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Yaoling: Mythical Journey is a fantastical adventure of magical creatures, existential threats, and powerful charms. It can also be quite intimidating - you’re sent out into the world with a handful of Yaolings to your name and instructed to conquer various schools, recruit people back to your village, and take down the demon threat. That’s a lot to place on your shoulders.
While there are tutorials to help along the way, they don’t do a perfect job of telling you the best way to play the game, and it’s easy to get caught up with some imperfect decisionmaking. This is why we’re here.
Yaoling: Mythical Journey is currently in Early Access, so the details below may change over the course of development.
Unlock Caulie And The Restaurant First
A big part of your quest will be heading to the various portraits shown on the map tomeet (and inevitably save) various NPCswho will come to your village and provide services. The first of these is Caulie, located to the south of your village and easily missable if you head to the east too quickly.
Rescuing Caulie from the dreadful Terrigaze will unlock therestaurant, and this is a wonderful boon. Even the very first recipes you may cook at the restaurant will provide significant boosts. Of note are Popcorn Rice and Scallion-Oil Noodles:
Though both of these recipes are temporary, and you can only use one at a time, they are both very useful and use only extremely common ingredients.
Don’t Neglect Your Village Workers
As you unlock various services in your village, you’ll be able toassign more and more Yaolings to them for work. Whether they’re working for money at the restaurant, crafting Charms at the Charm House, or even hunting or gardening, they will passively make significant gains for you.
It’s a good idea to get into the habit ofchecking in on your village workers very regularly- after all, you’ll have to pick up crafted items and their earnings before you’re able to use them, and oftentimes they’ll need to be given more instructions before they move on to another job.
Our recommendation is tocheck on your village after every story quest you complete. This will give them a decent chunk of time to progress on their tasks without being so short as to make the check useless.
Follow The Linear Storyline
While you are ostensibly given free rein to explore the world map as you wish from the very beginning of the game, there is a good reason tofollow the main storyline’s quests as they are given to you. Most importantly, these quests will give you a smooth difficulty and level curve, so you won’t end up facing overpowered enemies before you’re ready.
Thankfully, the storyline will also take youclose enough to the optional areasand challenges that it becomes an easy task to take a quick detour to complete them.
Don’t Ignore Yaoling Keeper Battles
As you explore the map and open up more of the world, you’ll come across moreYaoling Keepersthan you’re able to count. It’s important that you always make an effort to fight these characters, as they are the absolute best source ofSpirit Gemsin the game. These are crucial to unlocking new Charms, among other things.
Not only are they great sources of Spirit Gems (andexperience!), but they will allow you topractice combat with a full party of Yaolings. This is important for moments in the story that force you to fight against enemy Keepers.
Recruit Elite Yaolings For Strength
While they can be intimidating to fight, Elite Yaolings are very useful targets for recruitment for a few reasons:
As a result, keeping Elites as the main fighters in your party is a good habit to make.
Keep Your HP Recovery At 100 Percent
While it’s possible to reduce yourpost-battle healingto conserve your SP for long journeys, it’s actually a better idea toheal your party up to fullevery time you complete a battle. The reason for this is thatit is incredibly easy to restore your SP- rest spots and Spirit Shrines are all over the place, so there’s never much of a reason to go without SP for a long period of time.
Conversely, keeping your party on a low amount of health can lead to crushing defeats as your party gets swarmed by enemies at the beginning of a battle, which will lead to even more SP usage if you manage to come out on top. Truly, there isno real downside to keeping your SP usage stuck at 100 percent- especially once you rank up a little and get more SP in general.
Party Composition Tips
While it may be tempting to go all-in with bruisers and make a party full of aggressive physical attackers, keeping a well-rounded party with different types of Yaolings is the best way to be prepared for all challenges.
A good party will contain Yaolings of the following ‘archetypes’:
Luckily, the game will provide you with a tank (Bax) and a healer (Lume) from the beginning of the game, so you’re most of the way to a well-rounded party from the off.
As you get further into the game, havingbuffers and debufferswill become more crucial, but even then, they aren’t strictly necessary - you simply need to keep a core of offensive and defensive Yaolings to prove successful.
Party Arrangement Tips
While party composition is important, exactly how you place those Yaolings on the battlefield will also spell the difference between victory and defeat.
Your practiced and proven methods may fly out of the window when you encounter battles that start with you beingsurrounded- in these cases, you’ll want to prioritise protecting your weaker, ranged Yaolings above all elseortry a more aggressive approach where you only field your strongest, meatiest Yaolings. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to prepare for those situations.
