The Let's Play Archive

Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2

by Dragonatrix

Part 20: Feinne's Notes: Add-Ons 101

Hey, let's talk about Add-Ons for a second since now we can get them and as Dragonatrix noted they're incredibly powerful. Add-Ons come in a few flavors, as you'd expect.

Stats: The most basic Add-Ons let you improve one of a demon's stats. This is a really nice bonus early on when stats are low and you've got no chance of reaching max stats (especially because bonus stat points do partially carry over to fusion products) but starts to fade a bit once you get to stronger demons where an extra couple of stat points is sort of negligible. Eventually you'll probably be throwing these away in favor of some much better options.

Levels: Add-Ons can also add levels after fusing. This is pretty much useful forever, though I'd consider it one of the weaker Add-Ons since it just saves you some time. It could be really nice for a high level demon that you don't want to use any other Add-On for though.

<Skill> Set: Here's where things get interesting. Set Add-Ons let us add a new skill to those available to the demon from our cracked skills. The Add-On will specify what sort of skills it can let you add. This can let us get new offensive options on a demon, or more importantly let us cover weaknesses and eventually craft demons with Repel Phys/Null All that can only be touched by Almighty attacks. You should mostly save these for covering weaknesses honestly, that's what they're best at. You especially want to keep around a Phys Set skill for easy Repel Phys (though there are demons that can be a good source of it too). These do start out a bit weak since they rely on your cracked skills, as their only real flaw.

Master: If you use this Add-On you start with all your skills available on the demon. How nice this is depends entirely on how nice the skills the demon has that it doesn't start with are. One good use would be on a demon with a nice skill that you don't want to actually level up and just want to use as fusion fodder.

Release Command: Another absolutely awesome Add-On, this moves all the demon's default skills into the skill pool and lets you freely set its skills from all those available to it. This is the holy grail of creating demons that are immune to everything, because it lets you ditch shit they don't have any use for and replace it with the defensive skills you've engineered into the ingredients. Don't use these flippantly, because they're seriously the best Add-On.

I think that's all of them, I couldn't find a list so maybe I'm missing something weird and rare. Anyway fusing high level demons to their full potential is really an art form and as things go along I'll talk more about some of the tricks and some good priorities to consider in demon design.