re: Final Fantasy XIII

Well the game is basically letting you control each character to see what each one's strengths and weaknesses are. You probably dabbling with 2-person parties right now and learning the basics of them. Eventually you'll get control of your party and be able to pick your party leader.

The game gets better with each chapter, so if you have the patience, you'll definitely be rewarded in the end.

I'm having a lot of fun with some of the side-missions right now.

Yeah I was very pleased with the fact that the absent party members still got CP. So feel free to grind some when you can.

Not necesarily. I would strongly advise doing a slight amount of grinding every now and again simply to progress in the stage of Crystarium you are in... The more you progress in that, the more powerful you wil become. (Obviously.)


It would also be smart to keep your weapons on the rise as far as leveling them. All weapons can be upgraded to the final weapon, but their stats/abilities depend on the original weapon they were upgraded from.

**SPOILER**


If you want a list of weapons upgrades specific to each character's weapon class check out the following link...

This first one shows max levels and damage minimums and maximums. Also has an experience multiplier formula towards the end of the eval of weapons.

From Dissidia Forums

This one is MUCH easier to read. Says most of the same things as the other one, only in a table format. Doesn't have the experience multiplier deal, though.

Another site

Those monsters in Gran Pulse are completely out of your league when you first arrive.

Hell, I'm well on my way to maxing my stats and those 10 ton sons of bitches still give me fits.

The initial low level strategy for offing one of those big bastards is to play with Vanille, call in your eidolon, knock his legs out, and then start spamming her death attack. He has some pretty good drops: platinum ingots (big money) and trapehedrons (sp?) (ultimate weapon catalyst).

The change from Super linearity to the massive expanses of Gran Pulse is almost too big of a change. I have no clue how strong I should be to continue the story along so I have been doing Ci'eth missions until I max out my characters main 3 class types.

Also, anyone know anything about the Cacautar doll? Is it just a good source of gil or does it have a higher purpose? Also I met the cacautar up on the large plateau but it killed me when I tried to fight it later. Anyone know of any good drops it produces or anything cool about the cacautar for this game? There are filters at work so I cant look up any guides...

Yeah I'm currently working through the mission marks and I believe the giant cactuar is one of the missions towards the end.

All the dolls you find are good for gil, so just sell them.


As for when you first get to ch. 11, I would recommend not spending too much time in the archlyte steppe. Maybe try missions 1-3, but there's just too many strong enemies there to waste your time on. Once you leave that map and get to the Mah'habara area, there are weaker enemies and one very good grind point that I found that gives a lot of CP and can help you max your chars quickly.

@lsutigerbrian


Yeah, I was at some games this past year. The environment is great, but it's not anything like a Tiger Stadium game. I would definitely recommend it though. Especially if you can get tickets for a major game like Notre Dame or Ohio State. Just seeing a sea of over 110,000 people is really impressive. The big house is also a very nice looking stadium and has some great hang out points before games. I do love going to games there.

I did my undergraduate at LSU and now I'm in graduate school here at UM.

Yes it is. It's more fun when you come back after finishing the game.