How to Get Lots of Macca in Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey Redux

MegaTen battle system is one of my favorite elements in the franchise, and I’m a total freak when it comes to fusion in all the games of the series. To fuse great demons in Strange Journey can be very costly in comparison with other Shin Megami Tensei titles (but you can fuse anytime, which is awesome). It made me find a few tricks to save and earn more money. Proceed to learn about them.

General strategy

Long story short, it boils down to engagement with NPCs. It’s pretty obvious – participate in all available activities and you will get all the non-special goodies that can be acquired in game. This includes expendables, forma and equipment. There are only a few chests with macca and it’s rarely a big amount, though it’s a nice bonus during crawling. So the bad news is, there are no obvious shortcuts. But fret not! If you have been playing for some time, you probably have stuff to sell.

Manage your inventory

Forma

If you looked through the inventory, you probably noticed that every item can be stored only in limited number, depending on the kind. Forma is useful if you are a frequent lab visitor – you need to check with researchers to learn what you can do with it. It usually takes only a few entities of a forma to create an item. So you can safely sell all the forma you are not going to use. If you are not sure and want to explore possible combinations, set a limit of, for instance, 5-10 entities. You can easily make 100k+ off extra forma from the sectors that come later in the game or initially locked quest locations.

Expendables

Expendables are even more restricted than forma. Probably because they are so useful! You always want to have as many items as possible, but if you have, say, 20 Mazio stones, you can’t get any more of them from demon drop. I suggest paying attention to the drop of your current sector and selling at least half of expendables, with the exception made for rare/favorite ones. You can fuse demons with a variety of elemental/expel attacks and healing skills anyway, and healing expendables are the most common.

I don’t ever keep SP items except full/mass restore options like Soma, because you get full HP and SP every time you level up. And (the irony) it’s easier to heal for macca at a healing spot.

But don’t do it if you are onto a boss battle – sometimes elemental expendables are the best way to hit the weakness. Also keep mass elementals, mass healing and status lifting items for ailments you can’t fix with your current set of skills – they are less likely to be hoarded anyway.Sell:

Incense

It’s cheap, but rare and extremely useful. Just use it immediately on your protagonist or your favorite high-level ally (preferably without weaknesses).

Sell duplicate equipment

This is a one-time sale, but you can make some cash by selling weapons/armor/accessories you have from your previous walkthrough (for NewGame+) or just duplicates – some items can be obtained via multiple methods.

Set up your sub-apps

You can see the list of apps and their requirements on this MegaTen Wiki page. Some sub-apps will be developed anyway for the sake of plot, some can be obtained through optional quests. New Game + unlocks a set of sub-apps relevant to the topic of this post, so you can enjoy your 2nd+ walkthrough.

Turn off Enemy Begone and the likes

This is an obvious one, but let me just tick it. SMT:SJ has an assortment of sub-apps affecting the famous encounter rate. Enemy Begone, Enemy Lullaby, Enemy Banish and Red Carpet decrease the rate, which can be handy sometimes. When you are in the mood to grind, disable them for level-ups and fast cash. Enemy Welcome and Enemy Challenge increase the encounter rate, so you can utilize them , for instance, in Horologium where drop can be pretty pricy.

Enable Macca Garnish or Item Garnish

These apps make demons give you a present when they join the party. I don’t feel a big difference between getting macca at once or for selling items later. It largely depends on the drop of your current sector. Setting garnish to macca makes it easier, but selling rare items can bring in more cash. All I cans say is Heal Garnish is pretty useless (if you have your skills set straight).

Make sure to communicate with demons, and they will gift you stuff!

Enable Friend Macca or Friend Item

This will let you get items from the demons that are already in your party. Talking to all the same demons can be cumbersome, but if you are not in the mood for fighting, why not communicate for a change? If you are, however, in that mood, you will get drop and macca anyway. Keep the sub-apps enabled just in case. I personally prefer battling, since I can get something that no amount of macca can buy* – experience!

* You actually can get more EXP with DLCs, but they are bought for actual, and not demonic, money. Also you can increase the amount of EXP with a NG+ vest and respective sub-apps.

Enable Extra Macca or Extra Item

This is basically a taxation system 😀 If demons are giving you something anyway, why not throw in a little extra. This can be really handy if you don’t want to get macca/items only. You can set sub-apps to get a little of both.

Why getting items is good for you

As I mentioned, if you turn these options on and interact with demons a lot, you will never have to pay for healing expendables. So even if you are more into macca garnish, you might use this ability when you are low on stock.

Complete ex-missions

For the full list of optional quests, see the respective page on MegaTen Wiki.

You can get money for completing some of the ex-missions. Here are the names with the amount of macca they grant you:

• Killing Time I: 1000 macca. It is nothing grand, but you can finish these without leaving the base.
• Killing Time II: 2500 macca.
• Melchom’s Task I: 4000. According to some esoteric sources Melchom is the demon-paymaster, no wonder you can earn good money from him.
• Melchom’s Task II: 15000.
• Melchom’s Task III: 40000.
• Long Nose in the Air: 3000.
• Finding Loki’s Ally I: 50000. This one is in the last parts of Womb of Grief, but if you pay attention and fuse/recruit Vritra before going there, you can get your cash immediately.
• Tales of Investigation: up to 253000 macca for completing all the requested maps.

Ask demons!

MegaTen games have this useful option of asking for money. It’s great when you need money immediately (fusion!) and don’t feel like fighting.

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