How to get and use Essences in Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance

Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance has a huge variety of demons for the player to battle against and recruit, and every one of these demons has an Essence that can be acquired and used to improve your odds of surviving in battle by learning new Skills and Affinities. In this guide we’ll go over what Essence is, what it’s used for, and how you can acquire it.

What is Essence used for?

Essences are used in Essence Fusion in the World of Shadows, which allows you to inherit either the Skills or the Affinities of the demon in question. This allows you to customize your party members to make them more effective in combat: if a demon has a weakness to Fire, for example, you could use Essence Fusion to either grant it a skill to resist, repel, or drain Fire Skills, or change its weakness and resistance entirely.

Every demon has an Essence, and you can only carry one of that Essence at any time. They can be acquired multiple times however, so even after you’ve used it once, you can always get it again. Note that Unique skills, which are always on Essences, cannot be inherited by other demons during Essence Fusion.

The Doctrine tree of Miracles has a few Miracles that will make Essences more useful: specifically, Divine Amalgamation will allow you to use Essences to change the Nahobino’s affinity resistances, and Art of Essences, which comes in three tiers, will gradually unlock the number of Skills you’ll be able to inherit during Essence Fusion, as many of the stronger skills will be grayed out initially.

How to get Essence

There are actually quite a lot of different ways you can get Essence in Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance:

– Treasure Boxes will occasionally contain Essence, so you’ll want to keep an eye out for these. Quite often when you encounter a new demon for the first time, a treasure box containing its Essence will be somewhere nearby.
– The Cadaver’s Hollow will start to sell Essence after you defeat the first boss, and will receive regular expansions to its stock as you progress through the game’s story, so it’s a good idea to check back here every now and then to see what is available.
– Demons can drop their Essence after you’ve defeated them in battle, although the chances of this happening are quite low.
– Later in the game, if you have learned the Deathly Aura III Miracle, you can demand Essence from cornered demons, although as the chances of demons begging for their lives is random, it might be faster to just purchase the Essence you’re looking for from Gustave at the Cadaver’s Hollow if he has it.
– Subquest rewards will sometimes include an Essence of the quest giver.
– Leveling up your party members may result in them rewarding you with their Essence. Normally this happens once they have learned all of their Skills, or if you’ve been using them for a particularly long time and have been visiting them regularly in the Demon Haunt. There doesn’t appear to be a specific trigger for this to happen, however.
– Aogami Husks will also reward you with an Aogami Type Essence. These will refresh periodically, giving you access to a steady supply, although like every other Essence you can only carry one of each Aogami Type Essence at a time.
– When starting a New Game+ file, or transferring save data from the original Shin Megami Tensei V, you may receive an Essence depending upon the ending you witnessed the last time.

Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance is available now on Switch, and you can check out our coverage of the game here.