dqb2-secrets-and-trivia

[dqb2-secrets-and-trivia]

DQB2 Defiled Isle Trick: Finding Orichalcum Ore

One way to easily find the ore in the posion lakes is by using windows.

If you set the "see water though glass" setting off,

You can place windows in the swamp and see through the poison clearly

Source: Not sure

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DQB2 Glitch Showcase

Drowning Wrong Warp

When you fall off the world in the middle of a cutscene the game fails to spawn you in the shore and resorts to dumping you at the default coordinates. For IoA its at the mountaintop. For other islands its at the centre of the base.

The easiest cutscene to do this with is the "blueprint finish" cutscene, but others work too, like the "level up" cutscene.

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DQB2 Glitch Showcase

Connection failed Hardlock

Watch as Malroth thinks a bit too hard and bricks the game

How to do it:

Be offline

Pause and go to screenshots

While the "connecting" thingie is loading on the bottom corner, exit the menu

Quicky interact with anything that has a dialogue box (dying, talking, deleting from the inventory...)

Connection failed textbox will try to spawn at the same time as the different texbox and the game will give up. You'll be stuck. Forever.

Note: I define a Hardlock as "a state in-game where you're stuck and cannot move, only fixable by closing and reopening the game or reloading a save" while a Softlock is "a state in-game where you cannot progress as you're stuck in a map or are missing a key item, but you can move around in said place. Ony fixable by closing and reopening the game, or reloading a previous save. If u dont have a previous save then good luck :)"

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To let you know, during development, Malroth uses his Heroes model as a placeholder

Info Source

Image Source

"Hargon's throne room uses blocks from the first game instead of the custom ones used in the final version. Particularly notable since he uses the Dragonlord's decor, despite having no connection to the character. These blocks are obtainable in the final game, but aren't featured prominently during the story. [...]

In the earliest screenshot, Malroth seems to be using his model from Dragon Quest Heroes here, another game developed by Koei Tecmo; the primary tells-aside from the color-are the golden chain necklace and fang shape. Later, in August, Malroth's model appears to have still been under revision. He appears in a developer stream with a very roughly modeled skull necklace and altered shading on his face textures.

Malroth's final model matches his design from the original Dragon Quest II. Judging by artwork on the official site, Malroth's intended design was always going to be the one used in the final version and the early model was always a placeholder."

Source: @octo-l95

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DQB2 Isle of Awakening Trivia:

You can sleep in the straw bed at the alcove of Scarlet Sands in the prologue.

The game does not like.

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DQB2 Malhalla Trivia:

Spoilers for: Final boss fight!

You can kill Hargon at Malroth's first boss fight. There's an invisible wall around the arena, but the fire sword's long range attack reaches him despite it.

He has a lot of health, so you have to hit him for around 20 minutes or more nonstop to drain all of his HP.

He will dissapear during the rest of the fight, but once the fight is over he and Malroth get replaced with NPC versions of themselves. Which means killing him has no effect.

This is the only way for the player to ever kill Hargon.

Here's a video showcase.

Source: @octo-l95

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Malroth's 4 auras

· Battle Aura

A golden, fiery aura.

· Co-op de Grâce Aura

The battle aura, with a red tint and white sparkles flowing out.

· God of Destruction Aura

A bright purple aura, softer than the vibrant fire from last two, more passive. This one flows involuntarily. The white sparkles have turned black.

· Glorious Golden Glow

A soft, passive glow, with yellow sparkles. Flows more like air instead of fire.

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I smushed all the info the game gives us on Malroth before meeting the builder.

Here's the path he took and what he saw/did on IoA before Builder wakes up.

Of course it's just a theory. A game theory!

More info under the cut

I actually misremembered the opening cutscene. Malroth grabs Builder's hand, but on the next shot Builder is already out sitting on the sand, with Malroth behind him. So you don't really see Builder be dragged out of the ocean. TLDR: The cutscene and the game events do not conflict with eachother.

Also, Malroth going "a live one!" means that he could have dragged you out, thought you were dead, then left you without really paying attention, (because he was searching for alive people, "there's no one here..." are his first words you hear) He did do that with Lulu after all.

Then, there's also him going "how about we explore the island?" Which means he hasnt seen a lot, and if you turned right on the temple exit to go to cerulean steppe you'd have no real way of getting back to the beach without going around the whole island clockwise or turning back around 180 degrees. It also makes more sense to go left there since the rocks would help guide someone to dry land (beach).

And Malroth having swam out of the cave and towards the beach would also make his "I was also on the ship" conclusion make sense. If his memory was wobbly during that time, and he knows that he spent a lot of time swimming underwater to reach dry land, ship is not that weird of a thought.

Lastly, there's a line Malroth says when he first sees Hairy Hermit, which is "I have some questions about this island that I want answers to!" Which is, a weird line? And it goes unresloved, he never asks HH anything. I like the idea of him going to ask about the temple, but that is a biiig stretch honestly.

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DQB2 Skelkatraz Trivia:

Spoilers for the last island.

The 3 monsters that can be seen at the front praying to Hargon in Malroth's dream are the three Cardinal Cardinals you meet in Malhalla.

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DQB2 Builder Trivia

Bildrick and Creatrix have slightly different eye colour in their official art.

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DQB2 Cerulean Steppe Trivia

The castle being half-finished was an idea added late in development. In this interview the developers state that they had built the entire castle, only to scrap it.

Based on this, and the fact that the art made by amelicart was commisioned early in development, there is a high chance that the castle seen in the Cerulean Steppe drawing is the original, scrapped castle design.

It matches with the final game blueprint quite well too.

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DQB2 IoA Trivia : Unshaded umber and arid earth

On Green Gardens near the final river build there are 8 unshaded blocks that do not integrate with the rest of the blocks around them. When broken instead of showing the cracked texture the 'block health bar' appears. In the final game there is no way to place blocks like this. The only way to approximate it would be using the chisel.

Trying to make a blueprint with them yields.... mixed results. (Source: builderAura)

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DQB2 Malroth Trivia - Dominant hand:

Malroth is shown to hold his weapon with his right hand in-game, but holds his weapon with his left hand in the opening movie.

In other media he is also shown to be right handed:

Toriyama's original art, and DQ rivals art, directly referencing Toriyama's.

This can mean 2 things:

Malroth is Ambidextrous.

Malroth is Left-handed: - Toriyama's design is right-handed by default. - The animators could make him left-handed, but the game coded all characters share the right hand as their weapon hand (with no exceptions). - DQ Rival's art was directly referencing Toriyama's art, so right-handed.

Below is some analysis of the opening movie's "Left-handed Malroth".

Looking at the opening movie more closely- if you think Malroth holding his weapon with his left may be a "mistake"

Malroth is always shown to be left-handed in the animation. Here's some comparisons to Builder:

Even little details: Whenever he puts his weapon down it's to his left.

Even this scene, where both Builder and Malroth hold their tools in their left hands, but then when going on the attack builder rests the hammer in their right hand while Malroth goes full left-handed.

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This info comes from datamined tool, but still I'll reblog it here.

DQB2: The Minimap's Unused 3rd Dimension. (Minimap deep dive)

I want to talk a little about the minimap and how some of its features got scrapped mid-development.

My apologies, I suck at explaining stuff, but just bear with me. ok?

Let's learn about minimaps in DQB2!

So, this is a minimap. It's made of tiles.

All tiles have what I'll call an ID and a Type.

A tile's ID basically tells us what tile it is. For example:

ID 0 is deep water, ID 1 is normal water, ID 14 is grass, etc...

There are a lot of tile IDs, most of them covering all types of coastline water.

A tile's Type tells us what is on top of the tile. Here's an example:

There are exactly 11 tile types. Only 4 are used:

You may ask, "but what about the mountain tiles, those do exist in the final game! They are not unused!"

True, but the game handles mountains in a different way. The above method makes it possible to have mountains in all tiles, which is not true for how the game works in the final release.

You can see in prerelease images how all tiles could have mountains.

Image1-> Shows mountains on grass, Image2-> Shows mountains on sand.

I'll explain now how mountains are handled in the final release, before coming back to the other unused types.

Each tile, apart from having their ID and Type, has 2 other values that can be set to either 0 or 1:

The visibility value, which tells us if the tile has been explored or if its hidden from view.

And a height value, that seems to tell us if the tile is an at elevation?

For example, Lets look at a tiny Cerulean Steppe map and see how the values look:

It's a lot at once, I know.

The most important part here is the height value. There are tiles that look identical but have different height values

Look at the bottom right corner.

These 2 tiles would look identical to the player, but secretly one has height value of 1 and the other one has a value of 0.

What does this value do? It does 1 very specific thing.

It is hard-coded to turn these 5 tiles into these 5 mountain variants:

That's it. That's the only thing the height value does. It handles the 5 mountain tiles that are used and exist in the final game.

So, what is going on with the "tile type" system then? Why does most of it go unused?

Why would the programmers code in such a complex system with 11 different type options, only to scrap most of them and only use 4?

The type system seemed to handle all of the mountain placements just fine. Note that the minimap height value only tells the game what tile should go there. The types 7 through 10 acomplish the exact same thing.

The thing is, it seems that originally the type system was going to handle a lot more minimap and tile variance than what we got, but got replaced by a quick, hard-coded fix with the extra height value smacked in alongside the visibility value.

Now, I've been hiding something from you, back when I showed you the prerelease images, because I saved the best for last.

Let us look to our friend, the only unused icon still in the game, the tower.

This is the only "type" graphic that covers the tile beneath it entirely. This could imply it was a very early, placeholder item that would be replaced with a transparent one later.

What could this tower be? Perhaps a minimedal puzzle icon? An early version of the door icon, intended for buildings?

Well, the prerelease images tell us all.

Look at this photograph.

This is a curious image, isn't it?

Usually prerelease images like this one are trying to showcase something. Locations, story, characters... but this image only shows us some building work, no scenary, no nothing.

If you look closely though, you can see the tower in the minimap.

It's a little pixelated, but it's there alright. Right on top of the big tower building. So I suppose it is an old room tile?

But- wait.. what is that?

It's a little bit small, I don't blame you if you missed it the first time. I sure did. And I was the one that found the location of the image too- and it flew right past me...

It's a house.

A house? But isn't the tower the "room" icon?

Do you know what this image is trying to show us?

Tall buildings (like a tower) would showcase in the minimap with the "tower" tile. Small buildings (like a house) would showcase in the minimap with the "house" tile.

Do you think... I'm reaching, perhaps?

Then, let me explain further.

It's not just that those 2 incospicuous buildings are "tall" and "small" respectively.

The tower seems to be copy pasted. All floors are the exact same. No nuance, no variation. It's looks like the devs built that tower to be so tall for the sake of it being tall. Like the whole point of it is that it had to be tall. For what?

The house has the lowest height possible, at just 2 blocks tall. No windows, no nothing. It's just a rectangle with a barebones roof to show that yes, this is a house. Who in their right minds builds a 2 height room with a roof in this game? That's just asking the camera to break, honestly. Its almost like they wanted to make a squished, low house. For what?

And those builds aren't that pretty or use interesting blocks or anything. They're just... there.

Did I convince you? Well... what this all means is that...

There used to be a mechanic in the game where the tile shown in the minimap would depend on its height.

Artificial (building) or natural (terrain), it did not matter. All tile heights would be represented.

An unused 3rd dimension. The minimap's Z coordinate.

Isn't that cool? The type system was meant to give height variations to all the tiles.

But wait. There's more! One last prerelease image...

This one is showcasing a pretty waterfall and the cool terrain generation. But we don't care about that, let us look at the 120p minimap.

What do we have here? Well, the mountains look interesting, do they not?

It is quite curious that there are 2 of the mountain icons we can see in the final release of the game here. One that looks like a little mound, and another that looks like a robust, tall mountain...

Say, isn't it interesting? In the final game the mountain types are locked to each tile. But here, its almost like the game differenciates between "small elevation" and "big elevation".

Yes. It's not just "high" and "low". When I said "height variations" I meant it.

The mountains were not just "mountains". There would be different mountains for different heights, the same way there are different buildings for different building heights.

So at least for natural terrain, we have minimum 3 height levels confirmed.

Here's a little breakdown of the other parts of this minimap...

It would even account for height in the water tiles, giving them rocky water variants if the terrain rose past the water level!

Maybe thats what the missing 4th and 5th types would have? A house and rocks for water?

Or maybe there used to be more types, but the number got reduced mid-development? 11 is a weird number, especially in programing.

This height system seems to have been scrapped in between April 22 and August 2.

Look at this photograph, from August 2

This is just Al's cabin again. You can see the house as the building icon and the rocky water being still there. But the mountains look like the final release's mountains.

Rip 3rd dimension. March 30-April 22. We barely knew you, but it was nice to meet you, even if just briefly.

Thanks for coming on this minimap journey with me!

Some extra stuff:

The whole rocky water... wouldn't it be cool if that were still in the game? Look at IoA (the area left to the temple):

(Not quite the spot...)

All of that area is just... water.

It'd be really cool to have rocks around there y'know?

Hello there, unused tile.

This tile is ID 5. I've run out of steam so here's a picture of it, alongside ID 21, that was probably meant for all the technology blocks used in the ARK and such.

The building tiles are the last IDs in the list (before all the water begins) so mayhaps it was here when they realised buildings would be bigger than 1 tile, added the brick tiles, and realised big buildings broke the "tower" "house" rule so they scrapped it. (They also appear in the august images but not in the april ones.)

Here are tiles from 21 to 25.

Haha funny ilogical water tiles

The type system takes priority over the mountain system. You can see that in Moonbrooke's map. The trees take priority over the mountains.

All of this info I recompiled for the minimap exporter tool. Give it a try if you want! Next release will include support for all of the unused icons (even if not accesible without hacking)

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DQB2 Builder Trivia

The male's Builder Book and female's Builder Book have their colours flipped.

Male:

Female:

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DQB2 Furrowfield Seed Map

By Lilisaur

All credit to Lilisaur! All I aspire to do is to spread the information.

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DQB2 Ultimate Checklist!

Here's the link to the best information spreadsheet of the game! (All documented by the community as far as I'm aware)

It has info on:

All rooms (and requirements)

All sets (and requirements)

All foods (and ingredients)

Ingredient tier list

Furniture (category, ambiance)

Full itempedia (with info on each item)

All recipes (and crafting availability)

Story NPCs

Info on the Explorer's Shores

Full bestiary

All fish (and locations)

All tablet targets

This spreadsheet was made by the community years ago. I am only sharing it. I do not own it.