What are their main vocations? Let me guess, Lightning is the Mage/Magic damage dealer,  Hope is the Priest/Healer and Fang is the Warrior/Martial Artist?

Also, do you remember at what level did you finish the game, more or less?

went back to the inn grabbed some  off the shelf homies ,gilbert amale mage with a whip ,can't find a wand yet,muriel female warrior spear,fleur female priest staff, after that over sight thewight knight was  done in easy , so thanks for helping out an idiot who thought like most rpg,s the game would present you with party members has you go along forgeting this ones tailored toward  having "guest" members come and go. so no fully realised party.

@lestatdark, wow are characters are the same with gear, but my party levs are 70 for main character and the rest are at lev 68. i always grind to the extreme if its  possible, hoping to be lev 75 before the final .

No problem I also was lost a few times in the game, due to it not giving any kind of heads-up of what to do next.

You can buy both a Wizard Staff (840 G) or Oak Staff (120 G) for your Mage in Stornway.

Wand Skill Tree makes wonders for any Mage, because a maxed Wand skill means that your Mage almost never runs out of MP. Plus, you gain an amazing healing skill (Caduceus) that heals for over 150 HP, because unlike healing spells, this is linked to the Magical Might stats of your Mage. And later in the game, you may earn a skill that can also make your Mage a reviver, thus becoming a bonafide secondary healer for your team.

Warrior Spear sounds a pretty good idea, especially if you level up the Spear skill until you get Thunder Trust, which works wonders for Metal Slime farming. 

I myself, opted to go for Swords with both my Minstrel and my Warrior, because of Metal Slash. When both of them are equipped with Falcon Blades and Meteorite Bracers, you can almost always get four Metal Slashes on Metal Slimes before their turn is up. That's at least 8 damage, enough to almost kill a Metal King Slime.

Awesome How have you been grinding for your main party? Have you found a good grotto with Metal King Slimes or Platinum Jewel Slimes?

I've done some minor tweaks to my gear, added a Catopric Armour to my Minstrel (Has a potent Bounce effect) and has high defense (57), and passed the Ethereal Armour to my Priest. I'm eager to find the rusty sword, to upgrade it into a Sword of Eldritch.  

Don't know if you know this already, but any time you get a Rusty type of gear, if you mix it with 9 Glass Frits and 1 Orichalchum, you get an Eldritch equipment.

my main character lv 11 , rapier,  sword skill 15 , dragon slash/metal slash , heal - evac - crack trait atk 10 and the Warrior lv 8 ,iron lance and mercurial thrust  spear skill 7 ,2 courage ,trait atk 10 , Mage lv 7,  leather whip ,whip skill 3, hypno whip, frizz, acceleratle,crack,sap, Priest lv7, Wizards staff ,staff skill 6, heal, squelch, snooze, trait atk 10.

Just an advice, as you advance through the story, you'll get the chance to change vocations. When you do, try to evolve the main weapon skills that you're going to use the most in the game, by spreading the use of skill points for those skills in multiple vocations.

For example, both Thief, Warrior and Minstrel can equip swords, that means you can evolve the Sword skill faster by levelling up these three vocations, let's say to level 15 (gaining 22 skill points per each vocation) than trying to level up the Sword skill in just one vocation.

The reason for this is that much further in the game, there will be dedicated weapon skill quests that require you to be at a certain level for each weapon skill, before the quest is handed to you. The first quest is handled at Lvl 30 for each skill and the second one at Lvl 100.

It's massively worth to do the Lvl 100 quests for your main weapons, as you'll gain pretty awesome unique skills for them.

I bought DQ IX about a week ago, however I haven't finished playing DQ V yet.  I've just entered the dark realm, progressing to what I assume is the final dungeon.

In DQ IX, is there any big gameplay changes that I should be aware of, apart from lack of random encounters?

There isn't a fixed party this time around, you have to create your own party and this can be easily missed, just like what happened with mjk45.

There's a vocation system that can be freely changed once you reach a certain point of the story. In conjunction with the Skill system that comes from DQVIII, you have tons of skill trees available to your characters and can be freely pursued as you see fit.

There's also a combo system, which works by multiplying damage output if your characters get successful similar actions.
For example, imagine that your Minstrel and Warrior get subsequent attacks. Minstrel usually attacks first due to his higher agility, and does normal damage. Then your Warrior attacks and if he doesn't miss the attack, he gets a 1.2X bonus damage to his attack. If a third character also manages to attack successfully in this window span, without the enemy taking any action, then that character will have a 1.5X bonus damage, and a fourth character would have a 2X bonus damage.

There's a overworld loot system, in which alchemy items can be picked off in certain parts of the world map and will later regenerate after a period of time has elapsed. This also happens for pots and blue chests inside dungeons or towns as well.

I think that's pretty much it.

what was the feature u liked the most in dragon quest 9 ?

i liked no fixed party