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• Last Update: June 02, 2012, at 09:53 AM
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You’re never going to die, going up against a Dragon Warrior Slime. But there will come a time when you wish you were dead.

Let’s do some math.

A Slime has 3 Hit Points, more or less -- HP totals tend to vary a bit in Dragon Warrior games -- but it will always leave you 1 Gold Piece richer and 1 Experience Point wiser. Those are precious commodities in Dragon Warrior games, especially the first, where the essential gameplay is entirely about making your hero wealthier and more experienced. When you first start the game, you need 23 Experience Points to get to level 3, and since everything else in the game will kill you quickly, you’re going to earn those 23 points fighting Slimes.

You start the game with 120 Gold given to you by King Lorik, with which the best weapon you can reasonably hope to outfit yourself with is the Club. With a Club in hand, dispatching a Slime will probably take no more than two rounds, during which you might sustain a point of damage. Two, if you’re unlucky. With 14 Hit Points to start with, this means roughly every 10 battles it’s wise to spend 6 GP to visit the Inn. Your net gain, if you’ve been fighting Slimes all this time, is 4 GP.

Level 3 is the easy part here, mind you. The 23 Experience Points you need to reach level 3 will never go away, not even if you die, although you have to really work at it to die at the goopy pseudopods of a Slime. You’ll be at an appropriate level to leave the Brecconary region long before you actually do. Because your real barrier for exit is the 340 Gold Pieces it takes to outfit yourself with the best gear you can buy: one 180-GP Copper Sword, one 70-GP Leather Armor, and one 90-GP Small Shield.

Never mind level 3 -- you’ll be at level 4 before you can afford even the cheapest of these. And here’s where the Slimes really start to get under your skin: around that time, they know what’s up. They know they don’t stand a chance against you. They’ll start running away. Every one that escapes is 1 more Gold Piece you don’t add to you coffers; 1 more Experience Point you won’t add to your store of knowledge. You could go fight other monsters, but raw levels won’t do the job alone. You’ll need either better armor to withstand their blows or better weapons to end the fights before they can go badly. And for either of those things you’ll need to kill Slimes.

One copper sword's equivalent of Slimes.

Eventually, of course, you’ll be off the treadmill. You’ll be ready to leave the Brecconary region and go grind on new, interesting monsters which give better rewards and don’t run away quite so often. And on and on until the endgame, where you’ll have raised all the money you need for the very best equipment money can buy: a Flame Sword, a Silver Shield, and Magic Armor. But even with all those Gold Pieces behind you... even once you’ve gone one better and found the legendary equipment of Erdrick himself... you still don’t have a chance of beating the Dragonlord until you’re at least level 20. You’re likely to need to grind out three or four levels before you reach those lofty heights. And what, do you suppose, is the single best monster in the game for purposes of gaining the thousands of necessary Experience Points?

The humble Metal Slime, naturally: punchline to the karmic joke that is the hero’s quest.

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