A question for anyone who has played Dragon Quest 9

[Tylorious]

Hey everyone, I just got Dragon Quest 9 and have found myself really enjoying it. I am just a little confused about one aspect of the game. When you level up in a vocation, you get stats based on that vocation, but when you switch to a different vocation, do your stats from the previous one get removed? What carries over to the new class?

[Antonok]

This (http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/937281-dragon-quest-ix-sentinels-of-the-starry-skies/55701585) will help a lot.

As for a more immidiate response:

Stats are fixed in this game, but can be augmented through both seeds and through leveling vocation skill sets, all of which contain different status bonuses. This makes it easier to level up a new vocation from level 1, especially as the game progresses (gear will also be superior, which helps as well).

Switching is highly recommended, though switching too often can result in a very easy game. The main reasons are to gain extra skill points, or to try different vocation combinations. There are some things that carry over, and some that do not. I will list all overall bonuses to stats from vocation skill trees.

What carries over to all vocations:
1) All vocation skills (Enlightenment, Guts, Spellcraft, Litheness, etc.) including all stat bonuses learned. All status bonuses also stack, between vocations and within each vocation skill tree. So if you have a 55 points into Thief, and 100 into Minstrel, your Deftness is +50, +20, and +40 - so +110 overall, and this carries to every single vocation.
2) All unspent skill points.
3) All weapon skills with 100 points, giving them the Omnivocational skill - meaning all vocations can use them.
4) Skill Seed bonuses are the only seed bonuses that carry between vocations.

[Wookieetank]

This game is terribly easy to get sidetracked in, particularly once you get a vehicular mode of transportation. I put some 55 hours into the game before beating it, and even with a decent chunk of powerleveling found the final area to be moderately challanging. Made it in one go, but the last several bosses were sufficiently nailbitingly close to make the outcome uncertain. Now that I'm in the post game I'm having to powerlevel again, just to get past the boss that unlocks the rest of the post game areas ><

If you plan on going through the post game content, and/or want an easier time of leveling your various classes, make EVERYONE an omnivocational sword user asap. Besides from swords being plentiful and decent damage, being able to use the Metal Slash ability on everyone makes taking out Metal Slimes (and their relatives) MUCH easier.

[Mando Knight]

Plus, the Falcon Blade is just ridiculous, generally hitting for more overall damage than most other weapons... the Über Falcon Blade hits harder than the Metal King Sword or the bloody-near-impossible Hypernova Sword (which requires an extremely rare drop from top-level postgame dungeons and several copies of the most expensive alchemical reagents... for a chance to get the weapon).

Also, it's worth noting that vocations' skill points are heavily front-loaded. The first 38 levels will get you 100 skill points, and then the remaining 61 levels will get you another 100.