Tips and Tricks: The Final Fantasy XIII-2 game guide

Sebastian Haley January 31, 2012 5:32 PM

Welcome to GamesBeat’s Final Fantasy XIII-2 game guide. Here you’ll find some clarification on the Crystarium and Historia Crux systems, as well as specific tips and tricks on unlocking the best weapons, powerful fragment skills, and winning all the chocobo races with ease.

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More importantly, if you have any specific questions or feedback, leave a comment and I’ll get back to you right away. Useful information will be added to the guide and credited to whoever submitted it.

Index

Crystarium
The Crystarium is Final Fantasy XIII-2’s leveling system, which shares some similarities to those found in Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy XIII.

Both Noel and Serah have six roles to choose from:

Ravager – Offensive magic caster who increases the stagger* progress on an enemy; can also do area of effect attacks that damage multiple enemies
Commando – Melee damage dealer who maintains stagger progress and can launch enemies in the air where they can be infinitely juggled (with proper timing by all party members)
Sentinel – Tank class, can provoke enemies and withstain large amounts of attacks at reduced damage rates
Medic – A healer that can restore health, raise the death, and remove negative status ailments
Synergist – A support caster who bestows positive boosts on the party, including increased attack and defensive stats (good to start almost any battle of with one of these for increased efficiency)
Saboteur – The opposite of the Synergist, a Saboteur removes boosts from enemies and can inflict negative ailments as well as deal moderate damage in the process

Note: Monsters only have one role, though it varies from monster to monster.

To level up your character, you just need to choose which role you’d like to level and use the Crystogen Points required. The amount needed applies across all roles, regardless of level, and perpetually increases the more you level up. All roles use the same level progression track, so you can freely level whichever role you want to at any time.

For example: You take a Ravager from level 1 to level 2 at the beginning of the game. It only costs 100 points. But, let’s say you’ve leveled your Medic and Sentinel to 99 already; then leveling your Ravager from 1 to 2 could cost 500 points.

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After a certain amount of levels, you’ll rank up the Crystarium, and can choose from various one-time perks (such as unlocking a new role, role bonuses, increasing the ATB gauge, or even gaining access to powerful role-specific moves like the Ravager’s Ultima Arrow).

Lastly, to increase the amount of CP you’re getting, you can unlock a fragment skill that rewards double CP. Check the Fragment Skill page for more.

*Stagger: By filling the stagger meter of an enemy, they will enter “Staggered” status and any damage they take will be notably increased. Attacks may also cancel out whatever move they were attempting to perform, and Commandos can even launch staggered enemies into the air for a juggle combo. The enemy cannot retaliate while being juggled, and if you time your attacks with the rest of the party, you can usually keep the enemy in the air until they do, regardless of how much HP they have.

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Index

Historia Crux
The Historia Crux is a menu that allows you to access all available locations and time variations throughout the game.

To open new locations, you’ll need an “artefact” (intentional typo, or bad translation?), which is a key to unlock a time gate. Most of the time, you will automatically earn the necessary artefact by completing a story objective.

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Wild Artefacts
There are also 10 Wild Artefacts to be found, each of which can be used once to open a special blue gate. Blue gates lead to optional areas that don’t necessarily tie into the main story, but should be (and will need to be, for 100% completion) visited anyway. Their locations are as follows:

Bresha Ruins 005 AF: Near Chocorina, you’ll need to use Moogle Hunt to make it materialize.
Bresha Ruins 300 AF: Complete the fragment mission Iridium Ring. You’ll encounter the quest giver right as you arrive the first time.
Archylte Steppe: Overlooking the cliff at the far west of the map, you should see a platform down below with the artefact. Throw Mog at it.
Serendipity: Sold for 10,000 Casino Coins, or 7,500 Casino Coins if you have the Bargain Hunter fragment skill). See the Serendipity page for more info.
Augusta Tower 200 AF: On Floor 50, turn immediately to your left as you enter the elevator room and use Moogle Hunt on the invisible object.
City of Academia 4XX AF: This one’s tricky. Roughly in the southeast portion of the map, you’ll find it in an alcove on the lower level. Requires Moogle Hunt and it blends into the wall really well.
Mt. Yaschas 100 AF: Progress through the fragment missions and you’ll eventually have to solve a Time Labyrinth. The Wild Artefact will be your reward.
Oerba Village 200 AF: In the northwest section of the map, near the large tree. Look for a ledge on the building overlooking the sea (before you go down any stairs). You’ll have to throw Mog at it.
Sunleth Waterscape 300 AF: While riding on the largest beast’s back, you can see this floating off to one of the sides in the tunnel. Throw Mog to get it.
A Dying World 700 AF: After you leave this location for the first time, return and examine the goddess statue using Moogle Hunt.

Closing Gates and Reversing Time
When you find a certain stone for each location, you can close that gate and reset the timeline to how things were before you first arrived. This will allow you to play the area all over again, including any boss fights and missions. You can imagine how lucrative this can be, if you’re willing to put in the time, of course. No fragments you had earned from the area will be lost.

Once you’re done messing around, you can open the gate again, restoring the timeline to where it was before you reversed time.

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Index

Crystarium
Historia Crux
Serendipity: Casino & Chocobo Races (<–you are here)
Fragment Skills
DLC: Coliseum, Omega, and beyond
FAQ & Ultimate Weapons
Review

Serendipity
The Serendipity is Final Fantasy XIII-2’s poor man version of the Golden Saucer. However, it does have a very important items and one major NPC, plus endless hours of frustration…

Casino Shop
At the Casino Shop, you can purchase Casino Coins (1 CC = 10 gil), redeem tickets, and purchase prizes.

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Items of Interest:

Chaos Crystal – can be traded for Noel/Serah’s ultimate weapons (see FAQ page)
Just 1 gil – fragment
Setzer’s Dice – fragment
Wild Artefact – 1 of 10, opens a blue time gate
Ribbon – raises all resistances by 40%

All of the above items are 10,000 CC, so you’ll need to choose wisely unless you’ve hit the mega jackpot play the slots. Otherwise it would cost 500,000 gil to be able to buy everything outright.

Casino prizes can also be reduced by 25% with the Bargain Hunter fragment skill.

Cards
Unfortunately, this content is locked and will be released in a future downloadable update.

Slot Machines
Ah, the worst part of the entire game… Like all slot machines, Final Fantasy XIII-2’s require no skill whatsoever. Instead, you just holding down LB until you win big or run out of Casino Coins.

You can watch the tutorial to see how it all works, but this is very misleading since it makes it look like triple jackpots happen all the time. They don’t. I’ve left the game on playing slots for upwards of 10 hours now, and while I’ve have a decent amount of jackpots, I never really broke even, and I definitely never hit the 50K payout. I once got two jackpots during Super Victory Mode, which gave my the 10K I needed for the Chaos Crystal, but that was after hours and hours of grinding.

I recommend starting your slots session with at least 1,500 CC. This means you can grind for longer, and only costs 15,000 gil. Then just rubber band the LB on your controller and go to work, school, sleep, or write a game guide…… 1,500 CC won’t last you very long (less than an hour), so check back often to see if you’ve won or gone bust. If you lost, dashboard out and restart the game to prevent it from autosaving. You can then retry your luck with your 1,500 CC again.

1,500 CC is also a good number because if/when you enter Super Victory Mode, you’ll be betting 100 coins a turn (instead of 5!), and your wallet will decrease very rapidly.

You can also see what “mood” the machine is in by talking to the cat girl nearby. If she says, “That machine is on fire!” or “It’s like a hot summer’s day!” then you should play, otherwise exit and come back to check again. You should see a noticeable difference in how many payouts you get.

Chocobo Races
Chocobo races are not quite as epic as they were in Final Fantasy VII, but they’re at least more interesting than grinding the slot machines. Unfortunately, they also don’t pay out as well until you’ve mastered the highest tier races.

If you just want to beat all the races and collect the items for the sake of doing it, I recommend waiting till you find the Gold Chocobo in a treasure chest in A Dying World 700 AF. This is the best chocobo of all, but will require a lot of leveling (and therefore a lot of gil spent on expensive monster materials) to get it into top shape. Once you’ve leveled it to 45, you can pretty much just steamroll the competition throughout all of the races.

The Mystic
The Mystic is found in a tent from the left of the time gate when you first enter Serendipity. It’s the room with Mog in it. You’ll need to speak with her to obtain Fragment Skills. See the Fragment Skills page.

Index

Fragment Skills
Fragment Skills are 14 special abilities that can be enabled or disabled at any time. They’re essentially game modifiers and provide major advantages, especially post-game, which is where you’ll get most of them anyway.

When you have completed the prerequisites, head to the Mystic in Serendipity to claim your reward.

Mog’s Manifestation
What: Activates Improved Moogle Throw
Where: Automatic (first trip to the Mystic)

Haggler
What: Sell items to Chocolina for 10% more gil
Where: Automatic

Monster Collector
What: Increase monster crystal drop rate by 20%
Where: Collect all fragments in Vile Peaks 200 AF and Vile Peaks 10 AF

Anti-grav Jump
What: Jump and float in the air while exploring areas
Where: Automatic (after episode 5)

Bargain Hunter
What: Purchase all items for 25% less
Where: Automatic (after episode 5)

Note: Definitely get this before going on a Casino prize shopping spree.

Encounter Master
What: Increase/decrease the spawn rate of regular monsters
Where: Collect all fragments in every Yaschas Massif location

Rolling in CP
What: Doubles Crystogen points earned through battle
Where: Collect all fragments in every Yaschas Massif and Bresha Ruins location

Note: Recommended you get this as soon as possible, especially during post-game.

Battlemania
What: Increase the spawn rate of rare monsters
Where: Complete the Paradox Professor side quest from Academia 400 AF

Chocobo Music
What: Choose chocobo-riding music
Where: Complete the Monster Bits and Bounty Hunter fragment categories

Eye of the Goddess
What: Control the camera during cutscenes
Where: Collect all fragments in New Bodhum 003 AF, Bresha Ruins 005 AF, Yaschas Massif 10 AF, Yaschas Massif 1X AF, Oerba 200 AF, and Sunleth Waterscape (300 AF)

Note: If you make an upskirt montage, please link me in the comments. ಠ__ಠ

Mobile Mog
What: Collect all fragments in all locations of Oerba
Where: Reduces the time before Mog returns from being thrown

Field Killer
What: Insta-kills entire groups of weaker enemies
Where: Complete the Academic Reward and Great Mog Wisdom fragment categories

Clock Master
What: Increase the speed of the entire game
Where: Obtain all 160 fragments

Note: This is ideal for rapid farming and rare monster crystal hunting.

Paradox Scope
What: Unlocks alternate battles which lead to paradox endings
Where: Complete the final episode

Index

Crystarium
Historia Crux
Serendipity: Casino & Chocobo Races
Fragment Skills
DLC: Coliseum, Omega, and beyond (<–you are here)
FAQ & Ultimate Weapons
Review

DLC
Square Enix has revealed plans to expand Final Fantasy XIII-2 through coliseum battles and additional story chapters (focusing on Lightning’s side of the adventure, etc.). Coliseum battles will allow you to capture incredibly rare and powerful monsters to use in your party, and may also include some familiar, non-monster faces from Final Fantasy XIII….

So far, only the Omega coliseum battle (an Amazon.com pre-order exclusive) has been released.

Coliseum Battle: Omega
Omega is a four-legged robot that you can take on at any time, but it’s recommended you be at least level 400 before you take him on (meaning you’ve leveled up different roles a total of 400 times, combined). I was around level 430, and he still gave me a bit of trouble.

However, once I figured out his pattern and weakness, it became a bit easier. For starters, patience is necessary. Even at my high level, this battle took roughly 10 minutes or more.

You should start with two sentinels and a medic.
Block and heal while Omega attacks. Eventually he will power up and unleash a devastating beam attack.
After this attack, he will overheat and become vulnerable (staggered). Unleash everything you can into him!
You don’t really have a lot of time to boost up with a Synergist, so perhaps three Ravagers or Commandos (or a mix) are your best bet. Just be careful because he will still shoot missiles while he’s staggered.
After a short while, he will recover, and repeat the process. Just block and heal to wait him out.
When Omega’s life gets low, he will begin charging around the arena, trampling your entire party. At this point there’s no reason in trying to wait him out, as he no longer overheats. Attack him but keep a medic around to continuously heal, and he should go down soon.

Note that the whole point of this battle is to obtain Omega as a monster for your party (he’s a Commando, by the way), but even after defeating him once I didn’t get his crystal, and this was with the Monster Collector fragment skill on.

Xbox 360-exclusive Weapon: Azrael
Xbox 360 players can download an exclusive weapon for Serah. The Azrael DLC costs $1.

Once purchased, the Azrael model is available at Chocolina’s shop for free (first time only). It also has three additional models, which cost gil and require specific materials to craft:

Azrael – Cost: 400 / Strength: 25 / Magic: 20 / Chain Bonus: 1
Azrael Σ – Cost: 1,200 / Strength: 47 / Magic: 30 / Chain Bonus: 2
Azrael Ω – Cost: 1,850 / Strength: 60 / Magic: 35 / Chain Bonus: 3
Azrael ∞ – Cost: 3,800 / Strength: 80 / Magic: 45 / Chain Bonus: 4

Note that Azrael ∞ becomes obsolete roughly halfway through the game (though the Chain Bonus is still very nice). Plus, they focus on strength over magic, which doesn’t do much good for a Ravager, so the stats and bonuses are kind of at odds with each other.

Other DLC includes a few outfits and weapons, which can be seen in this Japanese trailer:

Index

Serah and Noel’s Ultimate Weapons
Once you reach Academia 4XX, Hope and Alyssa will give you a mission to recover Core Fragments throughout time. Hope will also mention an experimental paradox weapon he’s been working on, and asks you to hunt down a Chaos Crystal.

The Chaos Crystal can be found in Serendipity. It costs 10,000 Casino Coins, or 7,500 with the Bargain Hunter fragment skill, which you’ll get shortly after turning in all the Cores.

See the Serendipity page for more information. If you want to buy it outright, it will cost you 100,000 gil for 10,000 Casino Coins.

When you have the Chaos Crystal, return to Hope and talk to him. It may take multiple times, since he said a bunch of random crap to me before noticing the item.

Now you can retrieve the paradox weapon from the next room, but you will only get to choose one, for either Serah or Noel. Whichever weapon you don’t choose will be available in Serendipity for only 1,000 Casino Coins at the very bottom of the Casino Shop.

These weapons are the most powerful in the game, but they require a bit of work to unlock their full potential. Their stats are based on how many fragments you have, so when you have all 160, you’ll have an immensely powerful weapon. If you have anywhere less than 100, you can easily find better weapons in Chocolina’s shop, especially after you’ve beaten the game.

FAQ

Q: How do I unlock trophy/achievement X?

A: Check out this excellent trophy guide by Aeliana.

Q: How do I find X monster or solve X puzzle?

A: Check out this exhaustive Japanese guide. Prepare to fire up Google Translate, though.

Q: How do I unblock the gate in Archylte Steppe?

A: You need to find three green cactuar statues and defeat the Gigantaurs they summon. Two appear during sunny weather, and one appears during rainy weather.

To reach the west side of the map, change the weather to cloudy and use Mog to locate and uncover a cactuar statue that will teleport you. (thanks to Jacob & Kyle Blenkle for the tip)

Note that the Gigantaur is a tameable monster, and should be added to your party if for no other reason that the sheer spectacle of having a 50-foot cactus fighting alongside you.

If you’d like to read what GamesBeat thought about Final Fantasy XIII-2, you can find our official review here.

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