In Dragon Quest IV, the Silver Tarot Cards are a unique item that can be used as a weapon or armor. Nara, the fortune teller, has direct damage attack spells in the infernos line and powerful defensive buffing spells. These cards can drastically help or hurt your party in many ways.
To find the Silver Tarot Cards, enter the mine and go north to the first intersection, then east and north past the next two intersections. Take the west path to find the card. When used as an item, the Silver Tarot Cards have a random effect from the ones listed below. In chapter 5, they can only be used with the “Try out” tactic. If either the Hero, Cristo, or Nara survives a card, they can resurrect others and continue Nara’s card drawing.
The Silver Tarot Cards can be equipped by Nara, but there are more powerful weapons to equip her. A party of the hero, Alena, and Ragnar is the best because they can overpower anything before you need healing. Nara, Jessica, and other heroes can use the Silver Tarot Cards as an item in battles, but they may have circumstancial changes over time.
In summary, the Silver Tarot Cards are an interesting extension of character into gameplay, with Nara being the only character who can use them. They can have unreliable effects and can be used in battles with powerful weapons.
📹 Dragon Warrior IV (NES) Music – Battle Theme
Dragon Warrior IV (NES) Music – Battle Theme Download all my Soundtracks as MP3 here http://www.nes-snes-sprites.com/
📹 The Dragon Quest Iceberg Explained – sackchief
Welcome back everyone. Join me today as I take you deep down the Dragon Quest rabbit hole, explaining the hidden side of the …
Hearing this exact theme recently (playing Tickington in Dragon Quest XI) gave me such a massive flashback of perusal my brother play this game on the NES when I was tiny. I had no idea DQ was originally called Dragon Warrior in Canada back in the day. I heard this theme so often when I was little that I immediately recognized it 25 years later. That’s what good music and composition does!
I don’t know if this is appropriate to mention but DQ 8 and 11’s writing and voice acting is the best i’ve ever seen in any JRPG. I really wish the english translators get alot of recognition for their hard work Voice acting and writing are mostly hit or miss but DQ8 and 11 just knocks it out of the park the writers and actors put so much time and effort into their performance to make the characters really shine and what’s kinda sad is that most of the actors who did DQ8 only did that game or only a few acting roles.
I think the biggest conspiracy is how Dragon Quest is criminally underrepresented westward. The lore is very well-thought out, it establishes a lot of good RPG design decisions, and it’s the same Toriyama artstyle of DBZ. Maybe it’s a combination of turn-based battles and the over-saturation of medieval/European adventure games back when the franchise was new? There also seems to be a lot of bad timing with the series. Dragon Quest 4 released 9 months before the Super Famicom, yet it didn’t get a remake like its predecessors there. But, Japan did get a 4 remake on PS1… in 2001, so that didn’t come overseas until 2007 on DS. DQ5 strangely wasn’t localized on SNES even though it came out in ‘92. Dragon Quest 6 wasn’t localized either and the game suffered when devs were stretched with it and Chrono Trigger. Dragon Quest 7 released in 2000, localized in 2001, and sold poorly in North America. Finally, Europe only started getting main games with DQ8 in 2006. It might as well have been the same case in North America thanks to a demo of FF12. Man, I used to think Pokémon was bad with its late console releases. This slow release of games creates this lack of momentum that just hurts them overseas. DQ9 and the remakes on DS did a good job with momentum, but then 10 didn’t come out because it was an MMORPG and 11 didn’t come out until 2017. That’s nearly a decade! Wow, I feel old.
You know how in dragon quest 11 you get introduced to Maximilien and l’Académie de notre maître des médailles right? He tasks you with collecting mini-medals and rewards you with equipment or recipes the more you gather. After collecting 100ish medals he gives you, and I’m not joking; Erdrick’s Shield. Out of nowhere, sitting in the office of a fat French principal, lies the second best shield in the game.
– Lanson is the one that represents Australia in DQ3 and the Aliahan continent is fictional, also “cooe” is used only in the English version. – Kiryl’s AI is also tend to heal Alena immediately, even when she takes only a little damage. – What!? They’ve cut out the “It seemed to be great last night!” scene in Tantegel!? Even if you take the princess, not that random girl!? That was one icon of DQ1!! – The hero of 8 is immune to curse not just because he has a Dragovian origin, but because the Dragovian curse which sealed his memories was so strong that he got a perfect immunity against any other curse. -I’ve never tried saying no to Valenitina, but there’s a similar scene in DQ6, when you say no to Madame Luca when she asks to go to that cave. If you keep saying no, she gives up, doesn’t give you the medicinal herbs and Milly’s not gonna go along with you to the cave. – I’m always doing it with the Venus’ Tear. I even go to Pickham straight from Peregrin Quay (or whatever the English name is) so I defeat the Trap Box without Angelo…
Ooh! I bet I know why the Bunny Girl’s voice changes each time! Probably because she’s actually the Seer! That would explain the mystery of what she’s even doing on this random abandoned floating island in the middle of nowhere. I always wondered that myself actually. All they really had to do to reveal a lot of this lore was to have random books on the bookshelves contain some of this lore about the more mysterious areas. Instead we get a bunch of random boring stories about stuff mostly unrelated to the game or only related in very loose ways. Most of the stuff you read on the bookshelves in the game is pretty boring, but it could have been so much better! And yes, I have read EVERY SINGLE BOOK in the entire game and talked to every single NPC. I have absolutely poured over this game in every aspect and probably have 1,000 hours or more of real game time into it! It’s a LONG freaking game if you really take your time. It’s got an insane amount of content.
In Dragon Quest VIII, if you complete the events of Ascantha and the wisher’s peak before Angelo joins your party, there will be different party chat dialogue with Yangus and Jessica telling you that the banquette with King Pavan was cool, but they need to focus on pursuing Dhoulmagus. Then, if you complete the events of Maella Abbey, when you leave, you will see the original scene that was supossed to happen when you leave Ascantha after the banquette, only that this time King Trode will be upset because he was imprisoned and treated as a monster by Marcello and the templars, and then Yangus will have the idea of going to Pickham. I have never seen that scene in any gameplay on youtube, all the gameplays I have watched recruit Angelo first and then go for Ascantha. I also wanted to see if it was possible to go to Pickham without Angelo, but the Wisher’s Peak was already too hard without him, I don’t think I have the skill nor the patience to grind levels with Hero Yangus and Jessica to go to Pickham without Angelo, but I think it would be possible. I may try to do that in the next days. Nice article!
An indicator on what entry you’re talking about as well as showing the chart itself more would be good, but otherwise this is really cool. There’s some indicators by the way that Erdrick was meant to be the base alt in Smash. His iconicness is one thing, but also other things such as how he’s typically chosen for more promotional things such as the second anniversary image and most of all Sephiroth’s trailer. If this is true they may have changed it to Luminary late in for dumb reasons like “Oh he’s the newest guy people might recognize him, use him so people buy his game.” Personally I wish Erdrick was the base especially when taking longevity into mind.
There is something that has been bugging me ever since I played DQ3 and could probably be a theory, but I never see this discussed. Where did Zoma come from? In DQ3 when you fall into the hole, you reach the “underworld” which is the DQ1 world, supposedly it’s underground almost as if the earth had a second layer below it where DQ1 and 2 takes place. Yet, when you are there, you are told that Zoma came from ANOTHER hole in the northern cave, but that’s it, there is no further discussion nor lore about this hole other than your characters (Somehow) pop from there after defeating Zoma. The theory is, could Zoma come from another world even deeper below Alefgard? Just how deep does it go, are there maybe more worlds below it?… And if it is underground, how does the “day and night” cycle work exactly? Someone once told me that Alefgard whas not literally underground and that it was a different dimension but the game never clarifies it and all you are told is that it lies below the DQ3 since you and Ortega fell through holes to reach it. (On another note, could Erdrick also have spanish ancestry due to his father’s name? which is actually a last name in spanish, meaning his true name is “Erdrick Ortega”?).
A correction for your trivia about the Hero of DQ8. The reason he is resistant to curses is not because of his nature as a dragovian, but because he is already cursed. A curse was placed upon him at birth by the leader of the dragovians that would seal away his memories resulting in him being completely ignorant of his own origins. The curse is strong enough to not be overpowered or removed by any other curses or blessings like that of Rapthorne’s curse which destroyed the kingdom of Trodain.
Here’s an crazy coincidence I found out in DQXI. In the JP dub, Serena’s JP voice actor is Sora Amamiya who plays also plays Kasumi Yoshizawa. SPOILERS FOR P5R’S THIRD SEMESTER! Which is ironic and interesting that she plays both Kasumi and Sumire. Think about it, Sumire and Serena are young twin sister while Kasumi and Veronica are the oldest twin sister. Sumire and Serena feel like they’re not the same like their sisters. However, something bad happens to them which turns out that Kasumi and Veronica sacrificed themselves to save Sumire and Serena. The youngest twin sister feels like it’s their own fault for this. Later, Sumire and Serena stands up themselves and do something with their hairs, Sumire tied up her hair to be like Kasumi while Serena cuts her hair which the Arborians did at Veronica’s funeral. They fight for the world not by Sumire, Serena or others, but their oldest twin sisters inside them.
AVGN went over the fan theory that DQ 4-6 is an alternate time line from DQ 1-3 depending on how you end DQ11. The good ending leads to DQ 4-6 (I think this is where the world tree is at least initially still there). The bad ending (from act 2) leads to DQ 1-3 (I think this is where the world tree is still gone). Can’t remember if the world tree comes back after you beat Act 2 regardless…
the feel that DQ11 left me with was more like out current reality. we find many unexplainable things in this world we will never understand. weather its an out of place artifact inside a rock, the glyph’s in Peru or ancient ruins that are beyond our ability to replicate. to me it made the world more real
I really enjoyed this article bro. I’ve been wanting to see a DQ iceberg for a while and I’m glad I’ve learned stuff that I didn’t even know. Props to you for doing it. I’ve been wanting to replay DQ11 since it’s been my fav DQ game or maybe the whole series? Maybe eventually since I got a lot of games on my plate. Awesome article.
I’m playing DQ8 and after Pickham there’s the quest to obtain the ship, in the cutscene Ishmahri, the “elf” guy, referes to himself, the moonshadow harp and the ship as “Ancient One”. I immediatly thought about the Watchers in DQ11, but as you say in the article it seems that the Ancient Ones and the Watchers are just different concepts. So, is this some thin connection between DQ8 and DQ11 sharing some similar mythology? Guess we’ll never find out XD
10:49 also erik has his own prequel spinoff game (dq treasures) where he and his sister mia get teleported to another world named drakonia which is made up of the scattered skeletal remains of two gigantic dragons that once killed eatchother and this world is packed to the brim with treasures and monsters
3:25 You’d think that, but that’s a localization thing of more recent versions of the game, not in the original games, let alone in Japanese. That said the island to the left of the start location more resembles Australia (You know, the one that has the town of Lancel in the GBC version), especially with that desert area through the middle and consider the scale of it compared to other contenents) while the starting Aliahan is, other than a good jump in point to learn how the game works before it opens up to you, would be Zelandia (check out continent plate maps to see what I mean) or potentially Antarctica before shifting south. Or even just an add in where a compass rose would be. Point is, even though the map is very similar to a real world map, there’s some distinct shaping differences that screams a time way before current tectonic plate positions.
The “surprise” ending pretty much killed this movie for me and my younger brother (who is a bigger fan of the series than I am). Before that point I thought it was a decent (though incredibly abridged) retelling of dragon quest 5. That being said, the movie has a lot of heart and in my opinion should be watched by any fan at least once (but if you decide to watch it again just consider the bishop fight to be the ending).
The “cooee” being used as a smoking gun for the hero being Australian feels pretty tenuous tbh. It’s as british as it is auzzie, especially if you’re trying to evoke on olde vibe (as old as the 50s at least lol). However, the continents thing, yeah, can’t argue with that. Also, awesome article man, thanks for all of this! <3
I think the overall theory of Kiefer/Orgodemir based on what one fan told me is that he might have originally been possessed around the time that the Roamers had their failed ceremony and how his departure rubbed fans the wrong way. You know him already finding a purpose by finding the Fragments, yet claiming he had still been looking for his purpose. Also: 1. Aishe arguably having the least interms of story presence having only been added to provide a substitute for him. 2. Yeah part of it is based on the then upcoming remake of IV and how Psaro is not only purified from the Secret of Evolution, but joins the party. Meaning Kiefer would be separated from Orgodemir and rejoin, along with Lala. Heck, much like how Faraday is later empty near the end of the game of inhabitants as Zamoksva had the same thing happen in the original and remake of IV. 3. Things backing it up include the Super Kiefer bit with the heavy Resilience increase and how he is able to equip some gear from even after the Alltrades Abbey scenario.
Ain’t tryna pop anyone’s bubble. But as dq7 being my fav game, the theory of keifer being the final boss is prolly wrong. After you get ashe and go to that outlook to the sea you’ll see the grave that most likely points towards Lala’s and Keifers grave, and at the end of the game the stone tablet that you hook up says that keifer is currently traveling along with the roamers and is married to Lala. I guess it kinda de bunks that theory but I wouldn’t like the idea of keifer being the final boss so I had to write this lol
I unironically like the Jesters in DQ3. They have enourmous luck and can be turned into sages, the most powerful magic users in the game. I actually had 2 jesters in my party. I know. Heresy. But after I turned them into sages, I steamrolled the game. Seriously. The one thing you have to have with jesters is patience. Lots and lots of patience. But wait long enough and you pretty much break the game in half.
38:30 Dragon quest 9 had a similar celebrity push in the UK, but instead of getting an interesting UK celeb, they get the musical duo Jedward. A pair of twins whose claim to fame was winning the singing competition x factor, which is rigged most of the time and they never even realised an album since they won, which was many years ago.
question for sackchief, (this has spoilers for adventure of dai so read at your own risk) since Nadiria exists both in the adventure of dai and the zenithian trilogy, is it safe to assume that dragon quest 4-5-6 take place after the adventure of dai because dai was said to be the last dragon knight and the zenithians could actually be his descendants/distant relatives? There’s also the fact that dark dragon king velther or his tribe is not around but demons like vearn still exist because they weren’t annihilated during Baran’s journey in Nadiria. Finally looking at the design of the transformed vearn in the last battle, he looks extremely similar to Estark from dragon quest 4 so I think that my theory holds some ground, I mean the underworld is specifically named Nadiria when they could have named it something else so I feel it’s more than just a coincidence
Loved the article! Here’s my question: suppose the markings at the for and other places were left behind by The Watchers? It would be within their power an ancient and advanced culture. It would also help them navigate the world from above, as certain people have proposed of the Nazca artwork in south america
3:42 Australia is where Lancel is, the smaller island to the west of the hero’s town continent. Said continent is based in the fictional lost continent of Mu. Also, the use of “cooee” only happens in the newer releases, probably because the localizer mistook the continents. 10:11 31:22 Why did the localizers feel the need to arbitrary change names? To make jokes? Also, many of them have no reason to be, like Barbara renamed to Ashlynn, Loto to Erdrick or Flora to Nera. 13:35 I hate the decision to use old English. As a non-native speaker, it’s really hard to understand. 17:40 Eito can equip cursed items without their side effects?! I had no idea! 28:02 Looks like some kind of mermaid with a fish head attached to the human head. Interesting.
Oh my god, that Metal King Slime Ruby Path of Doom map…THEY REFERENCED THAT IN DQ11!! In Tickington, if you go to the Ruby Path of Doom, you can get a quest about someone sharing this map that is supposed to grant you tons of rewards, but adventurers are getting beaten up constantly! You travel down and find it’s a Metal King Slime who’s pissed off and tired of being used for grinding! The fact that the devs pay attention to what their fans do and implement it into their games is AMAZING.
DQ 8 was the first that i played (ok easy since DQ never made it to PAL regions or were big, i mean we had DQ Monsters 1 (not 2) and… that’s it i guess back then) and while i first just liked the artstyle i was kinda blown away that the voice actors were NOT American and had accents. When i played it back then i was … i think 22 or so and BOY had i problems to understand yangus xD but he had more character than some of the FFX characters
Yeah… Honestly the Switch ports were a HUGE disappointment. I can’t believe Square Enix phoned in those ports so freaking hard. They basically just took the mobile assets of the games & slapped them on the Switch, & they are basically god awful as a result & look like ass. The graphical style they used is just terrible & totally inconsistent between the four games. They are pathetic ports all around & it’s a real shame they would do this, much less try to charge us that much for them.
Huh. This makes me appreciate DQ so much. I played 8 as my first DQ game (I think I was 10-12 at the time) though I only got to the final story boss. I put the game down because I lost so in my head I pretty much just let the bad guy win and the world fell to darkness. Aaaand then I played 11 (as a 27yr old) and damn. I got so invested in the world and characters. I won’t spoil it for ppl who haven’t played it, though if you’re here you probably did, but there were plenty of moments that kept me on the edge of my seat, made me ‘cry’, and made me angry at a character. I found a game that was so well crafted I wrote a glowing Steam review. I only review games that hold a special place in my heart, either hate or love, so this was big for me. To clarify, this is the definitive edition, not the release version. Of course, the characters and plot is all pretty typical for anime, but there were enough twists mixed in and secrets scattered in the books and npc dialogue that made me feel like the world was truly alive and not just there to service the plot. 10/10 would cry at ******’s **** again!
I have to say that DQ9 is probably my favorite even though I wish the game would just let you play more files and buy the DLC without needing to jump through as many hoops as you do nowadays; a modern switch re-release might make it one of the most successful games of the modern era if they did it right, but they’d have to update the graphics for modern hardware
This is less of an iceberg, and more of a … snowfield. Don’t get me wrong, they’re all really interesting tidbits, it’s just that I hear “iceberg” and “how deep does it go?”, and think “this article’s gonna explain how all of the separate lores explored throughout all of the games in the franchise are secretly ONE big, cohesive, wouldn’t-have-guessed-it-all-comes-together-this-way, mind-blowing lore that will change the way I view parts of the series forever.” And some of the tidbits are mind-blowing, and change the way I view different parts of each game, so I’m not angling to diminish the intrigue of all of these different facts. It’s just that they’re all, more or less, self-contained. Nothing really ties them all together in the way that calling them, collectively, an “iceberg” implies. And — this is something I’m noticing in a lot of different sources (& officially a rant from here on out) — I’m seeing this trend of people calling things “explanations” that… aren’t explanations. Like, I was looking up people thought was the meaning of Mr. Robot’s series finale, for instance, and wound up reading no fewer than three (!!!) different articles, in three separate publications, by three distinct writers, claiming to be explanations of the ending… that were all just summaries of what happens during the episode; Cliff’s Notes… but minus any of the boiled-down analysis that Cliff’s Notes tend to contain. These aren’t explanations. Explanations do deep dives into aspects of the thing being explained, they’re not play-by-play summaries of the important scenes in a story, or a rundown of the various easter eggs you might spot if you’re an eagle-eyed observer.
Dragon Quest 9, easily the worst one in the entire series. Tried multiple times to get into that one. It was actually so forgettable that the last time I started playing it, I went on to other games and forgot that I had ever even started a new game on DQ9. 9 is just so “meh.” I don’t understand why so many fan boys love that one so much and hate the best one, which is hands down Dragon Quest 6. People are so backwards.
As far as the ball in Erdwin’s Lantern is concerned, I have two ideas. The first is that since they couldn’t find a reason to use it for anything it was intentionally left there to give a little hint as to what is to come later of the lantern. This is because if you take the ball out the model, which emits a blue glow, the lantern in game is hollow which would probably leave some people confused about why its see-through. However, I think your comment on hibernation leads to something, because the second idea is that there may have been a point in time where they would’ve shown how Calasmos got into that form. When looking at the cutscene where Calasmos revives himself, you can see for a couple of brief moments where he is looking down, and just so happens to look suspiciously like an HD version of the ball in the lantern. My guess is that after the whole Erdwin incident Calasmos changed into that form as he was being sealed away as a part of the ritual, and when he was freed he morphed back into his normal form. Its unlikely but the developers may have either never came up with or scrapped a scene of him morphing into the ball, so the one inside the lantern was perhaps an oversight that never got addressed in the final product. Just some food for thought, but seeing that secret really blew me away
So about a week ago I was playing dq11 and went to the world’s Edge and ended up on the other side, this feature is also present in dq9 as well, now these are the two dragon quest games I have played, but my theory is if these games take place in the same world because of certain characters and people from the past that are often referenced in quests and books and other material within the game, then they are most likely in some form of area that has a barrier spell on it where it just teleports you to the other side so you think that it is a circular world that you’re playing in. Now it’s just my own theory as a fan, but how cool would that be that all the dragon quest games are actually linked even though there’s a way to get the other side of the map by going to the maps sea edge
In DQVIII (at least, the 3DS remake, I don’t know about the PS2 original), when Mash(or was it Bangerz?) joins your party and tells you to go to the Tower of Alexandria, you can instead go all the way to Port Prospect. Once you enter the town, a special cutscene will play with Mash/Bangerz getting absolutely flabbergasted at your lack of a sense of direction, which is a fun little detail
There is a theory I came up with for Terry in DQVI, makes him even more tragic if he really did become Estark as this set the path to his downfall (Copy pasting from me telling someone not knowledgable on DQ so there is spoonfeeding in my theory) Monsters, as we know, is a prequel to Dragon Quest VI where you play as Terry, and your sister is Milly. Both characters in VI. In Monsters Milly is kidnapped by a monster and brought to a magical world in a cupboard to serve as a monster maser/tamer. Terry goes in that world to save her. In VI there are two worlds. The real world which is the beginning of DQM (VI tricks you into thinking the dream world is the real normal one at first) with the kingdom of Gandino, which is where Terry and Milly would have lived. And the Dream World which is accessed only by ghosts and the dreams and thoughts of people… It was revealed in VI Milly was actually taken as a concubine by the king of Gandino and probably abused. So it is likely all of Monsters took place in the Dream World as Terry’s coping mechanism to having had lost her sister, imagining a fantasized version where he saves her and is a hero… And at the end of VI, the dream world is 100% severed and unreachable from the real world, causing the main character (Botts) to lose his love interest in the process and also meaning Terry’s only positive coping mechanism that his childhood grew with is now out of reach, even if he finally found his sister and reunited.
Hey! Just wanted to thank you for getting me properly into the series. Played 8 when Hero was first revealed in Smash back in 2019 and loved every second of it. Recently stumbled across your articles and decided to replay it, and again, I’m enjoying myself a ton. Going to hop into 9 once I wrap my second playthrough up!
DQ8 owes a big part of it’s success to that included demo of what was it, FF8 I think it was? I know it was a FF game and that had a lot to do with ppl buying it. Shame that’s what it took, cus yeah the demo was exciting but I absolutely bought it for the DQ game of course. Have purchased every English DQ release as soon as it came out in stores ever since the NES days.
I’m surprised you didn’t mention the heros cameo in DQ Builders when you brought up the bad ending on DQ1. late in the game when you unlock the tantegel area, you actually find the hero portrayed as a hoodlum wearing a crown and with lotos sword. he resides as a sad psychotic maniac in a little dome shaped structure with a sign in front reading “half of the world”.
Bro, Cannock’s Prince was gonna sacrifice himself? That’s crazy because, without even knowing about this scrapped ending, in my first playthrough of DQ2, I tried a very risky strategy during DQ2’s final boss where I had him use Kamikaze for big damage, and then tried to revive him mid-battle with ka-zing. This somehow worked. I semi-halfway-canonized a scrapped ending without even knowing there even was a scrapped ending.