Man, the upgrade system is really awful later in the game.

[Nonexistinghero]

The amount of beast parts you need is just insane. The amount the game itself gives you just doing dungeons, adventuring, etc is only a small fraction of the amount you need. Meaning that you'll need to buy most of them and they're not that cheap either. It's f***ing ridiculous that you literally require like 1500-2000 beast parts to upgrade even a single weapon or piece of armor fully. And on top of buying an insane amount of beast parts, upgrading the equipment also costs a hefty sum of money.

Yeah, it's not really required and I don't intend to go for early full with this insanity. I'm playing on Nightmare and it's not all that challenging beyond the start, save for a boss every now & then. But it's ridiculous that you're forced to grind quite a bit if you want to upgrade everything before new stuff becomes available. Early on it was only doing and extra run here & there through an area. Just 5-10 extra minutes at best, but now you're required to do a lot more. It defeats the whole purpose of the upgrade system when you force that much of a grind on people. It wasn't a problem in the previous more recent games, so it's stupid that it's suddenly a problem here. And it's not just the equipment that requires it, tons of boat upgrades also require a decent amount (though not nearly as many).

Really though, I feel like some parts of this game were just not tested properly or thought out properly. Like the whole fishing thing. The reward for the middle size fish is 1 f***ing elixer that raises a single stat by 3. Not to mention the fact that you already catch all small fish like 15-20% into the game and the middle size fish about 50-60% into the game. Makes no sense.

Anyhow, the amount of beast parts required is just beyond stupid. Even in just the past 2 days of playing the game I think I've spent over 10K for upgrades and whatnot and I'm not even at the end yet.

[steven]

Played on HARD, did a 100% of all the maps, never farmed once and i was short of gold only.
I don't think difficulty affect the % drop rates and prices of things, but i can be wrong since there is no datas LOL. Maybe it affect at least the number of items and the sum of money looted ?

Beast part, crafts, reagents, ingredients, crystal shards, i had plenty of them even after spending it on ship upgrades, armors, bentos, mana seed....
I even payed merchants with gold or another money without distinctions.

For money, to upgrade the 100K stuff, after the final dungeon, I sold whatever i didn't need in my bags (like aurora berries, vajra bones and whatever ) gving me ♥♥♥♥ tons of money really fast (like 400+K).

If you want to farm money, you just need to destroy the pots / crystals / box for loots and then sell them OR you equip the accessories that convert EXP and Crystals to Money.
Then with the money, you buy beast part, crafts, reagents, ingredients, crystal shards instead of farming (if you need).

Overall, i think the prices and drop rates were pretty balanced (except the +3 in a stat potions, costing nearly 300K lol what a joke...)

Do you rush and never kill anyone ? Do you 100% all the maps ? Did you do the recapture drills, giving ♥♥♥♥ ton of materials ? Do you use the good accessories for looting ? Do you break pots / crystals / box whenever you see one ?
It's either a Nightmare modifier or a you problem. No in-between.

[Nonexistinghero]

I've done every bit of optional content out there. There's no way you can have enough parts without grinding if the droprate is the same. Enemies barely give anything, I think I get most of my beast parts from chests I come across (and from buying). Money isn't too hard to get later in the game with some materials selling for over 2K each, but it still requires quite a bit of grinding even with that since it's 15K for a mere 300 parts. Also I'm running with a ton of luck so that also increases the amount of drops and the droprate and I would still need to grind a hefty amount to afford all upgrades (before the next one becomes available to buy).

And no, I don't rush at all. And why would I need do a recapture drill? S-ranking them is easy enough as is.