Visions of Mana is a vibrant and charming role-playing game that harkens back to the classics many of us grew up enjoying, providing hours of enjoyable exploration, character customization, and storytelling. If you’re diving into this new adventure in the Mana franchise, here are some tips for your travels so that you can make the most of your early hours with the game.
The goal is to have fun, so pick a difficulty that suits you best
Visions of Mana offers four difficulties, and you should absolutely pick the one that offers you the level of challenge you desire, as having fun should be your highest priority here. Beginner difficulty is designed for those seeking to just experience the story with very little worry about combat. Easy, Medium, and Hard each ramp up how demanding the experience will be, with the sweet spot for most seasoned role-playing fans likely being Medium.
Just remember that all trophies or achievements can be unlocked on any difficulty, and you can rest assured that you’ll encounter fights that are certain to require some extra strategy or level grinding to overcome even on Easy or Medium. Additionally, you can change the difficulty in the settings at any time during your adventure if you begin feeling like the one you’ve chosen is either too breezy or too difficult.
Yes, all of the yellow items are worth picking up
You’ll see glowing yellow item pickups all over every zone you enter, which may begin to feel a bit overwhelming. It may get a bit tedious at times, but if you’re wondering if all of these items are worth picking up, the answer is unequivocally yes. Pick them up. Pick all of them up.
While you’ll sometimes just get a bit of money from these, you’ll also often get useful healing items that can make a meaningful difference in tougher battles. But most of all, these spots frequently provide you with Golden Clovers, which are an immensely important item for upgrading your characters and making them more powerful in battle. More on that further down.
Those colored crystals have a use later in the game
As you make your way through each zone, you’ll no doubt notice small crystals of various colors that seem to have no use. Don’t worry—as you unlock new Elemental Vessels, these will become obtainable, granting you Elemental Points for use in leveling up your Elemental Plot. Unfortunately, yeah, this means you’ll want to backtrack throughout the game to areas with crystals that match your freshly-unlocked Elemental Vessels, in order to gain as many Elemental Points as possible.
Collect all the Grizzly Syrup you can find
Very early in the game, you’ll discover Grizzly Syrup is, well, everywhere in the zones you’re exploring. This syrup can be traded with Dudbear shops—the first of which will unlock a few hours into the story—and are very much worth your time to collect. Dudbears often sell extremely helpful items, including elixirs that permanently boost the stats of whichever character you give them to.
The first Dudbear shop offers a nice selection of these elixirs (up to three of each!), so finding every Grizzly Syrup in the opening zones can help you to quickly power up a few of your early game characters. The stat boosts may not seem like much on paper, but they will certainly offer a slight edge in battle.
Convert your Golden Clovers into Elemental Points
It can take a lot of Elemental Points to unlock a full Elemental Plot tier for each character. If you have certain unlocks you’re looking to score, you can convert the Golden Clovers you’ve found into Elemental Points to earn those extra opportunities to expand your Elemental Plot. See, didn’t I tell you how important picking up all of those yellow items can be?
Conserve your healing items by breaking pots instead
If you’ve been picking up all of the items in the overworld (are you seeing a pattern here?), you’ll have numerous healing items on hand during the opening hours of the game. Even so, there’s no need to use them if you don’t absolutely have to—especially on higher difficulties—so keep an eye out for pots scattered all around each area.
Breaking these pots will often provide a quick heal that can keep you prepared for upcoming battles without having to deplete your stock of restoratives. You will frequently even find these within boss arenas, helping you to stay in the action while healing up a bit.
Beware of high-level foes in starter areas
As you’re exploring some of the initial zones of the game, you’ll stumble upon ruins that you can explore to snag things like treasure chests, Grizzly Syrup, or yellow item spots. However, you may notice some of these areas will have packs of level 50+ enemies standing around. You’ll be able to come back and fight these much later in the game, but for now, keep your eyes peeled for them so you can stay on the outer perimeters of the ruins to avoid triggering a battle you’re not yet prepared for.
Okay—you’ll hopefully be slightly more prepared for what’s coming your way in Vision of Mana’s opening hours, so here’s hoping your time with the game is absolutely wonderful. And hey, you know what I’m going to say next: pick up all of those damn yellow items. Don’t make me remind you again.
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