Metaphor: ReFantazio is a fantastic Persona-like romp through the fantasy genre. But the sheer scale of what’s on offer, combined with the limited number of in-game days to get everything done, means that if you want to do everything in one playthrough, you’re going to need to be efficient.

From making friends to cooking, cleaning, and crawling dungeons, there’s no shortage of things to do in your quest against the evil Count Louis. So, in order to help you get the most out of your time in the Kingdom of Euchronia, we’ve put together a list of tips and tricks to keep in mind as you first strike out in Grand Trad.

Here are 13 beginner’s tips you need to know before starting Metaphor: ReFantazio.

As with all RPGs these days, there are multiple different currencies you need to track in Metaphor. First and foremost, there’s cold hard cash (known as reeve). You use this for buying weapons, armor, potions and the like.

In Euchronia, the week is five days long. Make sure you do your shopping on every fifth day, Idlesday, when the entire kingdom puts on a discount. The days with sales are also marked in your calendar in the main menu.

If you’re short on reeve, you can sell items, beat enemies, or sell your second currency, MAG.

MAG is short for Magla (crystalised magic). Again, there are a few ways to get MAG: first and foremost as a combat reward, but also through saying the right things in conversation and, after the prologue concludes, interacting with the King’s Rock once per day.

Should you spend your MAG on buying reeve, though? Only in a pinch, because its real use is in unlocking new Archetypes and their abilities.

An Atlus game with different combat personas? Well, we never…

Your party members each awaken to a single Archetype (basically a Persona). To start with, these are things like Soldier, Knight, and Mage, but as you play on, you unlock things like the powerful Gunner Archetype, which offers ranged attacks, both in combat and while dungeon-crawling.

Once an Archetype is unlocked and the corresponding party member is added to your Followers, every other member of your troupe can learn it. While this offers huge flexibility in battle, teaching your party members new Archetypes is very expensive, sometimes costing tens of thousands of MAG. You will eventually unlock discounts as part of your friendship bonuses, so feel free to hold off until then if you want everyone to know everything.

That said, there there are actually a few clear best Archetypes, and unlocking the ultimate Archetype (the “royal” version) involves almost maxing out out 2-3 trees per character.

The first party member you pick up is Strohl, so we’ll use him as an example. Strohl’s Warrior Archetype specializes in physical, not magical combat. Obviously, you can turn Strohl into a Mage, but then you lose his other Archetype’s powers.

Fortunately, all is not lost. Once a character’s Archetype has learned an ability, you can pay MAG to unlock the ability for all other archetypes they have.

Bot, for example, is a weak fire-type attack that the Mage learns on unlocking. After a few level ups, it learns Blizz and Kande (ice and thunder, respectively).

For a measly 500 MAG, you can unlock each of these skills for use in each of Strohl’s other archetypes — once paid for, they’re yours!

Just be aware that this doesn’t unlock them for everyone else, so expect to pay a lot of MAG if you want everyone to know the really powerful stuff — up to 28,000 MAG for the most powerful passive skills.

You can add up to four skills per archetype, per character, by maxing out the corresponding Follower’s relationship rank.

Once you’re out of the prologue, you unlock several things that you will want to interact with on an (almost) daily basis.

The first is the aforementioned King’s Rock, which gives you an amount of MAG based on your current popularity. Fortunately, these bonuses accumulate over time, so if you can’t interact with it every day (or you forget), you can collect multiple days’ worth at once.

The other unlocks are in the Gauntlet Runner, your means of travel across Euchronia. Aboard you have the toilet, the washroom and the pantry, among other amenities. If the date is divisible by 5, you can gain 1 Luck by using the loo. Using the washroom every day will net you 100 EXP, and the pantry will give you some free ingredients.

As you progress, you will unlock shops across Euchronia with rotating inventories. We recommend checking each of these, and doing the above daily tasks, at the start of each calendar day, as they’re easy to forget about!

It wouldn’t be an Atlus game without a friendship-simulator element.

Each one of your Followers (including your party members) has a friendship ranking of 1–8. Rank 1 unlocks a new archetype for the party, while Rank 8 unlocks their Heroic Embodiment (if they’re a party member) or the ultimate version of their Archetype if not.

Along the way, there are a series of other helpful bonuses that each of these Followers will grant you, from discounts in stores across Euchronia to significant MAG discounts when unlocking their Archetypes.

Each character is different, and you can get a glimpse of what they do for you as soon as you befriend them. Simply go to Follower on the start menu, pick the one you are interested in, and hit Ability Details. You can see, for example, that when you raise your relationship with Neuras to the right level, he will attack enemies that board your Gauntlet Runner. Similarly, Catherina — who unlocks the Brawler archetype for your party — will sometimes offer support in dungeons once you raise your Follower Rank to a high enough level. Other bonuses include increased EXP and random loot deliveries at the end of the day.

As soon as you unlock a new Follower, see what they can do for you and prioritize your friendships accordingly.

Sure it sounds shady, but that’s politics…

It also wouldn’t be an Atlus game without a virtue system. In this case, you need to raise your royal virtues: Courage, Wisdom, Tolerance, Eloquence, and Imagination.

This is a vital aspect of becoming besties with all of your followers, as progress for certain relationships soft-locks until you reach a given level of one of these virtues. The Merchant, for example, won’t join your cause until you reach level 2 wisdom, while the Berserker won’t be your bestie until you max out your Eloquence.

If you’re stuck for things to do on a given day, you should pick one of these attributes to increase. Not sure how to do that? If you’re stuck for things to do on a given day, you should pick one of these attributes to increase. You can see the icons for each Royal Virtue on the map, or you can ask Gallica for information on the activities available in town.

Additionally, completing certain side quests will also reward you by raising one of your Royal Virtues, which is a nice bonus!

One of the most obvious things about our protagonist is that he is a massive nerd bibliophile. Yes, we know, only a nerd would use the word bibliophile. We apologize for nothing.

As you play through the game, your party members will add books to your Gauntlet Runner’s bookshelf (in the back right of the lounge).

Each book will raise a given virtue, take two to three sessions to read, and can only be read while your Runner is on the move. Make the most of this because while you get small boosts every time you read, you get a much larger additional boost when you finish a book.

This is easily the best way to ratchet up your stats and speed up your quest to be everyone’s bestie. Plus, there’s a trophy in it…

You’ll spend a huge portion of this game spent watching cutscenes and dialogue. (You know what you signed up for.) A similarly huge portion will be spent in dungeons, killing enemies to level up your characters and archetypes. The issue is that there is a limited number of in-game days to do things, and crawling dungeons uses a full day. This means that, unless you absolutely have to, you only want to visit a given dungeon once.

Once you beat the big bad in a given dungeon, feel free to hang around and grind out some extra EXP too. For the first few dungeons, you’ll want to do this until you run out of MP!

Normally, you can only save your game at the entrance to a dungeon, or where you meet Plateau, an apparition of your friend More’s cat.

You will find one Plateau per dungeon — if it’s an indoor dungeon, which tends to be linear, it will be outside the final room, before the inevitable boss fight. If it’s an outdoor dungeon, which are more free roam, Plateau is usually in the middle of the map.

However, you should make the most out of the autosave function, as this can be a lifesaver.

There are two ways to autosave in a dungeon: The first is by picking up overworld loot — the glowing blue orbs that you see on the mini-map and overworld alike. The second is opening a treasure chest.

Both will give you a handy autosave, although treasure chests can sometimes be mimics. So if you’re in a room with a difficult-looking enemy, maybe make a beeline for those first. Also, if you scan a treasure chest, Gallica will let you know if it’s a Mimic!

Unlike Persona games, enemies do not run from you in dungeons. You can be 30 levels higher than them and they will charge you without a care in the world.

You obviously want to get the first attack in, which means hitting them with your weapon. Once you unlock the Gunner Archetype, you can set it to your main character and then use your ranged attack to take out enemies from afar, which will save you a lot of effort.

If your protagonist is using any other Archetypes, you’ll want to make the most of Gallica’s scan ability to see the enemy’s level. If they’re a couple of levels (or more) weaker than you, they will be in a blue highlight/outline (as shown above). You can simply bonk them with your weapon and skip the combat encounter while gaining the usual rewards.

The issue is when they are at, around, or above your level. The former is shown with a yellow highlight/outline, while the latter in a clearly dangerous red.

Against these enemies, you need to do your best to get the first hit in. This means a lot of dodge-rolling out of the way and then attacking them to break their guard. Keep doing this until you see time slow and get a red Squad prompt. This will allow you to start the encounter with the enemy stunned (we’ll cover this in a second).

Beat the enemy without taking any damage and you will get either a 1.25x or 1.5x multiplier to your post-combat rewards. This can add up very quickly.

If you get hit, immediately escape from the battle. This will give you another attempt at starting the battle as you mean to go on — i.e., without an ax to the face.

In combat, each of your party members has one action they can take. If you hit an enemy’s weakness, you can take an additional action, up to a maximum of eight actions per turn.

Stunned enemies can’t do anything on their turn, which is great. However, each time you attack an enemy, they have a chance to recover, based on your Luck stat. This can reduce the amount of attacks you get in before taking a hit from 16 to just 8, or 4 if you don’t hit their weakness. So what do you do if the enemy comes to? Hit the Retry button.

There is absolutely no drawback to this, and it will restart the encounter — including the initial stun attack — and undo any hits you have already taken. Any HP and MP lost will also be returned to you.

Importantly though, the game will remember the weaknesses and strengths that you have discovered until then. So, if you hit an enemy who reflects fire damage with Bot, you can reset the encounter and see a giant red X when you target them with a fire-based attack!

Sometimes you finish a dungeon and want to grind out XP. The issue is that you look at the map and those delicious yellow dots signifying enemies have all disappeared, slain at the end of your blade. What to do?

Simply leave the dungeon (just so you can see More’s apparition, don’t return to town) and reenter. This will cause all of the non-special enemies (elementals and bosses) to respawn. Simply do a loop or run to the end of the dungeon and find your favorite ghostly cat!

Interact with the Plateau Mirage and you will see an option to leave the dungeon. This gives you a free “escape rope” to warp back to the entrance. You leave, come in, rinse and repeat. Good luck grinding out your sweet, sweet EXP!

That’s everything you need to know to get started on Metaphor: ReFantazio like a boss. Best of luck, and enjoy your time in Euchronia!

When you’re ready to dive in, see our guides on how to unlock all Followers and Archetypes, and how to to increase your Eloquence. Plus, here’s how long it takes to beat Metaphor: ReFantazio, and how to get all endings.