The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales is out now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC. I liked a lot of things about it: it’s got fun slashy combat, a neat upgrade system, and the actual adventuring of Elliot is pretty fun. I was a little less high on the story and characters, but still had a generally good time.
You might also like The Adventures of Elliot. You might like it even more if you read a few quick tips that will make your experience easier. I kept this thing very light on spoilers or even deeply specific tips: this is all just stuff I wish I had known when I first booted it up, because I would’ve been way less stressed out if I had.
Happy adventuring!
Tell Faie to shut the hell up
Trust me on this. Open the menu as soon as you start the game and find the option for “Partner chattiness” under “Basic Settings.” Set it to “Reticent.” Even if you think you won’t mind the excessive chatter, I promise you that this only turns it down from “literally constantly blabs” to “still talks an awful lot.”
Upgrade your Magicite box
Once you meet the Magicite merchant and learn about Magicite, you’ll see there’s an option in her menu to upgrade your Magicite box size. Do this. Then, if you have the cash, do it again.
When I first started The Adventures of Elliot, I was afraid to shell out the cash for Magicite box upgrades, because I didn’t know when I would need the money for something expensive. Turns out, you don’t. Throughout the whole game, the only other things you’ll ever need to buy are potions and arrows and sometimes bombs. That’s it. After a while, these become trivially cheap, especially if you’re doing a lot of monster murder. So buy the Magicite upgrades while you can, as it’s the only real permanent power increase you can spend money on.
Also, spend all your Magicite fragments at the trader every time for equippable Magicite. There’s literally no downside, as there’s nothing else to be done with them.
Use all your weapons
Yes, I know the sword is cool. Please try out other weapons too. There are some bosses later in the game for whom you will absolutely want to cycle in weapons like the boomerang, arrows, bombs, and so forth. Also, some of them have really sick Magicite upgrades that make them even more useful, like the one that makes the chain sickle spit fireballs when you spin it. Try everything out, try everything out multiple times, and you may find a sleeper favorite.
You don’t have to fight everything
You don’t! You only ever get Magicite fragments and money from killing monsters, and the occasional temporary buff. There’s no EXP system, no weapon drops. So if you want to sprint through an area and fight nothing, there’s really no downside. The only time it becomes an issue is when there are puzzles to do, in which case you’ll want to make sure there aren’t 20 enemies on your tail.
Do sidequests ASAP, but also don’t panic
The Adventures of Elliot has a number of sidequests that become available to you at different points in the story. You can track them via the Quests tab in the menu, which will also give you hints about where to start a quest you haven’t found yet, or where to go next on one you have.
Generally, it’s good to do every sidequest, and to do them right away. Many of them give very good rewards, such as accessories or empty vials for potions. One early quest (helping a widow make peace with her husband’s death) eventually unlocks a second shop in town where you can buy the best potion in the game.
The reason you want to do the quests right away is because some of them will temporarily become unavailable at different points in the game, usually when the NPCs involved are tied up in other stuff. The bad news is, some can be unavailable for quite a while, which is frustrating if there’s a reward you want. The good news is, none of them are permanently missable. You can always progress either the main quest or other sidequests further to free up the NPCs you need down the line, and the game is good about warning you when a quest is about to become unavailable for a while. So no need to panic.
“Help, I don’t know where to go next!”
I’m going to be vague here to avoid spoilers, but there are several points throughout this game at which it is genuinely not super clear what you’re supposed to do next. This will happen a few times. At a certain point, the main quest wants you to go kill something specific, and it’ll have a big mean purple monster icon next to that objective. When that happens, you can continue on, but there’s secretly more main quest waiting for you elsewhere that you may want to do first. The game just won’t tell you about it outright.
If you suspect there’s something you’re missing at any point—if the main quest seems to have petered out in a weird spot, for instance, or if you’re just looking for information—the absolute best thing to do is to go to the main city in each era and talk to everyone whose dialogue you haven’t exhausted yet. You should also go visit any major NPCs you might know of living outside of town, as they may also have something to say. In a lot of cases, simply visiting an era’s main town will trigger cutscenes you weren’t expecting that progress the story.
And finally, if you’re really stumped, go out adventuring! Try to uncover areas of the map you haven’t visited yet, do some dungeons, or just explore. The Adventures of Elliot is fundamentally about a guy going on adventures. Sometimes you might get lucky and stumble over what you’re after.
Visit the Water Temple
Okay, this is a bit more explicit advice, but there’s one dungeon you probably want to visit sooner rather than later that the game may not ever tell you about, depending on the order in which you do things. It’s the Water Temple, and it’s located almost dead center of the map on an island in the middle of a lake. Specifically, you want to do the Water Temple in the Age of Reconstruction. There are two major items hidden in there that you’re definitely going to want in order to finish the game. You won’t be able to beeline to the Water Temple right away at the start of the game or anything, but once it becomes available in the Age of Reconstruction I highly, highly recommend tackling it when you can.
Don’t worry about getting a “bad ending”
The Adventures of Elliot has three endings: a bad, a good, and a true ending. Don’t worry too much about getting a bad ending. The bad and the good endings both have clues in them for how to get better ones, and once you finish the credits and final cutscenes, you’ll be dropped off outside the final dungeon with a neat little badge on your profile indicating you finished an ending, freeing you up to go pursue the other endings. The Adventures of Elliot is pretty good generally about not having any big, scary points-of-no-return or things you’re locked out of doing if you don’t accomplish them by a certain point, so take advantage of that and enjoy the adventure at your leisure.
