Game

[iconoclast]

You can buy catalysts from one of the stores, The Motherlode, I think. Some of them are pretty expensive... (adamantite is 200k)

The best way to grind gil IMO is to repeat mission 63 over and over, since it earns you a guaranteed 60k each time and gives you 5 chances to get a Platinum Ingot (sells for 150k) and Trapezehedron (catalyst for ultimate weapons) or whatever it's called. But you need to be able to kill Adamantortoises reliably to do that, and that probably won't be until after you finish the game. The best gil grinding spot before then is mission 24 I guess? You can get 400k+ an hour I believe.

[iconoclast]

Oh yeah, and you can't go over the limit for whatever tier you're in. So if a tier 1 weapon needs 50k, and you use 150k exp, you waste 100k. Try to be as exact as possible.

And you don't have to go one level at a time, you can go from 1 to max rank.

[demi]

Cool cool, I made a nice sheet detailing my plan of attack. Gonna beat the game first to unlock Level 10 Crystarium

[Mr. Gundam]

Got to Gran Pulse this morning. Do I stick around and do some grindan or move ahead with the storyline? Can I come back to Gran Pulse, or is this my only chance at doing so?

[Bebpo]

If you move on the game is going to seem a lot harder than it should.  I'd recommend at least doing a handful until you can take on normal enemies in the field like King Behemoths like it's nothing.

[demi]

Got to Gran Pulse this morning. Do I stick around and do some grindan or move ahead with the storyline? Can I come back to Gran Pulse, or is this my only chance at doing so?

Do that grinding spot I linked above. Do Cieth stones up to Mission 14 if possible, for the Chocobo, and to unlock Waypoints.

If you try to move forward like I did, you will get your anus ravaged more than your wife already does

[Himu]

I'm on like c'eth stone 7 or something.

[Kestastrophe]

I got this yesterday, I've played it for 6 hours or so. I think I like it. The pacing is horrid during the first couple of hours or so, and they just keep throwing characters at you without giving you any reasons as to why you should care. But I like the crystarium leveling system and the paradigm shifting seems neat. I don't really get the complaints that people have about it being overly linear. Its a final fantasy game :shrug, and nothing that I've seen thus far seems to be a vast departure for the series.

The va work is pretty solid, but good lawd the dialogue is awful. I wish someone English would step in during the translation process and say "this just doesn't work". My biggest complaint about the game, so far. Also, the character designs are shitty

[Himu]

Doing that thing demi suggested and I've got about 100k cp in an hour.

[Himu]

Put Sazh in my party for haste and it's even easier. Gonna grind later tonight and complete all three main roles at stage 8 and rush to end game so I can beat this.

[Mr. Gundam]

Put Sazh in my party for haste and it's even easier. Gonna grind later tonight and complete all three main roles at stage 8 and rush to end game so I can beat this.

Sazh is a hastin' beast.

[Himu]

Haste is amazing in this game.

[Mr. Gundam]

Haste is amazing in this game.

Haste was always helpful, but it was never an essential spell. It sure as fucking hell is in FFXIII.

[Himu]

Yep.

[demi]

I use Light (Leader) / Fang / Hope

[demi]

Doing that thing demi suggested and I've got about 100k cp in an hour.

When you get stronger, you can fight the two behemoths that are fighting near the other end of the area. You will always get a pre-emp, and if you kill them, you get about 6600 CP, and they are easy to respawn.

[Himu]

I use Light (leader)/Fang/Hope as well, but for that trick to work, you're gonna have to put in Sazh for haste. Makes everything faster and easier.

[demi]

I actually didnt use Sazh, I guess I got lucky. I just used Blitz to make them stop casting Aerora - sometimes even just 1 Blitz so they cant cast. If you have Hope as a Ravager, he can cast Waterga, etc. Which knocks them into the air.

[Himu]

Doing that thing demi suggested and I've got about 100k cp in an hour.

When you get stronger, you can fight the two behemoths that are fighting near the other end of the area. You will always get a pre-emp, and if you kill them, you get about 6600 CP, and they are easy to respawn.

Sounds nice, but you get almost 6000 cp from this trick with the owls too.

[Third]

My whole team has sprint shoes equipped. They give you the auto-haste ability. No need to cast haste in a battle anymore. The magic will wear off after a few minutes of course, but starting off with haste is such a huge advantage.
Mission 7 drops the tetradic tiara as a rare drop. Upgrade the tiara, it only costs 200exp. And dismantle it. You'll get the Sprint Shoes.

[Himu]

I actually didnt use Sazh, I guess I got lucky. I just used Blitz to make them stop casting Aerora - sometimes even just 1 Blitz so they cant cast. If you have Hope as a Ravager, he can cast Waterga, etc. Which knocks them into the air.

When I didn't use Sazh I couldn't get enough attacks in before they used summon or conjure. With Sazh+haste, I kill them before they have the opportunity to even cast it.

[Himu]

My whole team has sprint shoes equipped. They give you the auto-haste ability. No need to cast haste in a battle anymore. The magic will wear off after a few minutes of course, but starting off with haste is such a huge advantage.
Mission 7 drops the tetradic tiara as a rare drop. Upgrade the tiara, it only costs 200exp. And dismantle it. You'll get the Sprint Shoes.

Niiice.

[demi]

Hmm, I think I did Mission 7. I might even have a Tetradic Tiara/Crown

[Third]

It has to be a Tetradic Tiara. Crown won't work. I've fought the boss maybe 10 times. Got 3 Tiara's out of him. Pretty good.
And he always drops some bomb shells, or something like that. Good item to upgrade accessory with.

I think I've done half of the missions so far. Can't complete the rest because they're too hard. Need to have better weapons and stats.

[Himu]

I haven't upgraded any accessories yet. Just weapons.

[demi]

Did you 5 star them? I've got the first 8 or so 5-star. I'm gonna beat the game first before taking them on.

[Third]

I haven't upgraded any accessories yet. Just weapons.

Me neither. I've only been upgrading Doctor's code and tiara's. Upgrade the Doctor's Code, only costs 200exp, dimantle it, and you'll get an elixir plus other stuff.
The elixir will fully recover the team's HP and TP. A very rare item in this game.
And upgrading the tiara costs you ~2000 by the way. Still not much.
Upgrading and the dismantling accessory seems to offer pretty good items in this game. Have to look more into it.

And no, I haven't 5 starred them all. Maybe later when my team is much stronger. Going on an annihilation tour when I'm maxed.

[demi]

I dismanted a Doctor's Code that wasnt max'd. Didnt know they made Elixers. I still have 2 though.

[demi]

I got this yesterday, I've played it for 6 hours or so. I think I like it. The pacing is horrid during the first couple of hours or so, and they just keep throwing characters at you without giving you any reasons as to why you should care. But I like the crystarium leveling system and the paradigm shifting seems neat. I don't really get the complaints that people have about it being overly linear. Its a final fantasy game :shrug, and nothing that I've seen thus far seems to be a vast departure for the series.

The va work is pretty solid, but good lawd the dialogue is awful. I wish someone English would step in during the translation process and say "this just doesn't work". My biggest complaint about the game, so far. Also, the character designs are shitty

Snow

[youtube=560,345]aJXu2Jy5k4c[/youtube]

[Third]

I think I've finished less than ten missions before finishing the main game. I was too lazy to finish more because you have to walk too much to reach a mission and goal, and I didn't have a chocobo then. Wanted to see the ending of the game too. So I kinda rushed through ch11 and ch12. I hated ch12 btw.

Some of the missions still seem impossible. And my team all have 15k+ HP. I still can't kill an adamontoise without using the death spell lol. Need trapze's so hard now.

[Rman]

Put Sazh in my party for haste and it's even easier. Gonna grind later tonight and complete all three main roles at stage 8 and rush to end game so I can beat this.

Hope learns Haste a bit later.  Once he did, I had to kick Sazh to the curb, since Hope's magic stats are crazy.  Sazh is such a stylish character, I miss having him in my party.  I currently use Fang as the party leader with Lightning and Hope flanking.  

[Himu]

Third, I took out the mark for mission 7 and didn't get any tiara like item?

I've taken out the first 10 marks and honestly, the whole game should have been like this. For the first time since beginning the game I'm not only having fun, I'm having a lot of fun. Adventure, variety, semi-challenging fights, loot, and exploration is what rpgs are about.

It just sucks that exploration is such a pain here, even with the waypoints. It takes at least 30 minutes to get from one end of pulse to the other: that's too big, but it's certainly preferable to the first half of the game.

4 more marks and I unlock the chocobo, which is good, considering my exploration complaint. After that, I'm gonna finish up my three main roles on my mains and continue the story.

I keep hearing about this tower in chapter 11 that's an actual honest to goodness dungeon, but I won't believe it until I see it. Either way, I'm just amazed that S-E thought it was a good idea for the player to wade through 20-25 hours of tedium in order to get to the part where the game really begins. What's with that?

[demi]

It's a rare drop. You have to get 5 star, and equip an item like Connosoir Catalog

[Himu]

I got a 5 star. Hmmm. I'll try again.

[Rman]

Third, I took out the mark for mission 7 and didn't get any tiara like item?

I've taken out the first 10 marks and honestly, the whole game should have been like this. For the first time since beginning the game I'm not only having fun, I'm having a lot of fun. Adventure, variety, semi-challenging fights, loot, and exploration is what rpgs are about.

It just sucks that exploration is such a pain here, even with the waypoints. It takes at least 30 minutes to get from one end of pulse to the other: that's too big, but it's certainly preferable to the first half of the game.

4 more marks and I unlock the chocobo, which is good, considering my exploration complaint. After that, I'm gonna finish up my three main roles on my mains and continue the story.

I keep hearing about this tower in chapter 11 that's an actual honest to goodness dungeon, but I won't believe it until I see it. Either way, I'm just amazed that S-E thought it was a good idea for the player to wade through 20-25 hours of tedium in order to get to the part where the game really begins. What's with that?

Yeah the dungeon is pretty awesome.  I think you'd like it.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

The dungeon requires you to beat some Marks, which you mentioned you liked, to continue to the next sections.  Enemies yield tons of CP there too.

[close]

[Himu]

Okay, are the tiara's drops or are they mission rewards? I've equipped the collector catalog on Fang (Light is my leader) and all I'm getting are bomb cores.

[demi]

Bomb Cores are the prize for winning the mission. Tetradic Crown/Tiaras are regular drops from the enemy itself. Collector Catalog won't get you the rare goods. You need Connoseuir Catalog

[demi]

You really dont need them, I am still 5-star Marks up until the tower (where I am now)

[Himu]

I just want sprint shoes.

[demi]

You can get them by upgrading Hermes Sandles you get AS A REWARD in Mission 34

Considering I 5-star'd Mission 26 or so... 34 doesnt seem so bad

[Himu]

Holy shit. I got at least 15 bomb cores from mission 7 mark, and so I decided to dump into my Axis-Blade, and just those bomb cores offered 28k points. Now my Axis-Blade is Axis-Blade *

What does THAT mean? Either way, I just tackled the King Behemoth and wolf mother fighting each other and did 20k damage per hit on the Behemoth when I launched him.

gawd DAMN.

[demi]

* means your sword is maxed. You need a Catalyst to upgrade it to Tier 2 now

[Himu]

Where can I get a catalyst?

[Ichirou]

Where can I get a catalyst?

You have to find a moogle and kill it.

[demi]

Buy them, earn them in a fight... time for you to go reading GameFAQs

[Ichirou]

Maybe you should do a little research, Himu.

[Himu]

Lazy.

[Himu]

It takes adamantite to upgrade my weapon and that costs 220k in the shop. FML.

[Ichirou]

fyl

[demi]

You only need 3 Adamantites towards the achievement, so it's not that bad

[Third]

I just want sprint shoes.

How I got Tetradic Tiara's out of missions 7:

- Equip the Collector's catalogue. All three members.
- 5 Starred the enemy.

That's it.

I got 3 Tetradic Tiaria's out of ~10 fights. Maybe I was just lucky. But it definitely works.

And yeah, missions 7 always drops bomb cores. Tetradic Tiara's are rare drops in the (SPOILS) section.

[Himu]

Oh, you put the collectors catalogue on all three MEMBERS.

[Rman]

You can get multiple collector's catalogs from one of the missions.  Don't spend valuable gil, that should be used for weapons upgrades, on it at MoogleWorks.

[Himu]

Buy them? Fuck that. I want to redo the mission that gives me collector's catalogs. Forgot which one does though.

Anyways, I've got my chocobo and my three main roles are mostly maxed as far as they can get at this point, so I'm going to continue the story

[demi]

That cutscene at the start of Chapter 12 was suh-weeeeeeet. Now I got my Lionheart and dumped it straight to * level

[iconoclast]

Catalogs of the same type don't stack. You can use a collector's catalog, connoisseur catalog, and the catalog for shrouds in the same group, but using more than one of each has no effect.

[Rman]

I forgot, Himuro, you can't win multiple catalogs from the missions.  You can only get that reward once.  Once you beat a mission and retry the reward will be different.  That's the same with every mission.  But since they don't stack, that shouldn't be a problem.

[Himu]

Fuck.

[demi]

I already have 2 Sprint Shoes. Enjoy your needless farming

[Ichirou]

Himurowned.