By 2021's standards, the original Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne's demon fusion mechanics are dated and frustrating. And while that mostly applies to the infamous ritual of re-rolling inherited skills, there's so much more under the hood that true mastery of Nocturne's fusion can be elusive. But early in 2012 I decided to challenge its inner workings and make (approximately) "perfect" demons, namely a void-all Arahabaki and healing/support tank Amaterasu. I knew the process would be painful and take many patient hours to succeed, but I got it done and recorded it step by step. This is that story.
So, in a sense, this is also the story of what features might still remain with Nocturne HD's newly updated manual skill selection. Even without time-wasting RNG, the base game's hidden inheritance rules, demon types, skill restrictions, and so much more ensure that achieving specific, high-tier intentions will still take a bit more effort than, say, Shin Megami Tensei IV's practically limitless and also relatively mindless skill selection. But even if Nocturne HD's fusion is not completely unrestrained, it will still be a far cry from the following, highly technical saga of the hours upon hours using every trick in PS2 Nocturne's book to craft exactly two demons precisely the way I wanted them.
Before We Begin the Insanity
- The following text is adapted from two forum posts originally published February 8 and 12, 2012, respectively, that are no longer publicly viewable.
- All images are pictures taken off my old CRT (RIP). No extra charge for the bonus retro feel.
- I did not take photos of every step. The important ones are all accounted for, though.
- Doublejump's Nocturne strategy guide was my Virgil through this hellish journey. A few mistakes aside (a Puzzle Boy stage or two), it's a great book. It's also basically a facsimile of the Japanese Maniacs guide.
- I've kept all the demon names the same as they were in the original. A glimpse into a time when I didn't care about that at all!
- Yes, Amaterasu is implied to be male in Nocturne (perhaps due to some questionable medieval reinterpretations) but for clarity's sake I will use female pronouns for her since this appearance is an anomaly.
Without further ado, here are our subjects in their splendor:
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| Arahabaki's "all other" is Fire, Elec, Force, Curse, Nerve, Mind |
While on the surface it's a lot less impressive than Arahabaki's skill set, Amaterasu took a lot more planning and experimentation to get right. It may just have been the most complex fusion I've ever done.
There are very few shortcuts in PS2 Nocturne's systems; foreknowledge, patience, and a bit of elbow grease are your only
advantages. And should for some reason you choose not to use skill selection in Nocturne HD, you will absolutely have to abide by all the rules discussed below. I'll start with Amaterasu, since I made her first and her creation is where I learned the most. Let's jump right in!
I. DEITY AMATERASU
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| YHVH's messenger, a thunder god (clothed ver.), and the divine stripper make up the sun |
Amaterasu is only available via a Sacrificial Fusion between (Avatar)
Yatagarasu x (Kishin) Mikazuchi x (Megami) Uzume,
the latter of whom must serve as the sacrificial third ingredient.
Amaterasu naturally voids Fire, Expel, and Death, which alone makes her a great supporting ally. She starts at level 56 and her innate skills
are Tetrakarn and Prominence; at level ups she will learn Godly Light
(57), Debilitate (58), Fire Repel (59), and Prayer (60).
A. Pre-planning
The first thing you need to do, and the key to advanced fusion in
Nocturne, is to know how many open skill slots a demon has by default.
Then it's a matter of deciding what skills you want the demon to inherit
in those open slots, depending on factors like weaknesses and whether
it will aim for a specific role like offense, healing, or support.
Otherwise, when a demon levels up it will start filling in the slots, effectively
permanently, with its own skills; the only way to replace a learned skill is if all 8 slots are filled and the demon learns another or the limited chance a skill can be mutated. It is also important to consider what
innate or learned skills of the demon's you will want to keep. There are a few ways to fill in the skill slots. The most obvious is through regular or sacrificial fusion. Another is elemental fusion, which I'll get into later. The most important fusion method is Mitama fusion, which is not technically fusion in the transformative sense and works mainly to increase demons' stats; it nonetheless allows you to stick almost (key word) anything on any demon with open slots.
Amaterasu has six open skill slots after her innate Tetrakarn and Prominence. I wanted her skillset to include some combination of Prominence, Victory Cry, the all-important Pierce, the powerful attack-all physical Hades Blast, Tarukaja, Godly Light (learned at level 57), Debilitate (learned at 58), and Prayer (learned at 60). However, I never used Godly Light before and I didn't know if it was any good or not, so just in case it wasn't I also added Repel Phys to her potential skill list; if it was good, Repel Phys would replace Prominence, if not, Repel Phys will replace it.
So out of all those skills, up to four will come from Amaterasu herself: Prominence, Godly Light, Debilitate, and Prayer, though it's likely one will get the boot. So where will the other skills come from?
B. Passing down skills
Note that there's really no way to make this particular Amaterasu without having access to a full compendium and the entire game itself, all five Kalpas included. Still, most of what I'll explain is also applicable in a general sense.
Phys Repel, Hades Blast: Phys Repel is justifiably a rare skill to find, as it's only learned by (Deity) Vishnu and (Vile) Samael. Samael learns it much earlier at level 77, but my compendium Vishnu had both it and Hades Blast, so it was a no-brainer to just use him.
Getting those skills off Vishnu is easy, and since I ultimately want them to result inherited on Amaterasu's three required demons, I decided to fuse both of those skills directly on down to Uzume herself. Fusing the Holy and Fairy classes together equal a Megami, so those two became my goal for this segment.
- The first step was to fuse Vishnu (who is base level 93) with (Brute) Shikigami, a level 4 demon. This resulted in level 52 (Kishin) Jikoku, with both Hades Blast and Phys Repel.
- Next, fuse Jikoku down with an Element, in this case Flaemis. This is the basic function of Element demons, to advance a demon up or down a rank based on its level position within its clan. Ranking down Jikoku results in Mikazuchi (with Hades Blast and Phys Repel), a necessary ingredient but will require a different skill set later.
- Fusing Kishin x Beast = Holy, so it's Mikazuchi x (Beast) Badb Catha = (Holy) Feng Huang with Hades Blast and Phys Repel.
- Fuse Feng Huang down with an Erthys to produce (Holy) Unicorn with Hades Blast and Phys Repel. Unicorn becomes the target Holy clan demon we need for Uzume.
- For Unicorn we will need to fuse it with the lowest possible Fairy to produce Uzume. In this case, it's Pixie. However, the Pixie in my compendium is the level 80 bonus Uber Pixie, so I had to go out and recruit one. You know, it was pretty cool that Strange Journey allowed you to resummon a demon in its default state.
- Fuse Unicorn x Pixie to produce Uzume with Hades Blast and Phys Repel. Yes, game, Hades Blast and Phys Repel. Come on, now. Please. She inherits Phys Repel well enough, so why not Hades Blast? This is where I finally consulted the guide to find a possible answer, and boy, did I ever: Uzume flat-out CANNOT learn Hades Blast, and neither can Amaterasu. I'll explain why in a moment.
All things considered though, this revelation came relatively early in the sequence. For expediency's sake, I ended up compromising with this Uzume:
Now, to gaze upon the things we weren't meant to see.
C. Skill ranks and restrictions
These are easily the most evil aspects of Nocturne's mechanics, and it's not just because none of this information is told to you explicitly within the game; even if you do know and have a knowledge bible in your hand like I did, skill ranks and demons' preferred inheritance types will still have you pulling your hair out in frustration, or, worse, put you to sleep like what happened to me a few times after hour-long skill rerolling sessions. The good part about this? You can very easily not care about any of these specifics and still get by in the game just fine.
1. Inheritance restrictions based on demon appearance type
This one's fairly simple actually, and perhaps the most logical. Simply, skills are categorized by the type of action needed to perform them. For example, the skill "Stasis Blade" is a weapon-type skill, so only demons who are physically holding weapons as part of their model/design will be able to inherit that skill. The complete list of appearance type skills is:
- Mouth: Skills where the mouth is used to discharge forcefully, such as Fire Breath or War Cry. In general, the mouth must be exposed or animated for the demon to use Mouth-types.
- Wing: Skills where wings are needed, like Wing Buffet.
- Eye: Skills that utilize the eyes, like Evil Gaze or Mute Gaze. In general, the demons need organic eyes to accept these skills; the four elementals and statuesque Virtue cannot learn them, for example.
- Lunge: Skills that require physical prowess, like the actual skill named Lunge or Berserk.
- Bite: Skills with teeth, like Hell Fang. These tend to belong to beast-type demons such as Cerberus or Shiisaa.
- Claw: Another self-evident and largely beast-only type; skills like Feral Claw.
- Weapon: Demon must hold a sword, spear, staff, etc. to use skills like Stasis Blade or Deathbound. There is no differentiation between weapons demons hold.
- Girl: A skill that requires a young female demon to use. Literally only for Maiden Plea.
- Talk: Conversation skills other than Maiden Plea. Seduce, Haggle, etc. In general, all demons can use Talk skills except wild beasts, spirits, and demons added for the Maniacs edition (Beelzebub, Fiends, Futomimi, etc.).
- Addtionally, there are Needle and Magic type skills, which any demon can learn. The vast majority of the skills in the game are Magic type. More on them later.
So it turns out Hades Blast is a Lunge-type skill. I thought at first that maybe because
both Uzume and Amaterasu float is why they couldn't use it; "Lunge"
implies tackling the enemy, even though Hades Blast looks more like a
large pool of darkness emanating from the user. But no, it appears to be
an arbitrary restriction based on, well, maybe not exactly gender, but the majority who can't are the demure goddesses such as Uzume or Kikuri-hime and our poor, frail Virtue. Even the barely-there Lv. 1 Will O'Wisp can accept Lunge skills! For the record, the only appearance skills Amaterasu can learn are Talk skills. Besides Hades Blast, this won't factor into her fusion any further.
Most skills, such as the elemental spells and support skills like -kaja
spells and voids are of the appearance-neutral Magic-type and thus free of restrictions. But that doesn't mean they get off easy!
2. Skill tiers
Skill tiers are also pretty simple, and have been in every SMT game
since. Basically, skills are ranked into groups based on their rarity
and usefulness. Simple spells like Agi and Bufu are tier 1 while an
end-game Almighty spell like Megidolaon is tier 14, which is as
high as it goes in Nocturne.
Tiers essentially affect two things. First, they provide a scaling
mechanic to determine how easily skills will be passed on from parent
demons to the child in fusion. Have you ever been frustrated because
junky skills keep getting in the way of what you want, forcing you to
constantly reroll and reroll? This is why (partially; see the next section). However, as long
as the skills are appearing somewhere in the results, it IS possible to
achieve any grouping you wish, though the odds will be stacked heavily
against you.
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| Instant alchemy in SMT4 |
3. Demon inheritance type
Skill tiers are bad enough; this is adding insult to injury. Basically, inheritance type determines what type of skills a demon is more likely to inherit. These types are: Phys, Healing, Fire, Ice, Elec, Force, Magic, Expel, Death, Support (buffs). Most are obvious enough, but Amaterasu happens to be a Magic-type which means she has even odds of inheriting anything that consumes MP, plus she is poor at inheriting Phys attacks, not that it matters anymore.
So, if you're fusing a demon of a particular
type and its parents have a skill it favors but one you don't want,
good freakin' luck shaking it off. From my experience, sometimes it
seems outright impossible to fuse what you want if the inheritance type
is misaligned. This affected the Arahabaki fusion greatly, but I'll get
to that when the time comes.
4. Number of inherited skills
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| A Jack Frost fusion from HD resulting in 4 inherited skill slots with one remaining |
To use as examples, I did some experimenting with Amaterasu ingredients Yatagarasu, Mikazuchi, and Uzume early on to determine how to appropriate the best number. As a rule, lower = better, because you can fill in the remaining slots with Mitama. It's also a lot more difficult to get what you want with a higher number.
In the test, Yatagarasu had 6 skills, Mikazuchi had 4, and Uzume had 5. That passed 4 skills onto Amaterasu. Having 6 x 5 x 5 meant that 5 skills passed onto her (note: while 5 skills is the max for normal binary fusion, ternary sacrificial fusion's max is 6. See Arahabaki's section for more). So, some combination of 6, 4, and 5 was the goal set, though better if I could somehow get fewer. When fusing demons down in level, such as what I did with Vishnu, it's good to use a demon with only two skills to limit the amount of junk carried over. No demon has fewer than two skills and I don't think it's even possible to pass on any fewer than two skills either.
Mitama themselves are also notably affected by this concept. All 4 of the Mitama have 3 innate abilities, and innate abilities do count towards the averaged total of inherited skills. What this means is that when fusing Mitama, none of them will start with fewer than 5 abilities. (The Mitama you can buy from Rag's are useless here as they wouldn't have any abilities you'd want to pass on to others.) So, going further, in almost all circumstances a Mitama will pass on 3 abilities to the target demon if it has enough open slots. However, if you have a Mitama with only 5 abilities and since 3 of those abilities are the Mitama's annoyingly junky innate skills (EXCEPT for Ara Mitama's Tarukaja in this circumstance), only 2 of those skills will be "yours" and one of the Mitama's junk skills is guaranteed to be inherited. The only solution to this then is to make Mitama with 6 skills, 3 which are your chosen. Any more than that is risky because it'll become more difficult to pass on what you want.
Another reason that passing on 4 skills to Amaterasu is ideal is that it's pretty absurdly easy most times to fill in the remaining two empty slots with a Mitama's skills, even if the skills are high tier. Of course, it can still depend greatly on the demon's inheritance type. In certain cases, passing on 3 skills from a Mitama can seem like too much; this is something else that affected the Arahabaki fusion.
D. Damage control and Yatagarasu
So, back to the actual subject. Uzume is done, but not being able to transfer Hades Blast put in a big hole in my plans. With it gone, something like Pierce is nigh useless too so that leaves at least two slots to fill. I still wanted her to be a Physical support type, since physical skills can be so broken in this game. It would also be best if I incorporated some lower-tier skills as well; ones that were inheritance neutral Magic-types and wouldn't aggravate once it became fusion time. I wanted Tarukaja from the start, which is neutral and relatively low-tier. Endure might also be a good skill, since Amaterasu doesn't have a lot of Vitality; it too is low-tier Magic-type. With two low-tier skills then, it's feasible to leverage them with something high-tier, so Megidolaon became a possibility. Those three skills then became the goal for the next ingredient demon: Yatagarasu.
1. Averaging fusion results.
Yatagarasu is a level 46 demon of the Avatar clan, so my target combination to make one was Beast x Holy, specifically (Beast) Sparna and (Holy) Feng Huang. Roughly, the formula for determining fusion results is an average of the two parent demons’ base levels plus one level because the results always round up to the next highest demon in the clan’s rank. Sparna is level 54 and Feng Huang is 36, averaged together equal 45+1= 46. Note that things will rarely work out that exactly. But say you had two demons who averaged out to a level 27 Avatar result—you would still get Yatagarasu instead of the next lowest Avatar, level 26 Cai Zhi, because of the rounding.
This quick formula is simplified compared to what the game actually uses, but better to use for quick estimates than the real one. Outside of a few common formulas, I've never memorized the race combinations. You just don’t need to! All you need to remember is to stick to Light or Neutral tendency (which is separate from the LAW-NEUTRAL-CHAOS alignment) demons and you will succeed. So races like Divine, Fairy, Jirae, Yoma, Fallen, Femme, etc. Dark affinity races like Viles and Tyrants can be exceptions, but you just want to make sure you don’t fuse them into junk like Wilders and Fouls, because it becomes harder to fuse anything worthwhile with them. This is also Nocturne-only advice since recent games made it much more difficult to dead-end yourself with Dark tendency demons.
2. Skill farming
Like snatching Repel Phys and Hades Blast from Vishnu for Uzume, I was lucky enough to have a (Snake) Naga with Megidolaon and Tarukaja, and a (Fallen) Flauros with Endure.
Fallen x Snake = Beast, so I fused Flauros and Naga together to make Sparna with Tarukaja, Endure, and Megidolaon. Then it was just a matter of buying back the Feng Huang from the Uzume step to fuse our Yatagarasu.
Simple! Only one more demon ingredient to go.
E. Mikazuchi
As a brief refresher, my goal was for Amaterasu to have the following skills: Victory Cry, Tarukaja, Repel Phys, Debilitate, Prayer, Godly Light, Megidolaon, and Endure. Debilitate, Godly Light, and Prayer she learns by leveling up, so the other five would have to come through fusion. Four skills have been locked in:
- From Uzume: Repel Phys
- From Yatagarasu: Tarukaja, Megidolaon, Endure
Mikazuchi would then need to have Victory Cry at the very least.
However, during a previous attempt, I had gotten impatient and just tried fusing Amaterasu with the
Mikazuchi that resulted during the Uzume creation process.
Unfortunately, it didn’t gel because that Mikazuchi was saddled with
extra unwanted abilities that mucked up the fusion process. Next, I decided to remake him with Victory Cry and some overlap with
Tarukaja and Repel Phys. More than one demon sharing a skill does NOT
increase the chances of it appearing on the result but does have the
appreciable effect of reducing the total skill pool.
Somewhere along the line I fused a (Deity) Horus with Phys Repel, and
since Horus is level 38, roughly around level 45 Mikazuchi, he would be a
good starting point. Deity x Brute also = Kishin, so that saves a few
steps. For this to work, I’d need to use (Brute) Ikusa in the fusion,
who is level 44.
Since I only needed to worry about Victory Cry and Tarukaja for the moment, I used my
Ara Mitama to fuse both onto a blank (other than his innate skills, Lunge and Focus)
(Brute) Momunofu, then used an (Element) Erthys to rank him up into an
Oni. This was quite possibly the most frustrating step of all. For some
reason, it took about an hour to get both Victory Cry and Tarukaja onto
the Oni (only two skills in total were being transferred). This was again
due to inheritance type restrictions; Oni is a Phys type, and both
Victory Cry and Tarukaja count as Magic. This wouldn’t have been a problem
except I was also carrying over Momunofu’s default Lunge skill, so 9
times out of 10 that skill wanted to cling. It also didn’t help that the
Erthys’ Zio and Patra skills are super low tier compared to Victory Cry.
But regardless, I eventually got the result I wanted and then passed the skills onto Ikusa as well, at considerably less effort presumably due to Ikusa's Death inheritance type. Passing on the skills to
Mikazuchi in the Horus x Ikusa fusion was easy by comparison. Here’s the result:
This was just hours of fun, I tell you.
F. LET’S FUSE AMATERASU AT LAST
Sacrificial fusions can only be performed at FULL Kagutsuchi, for a true artificial occult experience. Unfortunately, fusion accidents have a high chance of occurring during FULL but fear not—special fusions like sacrificial and fiend fusions are totally immune from them. Now, here’s our total skill pool and how each skill ranks:
From Yatagarasu:
- Mana Aid (6)
- Violet Flash (8)
- Megidolaon (14)
- Tarukaja (5)
- Endure (5)
From Mikazuchi:
- Ziodyne (7)
- Shock (5)
- Phys Repel (12)
- Victory Cry (13)
- Tarukaja (5)
From Uzume:
- Media (5)
- Mazan (3)
- Phys Repel (12)
- Rakukaja (7)
Desired skills are bolded, repeats struck through. 12 total skills, 5 required. Again, Amaterasu is a Magic type skill inheritor, and as luck has it all of those skills are Magic type, so only rank will affect inheritance.
So I wanted 5 skills out of the 12. But I’m only passing on 4, right? Right. I
figured by having more skills than I could possibly pass on at once, it
would increase my chances of success. I was hoping for two from
Megidolaon/Phys Repel/Victory Cry and both Tarukaja and Endure. Seemed
reasonable enough.
The innate skills from these three demons were ever the thorn in my
side. Mazan is the lowest-tiered skill and did in fact appear the most
in rerolls. (On a related note—rerolling sacrificial fusions is even
worse than usual since you have to confirm everything twice.) Besides
that, there’s not much else to say other than I kept trying until I got
it. I never expected to get all three of Megidoloan/Phys Repel/Victory
Cry at once, but it happened:
Stupid Ziodyne. I also should have re-fused Uzume to exclude Rakukaja. I can’t tell you
how many times I got a perfect roll of skills except that Rakukaja was
in there instead of Tarukaja. So here’s what she looked like
post-fusion:
The empty slots were filled by Phys Repel and Mediarahan. Mediarahan may seem a little redundant with Prayer, but Prayer also sucks down the MP like it’s Tubby Custard, plus you can’t use it outside of battle. The only other skills I was considering were Makakaja and Dekunda, but eh, I’m happy with it. She’s there to provide support to Focus/Pierce-wielding, physical powerhouse boss killers. Since I had room to experiment by getting rid of her Prominence and Tetrakarn, I tested out Godly Light. When it hits it reduces all enemies’ HP by 80%, but has abysmal accuracy. Into the garbage it went! One last look at the final setup:
So there we go. That’s how you fuse one demon in Nocturne. Now, let's fuse another one!
II. VILE ARABAHAKI
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| Hey, it's that art missing from Kaneko Works IX! |
(*You can buy an Arahabaki from a Shady Broker in Third Kalpa but he mostly has common buff/debuff skills and is not worth the effort or money.)
A. Battle plan
Like before, the first step is deciding what skills the demon needs and how many open slots are available.
1. Strategy
This is incredibly simple this time. Arahabaki Repels Ice, and voids Phys, Expel, and Death. He’s weak to Fire, Elec, Force, Curse, Nerve, and Mind. It’s a real shame Nocturne doesn’t have one of those elemental affinity status bars the later games have. If it did, his would look like this:
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| The latter three are respectively Curse, Nerve, Mind |
His Physical void is the earliest one available in the game and a good reason why he can be such a useful ally in random battles even without his weaknesses covered up. If you can pair him with a few demons that can void those weaknesses, there’s an even greater chance for success since, with the Press Turn System, when any group–ally or enemy—has a demon that is weak against something, another that voids/repels/drains it, and is hit with an attack-all skill of the same element, the "tie" will go to the void/repel/drain (or evasion).
Since the goal is to patch over all of Arahabaki’s weaknesses with the right elemental passive skills, we don’t have to worry about contingency plans. And where possible, I didn’t want anything less than Drains/Repels on him since they will instantly nullify the enemy’s press turns. This means we will need Drain/Repel Fire, Drain/Repel Elec, Drain/Repel Force, Void Curse, Void Nerve, and Void Mind. There are no higher tier ailment-nullifying skills than the voids, though Daisoujou can innate drain Curse and Mind.
Luckily, Momunofu has exactly six open skill slots. His two default skills, Lunge and Focus, aren’t terrible either, which is good because we can’t do much about them anyway.
So, where are we going to get all of those elemental-voiding abilities?
- Fire Drain: Lv. 70 (Night) Nyx, at 74
- Fire Repel: Lv. 56 (Deity) Amaterasu, at 59; Lv. 76 (Kishin) Thor, at 80
- Elec Drain: Lv. 74 (Tyrant) Surt, at 75
- Elec Repel: Lv. 74 (Lady) Skadi, at 77; Lv. 75 (Wilder) Hresvelgr, at 79
- Force Drain: Lv. 91 (Tyrant) Mot, at 94; Lv. 58 (Wargod) Ganesha, at 60
- Force Repel: Lv. 64 (Megami) Scathach, at 65
I was particularly interested in getting Elec out of the way first, and
it would be easier to make a Hresvelgr with less skill baggage than
Skadi, since the bird can be recruited from battle. In general I like Repels better than Drains, not only because
Repels are a tier higher, but because the reflecting effect is way cooler. In practice, neither one really has an advantage over
the other; no enemies have Pierce and thus can't bypass Drains.
The slight bit of damage or HP recovery also isn’t going to make much of a
difference because unlike, say, Strange Journey, Nocturne doesn’t
feature insane level scaling. However, theoretically it should be
ever-so-slightly easier to transfer Drain skills.
3. Elec Repel and Force Drain
When I fused the Hresvelgr he came with Void Force, which seemed innocuous at the time since I was only using him for Elec Repel and would probably get Force Repel off Scathach later anyway. Then a curious thing happened. During a level up he wanted to change a skill. Because I didn’t care about Void Force I let him do it – and he upgraded it into Force Drain (as seen right). A pleasant upgrade, one alluded too earlier when describing skill mutations and upgrades. However, while all elemental voids and Void Phys can be mutated into their respective Drains, the Drains cannot be upgraded into Repels. Skill mutation comes into play again in the Momunofu fusion, so I’ll go into more detail then.
Of course, once I finally got Elec Repel, I decided to keep Force Drain as part of the setup too, becoming part of the above Erthys I'd use later. I’d be crazy not to. So that’s 5 out of the 6 skills accounted for since Black Frost alone has 3. Now, one final choice: Fire Repel or Fire Drain?
4. The Answer is Fire Drain (and more Sacrificial Fusion mechanics)
This was easier than expected. Since I just fused Amaterasu and tossed the Fire Repel she learns at level 59, Nyx's Fire Drain learned at level 74 would be the next best deal. But as I was about to resummon her for grinding I didn't want to do, I remembered that Nocturne actually has a way around it with Sacrificial Fusion. Since Amaterasu was a special case, I didn’t really get into talking about its actual mechanics last time.
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| Nyx stock photo |
Say we are fusing demons A and B, and sacrifice demon C, to get demon D. If demon C is base level 20 and is sacrificed when it is level 25, demon D will be a number of levels higher than its base level determined by the factor of C’s experience gained. For simplicity’s sake, let’s just say it gains 5 levels over its base level, though the guide says the resultant demon actually gains 50% more experience than the sacrifice had which seems a little crazy, but is totally true! It also seems to be the final piece of the puzzle in breaking Nocturne wide open to the point of it forming its own event horizon. I’ll explain in the next section. Generally though, for estimation purposes it tends to be close enough that the demon will grow by a factor of C’s levels gained rather than its experience.
Needless to say, this is pretty rad. Depending on how things calculate, you can occasionally end up with a demon that requires a pittance of experience to level up, as any remainder of experience is still added towards the demon’s next level. And as long as a demon is an appropriate level, it can potentially learn all of its skills on one level up. This was my goal for Nyx since Fire Drain is the final skill she learns, so I would have to sacrifice a demon that has leveled up enough to get her to level 73 and slightly beyond for an easy level up and her learned skills.
Even better is that you CAN resummon demons you’ve registered in the compendium who are above their base level and use them as EXP offerings. A certain Pixie you can acquire in Fifth Kalpa who is 78 levels above her base seems designed for this sort of thing. Sadly, there are a few restrictions with this type of fusion. You can’t perform sacrifices when a Mitama is part of the basic fusion; however, it's possible for them to be the sacrificed demon. You also cannot sacrifice when making Mitama or Elements themselves. However, you CAN sacrifice when performing rank down/up fusions with Elements. Also remember there is a 1/16 chance of accidents during Full Kagutsuchi, up from 1/256. Just be sure to save.
Though I had assumed during my Amaterasu tests that the maximum number of skills that can be carried over in fusion is 5, it’s actually 6 when performing a sacrificial fusion and this is dependent on the number of skills the demons have. If both parent demons have the max of 8 and the sacrifice also has a high number, you’ll get six. Again, the max number for normal fusion is still 5 skills.
But anyway, back to Nyx. I summoned the demons I needed to make her and also a slightly leveled-up demon for the sacrifice… only to discover a frustrating roadblock. When you have Deathstones (the items needed to fuse Fiends) in your inventory and if on a FULL Kagutsuchi the resulting demon in fusion will be a Night (like Nyx), it will trigger the fusion of Daisoujou instead. There is no way around this other than getting rid of your Deathstones. You can’t drop them or sell them, only fuse them away, and because I had 9 of them at the time I figured it would be time better spent manually leveling her up. This oversight also affects possible Tyrant Sacrificial Fusions, which is a bummer! Those will always become Trumpeters. My only advice is just to not pick up Deathstones until you need them.
So I flip the game the bird, level up Nyx to get Fire Drain, summon Black Frost to get his ailment voids, fuse both down into Holy demons to make the below Flaemis and finally a Saki Mitama with three repeat skills (Fire Drain, Void Mind, Void Curse).
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| Saki Mitama not pictured, but it had the same skills as Flaemis here |
The End. If only.
5. True Fusion Maniacs
But first, time for an unexpected detour. As stated, I only discovered this fun
little stratagem as I was putzing around to confirm things about
Sacrificial Fusion. Not only is the 50% experience bonus to Sacrificial Fusion results super legit, it means is that you can seriously abuse it for outrageous
results. It’s really simple; you just need a lot of money.
I started with the Uber Pixie from Fifth Kalpa. Used as a sacrifice,
everything I fused instantly became level 99 or above. Sadly, Nocturne
does not display levels above 99 so you have to guesstimate based on
other factors like stat points and experience needed for the next level.
I then used the resulting demon from the Uber Pixie fusion as a
sacrifice in another fusion, which resulted in even more stat points than the
previous. I kept sacrificing these successive generations and before
long every new fusion resulted in a perfect set of stats; perfect 40s across
the board, which is a total of 200. Say
the Pixie transfers 250,000 EXP; the next generation of sacrifice will
transfer 375,000; the next, 562,500, etc. And to reiterate, the
experience from the sacrifice is just being added to the resulting
demon’s base level, for any base level.
The important part is that, again, you can register these outrageous sacrifices and achieve the same result with them over and over, as long
as you have the money. Resummoning cost in Nocturne is determined by the
number of stat points a demon has, and when a demon is maxed it costs
200,000 macca (100,000 if you have a full compendium).
I also confirmed that the obscene experience is also
carried over through transformation. I fused a junk Momunofu with the
Uber Pixie, making him Level 95 and when he leveled up and transformed,
Arahabaki remained level 96. I never made any serious attempts with this but the
potential is there.
The actual level limit in Nocturne is 255. I eventually hit that limit or, more likely, level 254. As an example, here's
a Horus that resulted from an uber sacrifice:
Note his MP and the absurd amount of experience needed to gain a level. I
believe that 885 MP amount represents an upper limit (without passive
MP-increasing abilities?) as it was present during previous
fusion generations prior to realizing I already hit the experience cap.
I did attempt to reach the absolute final level and an experience counter that read “0.” I couldn’t, likely because the designers realized that if you could go to max level merely by fusion, you wouldn’t be able level up and thus the demon would be barred from learning its skills. Thus, you're forced to gain at least one level by providing a hard limit to the amount of levels you can gain by a sacrifice.
It also seems that you need to gain all the required experience for level 255, meaning the experience cannot flow beyond level 254 itself. By the time you get this
high you will also see differing amounts of experience needed to gain the final
level. I fused a Vishnu with the uber sacrifice that only needed
330,000 (only!) to gain the final level. This is not extra EXP overflow but instead an effect of base level scaling. The higher a demon’s base level,
the less experience it needs for successive levels. For example, a base
level 10 demon might need 550 exp to reach level 11; on the other hand,
a base level 9 demon might need 560 to reach level 11 from level 10.
Thus, base level 38 Horus needs 571,204 exp to reach level 255,
while base level 93 Vishnu needs 330,000. To show the scale of that
number, you earn an average of 1200 exp per fight in the final dungeon’s
more lucrative areas. Then again, with Riberama and powerful demons,
you can earn 30,000 exp in 5 minutes or so, not that it makes these numbers anything less than staggering.
I experimented in battle with a few of these near-maxed
demons. I was surprised to find that magic (I had a pitiful Mazan and a
Megidolaon on hand) was doing around the same damage it would at any
other level. Mazan did double digits and Megidolaon did nearly 300. I
guess it doesn’t scale, then? Physical, however, did. Regular attacks
did ~600 damage, which is effectively double the strength of demons
level 90-100. Offensive skills did approximately double as well. I have
heard stories that Surt’s Ragnarok is unique in that it scales damage
with level, but that would probably require at least 450,000 experience
to find out first-hand. The near-maxed demons also seemed pretty adept at dodging
stuff, though that may be more from the max agility than the level.
The potential for uber sacrifices once again comes down to patience. Of course this will need to be in NG+
so the fusion level cap is removed. It’s also impractical to level a bunch of 254 demons just to get their skills, so maybe it’s best
to stop the EXP snowball after a sacrificial generation or two. But it makes for a fun experiment and the fact that you can register a level 254 demon to
instantly boost another is pretty tempting. At the very least, if there
is one final way to break Nocturne, here it is.
B. Momunofu
Right, back to business. We have two options for infusing skills onto Momunofu. The first is to recruit a blank one with all 6 skill slots open and fuse 3 skills onto him twice with two Mitama. The other is to use Elemental fusion to rank up a (Brute) Shikigami, passing some skills along with it, then using Mitama to fill in the rest. Because the former method requires fusing some relatively high-tier skills onto him TWICE, we’ll be going with Elements.
1. Elemental fusion
Elemental fusion is incredibly simple, and I already explained the nature of going up and down ranks within a clan with Amaterasu. Its secondary function then is being able to fuse two skills onto a demon.
Elements only start with 2 innate abilities, unlike the Mitama that start with 3. As I also talked about previously, that meant that you would always be forced to transfer at least 3 skills at a time with Mitama. However, if you can manage to get an additional 2 skills you want on top of the Element’s innate 2 abilities for a total of 4, 2 skills will transfer to the result, so long as the other demon you’re fusing with the Element also has a small number of skills. In general, and barring inheritance type problems, it’s very easy to get any two skills inherited this way.
So for detail, our first major step towards Arahabaki is: Lv. 4 (Brute) Shikigami + Erthys (w/ Elec Repel and Force Drain) = Lv. 20 (Brute) Momunofu with Elec Repel and Force Drain on top of its Focus and Lunge which leaves 4 open skill slots. It didn’t take very long to get both of those skills on there.
2. Mitama fusion and skill mutation
Mitama fusion has already been explained and as we all know it’s just a matter of patience and luck to get the right roll of skills.
The next step was Momunofu + Saki Mitama (w/ Fire Drain, Void Curse, and Void Mind). I didn’t think it would be much of an issue getting all three of those skills at once. Fire Drain is tier 9, while Void Curse and Mind are only each tier 6. I rolled and I rolled and I rolled, but I could never get all three at once. This is why you want to transfer as few skills at once as possible. My luck ended up being so poor I decided to try something else: skill mutation.
Again, skill mutation in Nocturne can only be triggered when a demon levels up and it has an upgradable skill from a select pool, like Hresvelgr's Void Force to Force Drain. Or, from my experience, there’s a slightly higher chance that this will fail and a random skill from a tier above that skill will be chosen instead. My plan was to replace one of the ailment voids with a lower tier Anti-Ailment skill instead, then get Momunofu to mutate it into a proper void during his leveling process.
Before committing, I experimented a bit with a Shiisaa with two upgradable skills: Feral Claw and Anti-Fire. Feral Claw upgraded to Venom Claw without much trouble, but when it came time to mutating Anti-Fire, it would only randomize and never upgrade. I tried probably short of a dozen times, but it would never mutate properly. I eventually had to conclude that a demon can only upgrade one skill; any subsequent mutations will randomize. This doesn't seem right but it's the only conclusion I could make based on the data. Reloading saves only to achieve the same result is tiring and also insane.
I've already explained that passive skills like your Fire Drains and Void Curses are categorized as Magic-type skills, not as general support skills like I had thought. Well, here's the moment I learned that. Something like Fire Drain then is actually a Fire skill and Momunofu, being a Phys type inheritor, doesn’t take kindly to magic skills like it or others. Rather, on any particular roll, he has the highest chance of inheriting Physical skills (of which there are none in this fusion), then Conversation skills (Trade) and Special skills (Analyze). While all Mitama are innately equipped with Analyze and thus "it can't be helped," not all of them have Conversation skills. Trade was appearing in nearly every reroll and proved enough of a hindrance that I had to give up on Saki Mitama. A better candidate proved to be Kusi Mitama, who only has two Support skills (Sukukaja and Dekaja) in addition to Analyze. I quickly put Fire Drain, Void Curse, and Anti-Nerve on it and voila, before long all three skills were passed on to Momunofu. Then it was one more simple chain of fusions to get a Mitama with Void Mind.
However, I became suddenly awash with panic. I would now have to try and mutate Anti-Nerve into Void Nerve but Momunofu's Force Drain was a mutation inherited from Hresvelgr much earlier. Would this actually impact mutations on another demon? After about 5 or more failed attempts at getting Anti-Nerve to upgrade, I thought maybe this was the case. How draconian would that be? Too draconian to be true, actually. A few more tries and it eventually upgraded properly. Now, drumroll please: the completed Momunofu masterpiece!
Yes, it bothered me then that Fire Drain wasn't in sequence with the others! (Now I'm just stunned by the patience I once had.) But my desire to get on with it proved greater.
C. The Arahabaki surprise
The final step is getting the Lv. 20 Momunofu to 24 for the Arahabaki evolution. This takes no time at all in the final dungeon. The only thing of note is that at level 22 he learns Brutal Slash and, just for the heck of it (I saved right before, just in case), I traded his Lunge for it. Brutal Slash is a weapon-type skill and Arahabaki has no weapons, so I was curious to find out what would happen. And just like that…
Woohoo! We’re done! …? Wait, what happened to Brutal Slash? Yes, that’s
right, it just disappeared because it is incompatible with Arahabaki’s
type. This was a complete surprise, creating new implications for
fusion with transformable demons. For example, when I was having trouble
transferring the 3 skills to Momunofu as described above, I could have
included a weapon-type physical skill as part of the mix instead of say,
Anti-Nerve. I didn't test it but I bet it would have been
fairly easy to get that weapon skill, Fire Drain, and a Void ailment all
at once. Then upon evolution the weapon skill would be gone and as long
as I also included Brutal Slash instead of Lunge, I’d have two open
slots for the two other ailment voids!
Unfortunately, this trick is very limited. Most transformations will
result in the same appearance type as the child or the transformation
will actually be an upgrade capable of learning more skill types. Besides Momunofu to Arabahaki, here’s every transformation in the
game that can benefit from this.
- (Yoma) Karasu to (Genma) Kurama (cannot transfer weapon-types)
- (Snake) Naga to (Snake) Raja Naga (cannot transfer weapon-types)
- (Fairy) High Pixie to (Night) Queen Mab (cannot transfer wing-types and girl-types)
- (Night) Lilim to (Night) Lilith (cannot transfer wing-types)
A whopping total of five. The only girl-type skill is Kikuri-Hime’s
Maiden Plea conversation skill, making that completely unhelpful. You can also recruit Raja Nagas, Mabs,
and Liliths later on, making this even more limited, though the Mabs and
Liliths will learn exclusive (and generally better) skillsets if they
result from transformation.
Back to Arahabaki and his mysterious open slot. It was so unexpected I
really struggled to think of what would be the most appropriate. Victory
Cry? He would hardly get damaged by anything and would barely have a
reason to use MP, so that would be useless. Hades Blast? Maybe if he had
Pierce too. He was already so ridiculous, he just needed a little
something extra to show off. A finishing touch. The clincher.
That’ll do.
III. The Future of Fusion
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| Excerpt from my future autobiography |
I did once champion that some level of difficulty with fusion earned a more satisfying result than free selection, particularly around the time it was revealed SMT4 would have the latter (read: a year after the A&A fusions!). The fact that I never made demons like Amaterasu and Arahabaki again I think refutes my own claim. In fact, after finishing them I had intended to fuse a Michael using an uber sacrifice along with a custom skillset I've since forgotten. While I can't deny the results of the A&A fusion experience did produce a certain level of satisfaction, it was just as exhausting and intimidating to consider and thus this Michael never became more than a nice thought. I wouldn't even play the game again until 2017, as a refresher before I wrote my Nocturne article for the Hardcore Gaming 101 Megaten book. It was less post-trauma and more learning to respect my own time.
Granted, SMT4's unrestricted skill inheritance did lead to balancing issues, namely its 400+ plus demons becoming little more than interchangeable face plates for the same few valuable skills over and over; am I exaggerating or are you like me and kept that Null Dark on a demon that innately voided the element just in case the next demon didn't? Or the ease of which you make demons with all elements at all times and completely steamroll the game post-Naraku? SMT4A rather ingeniously slapped each demon with varied and appropriate elemental affinity grades, creating incentive to not throw ice skills on your fire demons while still allowing the player full choice and control without RNG. I think it's safe to assume SMT5 will evolve this concept of free selection with meaningful downsides, but some new or returning auxiliary features could make for the best fusion experience ever. Here's a few completely naïve guesses:
- Persona traits / demon DNA. The skill modifiers/passives originally cut from SMT4. Who wouldn't pass up some extra utility for demons?
- Improved fusion search and additional options. The 3DS lacked the memory for a full compendium search, which shouldn't be a problem with SMT5 on Switch. As for more options, why in god's name were you not able to control the frequency of accidents in SMT4/A, like you could in Strange Journey? For accident-only demons, it was those games' equivalent to time-wasting re-rolling. Fix it.
- Resummoning demons with their default loadouts. A feature in Strange Journey. Since modern Compendium prices reflect skill loadouts and their tiers, this would be useful when you need a demon for fusion but don't want its particular expensive late game skills. Or you can just buy the inevitable money grinding DLC instead. That's good design, right?
- Return of ternary fusion and/or sacrificial fusion. Triple the fusion means triple the consumption of useless demons at once and/or an increased chance to fuse some of the better demon races. Sacrificial fusion seems to have been superseded by special fusions, however. Plus they sell levels as DLC now. Ethical practices.
- Learned skill list. A la Devil Survivor; however, thinking about it, this would be too broken for fusion in a mainline game. On the protagonist, however...
- Sword fusion. A classic mechanic that hasn't appeared since Raidou 2. This would score some MAJOR fanservice points with the lucrative over-40 crowd.
- More beginner-friendly options. Fusion is intimidating for new players. The fusion recommendations in SMT4/A were an okay idea, but could be more. Why not suggest demons that will help specifically for the current boss, or that idea as a flag after multiple game overs to said boss?
- Automatic fusion chains. Basically, select a demon you want to fuse and the app pulls all the demons needed to make that happen into a bespoke genealogical tree, from the compendium or your current stock. Yes, compendium fusion technically already does this, and with only two demons. But imagine if you don't have the right demons there or in your stock? This could be helpful for beginners as they dip their toes into the Cathedral.
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| Not in English, but I don't see any unexpected shenanigans here |
- Rerolling. Well, yeah. Hilariously, the Nocturne HD patch that added free selection also added a skill shuffle function to save you from manually selecting the fusion ingredients to get a different result. Now that's being mindful of the user experience.
- Demon inheritance types. Since the preferences of inheritance types don't actually bar demons from learning their opposites (ex. fire-type demons can still technically learn ice skills), those should now be free for the picking.
- Skill tiers. No more Zan or Tentarafoo clogging things up while you try to pass on Hassohappa and Repel Force.
Expunging these three sub-mechanics alone greatly simplifies things. The few complications we're left with are easy street in comparison. Appearance types are likely to still matter; no, I doubt Amaterasu will finally be able to learn Hades Blast. As confirmed by footage of the Japanese version, the number of inherited skills will still matter, too; but should you need more to fill in extra slots, Mitama are right there at your fingertips. You're still going to need to level up a large variety of demons for the best skills to pass along. Innate skills will still exist and unless the demon learns better ones, you might be stuck with them. And I didn't even talk about Curse fusion--and I'm not going to! So, despite the simplifications, it's not like making those "perfect" demons will require zero effort.
I'll end things with a somewhat prescient quote from the original Amaterasu post:
I hope there is a Nocturne HD coming in the future that gets rid of most of this opaque bullshit.
Back in 2012 I wouldn't have believed you if you told me said Nocturne HD would take nine more years to become reality, or that it would take significant pushback just to receive patched-in skill selection. And while it's manifested as a controversial port with various issues, when the dust settles it will nonetheless be a way to play the game on modern platforms. To be perfectly honest, I'm looking forward to recreating Amaterasu and Arahabaki, maybe even with some tweaks. And then I'll likely find the motivation to finally make that level 254 Michael. And then maybe the nigh-unstoppable Cu Chulainn you'd expect from me, an all-powerful Diaper Odin, that super broken Surt build, a savage Scathach, an Atavaka with...
(P.S. Motivate me to use Twitter more... or not.)
And if you have any questions about the article or if something wasn't explained clearly, let me know in the comments or on my social media and I'll be glad to help! Thanks for reading!
For more on Nocturne relevant to the HD version, a look at the original localization: Nocturnal Revelations (intentional or not, we've already seen some disappointments from the new localization)
I love this but why did you do this
ReplyDeleteSo you would love it a decade later!!
DeleteThat last skill for arahabaki. *chefs kiss*
ReplyDelete(I will update this article as I learn more.)
ReplyDeleteI would love a follow-up that compares SMTV fusion with SMTIII fusion. Even just a paragraph. Personally, I felt like it was a step back in terms of coolness, but with how the series is aiming for a wider audience now, it was inevitable.
Damn, I forgot I said that, lol. Honestly, for one reason or another, I found fusion in 5 to be just kind of ordinary. They didn't even include a granular fusion search! So I'd have to agree with you.
DeleteDamn!! Well detailed and informative Article about Nocturne's demon fusion mechanics. Ordinally described each point in this article. For level up your safety expertise with our institute's OSHA certificate. Gain industry-recognized skills for a secure, fulfilling career in occupational health and safety. Enroll now for success ahead!
ReplyDelete