblem. Legend of Zelda. First-Person Shooters. Gaming PCs. Strategy Games. You can reset your current grottoes by simply closing the treasure map while you're outside. For Legacy bosses, I believe you have to beat another Legacy Boss you can get Baramos from a quest and get lucky. User Info: TGSnowwy. Top Voted Answer. There are a very small handfull of quests that reward with grotto maps, some of which are not even yet available for download.
You can read more about those in the Quest FAQ. However, as you've now experienced the primary way of getting new grotto maps is by beating grottoes. As your levels and revocations increase you will get increasingly challenging maps as rewards. They are meant to be progressive.
The other method to get a LOT of grotto maps at once would be to attend or organize a tag event in your area. While in tag mode the game allows you to carry maps with you that you have beaten. When you get tagged with someone's character that is carrying a map you can receive that map from them by talking to their represented charater in your Stornway Inn.
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