Archive Page 2
August 1st, 2010 by Joe Majewski
Upon giving Earnan (the historian in Stornway Castle) some magic water for the “Don’t Cry Over Spilt Ink” quest, he will award you with a seed of magic. He will not give you his next quest until you leave the room and re-enter.
Quest number 23, Research Assistant, is Earnan’s next quest. He humbly requests that you bring him an ancient manuscript that he believes is hidden somewhere in the castle. When I took on this quest, I was led to believe that it was in one of the bookshelves, but that is not the case at all.
In order to find the item required for this quest, you’ve gotta be either (a) lucky or (b) very observant. Nonetheless, I’m here to tell you where it can be found.
Remember the treasure room that you gained access to upon dealing with the Wight Night. That’s your destination. In case you’ve forgotten where it’s located, here’s how to get there. Once inside Stornway Castle, head straight ahead and up the staircase that is guarded by two NPCs. From there, you will be in the room with Princess Simona, the King and his wife. Head north all the way to the top of the room where you will see two staircases, both of which lead to the same place. Head up either one of them, and then go through the door leading outside. Head east to the northeastern tower, and alas, you have arrived.
Once inside the treasure room, go to the chest in the far back and examine it. Voila, you have now found a “crumpled piece of paper”, which is required in order to proceed with the quest.
You know what you gotta do; head back downstairs to Earnan and speak with him. Unfortunately, you aren’t finished yet. The paper was apparently so crumpled that Earnan couldn’t read it. He requests that you bring him three more magic waters to help decipher the writing.
Do what you gotta do to retrieve three more magic waters, and Earnan will award you with three seeds of sorcery. Good deal, I suppose. That’s one less quest left to complete, so give yourself a pat on the back before continuing on with your massive adventure in Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies.
August 1st, 2010 by Joe Majewski
In Dragon Quest IX, a vocation is basically your character’s class. There are around a dozen vocations in all, many of which need to be unlocked much later in the game. The six basic vocations that are immediately available are minstrel, warrior, priest, mage, thief, and martial artist. You will begin your journey as a minstrel, which is a well-rounded vocation very suitable for starters.
Each vocation has five proficiency skills. For example, as a minstrel you will be able to learn skills in swords, whips, fans, shields, and litheness. Let’s say you change classes to be a warrior; all of your sword skills will transfer over since warriors also use the sword proficiency skill.
This applies to all class changes that use the same skill sets.
Keep in mind that your character’s level only applies to a given class. You might be a level 20 minstrel before obtaining the ability to change vocations; if you switch to warrior, then you will be back at level 1 again. Upon changing back to a minstrel, you will retain all skills previously learned and be at level 20 again; thus, you’ve got nothing to lose by changing vocations.
So how do you change vocations? About 20 hours into the main story of the game, you will reach a place known as Alltrades Abbey. This is the point in which you can finally change your vocation. It actually took me 28 hours to reach this point in the game, but I tend to spend a lot of extra time grinding enemies and completing all quests that I possibly can before proceeding. In a word, I’m what they call a completionist.
July 31st, 2010 by Joe Majewski
In recent years, the meta tag and link relationship library has exploded. It’s not uncommon to have over a dozen different meta tags on a given page. As a web designer, it’s important to keep yourself up-to-date with these changes or you can quickly fall behind in the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) race.
Googlebot can’t figure out everything for itself, so it appreciates it when you, as a web designer, point it in the right direction by giving it various information through the use of these meta tags and link relations.
One particular tag that I find to be important is the canonical tag, which is still relatively new. This tag allows you to define the URL to a page that Googlebot will take interest in when said page has many different “views” through the use of URL variables. This is difficult to put into words, but I’m sure that with an example you will fully understand.
Imagine a page titled rankings.php, which lists the top players in some online game. Perhaps, by default, 50 members are shown per page. Now imagine if their were 125 members in this “game”. Then, rankings.php would have 3 different pages to view, most likely referenced by a $_GET variable passed through the URL. Thus, here are all the different ways that this page can be accessed:
- rankings.php?page=1 would list the first 50 members
- rankings.php?page=2 would list members 51 through 100
- rankings.php?page=3 would list members 101 through 125
- rankings.php would assume that page=1, showing the same content as rankings.php?page=1
There is already a duplicate content issue, as simply viewing the default page shows the same content as you’d see if you added the URL variable ?page=1. Googlebot hates duplicate content.
Now imagine if you also had a sort feature, where you could sort users alphabetically by their username or by their ranking, both with ascending and descending options. I couldn’t even begin to list all of the possible combinations anymore, especially if there were more than just three pages of users, but I’ll do it anyways:
- rankings.php?page=1?sort=username&order=ascending
- rankings.php?page=2?sort=ranking&order=descending
- rankings.php?sort=username
- rankings.php?sort=username&order=ascending
Assuming that the default page ordering was ascending, then examples one, three and four are ALL duplicate content pages.
Naturally, Googlebot would crawl the site, following all paths of links that it can find, and you would quickly find that hundreds of pages are being indexed just for the rankings page, many of them showing duplicate content. Although not proven to be fact, many believe that this has a negative impact on your PageRank.
If you aren’t familiar with, or simply just don’t know a whole lot about how it works, I highly recommend reading an article that I wrote about Google PageRank.
Here’s where the canonical tag comes into play. By simply placing a single meta tag into your source code, you can tell Google to not bother with all of the hundreds of combinations of URL variables that can be created to dynamically generate the rankings list. It looks a little bit like this:
<link rel = “canonical” href = “http://example.com/rankings.php” />
By simply placing that tag in your source code, it will tell Googlebot to only take concern with that URL structure for rankings.php. This means that all of the ?page=x and ?order=asc won’t have any affect on your site’s indexing or PageRank.
This may not have been the greatest example to use, as many people would disallow Googlebot from indexing a rankings page at all, and even if they did want the rankings page to be indexed, they could add “no-follow” to the sort links. Although not foolproof, there are other ways around the issue in some cases.
Nonetheless, my intention was to inform you about the “canonical” tag, and not to provide you with the perfect example case for when to use it. If you have any questions about the use of this tag, ask away in the comment section below.
I really, really, appreciate all comments that I receive. To post a comment, you don’t need to register to this site, or leave your name, or even provide your email address; it’s easy as pie and it only takes a few seconds of your time. Also, if you have your own blog, I will comment you back to show my gratitude.
July 27th, 2010 by Joe Majewski
I knew from the very beginning that the Technology section of the game was going to be HUGE, but I had completely underestimated what was in store for me. I was overwhelmed with work. There were nearly a half dozen database tables, several PHP pages, and lots of brainstorming and paper work that I used to compile the finalized list of technologies.
As I’ve previously stated, Arena used an upgrade system where each upgrade type (attack, defense, unit production, etc) was always available, and it doubled in price with each purchase. This worked, but it caused all players to make similar choices when it came to upgrading. Fortress RPG has an entirely new upgrade system, where the components are called Technologies. Upon purchasing a technology, the cost of your next technology increases, regardless of what it is, as the cost of a technology is 100% based upon how many you own. Additionally, new technologies may or may not become available, depending upon what you chose to learn.
My fiancee and I probably spent over 100 hours working on the technologies system, and it was well worth it, as it makes Fortress stand out from most browser-based games of this sort. In addition to that, technologies are fun to learn. After purchasing a technology, it’s fun to see the new technologies that become available. I’m sure that
everyone will be more than happy with this new game mechanic.
I’m proud to announce that Fortress RPG will consist of 100 unique technologies
I will post another update, much like this one, after the next milestone in game development is met. So what’s next on my `to-do` list? First, I plan on making and completing the Buildings section of the game, along with the cron job (a PHP script) that gets executed every 30 minutes to update rankings and income stats, and whatever else needs to be done. This is tentative, so don’t be surprised if I do things in an entirely different order.
Stay tuned! If you’ve got any suggestions, now would be the perfect time to expose them.
(Not to mention that I like getting comments.)
July 19th, 2010 by Joe Majewski
What are Accolades? Is it possible to collect every Accolade in Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies? What are the benefits of getting new Accolades? Do Accolades do anything to affect gameplay? What other collectibles can be found in Dragon Quest IX? Does Dragon Quest IX have a bestiary? How many quests are there? How many hours does it take to complete Dragon Quest 9?
You’ve got lots of questions, and I’ve got lots of answers.
The only Dragon Quest game that I had ever played (before DQIX) was the very original, and this was back in the days of the original Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES. It was called Dragon Warrior here in the United States, if memory serves me correctly. I remember it being one of my favorite games for the NES, and this memory made me very excited for the North American release of Dragon Quest IX.
That being said, I cannot stress enough how amazingly perfect this game is. If you haven’t picked it up yet and are still debating, go and get it right now. I will be so bold as to say that Dragon Quest IX will hands-down be your very favorite DS game for a long time.
What are Accolades? Accolades are basically achievements that are earned for reaching certain milestones within the game. Anything from defeating 100 monsters to mastering the art of using swords in battle can help to earn you Accolades.
Is it possible to collect every Accolade? Unfortunately, no. From my understanding, there are Accolades that can be earned for completing the game with a certain playtime, and only one of these Accolades will be awarded, and the others will forever remain unobtainable. This is unfortunate for many gamers, as collecting everything in an RPG is always a nice accomplishment.
What do you get for earning Accolades? Nothing, other than the satisfaction of knowing that you are one step closer to achieving everything that there is to get in the game. Oh, and a flashy screen gets displayed, which always gives a nice sense of accomplishment.
So Accolades don’t affect gameplay in anyway? Correct. They are no-doubt fun to collect, and many come as a surprise to you as you’re playing. I suppose it is possible that the developers made some aspect of the game change upon gaining more accolades, such as higher drop rates for rare items, or changes in monster encounters, but I wouldn’t bet on it. The game has been out in Japan for quite some time now, and if Accolades did anything at all, we’d surely know about it.
What other collectibles can be found in Dragon Quest IX? There is an entire menu system dedicated to showing you a list of just about everything that there is to be found in the game. This becomes available after meeting an NPC known as Stella after playing the game for a few hours or so.
This includes a full bestiary with 3D models, animations, descriptions, drops, and kill counts for all 250+ monsters in the game. The same type of menu accompanies all equipment pieces and weapons that you’ve gathered, and an additional menu for the items collected. You can also view a list of Accolades that you’ve collected.
Does Dragon Quest IX have a bestiary? As previously stated, yes it does. And it’s extremely in-depth, featuring items dropped by the enemy, locations that the enemy can be encountered, times that you’ve defeated the enemy, a helpful description for the enemy, and 3D animation models for every action the monster encounters (animations for the monster being hit by an attack, dodging an attack, entering battle, dieing, and special attacks). It’s the most hardcore bestiary I’ve ever seen in a game. Lots of sales on strategy guides will be lost due to the high-tech bestiary that can simply be viewed from the game itself.
How many quests are there in Dragon Quest IX? The quest log in DQIX is tremendous. In total, there are over 180 quests that you can complete in Dragon Quest IX. Between 100 and 120 can optionally be done during the main story of the game, and the rest are unlocked post-game, with the exception of the bonus quests that can be downloaded via the Nintendo WiFi service. These quests will be released by Square-Enix, and I do not have information on the dates that quests will be available.
How many hours does it takes to complete Dragon Quest IX? Depending on your definition of “completing a game”, this can be answered in a few distinct ways. The storyline of the game will take around 40 to 60 hours for the average gamer to complete.
If you are a hardcore RPG gamer, however, that likes to play your games to death, then I would estimate at least 100 to 120 hours to fill the bestiary, get most or all of the items, equipment, accolades, and finish most or all of the quests. Beyond that, co-op play, treasure maps, and leveling up nearly a dozen classes can keep you playing for 200 hours easily, depending on how far you want to take it. There truly is an almost limitless experience for you to pursue with this game.
Trust me, it will take a long, long time to get bored of this epic, memorable RPG. Cherish it while you can, because this gem will go down in history as one of the greatest games of all time.
