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[Jamesfrom818]

Axis Blade is awesome especially with a large group of enemies.

 

[Kagari]

So

Spoiler

Hecatoncheir

is impossible. I've tried every goddamn strategy I can find and he still rapes the shit out of me. I guess this is a good place to shelve the game if I have to grind to beat him.

Saboteur with Vanille, Sentinel with Fang.

 

[Shadow780]

Shadow, post the image from Versus of the blonde kid with that chimpmunk grin. :lol

beware of what you ask for

 

[george_us]

Saboteur with Vanille, Sentinel with Fang.

This would work beautifully if Fang wasn't retarded and used everything but Mediguard so I wouldn't have to heal her. As it stands I have to switch to healing lest Vanille wants to get stomped too. Do I need to grind a bit or something?

 

[entremet]

Jesus, I'm stuck at the Chapter 11 boss. I haven't grinded up to this point or upgraded weapons or accessories.

I can handle him but then he just uses that damn doom spell on the party leader. So damn cheap. Bugger has tons of HP and it seems that the doom spell is not random. He keeps doing like clockwork right when I get him to half health.

 

[ElFly]

Once you figured out the pattern he was pretty easy. I agree, when he started healing himself for 10k I was getting pretty annoyed and pissed. :lol

When I saw him pull that bullshit, I went "yeah, how about no" and summoned Odin.

 

[Kagari]

This would work beautifully if Fang wasn't retarded and used everything but Mediguard so I wouldn't have to heal her. As it stands I have to switch to healing lest Vanille wants to get stomped too. Do I need to grind a bit or something?

Well, at least have both those roles decently leveled.

 

[DownLikeBCPowder]

This would work beautifully if Fang wasn't retarded and used everything but Mediguard so I wouldn't have to heal her. As it stands I have to switch to healing lest Vanille wants to get stomped too. Do I need to grind a bit or something?

I had to switch back and forth throughout the battle to heal - there's nothing wrong with switching.

 

[Scythesurge]

beware of what you ask for

That guy HAS to have trouble seeing through all of that hair in his face.

 

[Kagari]

How the fuck does summoning work anyways? It doesn't seem to do much damage.

The key is to get the enemy close to break, then bring out the summon. Use drive most during break for the most damage.

 

[ElFly]

How the fuck does summoning work anyways? It doesn't seem to do much damage.

In that particular case I needed to shave less than 20000hp from the enemy, so it wasn't that hard.

Normally I wait until the stagger bar is almost filled, then summon. It's not that much damage anyway.

 

[DownLikeBCPowder]

How the fuck does summoning work anyways? It doesn't seem to do much damage.

Doesn't seem to work at all for me, really. The only benefit I really walk away with is that my chars are all resurrected and healed when he finally leaves.

 

[entremet]

How the fuck does summoning work anyways? It doesn't seem to do much damage.

Summoning it much better in this game, probably the best in the series, as it's not a win button anymore and actually requires some strategy. Using summons in Normal Mode is also genius because many of them act as combined classes.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Where is this?

Mah'habara, just after you enter from the main area. The path splits, one goes on through the dungeon and the other ends at a dead end where a Juggernaut comes out of a door. You know it's the right hallway because there's also the Mission 29 Cie'th stone in the room the Juggernaut comes out of. Just run back and forth through the little hallway killing bombs and mechanical guys, trigger the boss to reset them, and repeat. Each pass back and forth is about 20k CP.

edit: I just realized I forgot to refresh the thread, I'm several pages late with this. :lol

 

[Alex]

Summoning is kinda useless outside of jamming the ultimate on a full chain bar, otherwise your characters alone will basically always outdamage it.

Or if you need a safety, i guess, I'd rather just use the points on Renew in that case.

 

[jaundicejuice]

Still in the Vile Peaks in Chapter 4, just completed the battle against Odin. I'm going so slowly, I don't know if I should bother to spoiler tag any of this given how most of you are discussing late game or post game content. I recall boco saying that that was one of the most contrived battles in the game, to show Lightning how much she needed others, mentioning something to the effect that he had to let Hope get killed and revive him 3 times in order to build up the Gestalt meter enough to claim the Eidolon. I had no such issues with the encounter. I got totally wiped out the first time when all I did was heal and not build up the chain gauge, it just took a bit of re-jiggering with a new paradigm to tackle the fight.

I started off with Hope as a Synergist to get some buffs and then just used two paradigms--Dualcast when Odin used Ullr Shield to build up the chain gauge with both as Ravagers and War & Peace with Lightning as a Commando and Hope as a Medic when Odin was attacking--throughout the battle. Gestalt gauge went up and up with the Ravager/Ravager and Medic/Commando combos, I gained a new summon easy-peasy.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

The Eidolon fights are all really easy, you just need to figure out what it wants and do it in a minute or two. Odin tends to surprise people because up until then it really is nothing but Auto-Battle over and over and you actually need to change Paradigms during his fight, and do it rather quickly or he'll end you in about 10 seconds of wtfpwnage. :lol

 

[Einbroch]

Did about 20 hunts today, good times.

 

[Pterion]

Got FFXIII and GOW3 on tuesday, both completed already. :lol

I liked FFXIII, but I still prefered FFVIII and XII. Looking forward to more FF goodness.

 

[Mystery]

I swear to God, I can't get an Adamantoise/tortoise to drop a Trapezohedron to save my life. I got about 7 Platinum Ingots today, but no rare drops, and I'm 5-starring all these stupid giant turtles. At this rate, I'll just end up buying the freaking things.

 

[Crazymoogle]

Wow. Died five times in a row vs. the Manasvin Warmech. (Yeah, I'm behind on the game, that's GDC for you.) Really wasn't clear how important Solidarity was to drop damage. I'm thinking maybe the game expects Lightning to be wearing HP-up items at all times, because Crystal Rain is actually an instant-kill without it (first hit: 150+, second hit 170+) -_-

Between that and the Eidolons, I guess I see what you guys are talking about with regards to tactics. Most combat and chaining goes by so fast I can hardly tell what's going on, but it still does feel like a new sense of strategy has emerged that the traditional FF games have lacked outside of Boss encounters.

 

[Replicant]

Once you figured out the pattern he was pretty easy. I agree, when he started healing himself for 10k I was getting pretty annoyed and pissed. :lol

He does that? Weird. It never happened during my fight and I had a rather easy time with him which weirded me out because I thought it'd be one hell of a difficult fight (since he Sephiroth'd himself and all). Ditto with all of the Eidolon battles post Odin.

 

[adamsapple]

Help please. What/where are the items required to further transmute Helter Skelter into the Omega Weapon and Fang's Bladed Lance into the second tier thing ?

 

[Gamer @ Heart]

I just beat the game 15 minutes ago. It made me appreciate the song "My Hands" much more than i already do. I even "get" the logo of the game now.

The endings where

Spoiler

someone sacrifices themselves, heroically or willingly, always hit me the hardest. Its so much more moving than when everyone walks away happy. I didnt much care for vannille until right at that moment.

What a fantastic ride.

 

[ULTROS!]

Anyone encounter the jumping "bug"? (Party member jumps back and forth on a ledge)

 

[Styles]

I just beat the game 15 minutes ago. It made me appreciate the song "My Hands" much more than i already do. I even "get" the logo of the game now.

The endings where

Spoiler

someone sacrifices themselves, heroically or willingly, always hit me the hardest. Its so much more moving than when everyone walks away happy. I didnt much care for vannille until right at that moment.

What a fantastic ride.

That music before My Hands was WOW. Really hit those key moments.


If I want to get 3 Traps from dismantling Vanille and Fangs weapon I must first level them up to their max right? Jesus, more farm incoming if so. But I've found it very easy to defeat those Adamantortoises now; summon Bahamut while Fang's debuff the shit out of the thing.

 

[Gamer @ Heart]

If I want to get 3 Traps from dismantling Vanille and Fangs weapon I must first level them up to their max right? Jesus, more farm incoming if so. But I've found it very easy to defeat those Adamantortoises now; summon Bahamut while Fang's debuff the shit out of the thing.

How fast does that work for you on average. Is one summon enough?

 

[Styles]

How fast does that work for you on average. Is one summon enough?

Here's my strategy(assuming you're decently leveled):

Only need Bahamut. Takes me under 3min to defeat it.

Have SAB/SYN/RAV ready for Fang/Hope/Ligh (respectively). Go in let Hope buff you with haste then summon bahamut which will lead to the thing becoming disabled. Debuff it as much as you can until the time almost runs out and press square(just before the countdown ends) to go into Gestalt mode(usually before that I've already staggered him). After finishing off with a Megaflare(before that use all of your attacks) begin to debuff with Fang, attack with lightning and buffing with Hope until you finally receive bravery on Fang(most of the time the stagger bars' almost filled up when she finally gets it). Quickly switch to RAV/RAV/RAV and stagger him, after that switch to COM/RAV/COM and spam him with attack and he should be dead after that..

Edit. I clicked post reply before I could type the strategy down.

Target time is 20min, defeated him under 3min so I easilyl got 5 stars.

Can't find those TP shrouds, I just go around and fight those wolf and goblins until I gain enough back to be able to summon.

Sometimes I end up getting nothing... maybe a Platinum Ingot(sold for 150,000 gil) but I rarely rarely get a Trap. Not worth it really. :lol

 

[Gamer @ Heart]

Here's my strategy:

Only need Bahamut. Takes my under 3min to defeat it.

Is that enough for 5 stars?

Do you just buy the TP refill shroud? I remember they were expensive but are the rewards more than enough to make up for it?

 

[luxarific]

Here's my strategy(assuming you're decently leveled):

Only need Bahamut. Takes my under 3min to defeat it.

Have SAB/SYN/RAV ready for Fang/Hope/Ligh (respectively). Go in let Hope buff you with haste then summon bahamut which will lead to the thing becoming disabled. Debuff it as much as you can until the time almost runs out and press square(just before the countdown ends) to go into Gestalt mode(usually before that I've already staggered him). After finishing off with a Megaflare(before that use all of your attacks) begin to debuff with Fang, attack with lightning and buffing with Hope until you finally receive bravery on Fang(most of the time the stagger bars' almost filled up when she finally gets it). Quickly switch to RAV/RAV/RAV and stagger him, after that switch to COM/RAV/COM and spam him with attack and he should be dead after that..

Edit. I clicked post reply before I could type the strategy down.

Target time is 20min, defeated him under 3min so I easilyl got 5 stars.

Is this post-end game or pre-end game? In Chapter 12, I have the Crysterium maxed for the three pre-picked roles for each character (all health/mp/strength stats), but that only gets me to around 7700 HP for Lightning (w/o strength+ accessories). The turtle's stomp ends up one-hit killing me and Vanille. Fang has something like 1000 HP left.

 

[Styles]

Is this post-end game or pre-end game? In Chapter 12, I have the Crysterium maxed for the three pre-picked roles for each character (all health/mp/strength stats), but that only gets me to around 7700 HP for Lightning (w/o strength+ accessories). The turtle's stomp ends up one-hit killing me and Vanille. Fang has something like 1000 HP left.

Post-game sadly. You can attempt to kill the smaller one but it will only gives you a Gold Dust as a common drop and a Scarlette as a rare.

 

[luxarific]

Post-game sadly. You can attempt to kill the smaller one but it will only gives you a Gold Dust as a common drop and a Scarlette as a rare.

Thanks - will give it shot when I finish the game.

 

[expy]

Is this post-end game or pre-end game? In Chapter 12, I have the Crysterium maxed for the three pre-picked roles for each character (all health/mp/strength stats), but that only gets me to around 7700 HP for Lightning (w/o strength+ accessories). The turtle's stomp ends up one-hit killing me and Vanille. Fang has something like 1000 HP left.

Better wait for end-game, it's way simpler once you get to level further into your roles. Also, try upgrading some of the weapons to tier 2, and use those against the adamantoiises/adamantortoises. My strategy takes 2:30mins to defeated them, I've been grinding for about 2 hours and i found 2 traps (got lucky I suppose). I don't think the 3 roles maxed @ chap 12 are enough to make it a worthwhile fight, better wait until you get some more points into those roles before trying to farm them.

Edit: no summons, I have one tier 2 wep on each character and ALL roles maxed out. Also wearing +phys resist accessories leveled to max.

 

[Replicant]

That music before My Hands was WOW. Really hit those key moments.

Is that an instrumental version of "Kimi ga Iru Kara"? I actually spoiled myself regarding the ending and I was so pissed that they replaced that song with"My Hands" because "Kimi ga Iru Kara" would have been a spot-on Ending song for the game.

 

[Styles]

Is that an instrumental version of "Kimi ga Iru Kara"? I actually spoiled myself regarding the ending and I was so pissed that they replaced that song with"My Hands" because "Kimi ga Iru Kara" would have been a spot-on Ending song for the game.

Just a variation of the the track

Spoiler

Final Fantasy XIII - Promise

 

[marathonfool]

As I said in my post (in which, you glossed over the other half of my argument being the combination of grinding with a complete mess of an economy in the game and decided to traipse straight into a Megami Tensei trolling attempt), the post-game is crappy because it represents a rather dire catch-22: You need to get materials to become more powerful. The only enemy that drops both a way to get a decent amount of gil and the means needed to get the ultimate weapons is this one enemy. This one enemy also happens to be vastly more powerful than the missions before hand to the point where the damage dealt jumps from 3,000 to 13,000. You have no sensible way to get stronger but to fight this enemy, so you have to use various work-arounds (Summon method, death method, etc). The ultimate weapons also cost 1.5-2 million gil and you're going to need at least three of them (and three of the Traphezohedron that the Adamantoise rarely drops), but the items dropped by the Adamantoise that you can sell only drops 30% of the time. The only other method of making gil involves farming two groups of enemies that drop one item a piece worth 15k. The item that the Adamantoise drops is 150k.

This isn't simply a problem of grinding, but an issue of poor balance and design (especially when you realize that the Adamantoise is harder than 3/4ths of the final set of missions anyway). The hoops you have to jump through here are vastly different than the little grinding you even have to do in Megami Tensei games.

I only have missions 51, 54, 63, and 64 left. I didn't do any grinding and I'm still using level 1 weapons. Maybe the last couple missions are next to impossible to complete without grinding(due to lack of HP), but I wouldn't say this game is unbalanced or has poor design.

Once I outfit my party with the right accessories, shrouds, or make use of well-timed summons, I can adapt to just about any enemy.

My highest HP character is Snow with around 17K [edit].

 

[linsivvi]

Whew. Finally got the treasure hunter trophy and the platinum. You know, I agree with everything MechaX said. Post game is totally tedious and not fun. I had to grind the tortoise so much that my characters are all maxed with 999999 cp and yet I hardly have enough money. Shouldn't the hardest enemies in the game at least guarantee you a decent drop so the players aren't wasting their time?

Also, summons are pretty useless in this game except when fighting the tortoise with a weak party. I haven't even bothered to check out the summon animation of half of them. Renew is both cheaper and better.

 

[Gamer @ Heart]

Whew. Finally got the treasure hunter trophy and the platinum. You know, I agree with everything MechaX said. Post game is totally tedious and not fun. I had to grind the tortoise so much that my characters are all maxed with 999999 cp and yet I hardly have enough money. Shouldn't the hardest enemies in the game at least guarantee you a decent drop so the players aren't wasting their time?

Also, summons are pretty useless in this game except when fighting the tortoise with a weak party. I haven't even bothered to check out the summon animation of half of them. Renew is both cheaper and better.

Isnt there an item that turns CP into gil?

 

[Rad-]

Game is fun but man, the writing is really bad occasionally. So many out of place lines.

 

[linsivvi]

Isnt there an item that turns CP into gil?

Nope. There's one that gives you double CP though, and can be obtained as early as chapter 11 if you use a certain trick and retry a lot of times.

In the end, I just sold everything I had to get enough money to make a max level ultimate weapon so I can turn it into a certain component that I need. Oh this is so silly. :lol

 

[KajunW]

So I am still trying to

Spoiler

beat the Primarch at the end of Chapter 9... I actually got him to do some moan when he was charging up his Destrudo. Is there something special you have to do to get him to do that? I am on try #4 and I am starting to get really pissed off again. :lol

I also had trouble (see my questions a few pages ago), but I finally beat the Boss this morning. Was pretty easy too, with my setup. What a difference a character can make!

Spoiler

Yesterday I used Lightning/Hope/Fang, but basically, I did so little damage that a) I could not make the boss moan during the charge up of Destrudo b) that I could not beat him before he casted Doom on me.

Today, I grinded some CP to get some additional HP abilities; most of my characters had some low HP. I changed my party to Lightning/Sazh/Fang, starting off with Librascope, and casting Haste/Slowga in Medic/Synergist/Saboteur mode. Once that is cast, I start hacking away with Ravager/Ravager/Commando or Medic/Ravager/Commando. Lightning really is poor at healing, so using the Doctor's code accessory and potions to heal is not a bad idea.

After beating the smaller heads, proceed with this strategy, making sure Sazh buffs up your party with haste and elemental enhancements to your strikes. Didn't think the main head has elemental weaknesses, but I could do some heavy damage (up to 4k per strike). A *huge* difference with my previous party (more like 1k at max). When the main is preparing for Destrudo, you can go all out as many others have mentioned here. I am guessing that he will moan after a certain amount of damage done; haste/elemental buffs with a Ravager/Ravager/Commando party will do just that.

I can't believe this only took like 10 minutes, in contrast to yesterday, what seemed more like 30 minutes.

 

[RpgN]

I haven't attempted to fight adamantoises yet but digging gold nuggets nets 60k which is pretty handy as well for money income.

BTW in order to get the ultimate weapons, you need to buy that item changing material in the store? You can't get it from missions or monsters?

 

[Nose Master]

You get it from the chained turtles. Speaking of!: How often does death work on them? I feel like it'd be easier to just kill them normally, which I haven't really tried. Summoning, then working up the stagger meter to 99%, then letting it despawn and pounding on it with the full team seems like it might work.

I didn't even realize Genji Glove was the only way to break the 99k damage cap... :lol

 

[RpgN]

Oh no I've only 'tried' to fight with one of them once on chapter 12, he did a stomp that caused 15k to my party and all of them didn't even have over 8k of HP at that time. I'm just going to relax for the time being, complete missions and more and then attempt this monster towards the end or something *gulp*

 

[Unknown Soldier]

I've been reading FFXIII: Episode Zero - Promise. It's a series of web novels Squenix posted to their Japanese site before and after the Japanese release of the game. There's a great deal of additional background information in the prequel you don't even get if you read all the stuff in the Datalog about the story and the world. The bonus is that the quality of writing in Episode Zero is about a million times better than the quality of writing in the game. Why Squenix didn't have the guy who wrote Episode Zero also write all the dialogue in the game is beyond my mortal comphrension.

WARNING: DO NOT READ EPISODE ZERO UNTIL YOU ARE AT LEAST AT CHAPTER 11 IN THE GAME! HUGE MOTHERFUCKING SPOILERS ABOUT SHIT! DON'T ACT LIKE I DIDN'T WARN YOU!

 

[desverger]

Quick question: What the heck does "Stagger Lock" do? The in-game explanation is .. lacking, it says "Prevents staggering of enemies."

WAT

 

[Styles]

Quick question: What the heck does "Stagger Lock" do? The in-game explanation is .. lacking, it says "Prevents staggering of enemies."

WAT

It means that you can only fill up the stagger bar to full but can't stagger them to increase the damage rate. In return though the weapon offers you a huge increase into both of your stats evenly.

 

[Castor Krieg]

Quick question: What the heck does "Stagger Lock" do? The in-game explanation is .. lacking, it says "Prevents staggering of enemies."

WAT

Person with this weapon equipped will not be able to stagger enemies. You need to rely on people without this condition.

 

[Peff]

Quick question: What the heck does "Stagger Lock" do? The in-game explanation is .. lacking, it says "Prevents staggering of enemies."

WAT

The character can build the Stagger bar but never make the enemy into Stagger mode, so it's useless for Ravagers but the great stats that come with it are actually cool for Commandos who can barely add to the bar as it is, let alone Stagger someone.

 

[desverger]

Thanks for the answers. The bonuses weren't really that obvious and the description - while semi-accurate - sounds like a real downside. It kinda sounded like it would PREVENT the stagger, so nobody could do it. But guess it makes sense now :lol