I went into Tales of Seikyu expecting the usual farming sim routine: Wake up, water crops, chop wood, accidentally spend seven straight hours organising storage chests while pretending that was part of the plan… Maybe flirt with a suspiciously attractive villager who clearly has emotional baggage and an excellent haircut.
Instead, what I got was something weirder but a lot better.
Tales of Seikyu takes the familiar farming-life formula popularised by games like Stardew Valley and throws a full-blown yokai transformation system into the mix, changing how you approach the game completely.
And while I absolutely love that, the game doesn’t help a lot with ALL these new mechanics and things you should learn, so you can only do it the hard way (if you are like me and jump head first into the game). Or you could be smart – which you are, since you’re reading this – and read a guide first.
So if you’ve just started Tales of Seikyu, here’s everything I’ve learned so far – tips and tricks that will help you start on the right foot and get the most out of the game.
1. Your Body Is THE Tool
The first thing I had to unlearn is the standard farming sim mindset – and it takes some time to get used to.
In most games like this, tools are required to perform various tasks and you upgrade them to make them better. Well, as I already mentioned in the intro – Tales of Seikyu does things differently.
Here, your yokai transformations handle a surprising amount of the work, which I fully approve because it cuts down on one of my least favourite habits in farming games: carrying around twenty different objects just to survive a Tuesday.
You unlock these forms by progressing the story, and each one acts as both a farming aid and a combat stance with its own levelling path. Here are the ones you unlock (some spoilers below, so jump to tip #2 if you don’t want to learn about all the Yokai forms):
Boar – this is the first form you unlock in Tales of Seikyu, and the most basic use of it is slamming the ground to till soil for crops. However, the game doesn’t teach you that you can also destroy rocks and chops trees with it – so now you know.
Of course, you can also use this initial form for gathering materials and basic combat.
Slime Form – the second form you’ll snag, unlocked after exploring the Fox Ruins. And this gelatinous buddy might not look good, but it has two super abilities:
First, watering crops: jump into a river as a mini slime, absorb all that liquid until you’re roughly three times your original size, then wobble back to your beds and unleash a water shot that drenches every plant in range.
The second one is underwater exploration: dive into any pond, lake, or river and start hoarding rare items like pearls (which are required for romancing characters later).
Upgrading slime form makes things even better. The higher its level, the more water it stores, the stronger the water projectile becomes, and the faster water collection happens.
Tengu: This is the third form currently available in Tales of Seikyu and unlocking it basically unlocks the mobility king in the game.
This winged yokai lets you fly to distant platforms and high-up areas that would otherwise demand a brutal parkour route.
If you enjoy playing this type of game, I recommend checking out my list of the best farming games on PC.
2. Consume All Your Energy Each Day
This should go without saying, but here I am saying it: make sure you consume all energy each day in order to maximize your progress.
This is especially important early on in the game, when there is so much to do and the resource requirements for anything and everything are still high.
And speaking of resource requirements – make sure you collect sap like crazy. Tales of Seikyu lets you craft sap into fertilizer directly from your inventory, no crafting table required. Smear that stuff onto your crops, and growth times shrink noticeably.
3. Build Storage Earlier Than You Think You Need It
Despite the fact that you can do so much with your Yokai, don’t believe that you won’t need plenty of storage for plenty of items!
To build your first chest, you’ll need a crafting table first. After that, you process 10 wood into 5 planks and combine them into a storage chest. This is a solid first step, and you should take it ASAP.
There are also furniture pieces that function as storage: wardrobes, cabinets, and similar furniture can store materials as well. Make sure to have plenty, especially if you’re a hoarder (and who isn’t in this type of games?)
Also read: BEST Open World Games for the PS5
4. Buy Backpack Upgrades First
Also somewhat related to storage, your Backpack is your biggest friend in Tales of Seikyu (at least until you start romancing the villagers). Either way, buying backpack upgrades is also important, because this is how you get to carry more things.
At Musashi’s shop, you can purchase backpack upgrades, but also plenty of other things that might seem tempting (single-use seeds and regrowable ones, dyes, etc.)
While the latter are equally important – especially the seeds, and even more so the regrowables – I recommend that your first 2-3 purchases are backpack upgrades, since each adds an extra row for carrying around (and you have 20 upgrades to buy total).
5. Getting Money Early & Quickly
The biggest early money-maker I found is spice rocks. To make these solid money-makers, you need a smelter. Then, place 4 rocks inside and you’ll get a spice rock, which sells for a whopping 104 coins (as opposed to the regular rocks that sell at 1 coin a piece).
Another great option early on is selling eggs. But not the raw eggs, even though they sell at 20 gold each. Mayonnaise, on the other hand, sells for 200 – so it makes sense to craft it instead for huge profits.
Right now, I was only able to find eggs in trash cans, which is strange but… Yes, you should raid garbage cans daily!
Years of conditioning from Stardew Valley taught me that digging through town trash is how you lose friendships and dignity at the same time, but this is a different game with different rules and here, one man’s trash is definitely your treasure.
They can contain eggs, various other ingredients, bundle materials, hardwood, bamboo, and various resources that would otherwise take much longer to obtain naturally.
You’ll usually get one or two items from each and even though it’s completely random, it’s also totally worth it!
6. Cooking usually makes things more valuable
Similar to crafting or processing in any way, cooking makes almost all items in the game more valuable – and that makes sense.
There is one exception, and one extra reason not to sell that item. I’m talking about flour, which is sold for 25 gold, but requires four wheat to craft – and selling that wheat individually nets you 88 gold.
Probably this is made specifically so that you are forced to eat the flour for the benefits, and not sell it for profit (which would actually be a loss), which is basically what you do with most recipes anyway.
Speaking of which, make sure to read my other article sharing ALL cooking recipes in Tales of Seikyu.
7. Fishing Is Not That Great
I have to admit that, even though I like it in real life, fishing is not one of my favorite things to do in computer and video games, and it definitely is one thing you should mostly avoid in Tales of Seikyu.
From an income standpoint (and that remains one of its main uses), fishing makes little sense. Good days bring around 300 gold from fishing and selling.
Bad days bring carp.
More carp.
And then somehow even more carp. And not Koinobori carp, which at the festival can net up to 1,600 gold (for the rainbow and black varieties).
Meanwhile crops, processed goods, spice rocks, and mayonnaise outperform fishing with much less frustration, are more fun and require less commitment. So for now, skip it unless you really like it as an activity.
Also read: Best Cozy & Relaxing Games on PC
8. How to Build Your Farm & House Additions
Your farm can eventually expand into six separate fields, and each one holds 18 seedable plots. The first field is free – from Sasaki in town, but after that, expansion costs climb steadily.
For example, the second one costs 2,000 gold, and each new one adds an additional 2,000 on top of that, with the final one costing 10,000. This means that fully upgrading all farmland costs 30,000 gold total.
That sounds expensive early on, and it is, so it’s best to start planning just as early.
House expansions follow a similar escalating model: the first adds a room for 8,000 gold, then prices climb by 4,000 increments until the last upgrade that costs 20,000.
A fully pimped-out house gives you three extra rooms on the ground floor and three more upstairs, costing a combined 56,000 gold. Another reasons to keep smelting those spice rocks!
Keep in mind: trees inside your fenced area do not grow back! Rocks, on the other hand, do (both inside the fenced area, and the ruins, every other day).
9. Be Smart When Choosing Crops
While different crops serve different purposes, with some being better for cooking than others, while others are better for gifts, you will eventually think about money.
So focus on regrowable crops for the money, while keeping a small patch for seasonal crops that you test out to see how they perform either as ingredients or gifts (I will soon post a guide to both cooking and gifts, so you know exactly what to do).
Strawberries, raspberries, grapes – anything that keeps producing without forcing constant reseeding should be purchased, even though the initial costs are very high. But it makes everything easier, from planning to profits.
10. Powering Up Yokai Forms and The Talisman Grind
Upgrading your forms is important, especially for battles that become difficult quickly. These transformations pull from a shared talisman resource, and you can hold a maximum of 40 at any time.
Every form upgrades differently, and the requirements for each new upgrade increase quickly, so you will have to make some tough choices, especially early on, because you simply won’t have enough resources to get all upgrades.
Here is what each upgrade gives you:
- Human form increases maximum health and stamina/emergy.
- Slime improves water capacity, strengthens water attacks, and speeds up water collection.
- Boar upgrades improve attack strength while increasing area-of-effect radius.
- Tengu upgrades improve defense, acceleration, and flying endurance.
As you can see, they are all helpful, so focus on upgrading whatever seems to be more useful in your current state. I recommend starting with the human form upgrades (simply because you need more stamina to perform more actions).
You can find the upgrade screen in the menu, and it’s worth a regular visit to dump spare talismans before you hit the cap.
11. Fox Shrines Are Important and Useful
Throughout the map you’ll find fox shrines, and interacting with them activates them and has them act as fast travel portals to various other places with fox shrines in the game.
This system works across multiple map layers, making the entire travel burden of life sims like this one a lot more manageable. So don’t forget about the shrines and use them to move around faster!
12. Outfits Are Purely Cosmetic
At the moment of writing this, all the outfits you can get from Miss Ama (and dye as you see fit) are purely cosmetic, meaning that they don’t improve your stats in any way, nor do they give you any advantages (or disadvantages).
13. Nine Lives’ black market
After dark, head into the Bamboo Forest (take the path behind your house) and you’ll find a character called Nine Lives who peddles rings and amulets – and these DO give you stat boosts.
14. Romaceable Characters
Right now, there are just six romanceable characters available, and the progression system here is gift-based, as in most other similar games. Here are the characters you can romance in Tales of Seikyu:
- Nyotengu
- Hephaestus
- Musashi
- Liliana
- Yohji
- Anna
Each currently has heart events available up to relationship level 4, but there’s one interesting thing you should know about gifting.
Normally, you can give each character two gifts per week, but this is a hard cap that can’t be overridden – not even by birthdays. So if you know some character’s birthday is coming and you want to give them a gift, make sure you don’t hit that limit before the actual birthday.
And if romancing characters is your thing, make sure to also check out my list of the best RPGs with romance options.
15. Festivals Can Be Surprisingly Profitable If You Play Them Properly
I usually expect festivals in farming sims to be light distractions and major annoyances with huge requirements that only give you small rewards.
Well, things are once again different in Tales of Seikyu, as the festivals here can give you massive money-making opportunities, like the Koinobori Festival that I mentioned earlier.
During this festival, you can play the minigame up to five times, with a chance to win either the black or the rainbow carp, which are more valuable than those you can catch when fishing: they sell up to 1,600 coins each!
BONUS: Focus on the Yokai Storage
As I said, storage space is something you always need to have maxed out, simply because you will have plenty of items hoarded pretty soon. This is where the additional Yokai Storage comes to the rescue.
This can be independently upgraded with stone and clay (the regular versions should be used) up to level 5, and once you max it out, you will have huge storage space available at all times.
Wrapping up
While this game rewards experimentation far more aggressively than most farming/life sims, you know now most of its secrets – the best tips and tricks that will help you get started with an advantage.
There is a lot more depth to the game, and plenty of things you will discover and struggle to master (most likely), but having these bases covered helps a lot.
If you have additional tips and tricks for fellow players, let us all know in the comments down below.
