In the Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake, players will have to choose the best party composition to get through the many battles in this game. There are a lot of potential combinations, and characters can be heavily customized to your liking. Once you get to grips with the party system, you will be able to fine-tune it and decide exactly how to get the right party for your play style.

Classes, or vocations in Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake, are an essential part of party building and something you will be introduced to right away. There are a lot of different options and some of them will fare better than others. However, pairing them with the right Seeds will also be another critical factor in how well you do, so keep that in mind as you go to build your party.

All Unlockable Party

Every Possible Vocation & How To Get Them

Unlike in past Dragon Quest games, you will not meet characters as you go along to slowly unlock. Instead, you can start building your party from scratch nearly as soon as you turn on the game. You will go through the hero-building process and enter the castle where you will be told to gather a party at Patty’s Party Planning Place. When you do, you will find yourself at a front desk and given three party to add to your class.

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This setup will have you (the Hero), a Warrior, a Mage, and a Priest to start out with. It is by no means a terrible setup, and if you aren’t interested in customizing your party, this is likely good enough. However, upstairs is the Premiere Adventuring Listing Services desk, where you can start creating and customizing allies to your heart’s content.

The following classes are available from the start of the game:

  • Warrior: A class focused on damage dealing through physical combat. Solid but will just Attack and Defend.
  • Martial Artists: Hand-to-hand combat specialists. Very agile without a weapon and good at making critical hits.
  • Mage: Spell-damage dealers, often getting the biggest hits on enemies even early game.
  • Priest: class capable of keeping the party healed and attacking when there’s nothing else to do.
  • Merchant: Good at gathering gold and appraising items. Less useful in other combat situations but handy to have one.
  • Gadabout: Very versatile but uncontrollable. They are unpredictable in nearly every way.
  • Thief: Stealth-based combat in that they can avoid enemies easily and find hidden treasures.
  • Monster Wrangler: A little different from the other classes, this one deals damage by summoning friendly monsters.

These all have their own advantages and disadvantages, but even at the beginning, it was clear to me that having a Mage on hand no matter what else is in your party can make a difference. You are not as likely to die in early battles, but a Mage will be crucial for quickly getting through small battles.

The Merchant and Thief vocations are good if you are grinding for specific items or for gold, but they will not likely make your final party roster.

Additionally, the Priest is quite useful, but you will eventually want to upgrade it into the only vocation that has to be unlocked: the Sage. This is because you can only get the Sage in one of two ways, but it is easily the most powerful vocation in the game. First, you can get the Sage by leveling up a Gadabout past level 20. Second, you can get the Words of Wisdom item at the Tower of Transcendence, which will let you do the same without having a Gadabout.

However, there is an alternative path that sort of cuts the difference. You can, at any time once unlocked, go to Alltrades Abbey and change your character’s vocation. Doing so will take them back to level 1 but will allow them to keep almost all of their learned abilities and with better stats than their newly created counterparts. If you first take a priest up to maximum level before switching to a Gadabout, you can level into the Sage class with nearly every spell in the game under your belt.

The other thing to when creating party is that you can give them each a Personality by distributing the Seeds among traits you want to see leveled up the most. This is not a guarantee, as there is some randomness to it, but you can cancel after asg Seeds to try for a different personality. Most agree that the Vamp is one of the best personalities in the game due to the scaling with Agility and Luck. You can read more about how each personality affects your stats in the Personalities & Abilities section of the Traveler’s Tips.

Best Party Combinations In Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake

Who To Include & Who To Upgrade

The party in an inn at night in Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake.

As stated, you almost always want a Priest and a Mage, and you will be forced to keep the Hero in the party at all times. This means that for most of the early stages of the game and into the mid-game, your party will likely consist of these three plus your next favorite one. For damage potential, you can go a more traditional route with Warrior and stick to the game’s suggested party, or you can go for the unarmed option with the Martial Artist.

However, I’d recommend the Monster Wrangler, the newly added class in this game, as a different option but one that will help you collect friendly monsters. You will need those for mini-games later in the game, and it is a fun and different option than the more traditional route. Beyond that, the Mage will be doing the most damage in the party anyway, so the secondary damage dealer can do so in a fun way. For instance, my early party consistently had these vocations, although I did swap that last slot out a few times:

  • Hero
  • Mage
  • Priest
  • Monster Wrangler

If you follow the recommended upgrade option, at some point you will have a fairly Priest-like Gadabout. This vocation is not as good, but with all of the Priest spells and new traits that unlock for it over time, it will still manage to do a great deal of . That being said, that fourth slot at that point in the game might be best in the hands of a higher-level Priest if you leveled up a new one in preparation for upgrading the old one.

You can take other vocations through the same upgrade paths, and it is up to you which paths you take through the various classes, but you can continue to do so. This can give you extremely versatile and adaptable characters who have a strong repertoire of spells, abilities, and stats. Once you do have the Sage class, it should take the place of the Priest in your party, and you can go back to the secondary damage dealer you like the most in the Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake.

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Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake
Released
November 14, 2024
9/10

ESRB
E10+ For Everyone 10+ Due To Alcohol Reference, Fantasy Violence, Mild Blood, Mild Language, Suggestive Themes
Developer(s)
Square Enix, Artdink
Publisher(s)
Square Enix
Engine
Unreal Engine 4
Franchise
Dragon Quest
Platform(s)
PC