The Dragon Quest franchise, which has been around for over 3 decades, continues to remain popular among RPG enthusiasts and manga and anime lovers alike and the spinoff series, Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai stands as one of Shonen Jump’s best-selling manga series of all time, giving rise to a second anime series adaptation as well several video games.
Fans of the franchise are up for a great treat with Square Enix and DeNA’s Dragon Quest The Adventure of Dai: A Hero’s Bonds, which is available for both iOS and Android platforms. The game takes you on unique adventures that offer a mix of the manga’s story as well as an entirely new journey.
Dragon Quest The Adventure of Dai: A Hero’s Bonds offers a captivating and immersive storyline that blends perfectly with its art style. Like every other Dragon Quest game, intuitive controls and base mechanics make it a relatively easy game to pick up and beginners as well as veterans in the RPG genre can easily get hooked on its distinctively addictive gameplay.
The lane system and third person perspective gives a bit of an endless runner vibe but the reaction times and decision calls in combat provide a more diverse challenge. Strategizing is not limited to combat as well and stretches across how you choose to form your team, each member’s skills, and their equipment.
Despite its share of unique concepts, Dragon Quest The Adventure of Dai: A Hero’s Bonds follow the usual Dragon Quest game essence that makes it easy enough even for complete beginners to get a good grasp of the game’s basic controls and features. Strategizing becomes more important with every step forward in your journey, though, and starting out your adventure right can make a huge impact every step of the way.
If you have just taken a dip into the world of Dragon Quest The Adventure of Dai: A Hero’s Bonds and want to level up your adventurer and heroes as fast as possible, we have you covered as our beginner’s guide comes with a plethora of tips, tricks and strategies!
1. Reroll For The Best Gears
While Dragon Quest The Adventure of Dai: A Hero’s Bonds ensures that every available hero in the game can be obtained by players through natural progression, it still leaves adventurers with a gacha system for added excitement and variety. Instead of characters, however, you will be rolling for gears in Dragon Quest The Adventure of Dai: A Hero’s Bonds. While gears can also be obtained from your adventures, higher grade ones can only be procured from the gacha pulls.
For complete newbies in gaming, gacha is a game mechanic derived from a toy machine dispenser that gives out random items. It is commonly used in mobile games as a system where luck and probability determine your prize, so to speak. Gacha systems in mobile games often require spending premium currency, which is not as easy to earn and farm normally compared to regular currency.
Dragon Quest The Adventure of Dai: A Hero’s Bonds, like most gacha-based games, provides a way for players to obtain more than enough resources to perform a couple of 10x pulls from the gacha at the early part of the adventure. This opportunity to perform early gacha rolls give rise to a popular exploit of sorts, which is rerolling.
If you are among the uninitiated, rerolling simply refers to the act of going through your first set of gacha pulls. This essentially means starting your adventure over if your first pulls are not satisfactory enough and going through the process as many times as you can until you land the best pulls.
Of course, this is not necessary and you can always make good progress in your adventure regardless of which gears you obtain from your first gacha experience. If you are the type of player who prefer plowing through the adventure straight away and do not fancy progress resets, then you can completely skip this part.
Rerolling, however, does provide a huge boost not just to the early part of your journey but also across the mid and end game contents. You can obtain 2 to 4-star gears from the gacha with lower chances for higher grade items.
Although any 4-star item is certainly something to appreciate, we prefer banking on weapons first, especially ones that your first characters can quickly utilize. Given the pull rates and probabilities, ensuring a 4-star gear or 2 before proceeding with your adventure grants your party a huge boost so if you are up for rerolling, then you better be ready to fully commit to it.
Before you can reroll, make sure that you use a guest account when entering the game. The initial tutorial session is quick and easy. As soon as you are able to explore on your own freely, you should head on to the Present Box through its icon at the left side of the main screen or the “Altered Altar” tab. There are pre-registration gifts you can immediately receive, which includes over 6,000 blue gems.
As you need 3,000 blue gems to perform a 10x gacha pull off from the Treasure Hunt you can access on the lower right side of the screen, you will have a sufficient amount to do 2 10x pulls. The probability of acquiring 2 or more 4-star gears from the gacha is highly improbable but still possible. Having at least 2 4-star weapons to start your journey is an easy enough target.
If you like the gears that you acquire from your first 2 10x gacha pulls, then you can finally continue on with your adventure. For the security of your journey’s progress, make it a point to link your game progress to either your Gmail or Apple ID. You can access the main menu through its icon on the lower right side of the screen. Within the menu’s page, you can scroll down to find the “Manage Account” button and if you click on it, you can readily link your game progress to an existing account.
On the other hand, if you are unlucky with your first set of pulls from the treasure hunt, you can head on to the main menu and click on the “Erase Game Data” within the “Manage Account” window. This will leave you with a fresh start and you will again go through the initial tutorial session. You will have to claim the gifts once again and proceed to perform 10x gacha pulls from the treasure hunt.
2. Cycle Across The Different Story Modes
Instead of simply setting adventurers up for a main story campaign, Dragon Quest The Adventure of Dai: A Hero’s Bonds provides a trio of story campaigns with its main game mode. The story mode is basically divided into 3 separate campaigns and instead of focusing on any one of them, the recommended approach is to cycle across them, taking the easiest available quest one at a time.
The Dragon Tracks is reminiscent of the classic tale that fans of Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai are very familiar with while the Bonding Journey is a completely new story exclusive to Dragon Quest The Adventure of Dai: A Hero’s Bonds. There are also Character Quests with its own set of episodes and rewards.
The story game modes in Dragon Quest The Adventure of Dai: A Hero’s Bonds are not entirely made up of battle stages. In fact, about half of it or more are episode scenarios, where you can watch or skip cut scenes and receive blue gems as rewards. You can expect the recommended power levels to increase from one episode to the next but there are some cases where it instead becomes lower, potentially because you will not be able to take a full team on that mission.
There are also intermediate and advanced versions of the Dragon Tracks and Bonding Journey battle episodes, which are simply amped up versions of the beginner mode. Progression on Dragon Tracks basically unlock the rest of the game’s features as well as well as other episodes on Bonding Journey.
You will naturally be in situations when your team’s current overall power will be below the recommended level for the current stage. In such cases, you can still make it through if the gap is not that big but early on, you should instead consider to switch to another game mode to earn resources and strengthen your party.
Beyond the regular drop, there are also first time completion rewards to earn on every battle stage. Take note that these first time completion rewards are dependent on the accomplishment of stage missions. Be sure to look into the targets before the battle and earn the full rating of 3 stars as much as you can.
If impossible, you can always secure a 3-star victory at a later time as what is more important as far as stamina consumption is concerned is tor progress with the story. Aside from item drops, valuable earnings also include EXP for your heroes, for the adventurer level, as well as the bond levels.
3. Do Not Always Rely On Auto Mode
The auto mode that has become prevalent on a lot of action RPGs on mobile led to a somewhat divided opinion on the feature’s existence. On one hand, it certainly makes adventuring convenient as you can simply lay back and watch as your character or characters move and act on their own with absolutely no effort from you. On the other hand, some RPG enthusiasts content that it takes playing off the board and renders the gameplay boring.
For us, however, it is all a matter of how you utilize a game’s auto mode. There is certainly no harm in using it but relying on it exclusively is certainly not the way to go. The auto mode in Dragon Quest The Adventure of Dai: A Hero’s Bonds is not that bad, but it is not that great either.
The heroes move forward consistently, attacking enemies they encounter and using special skills as they become available. However, auto mode seems to lack proficiently in switching across lanes and timing attacks as well as skill activations.
It is expected of most beginners to actually feel that they are ill-equipped early on in the adventure. Auto mode can appear to perform better than complete newbies but that is definitely not the case. Even if you are a beginner, you can surely perform better than auto mode. With a bit more experience that you earn from actual combat, you are bound to improve reaction times and timing as well.
Using auto mode, you will most likely lose in battle if your team’s power level is lower than the recommended power level of the stage in question. If you choose to go with manual controls, then there is a big possibility of breaking through stages that have higher power level requirements than what your team has.
This is especially true in Dragon Quest The Adventure of Dai: A Hero’s Bonds given the unique mechanics in combat. Breaking the enemy’s defense is very important to knock them back or even disable them temporarily. While luck may allow auto mode to time special attacks within the break period, you are more likely to be able to pull it off more consistently.
The timing as well that applies to ending breaks, guarding, or stepping back can be a lot better on your own compared to auto mode. These instances will not just spell the difference in efficiency between manual play and auto mode. In a lot of cases, it can be the cost of losing a battle that you can win with a little bit of effort.
4. Perform Upgrades Sparingly
Leveling up your heroes as a means to earn more power for them as well as for the team is actually something you hardly need to worry about in Dragon Quest The Adventure of Dai: A Hero’s Bonds. Characters you use in combat earn sufficient EXP and you will always feel that your team grows in strength every step of the way.
Each new level reached comes with stat boosts but every hero has an initial level cap that you need to be aware of. The level cap can be increased through the “Board” feature along with other power-ups that raise the stats and power levels of each hero.
You can access the Board through the “Upgrade – Manage” icon at the lower left side of the screen. The Ally Board leads to separate boards for the other characters while the Vocation Board holds 4 distinct boards for the different roles or classes your character can take on. Boards are laid out as interconnected panels where unlocking one leads to another.
Different types of panels have different material requirements to be activated and materials can be gathered from story quests or challenges. It is important to note that you do not necessarily need to activate every panel. Each set of panels will have a rank-up panel that you should aim to activate as this will increase the hero or vocation’s level cap. The first level of the new level cap will then be key to unlocking the next set of board panels.
Most panels require materials that are standard across all boards, be it for the main hero or your allies. This will naturally lead to always needing more materials than what you already have and decision points that border on which board to invest those resources in. Focusing on one vocation as well as one ally is a good start, but there will certainly be instances when you have to utilize other vocations and allies.
What actually makes the main hero very valuable is the innate ability to switch vocations, leading to the potential of filling the gap based on the team’s differing needs in their journey. You are likely to have invested heavily enough in the hero vocation before even considering to use any of the other vocations. As a balanced build, it is a solid investment and you should continue to prioritize it over other vocations. Just the same, capping a level on one vocation or having a great need to take on a different role makes it important to have a second vocation with some level and board upgrades.
As far as allies go, the first 3 companions you will recruit are not bad at all. Each one has a unique set of skills and class, ensuring a cohesive team that can take on all sorts of challenges. Beyond elemental affinities that affect each unit’s performance in battle, however, some battle stages have restrictions when it comes to your team’s roster, forcing you to switch members for your teams. Because of these restrictions, you have to invest in other characters instead of focusing on the 3 you consistently use.
In any case, there are events and challenges that have no restrictions at all as to which characters you want to have on your team. You would naturally have a main team with the strongest units and that would mean the ones with the biggest investments in their boards. For the rest of the heroes you only switch in when you have to, then a regulated investment in their boards is recommended.
Keep in mind that allies that join you later than others may have boards that actually have more panels in them. This results in some characters actually having bigger potential for growth. To be safe, keep a good supply of the resource materials for when you recruit new allies. The best time to choose from among them which ones to focus on should come after you have recruited everyone.
Weapons and armors as well as soul crystals you can equip on heroes can be removed and swapped across them with ease. The kind of gears each one can equip depends on their class, making it easy as well to utilize the auto equip function. Each piece of gear can be upgraded using weapon and armor ores and have an initial level cap of 15.
Through evolution, which can be done up to 4 times, a gear’s level cap can be increased to level 35. Evolution requires sacrificing a duplicate of the specific weapon or armor, making it extra challenging to evolve 4-star weapons and armor.
As far as weapon and armor upgrades go, you should invest not only in 4-star gears but 3-star ones as well. You will come to discover that since it is easier to obtain 3-star gears, you can more easily evolve them and rank them up to become stronger than their 4-star counterparts. With limitations on resources, it will also be wise to focus on one item of each type, ensuring that every class in your party has a best set of gears for them to use in battle.
Along with weapons and armor, skills can also be obtained from your gacha pulls in the treasure hunt. These come as skill cards you can use to upgrade existing skills your heroes have. As there are no other resources needed to enhance skills that can be used for other purposes, you should not hesitate to upgrade skills as the opportunity becomes available.
5. Manage Equipped Soul Crystals Well
The Soul Crystal feature in Dragon Quest The Adventure of Dai: A Hero’s Bonds is an innovative way of customizing each character. Soul crystals can be obtained from different quests and there is a separate banner for it in the treasure hunt. Although we recommend spending your initial mass of blue crystals on gears instead, you will need to invest in obtaining soul crystals at some point.
Each soul crystal comes with its own rarity grade as well and offers unique set of stats for each character. Initially, each hero will only be able to equip 1 soul crystal but higher soul bond levels will ultimately lead to being able to equip a maximum of 2 soul crystals. You can freely equip any soul crystal on any hero but the stat combinations each one provides are not as equally viable across different units.
Beyond the unique stat boosts, each soul crystal also comes with its soul type indicated by the colored crystals you see on it. Soul crystals of the same color lead to an increase in resonance, which can go all the way to 100% and a higher rate of resonance means a bigger boost in stats for the character.
Soul crystals can also be upgraded using crystal polish and instead of simply focusing upgrades on 4-star soul crystals, you should consider soul crystals that have a high resonance rate with the ones you use as well. The initial level cap of upgrades on soul crystals is 20 but you can increase it through channeling.
Channeling, however, requires soul crystal shards and gold and the former is not as easy to obtain. You can opt to convert some extra soul crystals to resources, which can include soul crystal shards.
6. Take On Event And Challenge Quests Regularly
The story modes in Dragon Quest The Adventure of Dai: A Hero’s Bonds are certainly more than sufficient to fill every player’s need for action and adventure. With an in-game stamina delimiting some battles you can engage in, it is more likely that you will run out of energy quickly and will have to take long breaks from adventuring after about an hour of adventuring.
Beyond the story campaigns, however, Dragon Quest The Adventure of Dai: A Hero’s Bonds provides a couple more of game modes players can revel in and some of these do not consume stamina at all.
You can take on various challenges and event modes lodged within the “Event” icon on the main screen. Challenges help get you more of the usual resources you need to keep strengthening your characters while events are time-limited mini adventures that let you acquire unique rewards every step of the way.
We recommend prioritizing story game modes to unlock the rest of the game’s content like the challenge stages. Once you have unlocked the challenge stages, though, you should ensure that the daily stock of tickets you have for separate runs are consumed within the day. Beating a challenge stage unlocks a higher level one. Tickets, however, apply across all levels so you should push to conquer the next level difficulty as much as you can.
The Growth Trial earns your party a lot of EXP and is certainly something you would want to take on ahead of everything else within and outside the challenges. You only have 1 ticket to spend on this challenge so be sure to take on the highest challenge level you can beat.
The Equipment Upgrade Trial and Gold Acquisition Trials are also important as you will never run out of needs for either set of resources. Like the Growth Trial, you only get 1 ticket for each challenge so be sure to consume each ticket every day.
The remaining trials all relate to board upgrades and you only get 2 tickets each day to spend however you like across the 5 different trials. Each one provides a different set of rewards. You may want to take a peek into your priority boards first. Identifying the specific board upgrade materials you need more than others is important as boards are built in such a way that you will not be able to unlock panels just because you have the resources.
As you will need to activate panels to get to others, you should constantly take note of resources you are missing in advance and focus on stocking up on them through the proper trials.
While progressing through the main story campaigns is still what we consider as top priority, you should also spare some stamina to dedicate to progressing time-limited events. There are plenty of rewards to earn from these special events that are difficult to obtain anywhere else and you can expect the top rewards to be exclusively obtainable here as well.
Special events appear very much like story game modes, which means that there are story stages to watch after each battle stage that earns you valuable blue gems.
7. Accomplish Missions For Extra Rewards
The host of game modes available for you to revel in as you venture within the world of Dragon Quest The Adventure of Dai: A Hero’s Bonds provide an ample supply of resources. Surely enough, you will always be needing more than what you have but that is among the essences of what makes adventuring in an RPG enticing. You will constantly feel bits of improvement in your heroes and your team every step of the way but extra opportunities to earn more rewards are certainly appreciated.
Dragon Quest The Adventure of Dai: A Hero’s Bonds provides players with easy opportunities to earn extra resources through the missions feature. There are Daily Missions, Event Missions, and Normal Missions to accomplish for exclusive rewards. Beyond the extra freebies, these missions ought to be considered as a guide towards progression as well as browsing through each one’s set of targets can help you identify aspects of the game you may be missing out on.
Daily missions are expectedly the easiest of the bunch and regular gameplay, even for just a few minutes. Guarantees the fulfillment of all set objectives. All mission targets directly relate to what you would normally engage in and you will find that you can accomplish several of them without knowing the specific requirements.
You should keep an eye out for event missions as these are tied up to time-limited events. This means that you can only accomplish these missions within the duration of the event and the rewards you get from these missions are often more valuable than the rest.
Normal missions are basically achievement objectives and lines up targets aligned with standard progression. Some normal mission objectives take time to complete and that is okay. What you would want to do is to look into ones you are close to accomplishing and push for them as well as take note of the targets you have little to no progress on achieving.
Relative to missions, be sure to visit the Beginner Missions at the upper left side of the main screen. Most especially for beginners, these missions basically walk you through how you should make progress in Dragon Quest The Adventure of Dai: A Hero’s Bonds. These are essentially limited missions in the sense that it goes away once you complete all the targets but there are no time limits as to how soon you have to accomplish them.
There are 3 sets of beginner missions with 9 panels on each one. Clearing an objective in a panel earns you instant rewards and clearing the whole set grants you 3,000 blue gems, which is basically a free 10x gacha roll. Even though there are no time limits imposed on beginner missions, you should certainly pursue each target as fast as you can as earning those rewards sooner than later will tremendously boost the way you progress through your subsequent adventures.
8. Take Advantage Of Added Freebies
Daily Login Rewards are a common incentive in mobile games and is an added enticement for adventurers to regularly dive into the game. In Dragon Quest The Adventure of Dai: A Hero’s Bonds, there are even more incentives available for players who dive in on a daily basis and if you want to progress as fast as possible in your journey, then you should never miss out on any of these added perks. Some can be claimed instantly while a couple will have you play a short ad. Each one is certainly worth the small effort.
The limited stamina you have is based on your adventurer level and you will quickly realize how easy it is to deplete your stock of energy. You replenish 1 stamina every 6 minutes and there are items you can use to replenish stamina. Likewise, you can also watch a 5 to 25-second video ad to earn 10 stamina up to twice per day. You can simply tap on the “+” button beside your stamina to see ways on how to have more.
Within the treasure hunt, be sure to claim free pulls from both the soul hunt and the normal treasure hunt. Do not underestimate these free pulls as you can also obtain 4-star gears and soul crystals from these banners.
Dragon Quest The Adventure of Dai: A Hero’s Bonds also holds a Video Bonus Treasure Hunt where you can watch a short video ad to earn random resource materials 2x per day. You are likely to secure skip tickets here and you will always want to have more of these tickets when replaying stages you have already conquered.
The developers promise to provide even more content for the game via future updates, with that said, this is where we wrap up our Dragon Quest The Adventure of Dai: A Hero’s Bonds beginner’s guide. We hope that you learned a great deal from our collection of tips we shared and that you can readily apply what you have learned in your adventures moving forward.
If you have chanced upon some nifty tricks in addition to what we have already covered or simply want to share your experiences with the game, be sure to drop us a line in the comments!