Games where you can build and create things can be fun with friends, as it provides a creative and leisurely activity to enjoy together while also sharing your own developments with them. In Dragon Quest Builders 2, there are all of these little things that make the idea of working together even more attractive. Visiting becomes this fun activity that you can’t wait to do again, and you might even have plans for things you would like to add to others’ worlds that may not fit in your own.

First, Dragon Quest Builders 2 requires you to get a little experience with the game before you can just hop into multiplayer. You have to clear Furrowind Island and help get the villagers from there who agree to move to your island settled a bit. Think of it as a sustainability tutorial. Furrowing helps you learn the basics and prepare food sources. Getting started on the Isle of Awakening helps you learn to terraform your own space and get people settled with a small farm and hopefully some basic buildings. Then, you can hop online. It means you’ll have a functional area set up so your online visitors won’t starve and could rest if they need to restore their health, as well as maybe have something cool to see or some direction.

The teleporter to open your gates or go somewhere else is, conveniently enough, a fast travel point. It, like the major hubs on your island, lets you get people to the most important areas ASAP. At the portal itself, you can set a number of rules right away to preserve your creations. You can determine if only your friends or friends of your friends can come in. (Note: if you have yourself set as invisible online, people won’t be able to find you and vice versa!) You can set building limitations, dictate possible explosions, and determine how chest access will work. Think of it as ensuring things will be safe and stable, just in case there is an accident or someone you don’t know could come through. Since the items you build when online will carry over to offline once the session ends, you want to keep things safe.

The fast traveling and convenient ground rules are just the most basic convenience applied in the game. The one that matters most is the option for infinite material supplies. In Dragon Quest Builders 2, there are an array of optional islands. These appear after completing story-related spaces and then paying the required heart fee to unlock them. Each one has two scavenger hunts applied to it. If you “check” every item on each list, you unlock an unlimited supply of a specific resource for you and every online visitor to your island. For example, the first Explorers Shores island is Soggy Skerry. If you complete both checklists, you will get unlimited wood and grass fibre at every workbench. These hunts can increase in difficulty as you proceed. For example, the two islands unlocked after Krumbul-Dun can give you unlimited coal, copper, iron, and silver, but you’ll need to scale huge mountains and descend into deep depths to mine all the items off of the list. Still, it is very much worth it for the satisfaction of knowing that you and your visitors can build without limits.

All of this means that you can get down to the best part of Dragon Quest Builders 2 multiplayer once you open your gates. That is, is letting someone stop by and then everyone doing their own thing. During each of the multiplayer sessions I participated in, we used the PlayStation 4 party chat system to express our desires for our islands. For example, don’t destroy any existing buildings was my major rule. In the case of the person I was visiting, I was not to perform any terraforming and to not build any roofs on structures. We then went about our tasks. We would check in and chat from time to time. We might ask for specific materials that didn’t have an infinite supply, for example. After an extended period, we would regroup and show what the other had done. I made a reading room with attached porch that was considered a board game space on poles on a river. He made a decorative bathhouse by my pyramid for tourists that was hidden in a cave next to the oasis.

Dragon Quest Builders 2 just makes it so easy to enjoy activities with friends. Fast travel points make it easy to get to gates and get set up. Options let you prevent explosions and set guidelines before anyone even comes by. Taking a little extra time at Explorer’s Shores islands gives everyone access to unlimited materials. Once people are there, it is easy to show people around, let them see where they can get food or take a rest, and then start working on projects. It’s handled quite well.

Dragon Quest Builders 2 is available for the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4.