Tales of Berseria: Tips For Beginners

Grab All Those Collectibles

Tales of Berseria is packed with tons of collectibles to pick up. These come in two basic varieties, Enhance Materials or Salvaged Items, and Katz Spirits.

Sparking lights on the ground will give you items, usually for enhancing equipment or simple Salvaged Items. Any materials that you pick up you should hang onto, as you’ll need them to improve your weapons and armor. On the other hand, Salvaged Items can be sold for pure profit at shops, although oftentimes they don’t net much Gald.

The other type of collectible, Katz Spirits, are used to open special Katz Chests around the world of Berseria. These appear as little floating purple orbs, and you’ll see them all over the place. All you need to do is pick these up and once you see a Katz Chest, pink chests with cat ears, you can simply walk up to it and use the specified amount of souls to open it. These chests contain Katz themselves, who’ll usually reward you with an Attachment to dress your characters up with.

You’ll be inundated with items and souls as you play Tales of Berseria, but it’s definitely in your best interest to pick everything up.

Make Sure to Watch Skits

Skits are a trademark of the Tales series, showing you conversations between your party members on different topics. These pop up randomly at different times in the game depending on the story or actions you’ve taken. You’ll see a triangle icon appear in the bottom right of the screen whenever a skit is available, and all you need to do is tap the triangle button on your controller to watch it.

Skits provide some vital insight to the story and world of Berseria, particularly fleshing out the characters and their personalities. Staying at Inns in the game can sometimes yield additional skits as well. If you really want to get invested in the story, you’ll want to watch every skit.

Try out Different Party Members

Tales of Berseria lets you control any one party member you want to in battle, and they each play incredibly different. It’s a good idea to spend a bit of time playing each character, and find out which one you prefer. You could play as the healer and magic using Laphicet, or rush straight into the thick of things as Velvet.

You can select which character you want to play as in the menu by setting them first in the party order. Alternatively, you can switch your character in battle by bringing up the menu and using R2 and L2 to cycle them, or by holding L1 and hitting left and right on the D-pad.

Make sure to experiment and see who fits your playstyle best.

Experiment With Lots of Artes in Battle

On top of just playing as different characters, it’s important to experiment with all of the different artes you have at your disposal in battle. Berseria’s battle system changes things up drastically from previous entries, letting you set a four-arte combo on each of the face buttons on your controller. This means you have a huge amount of combinations, as you can specifically change each of the four steps. You’re only going to unlock more artes as you progress through the game as well.

Because of this, it’s important that you just set different artes in each of your combos to experiment a little and see what works best. It’s definitely gonna take some getting used to, but once you find your rhythm in combat you’ll be unstoppable.

Make Sure to Pick Up and Use Herbs

Herbs are special items that you can pick up in Tales of Berseria, that appear as shining plants on the ground. When collected these provide you with consumable items that give you small, permanent stat boosts. They aren’t incredibly rare items, as you’ll be finding quite a few on your journey.

It’s definitely in your best interest to use them, rather than hanging onto the items. They’ll help you boost your characters stats, and give you that tiny bit of an advantage in battle.

Talk to NPCs

Talking to NPCs is usually a big part of any JRPG, and that holds especially true for Tales of Berseria. Every town and port that you visit has a number of NPCs that you’re able to speak to, and it’s definitely in your best interest to do so. Citizens often have interesting information to divulge that gives you context on what’s happening with that town, or how something works in the world of Berseria. On top of that, they can often give you useful hints on where you’re going next.

Outside of talking to random NPCs, you’ll often see a number of exclamation points on your map. These are NPCs with more importance that are given voiceovers, and provide important story related information. On your 50-60 hour journey through Tales of Berseria, you should take your time and see everything you can.

Take Advantage of Cooking

Cooking is a system that’s been in Tales games for a long time, and it’s just as important in Berseria. Cooking is a menu option that lets you apply any one meal to your party at a time. These have various trigger conditions like “Someone’s HP is under 75%.” Once the trigger condition is met in battle the dish will be used. You can also set up an auto-cooking option, that lets you cook any given dish and eat it after every battle. Of course, you’ll need to have the proper ingredients to make anything. Learning new dishes is simple, which you can learn here.

Keeping up on top of cooking or setting up the auto option can give you an edge in battle, or save you in a tough situation.

Use Expeditions to Bring Back Items and Dishes

The Expedition option will be unlocked in your main menu a some point in the story, after about 10-12 hours. This lets you send a scout ship out to explore different areas of the sea, fight enemy ships, and bring back loot. It’s a simple process, as all you need to do is go into the menu and select where you want them to explore. Each expedition takes a specified amount of real world time, usually 30 minutes, until the ship returns.

You’ll want to constantly have a ship out exploring, as they’ll bring you back new enhancement materials, food, and other items. Even better, you’ll learn new Cooking dishes as they bring back exotic food. Keeping an Expedition going doesn’t require much effort on your part, so there’s no reason to not have one constantly going.

Don’t Worry About Blowing Your Gald at Shops

You’ll be earning a lot of Gald throughout Tales of Berseria, that you can use to purchase recovery items and new equipment. You may want to keep a stash of money in case you need it, but realistically there’s no reason to do so. First off there are a couple easy ways to earn Gald, which you can read about here.

Shops in the game have a shared rank, that’s increased when you spend money. Each new rank gives you an additional discount at the shop, and an item. Because of this, you’re better off buying up everything you can at any given shop in an effort to increase the rank. It’ll pay off in the long run as items will become cheaper over time, and you can always go earn more Gald.

Enhance and Dismantle Weapons Constantly

Almost every single battle in Berseria rewards you with some kind of weapon or piece of equipment. You’ll be getting flooded with items as you make your way through the game, so you’ll want to unclutter that inventory a bit. You could just sell them off for money, but the better idea is to dismantle them at shops.

Dismantling gives you necessary items that you need for enhancing equipment, and dismantling something already enhanced will yield even more. For this reason, you’ll want to constantly be dismantling and upgrading your equipment, finding which items give you the best stat boosts and skills when equipped. Constantly cycling things out and trying new things is yet another way to give yourself an edge in battle.