Tales of Arise Guide For Beginners

Tales of Arise is the latest entry in the long-running JRPG franchise, and it’s an ambitious step up in terms of both design and visuals. As expected of a massive RPG experience, Tales of Arise is filled with different interworking systems and complexities. If you need a helping hand before heading off with Alphen and company, we have you covered. 

Tales of Arise Guide: Manage Your Cure Points Wisely.

Cure points are a brand new system in Tales of Arise, and essentially they boil down to how many healing spells your party can use. Each time a member uses a healing spell your CP will go down. However, the resource is also used to perform each character’s map action. For example, absorbing a wall of fire with Alphen might cost 22 CP, or healing an NPC with Shionne might use up 16 CP. Because of this, you'll want to make sure you're keeping track of your Cure Points as you venture throughout each area of the world. 

There are a couple of ways to restore cure points, luckily. The primary way is by resting at a campfire or an inn, so make sure to make use of these whenever you’re near one. At most points in the game you can actually fast travel out of an area and stay at a campfire or inn then travel back, if you need to. The other way of restoring CP is through items like Orange Gels, but they're not easy to come by and cost 3,000 Gald a pop in stores. Despite that, don't be afraid to pop an Orange Gel if you really need to, as there will always be more.

Tales of Arise Guide: Experiment With Characters and Artes.

Alphen may be the main character of Tales of Arise, but that doesn't mean you need to stick with him the whole time. In fact, it's a better idea to play around with each character and get a feel for them. Every party member has their own unique combat ability, and you'll want to know how to use each one. Battles later on in the game get far more difficult and you may be forced to switch to another character if the one you're controlling dies.

At the same time, you'll also want to play around with different variations of artes on each character. Artes level up with how much you use them, and leveling up artes more often than not leads to unlocking more artes, which is why you want to use as many as possible. 

Tales of Arise Guide: Don’t Forget About Party Tactics

The AI in Tales of Arise will generally do a fairly good job, but the game doesn't really explain the Party Tactics system until a ways into the experience. By going into the main menu and selecting the "Tactics" options you can bring up the Party Tactics. From here there are a number of presets like Balanced, Aggressive, Defensive, etc. The real trick, however, is that you can open each of these presets and customize all the options, like setting the AI to use an Apple Gel if you have over a certain amount in your inventory. 

While you'll want to set up your party Tactics as you see fit, you can also switch tactics in the middle of battle, letting you switch tactics on the fly. 

Tales of Arise: Don’t Stress About Accessories

Equipment works a little different in Tales of Arise, as you'll need to craft most of the weapons and accessories you use. Early on the game will introduce you to a feature that lets you craft accessories, but you'll have a limited pool iof items to use. You can wait until you're about halfway through the game before you even need to worry about crafting accessories. Later on you'll have a ton more items and options to use in crafting, and for the first half just exploring will net you enough accessories for your whole party. 

Tales of Arise Guide: Completing Subquests and Earning Money Effectively

Money, or Gald, is far more limited in Tales of Arise than it has been in past games. You don't actually earn any money for completing battles, so you'll have to resort to other means. To this end you'll want to complete every subquest you come across, noted by an envelope icon on the map.

Subquests are usually short affairs that have you delivering certain items, or battling a specific enemy. Every subquest you complete will reward you with Gald as well as SP. Outside of subquests the other way of earning money is by finding it in chests in the environment, or by selling items to merchants. You can reliably sell any excess materials you might have, but you'll want to hang onto weapons. A lot of weapons forged later in the game requires lesser weapons as materials, so unless you want to forge items again just keep them around.