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Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey uses a pretty basic version of the traditional Demon Fusion system, with a few interesting quirks. This week, we’ll go over some of the basic functions of the Fusion system, working up to the more complex tricks you can pull with it later on. First off, we’ll look at the basic mechanics themselves.

When you decide to fuse two demons, the result is determined by two main factors: The base level of the demons involved, and their race. For example, an Avian and a Foul will always produce a Raptor, while an Avian and a Flight will always produce a Divine. There are a number of restrictions, of course. Certain races will not combine with each other at all, and some are actually unavailable through normal fusion, and only become available through special fusion. For example, Fiends and most boss monsters are only available to be fused after you have found and defeated them in the game.

Which particular demon you get out of Fusion is determined by their level, with the basic equasion being the demon’s combined levels divided by two, plus one. The resulting demon will be whichever member of the species has a base level that is not more than the result of the above equasion. So if you were to fuse Avian Hamsa and Divine Angel, the equasion would spit out 8. Since Avians combine with Divines to produce a member of the Flight race, the result would be the highest-leveled member of the Flight race which is not above level 8, which would be Tangata Manu, at level 2. At any rate, the basic idea is the higher the level of the demons you fuse, the higher the level of the demon that results.

During normal fusion, a new demon can inherit up to five skills, though far more are possible using Demon Sources. But more on those later. For most fusions, what skills the new demon will get is determined by several factors, including the inheritance type of the demon (ie, a fire-based demon like Pyro Jack will be much more likely to inherit Agi than Bufu), and the rank of the skills involved (the higher the rank of a skill, the more powerful it is, and the more likely it is to get inherited).

For the most part, normal fusions will not produce particularly powerful demons, since not many skills will be inherited and you won’t be able to reshuffle to get the ones you want. In order to produce genuinely powerful demons, you’ll need to make use of Demon Sources. Demon Sources are items which grant demons new skills as they are fused, and are the best way to pass on skills from one demon to the next. They do have drawbacks, however. For a start, they are single-use items: Use that Cerberus Source on a Pixie by accident, and you’ll have to hunt down a new one. Acquiring your first Demon Source from a particular demon is not that hard — once a demon in your party has been fully analyzed and levels up, it’ll hand over a Source without fail — but recovering one you’ve already used is tough. After using a demon’s Source, there is a very, very small chance that the demon will grant you a new one when it levels up. Small as in a 2% probability.

Thankfully, there is a way around this frustrating limitation. However, it’s a fairly complicated manipulation of the Password system, which we’ll be talking about next week. So we’ll take a break here and let you digest what we’ve gone over. See you next week!