After 14 long years and a boatload of spin-offs with retarded naming conventions later, we now have Kingdom Hearts 3 on our laps. Is it good? Is it bad? Most importantly, are there a lot of sidequests to partake in?

Well, we’re here to help! We’ve got the most recent tips and tricks here on this one convenient feature for you to refer to.

Basic Tips & Tricks

Use Your In-Game Phone

Sora gets an in-game phone early on in the game. It lets you take photos, do random mundane stuff, and even summarizes the game’s past plot points in case you don’t want to pull out your real phone and read recaps like ours.

The phone also keeps track of the treasure you’ve found and the Lucky Emblems/Hidden Mickeys you’ve uncovered. That’s always handy to have.

Don’t Level Up Too Much

This is a Disney game not made in the 90s, so you won’t get your balls busted too much here. In fact, grinding might make the game a tad easier especially since the save points in the game replenishes your health and mana.

So if you see a world’s battle level that looks higher than your level, don’t worry about it too much. Just go on ahead and fight it out. The trick to survival in Kingdom Hearts 3 is blocking, reprisals, command shortcut management, and effective camera movement. This isn’t as hardcore as the first or second game, so take chances and master the combat system.

Besides, you only get your spells and abilities by beating bosses, not by grinding. So stop it.

There Are No Correct Loadouts; Mix & Match

Part of the fun of Kingdom Hearts 3 is figuring out what loadouts are best before fighting a boss. You’ll have the necessary spells available during a fight, but it’ll be a pain to cycle them in real-time, so customizing and configuring your shortcuts is essential.

By holding L1 you can open the shortcut menu. This displays a list of the four shortcut commands, mapped to each of the face buttons. By pressing up and down on the d-pad, you can swap between up to three decks.

What you end up putting in those three decks is up to you. Try having a support deck, an attack spells deck, and a hybrid deck on standby. If you’re fighting a boss with an obvious weakness, just make sure one of those decks have spells to hammer them. Remember: you can’t change loadouts once a fight starts, so if you see a save point before an ominous room, you better start prepping!

Check On Your Unlocked Abilities

You can only unlock abilities as you progress through the main story. Be sure to check out the new ones you receive so that you can activate them and get the perks you need. You have an AP threshold, so be mindful.

Cycle Through Your Specials With L2/R2

Yes, it took some of us a while to figure it out; pressing the trigger buttons let us swap between special attacks. This means you don’t have to waste a special to get to the next; you can store one for another bout later on.

Get To Cooking Whenever Possible

Once you gain access to Remy’s skills, you can actually warp to his kitchen whenever you find a save point. You can cook so you can eat a full course to gain temporary special abilities and stat buffs. And all you need are ingredients you found while you’re pillaging each different Disney world. Goofy will usually give a tip-off if you’re nearby a spot with ingredients. So get to it and keep the little chef busy, eh?

Advanced Stuff & Videos

How To Find Adamantite (For Keyblade Upgrades)

Keyblade upgrade materials more or less come in tiers, and once you’ve exhausted the upgrades that you can perform with Fluorite and Damascus, you’ll then need some Adamantite, a common legendary crafting material found in all sorts of games, from Terraria to Final Fantasy to World of Warcraft. Kingdom Hearts III is no different, and you’ll need some to fully upgrade your keyblades. There are a few places in Kingdom Hearts III where you can grab some Adamantite…

• Adamantite can appear out in the space overworld when you’re flying your Gummi Ship. It’ll appear in the later two areas of space that open up to you – Misty Stream and The Eclipse. Keep an eye out for the blue-tinted rocks, and blast them to pieces with your Gummi Ship laser – if you’re lucky, you’ll get an Adamantite drop. Remember, rocks respawn when you reload into space after visiting a world, so you can farm this way. Asteroids in The Eclipse appear to have a slightly higher drop rate, so if that area is unlocked, use that one.
• Adamantite also shows up in the later worlds of Kingdom Hearts III. The two worlds where we’ve seen it appear in treasure chests are San Fransokyo (Big Hero 6) and The Caribbean (Pirates of the Caribbean), so head back to those worlds and go hunting for chests. The items that appear in chests are more finite, however.

Once you’ve enough Adamantite, you’ll be able to use it to upgrade keyblades to their higher tier improved levels in the Moogle Workshop. Typically, each tier of upgrade for each keyblade that needs it will only require one Adamantite an upgrade.

How About Wellspring Crystals (Again, For Keyblade Upgrades)?

Once you’re at the tier of upgrade that also needs Adamantite, several late-stage keyblade upgrades will also begin to require Wellspring Crystal, or Wellspring Gem as it’s known in the Japanese release. Here’s the bad news: unlike the other materials we’ve talked about so far, Wellspring Crystal isn’t a drop that can be farmed by blasting through space in the Gummi Ship, blowing away meteors. You’re also going to need more of them per upgrade, as it’s the lesser, secondary ingredient in most late-game keyblade upgrades.

Here’s the good news: it is more common than Adamantite when push comes to shove, and it is available down in the worlds of KH3 outside of the gummi ship segments. Given that it’s a late game item, however, Wellspring Crystal only appears to spawn in Monstropolis (Monsters, Inc), the Caribbean (Pirates of the Caribbean) and San Fransokyo (Big Hero 6). While it does crop up in the occasional chest, Wellspring Crystal mostly drops from high-level, large heartless that you encounter when defeating them – and the drop isn’t guaranteed.

As with the other materials, once you have some you can deploy this to get some sweet power-boosting keyblade upgrades.

All The Lucky Emblems (via Everglow)