Master of Time

After 106 hours of gameplay, I finally got my platinum trophy for Final Fantasy XIII-2 (FFXIII-2)! My final statistics are Serah and Noel both fully developed with completely unlocked ultimate weapons (to unlock their ultimate weapons' full potential, one must collect all 160 fragments); these fully developed monsters in my party: Chichu (commando), Grand Behemoth (ravager), Flanitor (medic), Yakshini (synergist), Silver Chocobo (sentinel), Black Chocobo (saboteur); captured these rare monsters (I didnt fully develop them due to better choices for my party): Twilight Odin, Omega, Don Tonberry, Gigantuar, Cactuarina, Rangda, Nanochu and many others; 100% filled bestiary, 100% explored all areas, 713000~ gil (I have a stable means of farming gil easily via chocobo racing) and a stable means of farming high-tier monster materials.

Now that I've completely finished FFXIII-2, I can say that the post game is a lot more enjoyable than the first playthrough, especially once you have fully developed Serah and Noel's crystarium, have a stable income and some strong monsters. Also, this is something I should have realised long ago. Always play on Normal difficulty whenever you are ready. As far as I can observe, the only difference in difficulty is that monsters have less HP on Easy mode. Their stats and damage potential are unaffected. Also, playing on Easy severely hampers your item drop rate (but monster capture rate is unaffected).

A couple of notes on the last few trophies I obtained today.

• Saddle Sore: If you haven't been using chocobos regularly throughout the story like me, I suggest you find all 160 fragments and obtain the Clock Master fragment skill from the Mystic at Serendipity ??? AF. Set Clock Master to High-speed and ride a chocobo in circles in the Archlyte Steppe ??? AF for a while. Dismount from your chocobo whenever you think you should have done 10000 steps. If the trophy pops after a few seconds, congratulations! If not, mount your chocobo and do a few more laps and dismount again later. I only used chocobos whenever they were absolutely necessary to proceed with the story or sidequests so with Clock Master on High-speed I took 30 minutes of chocobo riding to get the Saddle Sore trophy.
• Beast Tamer: Set these fragment skills: Clock Master to High-speed, Battlemania to Attract tougher enemies, Monster Collector to Obtain more monster crystals, Encounter Master to More enemies. Now run around in the grassy area in Bresha Ruins 100 AF until a space-time distortion appears. This is Don Tonberry. REMEMBER TO SET CLOCK MASTER BACK TO NORMAL SPEED BEFORE YOU ENGAGE DON TONBERRY! If you have a fully developed party with strong monsters, you should have no problem defeating Don Tonberry before the first stagger ends. Try to finish Don Tonberry off with a Feral Link to boost capture rate as it is quite hard to capture him even with Monster Collector. Difficulty does not affect capture rate so feel free to set it to Easy (but he should not pose any threat even on Normal). I captured Don Tonberry on my fifth encounter with him. Using the fragment skill setup I mentioned earlier, I was able to encounter Don Tonberry 6 times out of 8 battles in that location. Battlemania seems to greatly boost Don Tonberry's encounter rate in the grassy areas of Bresha Ruins 100 AF
• Anomalous: To get the secret ending to trigger, you must have watched all 8 other paradox endings (if you have 8/8 paradox ending fragments, you have done so). Now this is very important. SET PARADOX SCOPE TO EXPLORE NEW POTENTIAL HISTORIES BEFORE YOU ENGAGE THE FINAL SERIES OF BOSS BATTLES! I forgot to turn on Paradox Scope before fighting the final set of bosses in Academia 500 AF and didn't trigger the secret ending. As a result, I had to turn on Paradox Scope and replay the entire set of battles. More annoying than hard, really. Unlike the paradox endings, the final set of bosses do not get buffed when Paradox Scope is turned on. Enjoy destroying Jet Bahamut with your overpowered party! ^_^ 
• Fair Fighter: There is no easy way to go about this. Using the same fragment skill setup I mentioned for Beast Tamer, you should be able to encounter the space-time distortion that is Raspatil extremely frequently in the Ashensands area of Oerba 400 AF. I encountered Raspatil on first try with that setup   and right after I got the trophy I encountered him again while running back to Chocolina so I'm not sure of the actual encounter rate, but it must be incredibly high with that setup. REMEMBER TO SET CLOCK MASTER BACK TO NORMAL SPEED AND DIFFICULTY TO NORMAL BEFORE YOU ENGAGE RASPATIL! If you are using the right strategy (found on ps3trophies.com) and have a fully developed party including a fully developed synergist monster with Bravega and Faithga (I had a level 70 Yakshini with 9500~ HP, 700~ strength, 800~ magic, 26% resist physical damage and all buff spells learnt), Raspatil should be quite manageable on Normal.  

Serendipity

Okay just woke up and checked my fragment list in Final Fantasy XIII-2 (FFXIII-2). I got the Lucky Coin fragment! For people having trouble with this fragment, here's what I did.

My walkthrough for Serendipitous PSN trophy and Lucky Coin fragment   

1. These steps are only valid if you have a fully developed Silver Chocobo with all chocobo racing abilities (mine didn't have Free Spirit but that didn't seem t affect its performance) available for Chocobo Racing and are sufficiently knowledgeable in the techniques used to win races (can trigger Sprinting Start regularly, know the different chocobo racing strategies etc.).
2. You can start with 0 gil in Chocobo Racing as races use Racing Points (RP) to enter, not casino coins or gil.
3. The first four races that you enter in your chocobo's career should be graded or secret in order to unlock the Fal'cie class races quickly. Fal'cie class races have the highest payout.
4. After that, only join races which have a payout of 320 or 480 coins for first. Also keep an eye out for Dahaka Stakes races which have a Collector's Catalogue as the first place prize. You can repeatedly farm these Collector's Catalgoues and leave with as many as 10 in one career. That's a whopping 110000 gil if you sell them to Chocolina.
5. You can attempt races that have interesting prizes such as adornments, weapons and accessories if you want. This only minimally affects your total winnings per career.
6. You can bet up to 100 casino coins on your chocobo per race to win a net gain of 120 casino coins if your chocobo wins first place. WARNING: DO NOT BET IN RACES THAT HAVE A RIVAL CHOCOBO WITH * RATING. Betting will buff all rival chocobos' stats significantly and reduce your chances of winning. Only bet if you are attempting any race lower than Weapon class.
7. You do not need Chocobull or Chocoboost. They are a waste of casino coins. If you win them as prizes though, feel free to use them in Fal'cie class races.
8. You should use Shuffle only if you are purely grinding for gold as it is not cheap in terms of casino coins. Use Shuffle to find Dahaka Stakes races quickly to farm Collector's Catalogues.
9. If you deplete your chocobo's RP, simply retrieve it to retire it and register it again to start a new career. Note: you have to repeat step #3 to u'nlock all race classes again everytime you start a new career.
10. If you follow these steps, you should obtain the Serendipitous PSN trophy in 2 careers. You should be able to make 6000 casino coins on average per career. There is a lot of misguided information out there. Serendipitous trophy requires you to win 10000 casino coins from Serendipity ??? AF. This includes the slot machines AND chocobo races over any number of careers or sessions (cumulative). Chocobo racing is by far the safer option of the two.
11. Once you have made about 20000 casino coins (or you can just buy them using the gil you made from selling Collector's Catalogues; remember, casino coins that were bought with gil or redeemed with tickets do not count towards the 10000 casino coins needed for the Serendipitous trophy), you are ready to try for the Lucky Coin fragment. To obtain this fragment, you are required to win at least 7777 casino coins from the slot machine. Only casino coins won from the slot machine are counted towards the total needed (NOT BOUGHT WITH GIL, TICKETS OR WON FROM CHOCOBO RACING). You can also amass this total from any number of slot machine sessions as it is cumulative.
12. Ask the attendant near the slot machine about the slot machine's mood.
13. If she says "It's like a hot summer's day!", proceed to step #12. If she says anything else, return to the Historia Crux and reenter Serendipity ??? AF to reset the slot machine's mood until she says "It's like a hot summer's day!".
14. Play the slot machine. Use a rubber band or cellophane tape to tape down the L1 button of your controller to leave the slot machine on Auto-play. 
15. Turn off your televison screen and leave your PS3 on for half a day. The most efficient time to do this is when you're going to sleep at night so you don't lose any precious hours.
16. Check your PS3 in the morning. Look at your fragment list. If you have the Lucky Coin fragment in the Serendipity ??? AF location list, congratulations! If not, repeat steps #12 to #15 but you can use less starting casino coins because you would have earned at least a decent amount of casino coins in your first attempt. 

To give you perspective of what to expect, this is my experience. I had a fully developed level 45 Silver Chocobo with all abilities except Free Spirit; 500000~ gil from finishing the story, collecting 157 fragments and defeating Raspatil, Ochu, Yomi and Long Gui multiple times; and 2000~ casino coins from redeemed tickets. I amassed 22000~ casino coins from 3 full careers in chocobo racing and sold 8 Collector's Catalogues I won as prizes for 88000 gil. I bought an additional 5000 casino coins using 50000 gil (1 casino coin costs 10 gil; that's why it's advisable to not buy casino coins and earn them through chocobo racing).

I started the slot machine with 27000~ casino coins in the mood "It's like a hot summer's day!" at 9PM last night and left it on overnight. I checked it this morning at 8AM, which means that I left it on for 11 hours. The slot machine had stopped Auto-Playing, I had 4 casino coins remaining (one play requires 5 casino coins) and 22 triple seven jackpots. Each triple seven jackpot bonus gives 250 casino coins and sends you into Victory Mode (which uses 10 casino coins per play). Each triple seven jackpot bonus in Victory Mode sends you into Super Victory Mode (which uses 100 casino coins per play). By calculation, 22 triple seven jackpot bonuses indicates that I won 8250 casino coins from triple seven jackpot bonuses alone without counting the other bonuses along the way such as triple chocobo bonus, triple cactuar bonus etc. I am unaware of the mechanics of triple microchu jackpot bonus as I have never gotten any.

I was monitoring the slot machine on Auto-Play for the first hour that I left it on. When I won two consecutive triple seven jackpot bonuses, I did not get the cutscene that gave me the Lucky Coin fragment. This disproves the myth that some people have been spreading that the Lucky Coin fragment can be obtained by winning a triple seven jackpot bonus. The ONLY way to get the Lucky Coin fragment is by winning at least 7777 casino coins from the slot machine. On the play that pushes you past the 7777 casino oin mark, you will get the cutscene. Sadly, I was asleep when it happened. Oh well, there's always Youtube.

Monster Professor

Finally achieved 100% completion of my bestiary in Final Fantasy XIII-2 today. If you're having problems completing your bestiary, I suggest looking up a user named LiquidHooch in Youtube. His monster location video guides really helped me. To complete the sidequest that requires you to achieve 100% in your bestiary, you just need to defeat every monster in the game once. You don't have to capture or discern 100% Libra information, just defeat at least one. That includes all versions of a certain monster or boss in every available timeline, paradox and era.

I also just discovered today that loot drop rate in FFXIII-2 works exactly like Tales of Graces f. Once you can handle it, try to always play on Normal difficulty. The difference in drop rate is extremely significant. Also try obtaining a Collector's Catalogue from Chocobo Racing in Serendipity ??? AF and upgrading it to Durable Collector's Catalogue as soon as possible to really boost your drop rate. Fight Microchus in Archlyte Steppe (sunny) with Battlemania fragment skill OFF and get 2 Sunpetals (rare drop from Microchu). If you have completed the story or are close to completion, you should have obtained at least 2 Phoenix Bloods by now. These 4 components along with 30000 gil are required to upgrade the Collector's Catalogue to Durable Collector's Catalogue at Chocolina's shop in Archlyte Steppe ??? AF.

With Durable Collector's Catalogue equipped, if you finish a battle on Normal Mode with a 5 star rating, you get a whopping +500% item drop rate and +320% rare item drop rate! That pretty much ensures you will be getting loot almost 9 times out of 10 battles and at least 3 of those battles will drop rare items. You also tend to get item drops in larger quantities.

Now I'm left with 3 fragments from Serendipity ??? AF, one of which unfortunately requires playing the slot machine. I made enough casino coins to afford 2 of the final fragments I need, but the last one requires winning at least 7777 total casino coins from the slot machine. This is going to be a pain. =.=

Blog Update: Label Changes #2

Renamed "academia" label to "education" to better reflect the content of associated posts. This was also done to avoid confusion with the Academia locale in Final Fantasy XIII-2.

Time Explorer

Here are a few tips for achieving 100% map completion in certain areas in Final Fantasy XIII-2 (FFXIII-2). I experienced difficulty in these areas and here are some parts of the map that are often overlooked.

General Tips for Map Completion in Final Fantasy XIII-2

• During your first visit to a new area, always try and explore as much of the map as possible to reduce downtime needed to return later as some parts of the map are only accessible during your first visit.
• If you missed some parts of the map that are only accessible during your first visit, just find the corresponding gate seal and close the gate to that area from the Historia Crux. This lets you replay that entire area as if it is your first visit (but you keep all records of opened treasure spheres and explored terrain).
• The dark blue areas on your map are unexplored areas. They become light blue when you travel over those areas. This makes it easy to track where you have already explored. Keep in mind that some areas have multiple layers so you need to check under the displayed map areas if any.
• The description of the map key items you acquire through the story have a "% explored" at the end. View your map key items to check which locales you have not fully explored. Alternatively, you can check a certain locale's exploration progress by opening the map via the square button.
• Some locales have multiple eras associated with them. To get a 100% map completion, you must fully explore ALL eras associated with that locale.
• Some parts of the map can only be accessed once you have the Anti-Gravity Jump fragment skill, chocobo access or key items obtained via sidequests.

New Bodhum

• The part that most people overlook is the NORA house. Walk over every inch of land in and around the NORA house. This includes the two sides of the patio that can be seen if you stand in front of the NORA house and look directly at it. Manually walk over the entire space of the patio; just going near them is not enough. The patio is not clearly noticeable as dark blue even if it is unexplored so the only way to be sure is to walk over it.

Academia

• There are a lot of corners and hidden alleys in Academia 400 AF and 4XX AF that need to be walked over manually. But this might come naturally when you are attempting the Captain Cryptic sidequest.
• On your first visit to Academia 500 AF, explore every part and make sure you step foot on every platform (especially the central platform that can be reached by jumping down from the two rotating platforms above it). If you miss this opportunity to get a 100% map completion on your first visit, you will no longer be able to reach most of the platforms once you have finished this part of the story. You will need to find the gate seal for Academia 500 AF, close the gate from the Historia Crux, proceed with the cutscenes until the boss fight with the two giraffe cie'th and regain access to block switches. DO NOT TOUCH THE BLOCK SWITCH. Instead, you can now reach the central platform again.

Augusta Tower

• Complete all three Paradox Agent sidequests to obtain Access Key 13 which allows you to reach floor 13 in some of the eras associated with this locale.
• You must fully explore every floor of every era to get a 100% map completion.
• Some eras only have access to certain floors so check every era.

Archlyte Steppe

• There is a raised stone formation south of the Nomad Camp near the edge of the map. You can reach the treasure spehere on it with Moogle Throw but you can't step foot on the stone formation without a chocobo. Anti-Gravity Jump will just miss it. 
• Touch all five cactuar waystones (four are red, one is gold) and defeat all three Gigantuar. Some waystones appear only in certain weather conditions. All waystones must be revealed with Moogle Hunt. After you have done so (if you touched the five waystones you should have the bottom five fragments on the Archlyte Steppe fragment list), talk to the person standing by the chocobo stables in the Nomad Camp to unlock chocobo access in this locale. Ride the chocobo to the cliff facing that stone formation, jump and glide to it. You should easily reach it if you're in the correct place.

The Aggro Drifter

I made a couple of downloadable tracks in ModNation Racers (MNR) today specifically for grinding technical trophies such as number of drifts, power-ups used, sideswipes made etc. Just search text "Demirincar" without the quotation marks and you can find my tracks, as well as custom mods and karts that I've made. The tracks are very long so you can easily get more than 200 drifts in one race if you set the laps to 9. Set the speed to Rookie, difficulty to easy and set any number of A.I. racers (having more racers means more chances to sideswipe and takedown, less racers mean less interruption if you're aiming for clean laps and drifts). These tracks are also good for practising your cornering, drifting and handling skills in addition to learning how to successfully takedown other racers, depending on the race type.

Set the race type to Action Race if you're grinding for takedowns, shield usage, successful secondary weapon hits, the Trigger Happy trophy or training your offensive driving skills. The Pacifist trophy and the Slow and Steady trophy can be obtained from my tracks, but it is advisable to choose shorter tracks for those trophies due to the length of my tracks; any single mistake can easily cost you 1st place.

Set the race type to Pure Race if you're grinding for drifts, sideswipes or training your handling skills. Due to the amount of curves and bends in my tracks, you can almost always have your boost meter completely filled by drifting at every opportunity. By setting the number of A.I. racers to 11 (maximum), you have plenty of opportunities to sideswipe. 

If you are unable to search for my tracks via my username "Demirincar", search these track names.

• Thousand Drifting Aggro
• Drifting Aggro Peaks 
• Drifting Aggro by the Sea

Please vote for my tracks if they were useful to you. Also be sure to check out my other creations such as mods and karts. Thanks!

Drifting on the Road

Today I returned to ModNation Racers (MNR) after a two year hiatus. Man, I'm rusty. But I still managed to get 12 new trophies today. Yay me! Here's a word of advice for people going for the Drifting Superstar (bronze) trophy in MNR. Search for Pesico's created track titled "Drifitng Superstar" without the quotation marks and download it. That track is the best track you're gonna find that will allow you to drift 100000 drift points in a single drift. Just try and get your drift started as early as possible just before you enter the spiral ramp and tap the left analog stick left or right accordingly to stay in the centre of the track Use the crocodiles as a marker. Don't worry, they will jump if you steer into them and you won't actually bump into them. They're there to give you a general guideline on how close you are to the track boundary. As soon as you get 100000 drift points, stop drifting and you should et the trophy (but don't run into a wall when you stop drifting or it won't count).

That track can also be used to get the Pacifist (bronze) and Slow and Steady (bronze) trophies easily. Since the A.I. is too stupid to drift continuously through the entire track, you should easily get 1st place when you perform the 100000 drift points drift. Avoid booster pads and don't use weapons and the two aforementioned trophies will be obtained. 

Soul Grinding

Whew, finally finished 100 online matches in Soul Calibur V (SCV) today and got my last trophy. I'm now rank 9 on PSN! Yay me! 

For people who have been wondering if matches in the Global Colosseo count towards the number of matches fought on PSN trophies in SCV (Mercenary of War, Strategist of War & Hero Carved in History), yes they do count. Any match played to completion (i.e. all rounds played and a victor is determined) in Ranked Match, Player Match and Global Colosseo count towards the trophies. The guides online conveniently left out the Global Colosseo, which is where you will find the majority of players since SCV is considered an old game now.

Looking for Long Term PSN Friends

Before I forget, I would like to announce that I'm looking for active or semi-active friends who have access to PSN. Whether you have a PSP, PS Vita or PS3, as long as you have an online connection to PSN, that's all I'm looking for. That, and if you're interested in making new friends. ^_^ In particular, I'm looking for players who regularly log on to PS Home and do the daily stuff like Aurora 5.1 and Novus Prime. I'm also looking for long term PS3 players as well as trophy partners (i.e. we help each other get trophies). I am also interested in meeting other RPG fans, but if you aren't really an RPG person, that's okay, I play other genres too, just very specific titles. Finally, if you meet none of the descriptions above but are still interested in meeting new people, you're always welcome to add me. I live in the Malaysian time zone of GMT+8 and currently I'm on graduation break so I play everyday but at irregular hours. You stand the best chance of catching me online after 9PM (GMT+8).

Thank you for reading and I look forward to your friend requests soon. My PSN ID is after this paragraph. <3

PSN ID: Demirincar

Soul of Lag

So today I started my trophy run in Soul Calibur V (SCV). The easy creation trophies were no problem. In fact, I got carried away and spent the next two hours fiddling around and creating female anime and game cameo characters like Tifa (Final Fantasy VII), Chifusa (Manyuu Hiken-cho), Saeko (Highschool of the Dead) and a few dozen more. I still prefer the equipment choices in Soul Calibur IV (SCIV) though, the undergarment choices here leave a lot to be desired. In the end, I managed to come up with 11 beautiful custom characters that I can be proud of.

The online trophies are near impossible to even attempt. Firstly, to find a room takes close to 30 minutes of non-stop searching in every region due to the extremely low online population. Next, eight times out of ten when you do find a room, you either can't join due to poor connection or the host kicks you for lagging up his room. Of the four hours I was online, I only managed to get in 30 online matches (but that was enough for one trophy).

Here's why I hate playing fighting games online - out of the 30 matches, I won once and lost 29 times, Basically, it is impossible to win if you're not the host because you will suffer severe lag so all your character does is stand there taking hit after hit.

Looks like I still have a long way to go. the final online matches trophy required 100 full matches, I'm not even halfway to that mark. 

Sackboy the Second

I just obtained 18 new trophies from Little Big Planet 2 (LBP2) today. Most of them are much easier to get than LBP, but you really need a good connection for LBP2, otherwise you'll be at a disadvantage when playing online versus levels. Also, be prepared for jerks who will let you join and instantly kick you out so they qualify for trophies without you interfering.

But overall LBP2's pin system does a good job of tracking your progress towards trophies. You can check your pins from the Me tab in your Pod.

The trophies in LBP2 are a mix of incredibly time-consuming trophies (spend 5 active hours playing community levels?!) and ridiculously easy ones (take a photo and upload). Most of these trophies are well described in the pins tab.

I still prefer LBP over LBP2 for its simplicity and lag-free online gameplay. Tomorrow I'll either do a trophy run through Soul Calibur V or ModNation Racers.

Easy Trophies Courtesy of Sackboy

While waiting for Guild Wars 2, I thought I might as well run through my older PS3 games and get those easy trophies. Today, I started with Little Big Planet (LBP). Most of the trophies are pretty self-explanatory via their descriptions on your trophy collection on the XMB. Most trophy guides online will tell you exactly how to get them efficiently too. However, I notice that a lot of people are having problems with two particular trophies. I would like to clarify these two - Expert Creator (bronze) and Share (gold).

Little Big Planet's Misleadingly Difficult Trophies

Expert Creator (bronze)

• Firstly, there are more tutorials than just the ?s in your Popit so follow this checklist to make sure you do ALL tutorials.
• Go to your Moon and pick any crater to create a level.
• Once you're in Create mode, open your Popit and you will see an ? in the top row of your Popit menu. This ? is a tutorial so do this tutorial TO COMPLETION. 
• When the tutorial is finished, another ? will replace the completed ? in your Popit, Repeat the previous step and do this until an ? no longer appears in your Popit. That means you will have finished all the basic tutorials.
• It is very important to make sure that you FINISH each tutorial (you will receive a bucketload of new prize bubbles when you complete a tutorial) and DO NOT SKIP OR QUIT A TUTORIAL BEFORE IT IS COMPLETED. There is no way to track which tutorials are unfinished so you will have to redo all of them if you skip one.
• Next, go to your Goodies Bag and click on every item there. Some new items not covered in the ? tutorials will have tutorial videos. Watch all these videos TO COMPLETION. I cannot remember if there are any interactive tutorials in the Goodies Bag; I think they were mostly videos but in general, FINISH any tutorial.
• Now go to the Tools Bag at the bottom row of the Popit menu. when you open it up, you will see alot of new tools that weren't covered in the ? tutorials. Go to each tool with a green star on its corner and access it. You will be prompted to do the tutorial regarding that tool so accept. 
• It is highly recommended you do each tool in a methodical fashion so you don't miss any tutorials. Some tutorials are videos and some are interactive. Watch each video TO COMPLETION and FINISH each tutorial (you will receive more new prize bubles when you complete these tutorials too). Some tutorials explain several tools at the same time so when you click on those tools later, there will be no tutorial prompt. It is safe to ignore these tools but click on them to check just in case.
• Upon completing your last tutorial, you will unlock the Expert Creator (bronze) trophy while you're still being awarded prize bubbles in the last tutorial. Congratulations!

Share (gold)

• Expect to take at least 5 hours of non-stop grinding to unlock this trophy. A lot of people are very impatient when it comes to this trophy so I just indicating the time i took to get this trophy.
• You must be connected to the Little Big Planet servers to get this trophy.
• Go to Community -> Search -> Search text. Type "PS3T" without the "...". Doing this will show you all the levels that people have created since the game launch that caters to trophy grinding. These community levels can be empty instant wins to reduce grinding time for the Share trophy, or they can have a variety of features that help you unlock most of the other trophies.
• Once you've found a level you want to play, follow this checklist.
• Heart the level.
• Play the level TO COMPLETION (if you leave early it won't count towards your trophy progress).
• Once you're back in your pod, rate the level and tag the level with any description word (these are also requirements for the Share trophy).
• Some levels can be copied by other people. Tab right once and if the level can be copied, there will be a Copy option. Copy the level to your Moon, edit the name, description and icon if you want, then publish the level.
• You can have 20 levels published at any given time. Doing this early in your game lets people play your level and give you hearts (both of these are required for other trophies). Just wait and check your profile every time you play LBP to see if you've reached the required hearts and plays for those respective trophies. 
• Repeat the steps above 150 times for the Share trophy (you would have met the other requirements for this trophy along the way if you followed my checklist).
• If you want to gauge how many more community levels you need to complete for the trophy, go to your Hearted Levels and click More.Keep tabbing right until you reach the last page. By the time you have this trophy, you should have at least 5 full pages of hearted community levels. Each hearted community level should also have a golden sackboy head (denoting completion without dying) and a golden spade (denoting all prizes found) next to the heart. If a hearted level does not have a golden sackboy head, it has not been completed and DOES NOT COUNT TOWARDS YOUR TROPHY PROGRESS. Also, your hearts and plays on your own published levels DO NOT COUNT; you must play other people's published levels. Repeated completed plays on the SAME community level count as ONE completed play; each of the 150 completed plays for the trophy must be on UNIQUE levels.      

My First Platinum Trophy

Today will be remembered as the day I obtained my first platinum trophy on the PS3. *bow* Tales of Graces f 100% trophy completion. The last trophy I had to get before unlocking the platinum trophy was Fodra Queen in 60 Seconds (silver), arguably one of the most discussed trophies on Tales forums. I took 16 seconds to destroy the Fodra queen. Yes... 16 seconds. There are many ways people have found to achieve this feat, many of which can be found in Youtube guides and forums. Most of them use what is known as the piggyback method. I defeated her the standard way. Here's the summary of how my battle went; hopefully this will inspire anyone going for the trophy to defeat the Fodra Queen without cheating.

Fodra Queen in 60 Seconds

Difficulty: Easy

Party: Asbel, Cheria, Hubert, Sophie

Parameters: All level 200, all parameters 1000+ except Cheria's PATK and ACC, all HP 9000+ (Asbel 9999 HP) except Cheria at 7100HP.

Titles: 

• Asbel: Malik costume
• Cheria: X2 hourglass duration
• Hubert: B-arte critical rate +30%
• Sophie: mystic arte damage +40%

Artes: Toggle off all artes that do not have an ailment associated with it. Set 1 healing arte and 1 revival arte to party members with access to those artes and fill the rest of the shortcuts with ailment-inducing artes prioritizing petrify, paralyze, freeze, burn, poison then slow.

Equipment: All have ultimate armour, Hubert and Sophie have ultimate weapons while Cheria has strongest main arc weapon and Asbel has strongest Lineages & Legacies weapon. All weapons and armour have been improved via cooking (Beef with Red Wine Sauce) dualized repeatedly to achieve these effects when equipped alongside respective gems (all gems are either P or Q quality).

• base PDEF, CDEF and EVA of all armour are 400+.
• base PATK, CDEF and EVA of all weapons 300+ except Cheria.
• all weapons and armour have rank 7 qualities with only positive effects and have at least +15% damage dealt on weapons and at least -15% damage taken on armour.
• all party members have 15+ minimum CC to 30 maximum CC.
• all party members have 70%+ Reinforce effect (including bonuses learnt from titles)

Strategy: All leader's target, all B only, all aggressive, Asbel and Hubert  never defend/heal while Cheria and Sophie rarely defend/heal, all accel mode upon near-death.

Mixer (9999 capacity, 13 slots):

• Baked Potato
• Beef with Red Wine Sauce
• Mabo Curry
• Book of Suppression
• Book of Preemption
• Book of Metabolism
• Book of Satiation
• Book of Exchanging
• Book of Expansion
• Book of Friendship
• Book of Partnership
• Book of Frugality
• Book of Awakening 

Food: Funny story, I completely forgot to eat Mabo Eggplant prior to the battle. Remember to eat Mabo Eggplant to start the battle with immunity to all ailments.

Preparation:

• Have 15 arcane bottles and 15 hourglasses on hand.
• Fight the hulks on Hard or Evil (Chaos might K.O. some characters or force them to activate accel mode prematurely) to near the final save point to charge all accel gauges to maximum.
• Save.
• Set the Book of Solitude, enter a battle in Lhant Hill, use an arcane bottle to boost the eleth gauge to near maximum then escape form battle.
• Make your way back to the final boss checkpoint but DO NOT TOUCH ANY SAVE POINTS on the way (this resets the eleth gauge thus wasting an arcane bottle).

Summary of my actual battle against the Fodra Queen:

1. As soon as the battle begins, Cheria uses an arcane bottle, triggering eleth burst (twice as long due to Book of Awakening).
2. Hubert spams Aerial Barrage to petrify the boss with the help of Sophie and Asbel (in Malik costume).
3. Within 2 seconds, the eleth gauge hits level 3 and the combo meter reaches 96 hits.
4. Before I can activate Hubert's mystic arte, Cheria uses Punishing Blossom (level 3 mystic arte) and send the combo beyond 120.
5. At this point, the Fodra Queen alters form to melee. Cheria uses an hourglass (twice as long due to Cheria's mastered title).
6. Hubert activates Arrow Squall (accel mode) and spams A-artes while Malik and Sophie are still casting B-artes.
7. Eleth burst and the hourglass end simultaneously. Fodra Queen immediately uses Dual the Sol. Due to my shock and panic, I forgot to hold the buttons to activate the string of QTEs that lead to Blue Earth combined mystic arte.
8. Hubert is K.O'ed and the other three are left with 20% HP but all are immediately healed to 70%~HP from the Mabo Curry that was activated in the mxer upon Hubert's K.O. Asbel (in Malik's costume), Sophie and Cheria all activate their accel modes together.
9. Due to the combined Harsh Lesson instantly bringing the reset combo counter back up to 149 hits, EX Boost which instantly recovered all of Sophie's CC and Temporal Rift which stopped time for the Fodra Queen, one last Aerial Barrage from Hubert ended the battle with 169 hits.

Final battle time: 16 seconds

A Feast for... Vitality?

There are many ways to improve your party's parameters in Tales of Graces f aside from leveling, and this is especially important to further build your party after reaching the level cap of 200. These include:

• Herb bonuses from herbs e.g. Verbena, Chamomile, Red Sage etc.
• Plus skills from titles e.g. Mind Plus, Aim Plus, Evade Plus etc.
• Dualizing equipment repeatedly (each shard dualized to an equipment increases its parameters) to a maximum of +99
• Food (specifically Tuna Bowl, Beef with Red Wine Sauce, Eel Porridge, Sweet and Sour Eel)

Today, I will be covering the use of food to boost your party's maximum HP and equipment parameters with four often overlooked dishes.

Beef with Red Wine Sauce

Post-battle: mixer's eleth < 50%

Improves armour ability

I just learnt this today. If this dish triggers after battle, each party member who participated in that battle and was still alive at the victory screen will get a +1 boost to either PDEF, CDEF or EVA on their currently equipped armour. This is a very good way to build your party's armour and is way cheaper than dualizing. Best of all, it's easy to trigger! Just don't refill your eleth mixer unless it is completely drained. This is more suited to people who have acquired the Turtlez Flute and have a mixer with considerably large eleth capacity since the dish itself is very high on eleth consumption.

Eel Porridge

Post-battle: someone levels up

Max HP +1

HP is obviously not the most important parameter in Tales of Graces, but the difference of 1 HP can have life and death consequences.To trigger this dish, someone must level up at the victory screen after a battle from gaining EXP. If triggered, each party member who participated in that battle and was still alive at the victory screen will get a +1 maximum HP. Monitor your party's EXP closely after battles and swap this dish in whenever you feel that someone is going to level upon the next battle.1 HP may sound irrelevant, but considering the level cap is 200, and you have 8 party members to choose from, you're looking at a +1600 max HP boost if you time every level up with this dish on New Game +.  Set this dish when you are attempting the upper floors of the Zhonecage (floors 6 - 10) as those floors give so much EXP that you can be guaranteed a level up almost every other battle. Warning: this dish will lose its usefulness once you reach level 200 so start using it as soon as you can afford its eleth cost even during your first playthrough.

Sweet and Sour Eel

In-battle: when landing 50 or more hits in a combo 

Max HP +1

This dish works just like Eel Porridge, except that it is triggered upon landing a 50th hit in a combo during battle. As soon as you are confident enough to land consistently long combos, this dish should always be in your eleth mixer, especially just before a boss fight. Setting the difficulty higher will give monsters more HP and allow them to tank your combos. A very efficient way to boost your max HP when you are at extremely high levels is to challenge the Rockgagong on Easy, land a 50-hit combo and escape. Rinse and repeat. This requires you to have Cheria in your party to heal your attackers in case you can't land a 50-hit combo before the Rockgagong attacks. Control and move Cheria to the bottom left corner of the battlefield where she can't be hit by any of the Rockgagong's attacks. There is a small blindspot where she should stand but it's hard to explain so try it out a few times. Once you reach level 200 and are strong enough to kill the Rockgagong, you can do this max HP farming but instead of escaping, defeat the Rockgagong to earn 88k gald. This is a good way to grind arte usage (with the Book of Striking and duplicate titles), gald and max HP at the same time. On average, to defeat the Rockgagong with a fresh level 200 party with minimally improved equipment takes approximately 4 minutes.

Tuna Bowl

Post-battle: party's HP < 30%

Improves weapon ability

This dish works just like Beef with Red Wine Sauce, except that it gives a +1 boost to either PATK, CATK or ACC on your party member's weapons. However, this dish is considerably harder to trigger.If you can consistently end battles with less than 30% of your party's average HP remaining, then set this dish. I regret to announce that I have not devised a scenario where this is possible, though I think it can be done Inside the Rockgagong (the toxic pools deduct HP) and the Eleth Research Facility on Fodra (the gas cloud deducts HP).

Optional Bosses in Tales of Graces f

Okay, I just finished the Zhonecage floor 10 in Tales of Graces f today, clearing the dungeon with all characters maxed at level 200. Frankly, the EXP in floor 10 is ridiculous. At least 750k EXP per battle on Easy; with EXP-boosting food like Chilli Shrimp the EXP per battle easily reaches 1.5 to 2 million. I hit the level cap long before I even reached the Zhonecage final boss, Solomus. But I admit floor 10 is very large compared to the other floors, so it's recommended that you get the Turtlez Flute before you attempt floor 10. That way, you can set EXP-boosting food in your eleth mixer permanently and never have to worry about refilling it since you can just summon a Turtlez merchant.

Solomus is quite easily beatable at level 200 on Easy. He managed to get one mystic arte off on Asbel, which got knocked down but it barely even scratched his HP (Asbel had a 50% damage reduction title equipped and Book of Fortitude was set to the eleth mixer). When Solomus split himself into 5 copies, I had Asbel and Hubert take down individual copies one by one while Sophie distracted the others. Cheria was busy healing (wasn't really needed, she only cast one Healing Circle the entire battle) and casting Indignation. I just kept racking up 100-hit combos which allowed Asbel and Hubert to use their level 3 mystic artes in succession, ending the battle in 1 minute 29 seconds.

Defeating Solomus unlocks a new optional boss, Lambda Theos (upgraded version of the final boss, Lambda Angelus). This also locks all trophies associated with Lambda Angelus including the game clear difficulty trophies so make sure you obtain those before defeating Solomus. Lambda theos isn't all that he is hyped up to be on the Tales of Graces f forums. The upgrades that he gets from the original version are double HP (240k HP on Easy), massive boosts to PDEF, CDEF and EVA, but his PATK, CATK and ACC are just boosted very slightly. This means that his attacks will still be only as damaging as Lambda Angelus on Evil, but he will be very hard to stagger. So all you need to do is get a combo going. Once you start a good combo that reaches more than 100-hits, cycle through the characters and use everyone's mystic artes. I got lucky with an Eleth Burst at the same time as my combo reaching 150-hits so all I needed to do was spam level 3 mystic artes. Lambda Theos's mystic arte is not that painful if you have 50% damage reduction titles equipped and the Book of Fortitude (Book of Glory is not recommended since it saps eleth too quickly and this battle is longer than Solomus due to Lambda Theos's high PDEF and CDEF). I won the battle in 2 minutes 9 seconds.

I decided to attempt the Rockgagong, hearing about how unbeatable it is without the infamous piggyback method or X10 damage grade shop bonus. I am happy to announce that the Rockgagong IS beatable at level 200 on Easy and well within the 20 minute time limit. This is my setup:

Preparing for the Rockgagong

Party: Asbel, Cheria, Hubert, Sophie

Level: 200

Difficulty: Easy

Accel Mode: All at 100% when entering battle.

Strategy: All on Aggressive, Asbel on Rarely defend, Cheria on Always defend, Hubert and Sophie on Regularly defend, Asbel on B heavy, Cheria on B only, Hubert on A heavy, Sophie on Balanced, All on use Accel Mode when Near-death.

Artes: Turn off all artes except those that hit the Rockgagong's weaknesses. Leave Virtuous Radiance and Indignation on for Cheria. I controlled Asbel for the bulk of this battle so I set to his shortcut B-artes the following: Aurora Lotus, Gale Maw, Plasma Shock, Shattersteel Swarm.

Titles: All best 50% damage reduction titles.

Food: Seafood Stew

Eleth Mixer (9749 capacity, 12 slots):

• Seafood Curry
• Mabo Curry
• Chilli Shrimp
• Book of Preemption 
• Book of Fortitude
• Book of Metabolism
• Book of Partnership
• Book of Satiation
• Book of Growth
• Book of Friendship
• Book of Awakening
• Book of Expansion

Note: There is a time limit of 20 minutes for defeating the Rockgagong. I have no idea what happens after 20 minutes but I think it's an instant game over. Aslo, while you can enter Eleth Burst and Accel Mode in this battle, mystic artes are locked for this battle. The special effects you get when enter Eleth Burst or Accel Mode still occur.

Summary: Upon entering battle, I immediately controlled Cheria to move to slightly off-centre to the left furthest back from the Rockgagong. There is a spot where none of the Rockgagong's attacks will hit (I didn't manage to find it though, Cheria still got hit by a tornado attack nearing the end). I controlled Asbel to use B-artes hit any weaknesses of the Rockgagong that have not been hit by Hubert or Sophie, ensuring that most if not all his weaknesses were hit at all times. The Rockgagong is weak to A-artes so when his weaknesses were covered, I shirted to using A-artes and racked up combos with Hubert and Sophie. The Rockgagong's head bobs up and down so I had to time my A-artes wisely. The AI for Hubert and Sophie does this excellently. Don't worry about his attacks as Cheria will heal when anyone has been hit, and if the Rockgagong K.O.'s a character with a critical hit (which happens rarely), the food in the eleth mixer will bring them back to life instantly. It is quite easy to rack up 150 to 200-hit combos since the Rockgagong attacks very infrequently, giving you plenty of time to guard and continue the combo even if Hubert or Sophie gets knocked down.

Once his HP reaches below 50%, he will start to rest his head on the ground for a few seconds every once in a while. Use this opportunity to activate Accel Mode and go crazy with attacks. Hubert's Accel Mode, Arrow Squall, increases the combo counter to insane hits and carries on even if Hubert is knocked down. Asbel's Accel Mode, Spiral Surge, adds additional hits to every attack he makes. Sophie's Accel Mode, EX Boost, makes her attacks significantly more powerful and completely heals her HP and refills her CC to maximum upon activation. Cycle through the characters and activate their Accel Modes one at a time. Sadly, Cheria's Accel Mode, Temporal Rift, does not affect the Rockgagong since he is not considered to be *in* the battlefield and cannot be stopped by time. Try to finish this second half of the battle as soon as possible because the Rockgagong will start using more powerful attacks and he also starts eating melee characters, instantly removing them from battle.

The Rockgagong ate Hubert and Sophie nearing the last 1% of his HP. Thankfully, Cheria was in the middle of casting Indignation and with one more Aurora Lotus from Asbel, the battle was over.

Clear Time: 2 minutes 44 seconds

End Note: It really depends on when the Rockgagong decides to eat your characters. If he eats them too early in the battle, it might be wise to just reattempt the battle since it's harder to chain combos with less than a full party. The Rockgagong can only eat characters near its head dealing melee damage, so another strategy would be to use all ranged attackers like Malik and Pascal. Although my Malik and Pascal are both level 200 with all mastered titles, I rarely used them throughout the game so I wasn't confident enough to place them in battle not knowing the extent of their Accel Modes and artes.

It's Raining EXP

Just a small follow-up to my recent guide on grinding post-game in Tales of Graces f. I just cleared the Zhonecage floor 9 today and was amazed at the EXP. Whenever I try something new in Tales of Graces f, I usually set the difficulty to Easy to see how things go. On floor 9 in the Zhonecage with an EXP boosting food (I used Chilli Shrimp since it's very easy to trigger; post-battle: party HP > 80%), I was getting close to 1 million EXP per battle. This meant that I was levelling up once every battle. O_o' Even if your level is considerably high, the rate at which you level up is ridiculous. I haven't checked but I'm guessing the EXP to next level caps somewhere at 1 million EXP, meaning that if you can reach that amount of EXP per battle with food and good combos, you're practically levelling up every battle. This means that the Zhonecage is now the best place to max your levels. I went from level 131 to 173 in the space of 1 hour in the Zhonecage floor 9, and I wasn't even running into battles on purpose.

On a side note, I turned in my last inn request today and entered battle with the Gentleman. He isn't really as hard as some of the other optional bosses in the game (such as the chroma guardian dragons), but that's maybe due to the fact that I was ridiculously overpowered at level 173. He has no weaknesses however, so just throw everything you have against him. Don't waste Arcane Bottles or Hourglasses on the Gentleman because he goes down fast if you get a good combo going. One thing to watch out for is when he starts walking on air. He can't be hit by melee attacks in the air, but most B-artes will still hit him like Asbel's Aurora Lotus and Incineration Wave. The Gentleman drops 2.2 million EXP (!!!) and the Genius Staff (unique weapon for Pascal, second best shotstaff after her ultimate weapon, the Staff of Expiration). You also get to pick a material for dualizing either the ultimate armor, tunic or robe in the game. You can get these materials from shops where you have maximum stamps so don't worry about picking wrongly.

Grinding Postgame in Ephinea

Once you reach level 90+ in Tales of Graces f, EXP, SP and gald become very hard to obtain efficiently, even on Chaos difficulty. Here are some places and tips that I found while trying out different locations to farm EXP, SP and gald. Note: the following guide assumes that you have finished the entire story (main arc + Lineage & Legacies) at least once and you are on your second playthrough (New Game +). You do not need to be in the future arc to access these locations but you must have Zhonecage access for some locations listed below.

Grinding on New Game + in Tales of Graces f

• Objective #1: obtaining EXP to level up and reach level 200 (max)

Sandshroud Ruins and Ghardia Shaft on Chaos give around 50k EXP at level 100. But the monsters there appear in large numbers and it is very easy to get swarmed and if you haven't mastered the art of dodging, you can be ganked by several monsters and one by one your party members will fall.

A more relaxed location that gives loads more EXP is the Zhonecage. Even on Easy at level 100, floor 2 onwards in the Zhonecage gives 100k+ EXP per battle. Set an EXP boosting food to cook in your eleth mixer that you can be sure it will trigger to double the EXP gain from these battles to 200k+ EXP per battle. An example of such foods are Chilli Shrimp (increases EXP earned; triggers post-battle if party's HP is >80%). Once you get the hang of a certain floor, you can raise the difficulty to give even more EXP!

• Objective #2: obtaining SP to master titles

Battle at the Sandshroud Ruins or Ghardia Shaft on Chaos, whichever you can handle better. Set SP boosting food to cook in your eleth mixture that can be triggered easily such as Pasta au Gratin (increases SP earned; triggered in-battle when landing a 20-hit combo) and Chicken Curry (increases SP earned; triggered post-battle if eleth mixer is at <50%)

These locations wil lstart to drastically drop in SP gain past level 110. When that happens, go to Mt. Zahvert  and fight ONLY the snow goblins (those monsters that hide in snowmen and appear if you approach them) on Chaos with these items set to the eleth mixer: Pasta au Gratin (increases SP earned; triggered in-battle when landing a 20-hit combo), Book of Audacity and Book of Passion. The idea is to make a 20-hit combo and kill the snow goblin before it decimates your party with critical hits. Don't worry, this is very easy to do if you set all your party members' strategy to Aggressive and A Only arte usage. You can do a loop around the mountain from top to bottom starting and ending at the Amarcian Enclave to refill your eleth mixer and encounter at least 3 snow goblins each run. If you do a good combo on a snow goblin (~30 hits), expect to gain 3k+ SP per battle with that setup at level 110. You can repeat this for any single foe encounters you can find, but I haven't found one that gives that much SP for such little hassle yet past level 120.

• Objective 3: obtaining gald for dualizing weapons, gem fusing and gem polishing

Each floor of the Zhonecage has bosses that give bucketloads of gald regardless of your level. If gald is all that you're looking for, clear the highest floor that you can handle on Easy multiple times. The gald boost for doing a run on higher difficulties is minimal so unless you are looking for EXP as well, set the difficulty to Easy. The Book of Wealth doesn't give as much profit as you might xpect, since it uses eleth to generate gald, and you have to use gald to refill that spent eleth so profit is marginal.

Dualizing Like a Boss

In Tales of Graces f, to encounter the Gentleman optional boss, one must finish all inn requests in all towns. Sounds easy, right? Unfortunately, the last request in each town is given by the Gentleman himself. As you can expect, these are all extremely rare weapons which require certain sidequests completion and expensive weapons sold only from towns where one has acquired a high number of stamps. That's not all. Once the specific weapon is dualized, it must be further upgraded to a certain high rank quality that often either requires an absurd amount of luck or patience in getting the required shard, or an equally absurd amount of gald and plenty of shards of varying qualities.

I was very frustrated at not getting any Magical shard drops after farming for 20 hours straight. So in the end I thought of a different strategy. Why not downgrade the weapon to a lower quality and build it back up to a desired quality? That way, I can use the shards I already have without wasting my time farming. 

Dualizing the Easy Way

Example, if I want a Dreamer's Flange (Perilous) for the final request by ??? in the Amarcian Enclave,

1. Dualize a Dreamer's Flange via Rare Shotstaff + High-Grade Crystal.
2. The Dreamer's Flange starts with Epochal quality. To make it Perilous, I need a Haughty shard, and I haven't seen one drop in almost 50 hours.
3. So, I erased the Dreamer's Flange's quality with a 6-letter quality, Barbed.
4. Temper and dualize the Dreamer's Flange (Barbed) with another weapon to enable it to be dualized again.
5. Dreamer's Flange (Barbed) + Stuffy shard = Dreamer's Flange (Untamed).
6. Repeat step 4.
7. Dreamer's Flange (Untamed) + Untamed shard = Dreamer's Flange (Perilous). YAY!

However, you need to do a stock take on what quality shards you have, and how many you have. Plan out your dualizing route beforehand and SAVE BEFORE YOU START DUALIZING. The reasons why very few people use this method are:-

• People are lazy, and one step sounds a lot easier than several steps.
• My way uses a lot more gald and shards than the direct path. (I used up 3 shards and who knows how much more gald, while the direct path  uses only one shard and minimal gald but at the cost of A LOT OF TIME).
• This way is highly dependent on the type and amount of shards you have at the moment. If you don't have much to work with, there's nothing I can do to help you. 

Practise a good habit from the beginning of the game. Set the Book of Acquisition to the eleth mixer as soon as you can bear its cost, cook food that increase sharp drop rate (Miso-Glazed Cod is a good choice) and set the game difficulty to as high as you can handle (higher ranked shards drop more frequently at higher difficulties). Also, the sharp drop rate is affected by the difference between your level and monsters' level, difficulty and the number of shards currently in your inventory. Sell unnecessary shards or dualize them onto equipment and resell but make sure you are not carrying more than 100 shards at any given time. If you have more than 100 shards, the shard drop rate is cut in half. If you have 190 shards, no more shards will drop.