Personally, I think grinding in this game is mostly unneeded; I didn't do much of it, anyway. Most of the boss fights come down to correct use of Paradigm shifts and abusing the ATB bar trick (which most people call 'ATB cancelling', look it up on Google). The difficulty does ramp up a bit after chapter 10, though, particularly the bosses.


As I mentioned, sidequests are unfortunately quite sparse, which I found to be the biggest disappointment, considering all previous FFs had a very rich post-game. The biggest 'sidequest' is doing a series of hunts, which involve fighting progressively harder marks. There are 60+ missions in all, so it should take some time all in all. Beside that, it's mostly grinding to upgrade equipment to their ultimate forms, and that's it.

This is where Square fails the most, I think.


True, money is quite sparse for most of the game, so it really isn't efficient to do much upgrading before chapter 11. I'd upgrade only the weapons of the characters that you use most, and leave the rest for later.


Yeah, it's almost impossible to earn cash in this game in an efficient manner until you reach chapter 11. You could sell stuff, but remember: if you're planning on achieving ALL trophies in the game, don't sell off anything that you don't have duplicates for. There is one trophy that requires you to have held every single accessory and weapon there is in the game, so if you sell of something that only appears once during the entire playthrough, you won't be able to get the trophy since you won't be able to upgrade that piece of equipment.
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I'm not really the trophy hunter, although I like to get them But if I have to invest hours of tedious gameplay to get one single trophy, I'd rather skip that one.
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I doubt I'll ever get that one either, but we'll see. There's so many other games in the backlog that I still have to play...

Have started White Knight Chronicles now, which, although a bit dated-looking, does evoke that old-school JRPG feeling. Bought Resonance of Fate also, which should be good according to the reviews.
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I also have still a lot of games to play, but didn't buy WKC or RoF yet, want to wait until they get a bit cheaper, because I have really a whole lot of games still to play. And RoF is holding me a bit back because of its high difficulty and learning curve.
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I'm very close now to chapter 11, and as I read, this is where I should start to invest items and stuff into my weapons and other gear to gain experience. As I didn't do it so far, I wanted to ask you what you did exactly, and what stuff would be worth to upgrade?

In my battle party I always keep the same characters, Lightning as leader, then Hope and Fang.

Are there any tricks or things that I should consider to do, and pay attention on what really not to do? Which items did you sell and which one did you use to upgrade?

Btw, bought WKC yesterday for 22£.
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Where are you at now?

I haven't played the game in a good while now, so the details are starting to fade a bit.

Some pointers though:

1. Complete Mission 14 as soon as you can. You receive the means to ride Chocobos then, shortening your travel times, giving you semi-immunity to being attacked on the field, as well as allowing you to dig up treasure. Some pieces of treasure can be sold for like 30.000 apiece.

2. When you gain a spell called Death on Vanille (she's the only one who has it), it might be worth it to try your hand at mission 54 (I think). This pits you against a Marlboro-type plant monster. He's really tough, and comes with 4 or 5 nasty minions, but the good thing is that he's vulnerable to Death. If you manage to achieve this mission, you receive the Growth Egg, which doubles CP earned. Lovely!

3. The Axis Blade for Lightning might at first seem weaksauce, but don't underestimate it. Its special property speeds up the ATB rate by 10%, and if you combine it with an accessory that also increases the ATB rate, Lightning becomes a monster.

4. Lightning also has access to another sword (the name eludes me) that has the ability to instant-stagger opponents that have a nearly-full stagger bar. I think it needs to be upgraded to its second form for it to manifest itself. I found this ability to be extremely useful.

5. Complete the Bhakti sidequest in Oerba as soon as you can. If you meet certain criteria (such as having walked xxx steps in the Lowerworld), you will receive prizes from him. One of them is 3 Platinum Ingots, which you can sell for 150.000 each. That's a lot of cash!

6. Did you know Lightning can be developed into the best Commando vs. physical attacks? At one point she can attain an evasion rate of like 85+ %, meaning enemies that do only physical damage can barely hit her.

7. Somewhere in the Northern part of the highlands there's a giant wolf and a behemoth fighting each other (they're close to a save point and an exit to another area). As long as your party is sufficiently strong, this spot becomes a very good grinding location, since you can always ambush these creatures. Ambushed creatures have only half health and a nearly-full stagger bar, meaning you can kill off one of them very quickly (behemoth first would be a good idea). It takes only a little run back to the save point to respawn the monsters.

If I can remember more pointers, I'll post them as well.
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I'm right in the caves behind the giant wolf and a behemoth fight, I'm still too weak to beat them. But there in the caves I'm grinding at the moment, and every fight gets me between 2000 and 5000 CP, which is quite good at the moment.
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I haven't even bought FFXIII yet :/ It seems a bit of a downer compared to XII....
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If you ain't too bothered with linearity and the lack of towns and sidequests, it's still a pretty good game.
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But I like the sidequests, gives it depth. So if they didn't do all the sidequest stuff, what did they do instead?
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