Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age – Definitive Edition has now arrived on the Nintendo Switch with not only new features, but everything the original package had. The Western release last year added some new content itself like voice acting and what is known as Draconian Mode. Draconian Mode is essentially the hard mode for the game and this guide will tell you how you can activate it in Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age – Definitive Edition.
Draconian Mode is not just a basic hard mode that makes everything more difficult, but rather offers you a checklist of different settings that you can turn on to increase the difficulty in certain ways. To activate Draconian Mode, you will have to start a brand new game, so select “Create a new adventure log” from the main menu and choose an unused save slot.
When you get to the screen where you can choose your name, press X to bring up the Draconian Quest Settings menu. From here, you have a list of eight settings that you can select to affect different areas in the game.
The first of these is No Shopping, which is just as it sounds. This makes it to where you cannot purchase any items in the game, instead being reliant on chests and item drops. No Armour is also very self-explanatory, as it means you cannot equip any sort of armor in the game, which obviously makes you much more vulnerable.
Reduced Experience from Easy Fights is also as it sounds, where you get half the normal amount of experience when you defeat enemies that are weaker than you. In fact, sometimes you may get no experience at all. To counter this, you can activate All Enemies Are Super Strong, which makes all the enemies very difficult in the game to where you’re always gaining XP if you have Reduced Experience on as well.
Shypox and Super Shypox are two setting, the first of which affects you and the second of which affects your party members. This causes uncontrollable embarrassment, which you never know when exactly will pop up in the game.
Townsfolk Talk Tripe causes the inhabitants of Erdrea to start lying at times, which means you never really know if they’re telling the truth or not. This can make it hard to figure out what to do sometimes if you’re relying on these people for hints.
Lastly, Party Wiped Out if Protagonist Perishes is also as it sounds. Normally the Luminary dying does not cause you to go to a game over outright if you have other party members alive, but this one will go right to a game over.
The good news is that if you are really not liking some of the initial settings you picked, you can deactivate them at any church in the game after the fact.
