Welcome to the End-Game Side Quest Content page for Final Fantasy XIII. This section of the walkthrough has been set up to guide you through the completion of all of the optional content at the end of the game in an optimized manner describing which areas of the game you should focus on as you make your way through the more challenging content.

This section of the guide is intended to be used after you have completed the story of Final Fantasy XIII. In other words, you have reached the end of Chapter 13 and have unlocked the maximum level of your character’s Crystariums (level 10).

For starters, let’s do some catch-up to ensure that you have completed all of the optional content up to this point. You have likely completed all of this content already, but do a quick review and make sure that these items have been taken care of before we move on to the remaining content. You should have:

✓ Completed Missions 1 through 34

Check out the Missions page for more information if you haven’t completed all of these Missions:

✓ Repaired Bhakti

Travel back to Oerba if you forgot to repair Bhakti. You may also want to review the Bhakti side quest page to familiarize yourself with some of the other side quests and completionist content that Bhakti is involved in:

✓ Optional Areas

Completing all of the available Missions up to Mission 34 will have taken you to all of these areas, so you should have visited them all by now:

With all of that done we should be all caught up and ready to begin the remaining side quest content. The first step is to do some preparation…

Preparing Your Party

There are three things to take care of that involve preparing your party for some of the more difficult challenges that await you. They include upgrading your character’s weapons, equipping beneficial accessories and doing any remaining CP farming that you need to in order to get your party leveled up.

Upgrading Your Weapons

You may have already begun the process of upgrading your party member’s weapons, but it’s at this point in the game where you should plan out the process of upgrading your character’s weapons to their Ultimate Weapon. This is otherwise known as their Tier 3 upgrade.

All of the weapons that you find in the game can be upgraded a maximum of three times and, once they reach the third tier, they all upgrade to the same weapon. For example, Lightning’s weapons will upgrade according to the following chart:

Tier 1	Tier 2	Tier 3
Blazefire Saber	Flamberge	Omega Weapon
Axis Blade	Enkindler	Omega Weapon
Edged Carbine	Razor Carbine	Omega Weapon
Lionheart	Ultima Weapon	Omega Weapon

While Lightning’s weapons may all upgrade into the same weapon, Omega Weapon, the stats on this weapon will be different depending on which Tier 1 weapon you used to upgrade to Tier 3. This means that there are preferred weapon choices that are considered Lightning’s “best weapon” and, while this can be somewhat subjective, a case can usually only be made for 1 or 2 weapons for each character.

If you did any Sacrifice Farming in Chapter 13, you probably already have enough money to upgrade at least one of your character’s weapons into their Tier 3 ultimate weapon. But which character should you start with and which weapon should you upgrade?

First and foremost, you should begin with the party members that you will be using the most. If you’re still following the Optimized Party Setup Guide and using Fang, Lightning and Hope, you should obviously begin with those three characters first.

One of the primary benefits of upgrading a character’s weapon into their Tier 3 version is that that character will gain access to their sixth and final ATB bar, which increases the number of actions they can perform in battle. Due to the amount of damage that she deals, Fang is your best choice to upgrade first, and her weapon choice is fairly obvious.

You should upgrade her Taming Pole into a Venus Gospel and then into Kain’s Lance as this will greatly increase the amount of damage she puts out. For more information on how to do this, check out the two sections:

Creating and Equipping High-Level Accessories

There are two important types of accessories that you should obtain before you work your way through the remaining end-game content. The first group of accessories are those that improve leveling and farming efficiency and the second are those that increase the offensive and defensive stats of your characters.

Starting with the first group, the accessories you should obtain include the following:

Accessory	Details
Growth Egg	This accessory can be obtained by completing Mission 55 - Can’t We All Just Get Along?. You may need to use the strategies found in the Early Growth Egg section as this Mission can be quite difficult.
Collector Catalog	You should have a few of these in your inventory already. One can be obtained from completing Mission 08 - The Eleventh Hour, another can be found in Taejin’s Tower and a third can be found in the Haerii Archaeopolis. You can also purchase them from the Moogleworks shop.
Connoisseur Catalog	This accessory can be created by upgrading a Collector Catalog. The Collector Catalog requires 175 experience to reach its maximum ★ level at which point you can use a Mnar Stone as a catalyst to upgrade it into a Connoisseur Catalog.
Survivalist Catalog	This is the least important of the four efficiency-focused accessories as it just increases the odds that a Shroud will drop. One can be obtained by completing Mission 15 - Tribal Warfare.

The second group of accessories is intended to increase the effectiveness of your characters in battle.

Accessory	Details
Gaian Ring	This accessory is useful for a few very specific battles which are very difficult if you don’t have resistance to earth-based magic. Focus on getting three of these accessories first before stocking up on the others because the other accessories, while beneficial, are not as much of a requirement as these rings. Spend your Gil on this first. You can obtain a Gaian Ring by upgrading a Siltstone Ring using 20 Sturdy Bones followed by 3 Superconductors which can be purchased in the Lenora’s Garage shop.
Royal Armlet	These handy accessories increase resistance against both physical and magic damage making them incredibly efficient as a defense-based protection for your characters. You can upgrade them to their maximum level by using 36 Sturdy Bones followed by 23 Superconductors. They can be upgraded again using a Dark Matter catalyst, but this is an expensive process and it’s unlikely that you have (or can afford) any at this point. However, while the price is high (840,000 Gil in the R&D Depot), you will require one to obtain the Treasure Hunter trophy, so it may be worth upgrading one now.
Ribbon	You may already have one of these in your possession depending on how much digging for treasure you have done with your Chocobo. If not, consider spending more time wandering around the plains of the Archylte Steppe on your Chocobo. Check out the Chocobos side quest page for more information.

Farming and Spending Crystogen Points (CP)

It’s at this point of the game where the Missions get a lot more difficult. You now have access to Stage 10 of each character’s Crystariums and it may be worth farming some Crystogen Points to start filling out the new sections that have become available.

These two farming locations are not anywhere near as efficient as they used to be but they can be useful for helping you get your characters caught up:

Titan’s Trials and the Faultwarrens

It's now time to move on to the next set of Missions. Mission 35 through Mission 51 are part of the Titan’s Trials which can be found in an area called the Faultwarrens. This is the area that was locked behind the Cie’th Paling wall that was opened after completing Mission 34 - Zenobia, the Butcher.

Check out the Titan’s Trials / Faultwarrens section for more information:

Continuing the Missions

The next set of Missions can be completed outside of the Titan’s Trials / Faultwarrens and involves clearing all of the Missions up to Mission 63 but there are some considerations you should look at before completing this one or the last one.

The next Mission will require you to travel back into the Mah’habara Subterra Optional Zones.

The next Mission is a particularly challenging one and is one that you may want to consider leaving until later on in the game unless your characters are very well leveled and you have spent a fair bit of time farming already:

You may have already completed Mission 55 if you obtained the Early Growth Egg. If not, you can do it next:

The Circle of Cie’th Stones

During your travels through the Archylte Steppe, you may have noticed a circle of Cie’th Stone in the Eastern Tors area. The next set of Missions involves completing each of the available Missions in this circle. Note that you may have already completed some of the easier ones (noted with an asterisk) at the end of Chapter 11:

Use the link below to complete Mission 63 if you would like to now or navigate to the Adamantortoise / Platinum Ingot section below.

The Final Mission

You’re presented with another choice here. Mission 64 is the last and most difficult Mission which can be made much easier if you spend some time farming and leveling up your characters through the remaining sections of their Crystariums.

If you would like to make this Mission easier and plan to do a fair bit of Gil farming and pursue the Treasure Hunter Trophy, consider leaving this Mission until later.

Adamantortoise Farming (Platinum Ingots and Trapezohedrons)

The last thing to do is to start farming for Gil. One of the best methods to do this is to farm Adamantortoise which has a chance of dropping Platinum Ingots, which sell for 150,000 Gil, or in rare cases, they might drop a Trapezohedron.

You will need six Trapezohedrons to upgrade each of your character’s weapons into their Ultimate Weapons, and each one costs 2,000,000 Gil to purchase in the R&D Depot Shop, so every time you get lucky and have one drop, you will save a massive amount of Gil!

At this point, you need to be very strategic about how you are farming and how you are spending your Gil. Use the Adamantoise Farming page as well as the Treasure Hunter achievement guide page below to help you focus your efforts:

Treasure Hunter and Bhakti

Once you have obtained all of the available weapons and accessories in the game you will need to head back to Oerba to visit Bhakti to obtain the Treasure Hunter achievement trophy which is a very significant achievement if you manage to do it. Congratulations!

Achievements and Trophies

The last thing to do is make sure you have obtained all of the Achievements and Trophies available in the game. The most challenging ones to obtain involve obtaining a 5-Star Battle Results Rating for many of the fights, but this is made much easier once you have the Gold Watch accessory from completing Mission 64 - The Doomherald. Check out the Achievement/Trophies section for more tips on how to obtain the rest.

Congratulations!

You have completed all of the end-game content. Thank you for reading this strategy guide! Be sure to return to jegged.com if you move on to any of the other Final Fantasy titles! Check out the Final Fantasy portal to see which games are available.