Necessary to Dualize?

[Seisachtheia]

To be frank, I generally dislike crafting systems in games and hate crafting systems that are "experiment to find different combinations and powerful items!" just a preference of mine.

I've basically been ignoring dualizing up to this point, only really using it to fulfill requests and cook. Anytime I get one of those shards I just slap it on whatever piece of equipment to get the stat increases. I keep doing this until it feels too expensive, then I buy a new piece of equipment and start over. I'm not trying to plan out what gems I get or what combos I want.

My question to the more experienced players: is this a perfectly fine way to play the game without running into issues? I've enjoyed the challenge and fun in this game so far but don't want to hit a roadblock where the game expects me to have better than the C or D tier gems that I randomly get sometimes.

Thanks.

[Saibot]

It completely depends on your difficulty setting. Do you play on Easy/Normal? Then its completely fine. Moderate is probably fine as well, but everything harder is a no-no.
It requires "gamer" skill though, you probably end up on a roadblock if you're a casual gamer without much experience.

Dualizing is nessecary for endgame though (Zhonecage optional dungeon after the story) and requests from Inn and 100%.
If you don't care about any of this you can activate the 5x EXP and double Damage thing from the Grade shop. For that simply go into the settings tab in the menu and navigate to "grade shop" and activate whatever helps you.

So even if you encounter a roadblock (depends on difficulty and your skill level) you can overcome it by either: grinding or simply activating optional quality of life features or stuff from the grade shop like 5x exp and 2x damage.

No matter what happens: you CAN ignore it, but I would recommend to dualize your equipment from time to time as you already do. Get new stuff? Dualize it with a shard and then move on. You can go on like that.

[Seisachtheia]

Originally posted by Saibot:

It completely depends on your difficulty setting. Do you play on Easy/Normal? Then its completely fine. Moderate is probably fine as well, but everything harder is a no-no.
It requires "gamer" skill though, you probably end up on a roadblock if you're a casual gamer without much experience.

Dualizing is nessecary for endgame though (Zhonecage optional dungeon after the story) and requests from Inn and 100%.
If you don't care about any of this you can activate the 5x EXP and double Damage thing from the Grade shop. For that simply go into the settings tab in the menu and navigate to "grade shop" and activate whatever helps you.

So even if you encounter a roadblock (depends on difficulty and your skill level) you can overcome it by either: grinding or simply activating optional quality of life features or stuff from the grade shop like 5x exp and 2x damage.

No matter what happens: you CAN ignore it, but I would recommend to dualize your equipment from time to time as you already do. Get new stuff? Dualize it with a shard and then move on. You can go on like that.

I'm playing on Moderate and still early in the game (just finished the Throne Reclaimed chapter). So far the game hasn't felt super difficult, it has a pleasant challenge to it that's fun to overcome but not that hard. I just don't want to get to a point in the story where the game expects me to have like...L or M 'tier' gems when I'll probably have like D's most of the game because I do not give two ♥♥♥♥♥ about trying to figure out and plan a route to end game crafting. I do constantly use all the shards I get, but purely to up the stats on the weapons.

So sounds like I'll be good. Thanks for your feedback.

[Saibot]

Originally posted by Seisachtheia:

Originally posted by Saibot:

It completely depends on your difficulty setting. Do you play on Easy/Normal? Then its completely fine. Moderate is probably fine as well, but everything harder is a no-no.
It requires "gamer" skill though, you probably end up on a roadblock if you're a casual gamer without much experience.

Dualizing is nessecary for endgame though (Zhonecage optional dungeon after the story) and requests from Inn and 100%.
If you don't care about any of this you can activate the 5x EXP and double Damage thing from the Grade shop. For that simply go into the settings tab in the menu and navigate to "grade shop" and activate whatever helps you.

So even if you encounter a roadblock (depends on difficulty and your skill level) you can overcome it by either: grinding or simply activating optional quality of life features or stuff from the grade shop like 5x exp and 2x damage.

No matter what happens: you CAN ignore it, but I would recommend to dualize your equipment from time to time as you already do. Get new stuff? Dualize it with a shard and then move on. You can go on like that.

I'm playing on Moderate and still early in the game (just finished the Throne Reclaimed chapter). So far the game hasn't felt super difficult, it has a pleasant challenge to it that's fun to overcome but not that hard. I just don't want to get to a point in the story where the game expects me to have like...L or M 'tier' gems when I'll probably have like D's most of the game because I do not give two ♥♥♥♥♥ about trying to figure out and plan a route to end game crafting. I do constantly use all the shards I get, but purely to up the stats on the weapons.

So sounds like I'll be good. Thanks for your feedback.

I did the same and also played on moderate. There will be bosses that are tougher than usual because the balance is a bit off, but I played exactly like you, until I had to dualize a lot for the post-game content.

If worst comes to worst you can either grind for more EXP / Levels or simply activate stuff from the grade shop, but yeah you are good to go. I played this blind for the first time on moderate as well and simply bumped up the stats because I didn't care about the gems until end-game.

[Oostin]

Dualizing won't play too much of a role now other than for fulfilling requests and having better gear, but it will play a role in being able to access the later floors in the Zhonecage, as the entry requirement per floor is to offer an item of a certain value. The required value will increase per floor, with the very last floor requiring an item or gear worth 200,000 gald (I think, I may be wrong). Don't worry about losing the item though, there's a save point near the altar and you get your item back if you beat the floor.

[Saibot]

Originally posted by Oostin:

Dualizing won't play too much of a role now other than for fulfilling requests and having better gear, but it will play a role in being able to access the later floors in the Zhonecage, as the entry requirement per floor is to offer an item of a certain value. The required value will increase per floor, with the very last floor requiring an item or gear worth 200,000 gald (I think, I may be wrong). Don't worry about losing the item though, there's a save point near the altar and you get your item back if you beat the floor.

If he literally doesn't like the system, nor wants to play around with it more than he has to... do you really think he'll do any optional content, especially Zhonecage? Lol.
He'll play through the story and then uninstall for good, hence why I didn't mention it.

But yeah you are right, a bit over 200.000 Gald for the last floor, but again. If he doesn't like the system, nor wants to dualize: You can do one simple item that bumps up to 140.000 Gald (Asbels rare weapon dualizing with Earthen pot and Legendary Metal result) and then Dualize with a high quality shard. +2 or +3 gives 200.000+ in return for the weapon.

There are easy ways, but again: I dont think he'll do it :D

[Seisachtheia]

Yes my decision on whether to do any postgame content will depend entirely on how much I end up enjoying the battle system. So far it's fine, I'm not yet sold on or seeing the "greatest Tales combat system ever" hype that this game gets, but it's also not boring or frustrating. I think I'm still pretty early on though as I've just gotten to Strahta so plenty of time for it to continue opening up.

[Saibot]

Originally posted by Seisachtheia:

Yes my decision on whether to do any postgame content will depend entirely on how much I end up enjoying the battle system. So far it's fine, I'm not yet sold on or seeing the "greatest Tales combat system ever" hype that this game gets, but it's also not boring or frustrating. I think I'm still pretty early on though as I've just gotten to Strahta so plenty of time for it to continue opening up.

It opens up even in Chapter 9 (Chapter after the main story). The combat system is very good, but not without its flaws. Definitely top 3 for me.

[Elbs Final One]

I am not sure you'd get far in the game outside of maybe Easy mode. The best weapons that I've found are ones I just found in treasure chests in the post-game, but dualized weapons carried me all the way there.

Just a note though, dualization is an incredibly easy crafting system since you don't need to experiment at all (it's not one of those systems). All possible recipes are immediately shown both in the in-game dualization book and through the green-highlights in the dualization menu. The Mixer allows you to spawn any material you ever picked up too, so you can't mess up.

EDIT: Also keep in mind that the combat system is more interesting when you have more CC capacity, and that increases through weapons... So, non-converted weapons you get at shops won't have as much CC capacity as some converted ones.

EDIT 2: And if you ignore even weapon-shard dualization, you won't even be able to get CC through the Exceed shards/gems, so you'd be really constrained in combat.