Tips¶

Quick settings¶

• Sprint: Options lets you change sprint from Hold to Toggle (press once to switch) or Invert (always run unless you hold the button). Running raises the encounter rate.
• Battle speed: Press Triangle in battle to speed up animations. Some Sweeping Staggers reset it, so tap it again. There are three speeds, shown by the triangles at the bottom left.
• Autosave is a switch under Options → Gameplay.
• Mini-map: Click R3 to hide or show it.
• Active Time Chats: If you walk away from one, press L1 for the list and replay it.
• Auto-cure in the main menu heals the party with Cure. It spends MP, so don't use it to top off small scratches.
• Help in the system menu has every tutorial, including what each status effect does. Handy mid-boss when something odd hits you.

Combat¶

Stagger is the whole game¶

• Every enemy has a stagger gauge under its HP bar. Draining it to zero makes the enemy lose its next turn and take extra damage.
• Hitting a weakness triples the stagger an attack deals. Hitting a resistance does next to nothing, and the gauge refills if you leave it.
• Before you confirm an attack, the game shows its damage (red) and stagger (yellow). Check the yellow bar.
• Spells like Fire, Blizzard, Thunder, Water and Banish have 17 stagger power. Surges (Fire Surge, Water Surge and so on) have 25.
• Tronn and the Warrior of Light carry Stagger Power +30%, which boosts everything the wearer does. The Stagger Ring from the Tablet Shard boxes adds 10%.
• Enemies above your level are harder to stagger. If the gauge barely moves, you're probably under-leveled.
• Some enemies, like the Minituar, dodge most attacks until staggered. Stagger first, then hit them.
• Save your big hits and buffs for when the enemy is staggered.

Timing the stagger¶

• The strip along the top shows turn order, left to right. Allies are blue, enemies red. There's no time pressure, so read it every turn.
• The second strip shows the order for the next round. Use it to plan a heal or a break a round ahead.
• Break the enemy that acts soonest first. Staggering one that already moved this round, or acts last, wastes most of the effect.
• Counters count toward stagger. A counter that breaks an enemy after it has already acted wastes the break, because stagger wears off at the end of the turn.
• Plan who chips the gauge and who breaks it, so the characters after them can pile on.
• An enemy that glows red is about to use something devastating. Stagger it before its turn, or Defend. Defending also lets you pass a turn to line up a break.
• Heal or buff before a dangerous enemy's turn, not after.

Weaknesses and Libra¶

• Weaknesses stay hidden until you hit one or cast Libra. Nichol has it, and the Leah and Cloud Visions give it to anyone.
• Libra shows HP, weaknesses, resistances, traits, status vulnerabilities and what you can steal or win. It only needs doing once per enemy type; the info stays.
• Some enemies absorb an element instead of resisting it.
• Elemental attacks can be physical or magical. Rain hits hardest with physical moves, Fina and Nichol with magic, and Lasswell and Lid handle both. In Equipment & Abilities, press Square on a Vision to see which of its moves are which.
• Your party's own elements are limited. Rain has Fire, Lasswell Ice, Fina Light, Lid Earth and Nichol Water. For Lightning and Wind, lean on Visions.
• Look for elemental scrolls in chests. They tend to show up just before a boss that's weak to that element.
• If you give your party Reflect, it bounces your own healing spells to the enemy.

Bonus Phase, Sweeping Stagger and Resonance¶

• Whoever staggers an enemy gets an extra action at the end of the round.
• Stagger every enemy in the same turn for a Sweeping Stagger: the whole party gets an extra action, and you can fire one Resonance at the end of it. A lone enemy counts.
• Resonance is a finisher. Save it for this window instead of opening with it.
• Read what each Resonance does. Many have a side effect: the Warrior of Light's buffs the party and Leah's heals everyone and adds Regen. Pick the one that fixes your current problem.
• "All enemies" spells hit each target for less, but if the whole group shares a weakness, they're the fastest way to a Sweeping Stagger. On a single tough enemy, use single-target spells. To target everyone, keep moving past the single targets until the whole group lights up.
• When several enemies are close to breaking, spread your attacks so they all break in the same turn.

Limit Bursts¶

• The purple gauge fills when a character staggers an enemy or takes damage. A stagger-focused party fills it faster.
• The gauge empties after every battle. If it's full, use it.
• Limit Bursts always hit, which matters against evasive enemies.

Status effects¶

• Esuna and items like Remedy cure ailments (Poison, Silence and so on), but not debuffs like Deprotect or Slow. Wait those out, or cast the opposite buff (Protect cancels Deprotect, Haste cancels Slow).
• A physical hit wakes up a sleeping or confused ally.
• Don't cure on reflex. A poisoned ally on low HP needs healing more than an Antidote.
• Accessories with Nullify effects block a status outright. Leah's Nullify Charm and Monk's Prayer Beads both stop Charm.

Espers¶

• Summoning is Fina's job and costs 50 MP. The Esper stays 3 turns and ends with its finishing move. See Espers.
• Use them in boss fights, ideally lined up with a stagger, rather than saving them for an emergency that never comes.
• The finishing move doesn't miss, so it's a good way to land the last hit on an evasive enemy.

Visions¶

• Mastery is per character. Each character has their own Mastery Rank with each Vision. Moving Cloud from Lasswell to Fina starts Fina at zero, but Lasswell's ranks are still there when Cloud goes back to Lasswell.
• MRP goes to the equipped Vision, so equip the one you want to rank up before the fight.
• Stat gains and Mastery passives stay with the character after you swap Visions.
• Get every Vision to rank 1 or 2 on everyone. It's quick, and the early passives add up. Several restore MP: Tronn (5% when you stagger), Warrior of Light (10% when you stagger) and Cloud (3% on a critical).
• AP comes only from Mastery Ranks: ranks 4 and 9 each give +8 AP. That's per character, per Vision, so rank 4 on every Vision on everyone adds a lot of AP.
• A Vision's own abilities work as soon as it's equipped. AP is the budget for the learned abilities you equip on top, from any Vision that character has learned them from.
• Match roles where you can (Commando, Breaker, Sentinel, Medic and so on), or use a Vision to cover a role the character lacks. The Warrior of Light on Lasswell gives him a taunt and healing.
• Don't double up. Fina already heals, so a healing Vision on her is mostly overlap. Give healing to someone else and you'll have two healers.
• Before you swap off a Vision, check whether the character is one or two ranks from a passive worth having.
• Magicite is limited, so spend it awakening the Visions you actually use. Awakened abilities only work while that Vision is equipped. Mastery abilities can be equipped on anyone who has learned them.

Mastery abilities worth getting early¶

Stealing¶

• Libra shows what an enemy has to steal, common and rare.
• If an enemy has only a rare steal, any successful steal gets it. If it has two, a successful steal can land on either one, so the rare is harder to get.
• Steal before you finish the fight. Some steals are accessories you can't get anywhere else yet. For example, the Dhorme Chimera on the Grandport world map has a rare Ring of Rage.

Exploring¶

• Explore each new region before following the story. Sanctums are easy to walk past, and every hour without a Vision is MRP you didn't earn.
• Hug the walls. Some chests are invisible until an Inspect prompt pops up, and some passages don't show on the mini-map until you walk into them.
• Talk to everyone. Some NPCs heal you for free or sell items outside of shops, and bulletin boards and townsfolk point you at side quests and good grinding spots.
• Do side quests as soon as they open. They pay out gear while it's still useful, and many give Magicite Shards.
• Dialogue choices with party members give permanent stat bonuses. The first is outside the Earth Shrine: your answer gives Rain +3 Strength, Stamina or Spirit. The wording hints at which.
• The best gear mostly comes from chests, not steals or drops. Consumables are the reverse: Ethers can't be bought, so they come from drops.
• Equipment isn't a straight upgrade path. Read the secondary effects.
• Check the weapon and armor shops in every new town, but compare with what you've found first. Chests on the way to a town often hold better weapons. Sell old gear if you're short.
• Which enemies you meet depends on the ground you're on. Grass, trees and paved ground in the same area can each have their own encounters.
• Some areas have a rare, tougher enemy. Libra describes it as powerful and hard to stagger, but well rewarded. Medusa on the Dirnado world map is one; rarely, you can steal a Jeweled Ring from it.
• Riding a Chocobo lowers the encounter rate, and it avoids the Antlion ambush on Grandport's roads. Get off and run when you want fights.
• Dungeons show a recommended level when you enter. A couple of levels under is fine. Further under, go grind or do side quests first.
• Nothing is permanently missable. The game warns you before a point of no return, and everything behind it can still be done later.

Saving and healing¶

• You can save anywhere on the world map, plus at save points in towns and dungeons.
• After you've touched a dungeon's save points, you can teleport between the entrance and the deepest one you've reached.
• Fast travel from the Map screen to anywhere you've been. It doesn't work underground.
• Tents fully restore HP and MP and revive anyone who's down. Use one at a save point or on the world map.
• An inn does the same for 100 gil, a third of a Tent's 300. In a dungeon, teleport back to the entrance, fast travel to an inn, then come back and teleport to where you were.
• The encounter sensor on the mini-map turns redder as a fight gets close. Use it to time saves and heals.

Difficulty and battle rewards¶

• Difficulty can be changed anytime from the menu.
• Casual gives enemies 60% of their HP and a much smaller stagger gauge. EXP, gil and drop rates are the same as Normal.
• Expert is tougher but gives 1.5× MRP. EXP and gil don't change.
• Bonuses on the results screen:

• For grinding, easy enemies you can farm all three bonuses from often beat tougher ones. Taking enemies down one at a time so the last one dies staggered gets you both Stagger Finish and Overkill.
• Everyone gets EXP, including characters on the bench.
• Running away earns nothing.
• Each enemy rolls separately for its drops: about 1 in 8 or 1 in 12 for the normal item, and 1 in 30 for the rare one.

Farming spots¶

Metal Minituar¶

• It has only a few HP, and every hit that lands does 1 damage. Casual gives it the fewest HP and doesn't lower the EXP, so switch to Casual to farm it.
• It resists every element. Use plain, non-elemental attacks.
• Normal attacks land less than half the time. From its fourth turn on, it has about a 1 in 3 chance each turn to run.
• Multi-hit abilities roll to hit on every hit, so they're your best bet. Lasswell's Tranquility works well. Limit Bursts, Resonances and an Esper's finishing move always hit.
• The other enemy in that spot is Medusa, worth over 1,000 EXP and about 1,000 gil, so the bad rolls still pay.

Mini Gil Snapper¶

• It counters physical attacks, so stagger it with Ice magic.
• Steal a Mist Ether, or rarely a Small Golden Shell, which sells for 2,500 gil.

Pots¶

• A Pot asks for one item. Use that item on the Pot and it vanishes, which counts as a win.
• Switch to Expert first. There's no risk, and it's 1.5× MRP.
• Each Pot only pays out once. If you don't have the item, run. It'll still be there when you come back.
• Damage does nothing to a Pot. Every turn it asks for its item again and heals itself to full.
• Pots sometimes drop an Elixir.