The world of Digimon Story: Time Stranger is filled with compelling mysteries and cool-looking Digimon to evolve, but navigating the digital world of Digimon games for the first time might feel overwhelming. From how to help your Digimon unlock new forms to the best skills to run with your agent, there’s a lot to learn.
In order to help you have a smooth experience and enjoy this new Digimon adventure, we’ve prepared 10 beginner’s tips to start playing Digimon Story: Time Stranger.
De-Digivolving is as important as Digivolving
It’s only natural that we want to Digivolve our favorite Digimon to its next form, seeing it become stronger with every change. However, progression in Digimon Story: Time Stranger depends on having a solid foundation before aiming for higher goals, so you will want to De-Digivolve your Digimons.
Whenever a Digimon hits max level, you can transform it back to its previous form and level it up to go back to its current stage. By doing so, you increase a Digimon’s level cap, and it will inherit some of the attributes it acquired before De-Digivolving.
Grinding is part of the experience
While it may break the rhythm of the campaign, it’s important to spend time grinding when you arrive at a new area. The story in Time Stranger is filled with questions and intriguing situations that can make you wish to focus only on completing quests, but you will find yourself underleveled, and fights in this game are more punitive than in previous Digimon Story games.
Sure, your Digimon level won’t ensure victory, since the battle system in the game has a rock-paper-scissors structure where elements also play a part. However, having a Digimon of the perfect type and element for a certain situation won’t matter if there’s a three levels difference between them. When it comes to important fights, being underleveled makes it almost impossible to defeat bosses. In case you don’t want to worry about that, you can always change the difficulty mode to “story” when facing key encounters, lowering considerably the friction you experience in the game.
Finding the right grinding spot is the secret to leveling up
If you plan on jumping into Digimon Story: Time Stranger and saving the Digiworld, you must be ready to grind. There’s a trick when it comes to leveling up your Digimon, though. You can speed up the process by choosing a grind spot next to one of the exits of the area.
In Time Stranger, a defeated enemy respawns after a few minutes. However, if you leave an area, it resets, which means that all the creatures come back to life, and material nodes are refreshed. The best strategy to level up is to kill all enemies in a small area with a high concentration of wild Digimon, leave the map, and come back to find all the enemies ready to be defeated once again.
Burn your SP
Veteran RPG players have been taught to be mindful when it comes to using skills or casting spells that require SP, since the items you need to recover them are usually rare or expensive. However, in Time Stranger, you should use skills and burn as much SP as you want to, because you can recover these points by standing still for a few seconds.
Prepare a training plan
After you unlock the farm, you can train Digimon to increase their basic stats and meet the requirements to evolve them. However, since you can’t access the main menu to see your Digimon’s evolution requirements while in the farm, the processes can become convoluted when you’re trying to keep track of 15 Digimon. That’s why you should do some prep work.
Use the notes on your phone — or a clean page from a notebook if you’d rather go for a more old-school approach — and write down the numbers a Digimon needs to reach. This will prevent you from having to leave the farm only to access the main menu. Next, select the Digimon you want to train based on the attributes they need to raise.
You can only train a Digimon if a training set is available, and at the beginning of the game, you will have only one of each type. Picking two or more Digimon who need to raise the same attribute means that most of them will be idle in the farm. By organizing the training sessions, unlocking the next forms of your Digimon becomes a quicker and less annoying process.
In Digimon Story: Time Stranger, you have the Digiline and, yes, you will receive lots of messages, but you should do your best to answer them.
Among the messages you will receive, there are two types you should respond to. The first is a notification informing you when a training session for one of the Digimon in the farm has come to an end. By answering this message, you re-assign the same training routine without having to visit the farm, which saves you a lot of time. It won’t tell you how many attribute points a Digimon received from the previous training session, though. The other messages you should answer come from your own Digimon and depending on the dialogue option you pick, your response might change its personality.
Always convert new Digimon
It only takes a few hours in Digimon Story: Time Stranger to have many Digimon ready to be converted, which means turning the data you acquired by beating that type of Digimon into the actual Digimon. While there are some cases in which you may want to hold the data for later, in general, you should always convert a Digimon when the data hits 200%.
In Time Stranger, having multiples of the same Digimon is actually a good thing. Each Digimon has more than one evolution path, so by having two Agumon, one can turn into a Greymon while the other becomes a Growlmon. Besides, you can sacrifice a Digimon to enhance another, giving them experience points and attributes. So, by not converting your Digimon, you’re wasting a lot of potential.
Let your Digimon enjoy the farm
If there are remaining slots in your farm after having planned all the training sessions you can have running at the same time, consider moving Digimon you won’t be using in your party to it. Although the game doesn’t explain in detail how it works, as Digimon spend time in the farm, they collect materials which you can use to craft items with Zudomon in Central Town. The loot is always listed when you visit the farm after some time. While on the farm, these Digimon receive experience points as if they were with you, so you won’t be losing anything on that front.
Prioritize Agent Skills that increase experience
Agent Skills are a brand-new feature in Time Stranger that allows you to unlock upgrades or Cross Arts — unique skills for your agent. Despite how useful these upgrades can be, it’s important to prioritize the skills that increase the amount of experience a Digimon earns. For example, “Lesson in Rearing” boosts the experience gained in battle by 1% for each Agent Rank. All the skill trees have skills like this one and by unlocking all of them, you receive a considerable experience boost. Although the other Agent Skills can increase the HP or other attributes, nothing improves your chances of defeating a difficult enemy more than raising the level of your Digimon.
Support Cross Arts are the best
Cross Arts are special abilities you unlock using the Agent Skill points, and that you can use during fights to help your Digimon. Since they don’t count as a Digimon action, popping a Cross Art means you will be acting twice in a turn, which is extremely powerful. But if you want to get the most out of these skills, you should run the support-focused ones.
The available Cross Arts can be split between offensive and support skills. The former are good, but the buffs and healing you can get from the latter are more useful in boss fights, especially in the first part of the game. You won’t have good group healing skills, and recovery items are expensive, making support Cross Arts the best option early on.
