Early-to-mid game build and general tips: Erik

[somedude212]

Just like the previous post, I will put the names in parenthesis if I don't know what it will be called in English version.

Erik has four skill trees: "banditry", boomerang, dagger, and swords. Erik will not gain full access to all skills in every tree until the mid-game, unlike the MC who only has that issue with Luminary.

Early-to-mid game build advice:

1. "Banditry" lets you do things like stealing items and increase your deftness (for higher crit and steal chance), agility, and evasion. You start off on this tree by picking up Half-Inch (item steal). You should get this early since with the MC's Flame Slash, you can do a pep power called Itemized Kill, which is the easiest way to steal rare drop from enemies for early-to-mid game. If you are going for specific rare drop using Itemized Kill, my suggestion is for Erik to steal the common drop from the enemy first since sometimes Itemized Kill gets you the common drop if you didn't take it from the enemy earlier. Another skill of note in this tree for beginning is "Bunshin" (shadow copies). It is a skill that has Erik create two shadow copies of himself. This triples his evasion rate and in the upcoming turn, whatever active skill he uses will be performed three times. The effect disappears at the beginning of the following turn so you can only take the full advantage of it for one turn. This skill is quite good once Erik learns status effects skills or heavy damage skills since it triples his likelihood of causing status effects / damage output. Needless to say, if Erik gets hit with Disruptive Wave in-between or wastes the following turn due to status effect, then you will have spent a turn for nothing so it's little risky.

2. Swords skill tree gives you sword skills standard to Dragon Quest series such as metal slash, flame slash, and falcon slash while giving bonus for equipping swords. There isn't anything special about this skill tree but in late-game, you need to put lots of points into this and dagger skill tree in order to unlock a passive that erases penalty for dual-wielding, which is critical in Erik's becoming the strongest physical attacker.

3. Advancing into dagger skill tree lets you dual wield, which is important for Erik since he cannot equip most shields. As a result, you will generally want to put some points into dagger tree even if you use other weapons. Note that you can only dual wield the weapons of same type so there is no yielding dagger on one hand and sword on another. Outside of attack/crit passives, Erik can learn several skills that deal status effects such as sleep and poison and deal heavy damage to enemies suffering status effects, i.e. Persecutor - which lets him deal heavy damage to enemies under confusion or sleep. This is very useful since many enemies including bosses will be susceptible to poison and/or sleep, allowing Erik to become a surprisingly effective physical attacker. However, do note that enemy recovers from that status effect if you use the said damage move on them so you have to try and inflict the status effect again. Between poison and sleep, I would put more value on poison since even many late game bosses are susceptible to poison.

4. Boomerang skill tree is the one you go for if you want Erik to take care of trash mobs. Boomerang in Dragon Quest games let you attack every enemy but at decreasing power as it goes through each enemy. In fact, if you unlocked the dual wield passive from dagger skill tree, you can dual-wield boomerangs as well. Some notable skills in this tree are "Super Throw" (lets you hits all enemies at full power; this was the skill's name in DQ VIII), boomerang version of metal slash, and "dual cutter"/"dual breaker" (lets you hit all enemies twice at increased strength - "dual breaker" is more powerful and is only unlocked after certain point in game). Unfortunately, the attack bonus passives you get in this skill tree are fewer than others (only +5 and +10 so +15 in total) so it will be lacking in concentrated firepower compared to other weapons.

General:

1. Once full "banditry" skill tree gets unlocked, I heavily recommend putting some points into this tree even if you have to reset skill points in other trees. There is a skill that lets him do guaranteed critical hit, which will be absolutely invaluable in hunting those metal slimes. Unlike crit skills from other characters, there is no downside to accuracy with it. Increased steal rate, which you have to get in order to access the above mentioned crit skill, is an added bonus as stealing will become very important by the mid-to-late game as even common drops from late-game enemies may be rare ingredients for crafting. In fact, you can only get some of the best equipment in the game as rare drops.

2. For getting rare drops, in addition to Itemized Kill mentioned earlier, the MC, Erik, and Jade have a pep power that increases the exp, gold, and drop rate of items for all enemies. You have to kill them to get the bonus so if you or they run away, then the power is wasted. While this pep power has no skill requirement (nobody has to learn any skill to unlock it) and will generally guarantee more rare drops than Itemized Kill, it requires three characters to be in zone at the same time as opposed to Itemized Kill's two. There are also equipment that increase drop-rate as well, i.e. Vest for Success for males and schoolgirl uniforms for females.

3. Since Sylvando can learn status effects skills, he works nicely with Erik if you are going for dagger build. In fact, Sylvando can also learn those status effects skills in his dagger tree so they can go back and forth between dealing status effects and dealing damage.

4. Once full sword skill tree gets unlocked, Erik can gain huge attack passive bonus for equipping swords (+25 and +35 for whooping +60 attack power) and strong sword skill that has high crit rate. Since you have to get all these before you can unlock remove-penalty-to-dual-wield passive, one handed sword lets him become the strongest physical attacker in the game bar none as far as single target DPS is concerned, especially when you add in "Bunshin" skill to the equation. However, due to huge sp investment required, you will only be able to tap into this DPS potential by the very late game unless you grind a lot.

I just added the tidbit on rare drops since it's useful and generally involves Erik.

[hisv]

Nice info, thanks for posting! Just a note, I think Kamus is much cooler than Erik :/

[Meryl]

Erik is OP

[Marlfox]

So dual swords is better on MC than greatsword?

[Rყᴜȥᴜ ⟡]

Thank for your guide. I was extremely confuse on what to do with the skill trees.