Sanskrit grammar is complicated enough for basic knowledge of the cases and the tenses/aspects/moods to be less useful than one would otherwise assume. You have sati-saptami prayogas, krdantas are often uses as adjectives while basic text books talk about them in limited contexts. It is a huge mess.
I wasn't referring to knowledge of the Paninian sutras or pratyayas, to be clear, when I said "the basics".
For this story, you don't need to know the pratyayas but you do need to know the tenses, the ktva-lyap forms, etc to fully understand what is going on. With only an incomplete knowledge of those aspects, one can sort of intuit the overall meaning but eventually would find that they had the wrong idea altogether when reading the corresponding translation in a language they know.
Take this story (https://www.adhyeta.org.in/sa/k/samskrita-chandamama/198404/...). Assume you have a gloss available for some words. Do you really need to know the pratyayas for the nouns and verbs for you to be able to understand the story?