Upon completing the tutorial area — that is, the area that leads up to the first Abscess encounter — you may have noticed that something is missing. How do you get rid of these weaker demons and turn them into something a little less awful? Veterans might be looking for a Jakyou Manor, or a Cathedral of Shadows, but that doesn’t exist in Shin Megami Tensei V. Instead, we get the Realm of Shadows, an area of space controlled by Sophia.
Your first encounter with Sophia will unlock a few features, but you will not unlock Demon Fusion or the Compendium until after you clear the first Abscess and reach the Leyline afterward. Once completed, Sophia will notify you upon visiting the World of Shadows that Dyad Fusion has been unlocked.
Notable changes to fusion in SMTV include the addition of Reverse Fusion, an extremely useful feature that simply shows you every single demon fusion result based on the demons in your party. In fact, the game went a step further and added a third option, the Reverse Compendium Fusion, which does the same thing, but includes summonable demons from your Compendium as well.
This saves a ridiculous amount of time, as previous entries had you manually checking each demon combination by hand, or checking an online calculator, to see what all you needed. Just keep in mind that no matter what you may be able to fuse, you still require the Macca to summon from the Compendium, and the requisite level to control the result.
