How much grinding is needed in Chapter 11? Kind of Lost - Final Fantasy XIII - Giant Bomb (2025)

Not that anyone is looking at this forum, but - I'm on a bit of a JRPG kick so I finally got around to playing FF13. I can totally understand the mixed emotion about this game as the 20-30 hours of linear gameplay was a little rough, but I think the battle system is awesome and kept me going. All of this is old news, ofcourse, so on to my question:

I'm about 30 hours in and reached Chapter 11 Gran Pulse. I've leveled each of the main character's 3 roles to at least level 3. I'm also just starting to understand the weapon upgrades with some online help, but don't have that much gil, so I only got each character's weapon to level 5 or so thus far.

I understand that a lot of this area is to come back to later in the game (getting 2 hit killed by a lot of the enemies), but I've also read that you need to do some grinding here in order to be able to survive the rest of the storyline. I've completed the first 5 missions so far - they were harder than a lot other parts of the game, but not that bad - many of the enemies on the way to them, were harder.

I guess my questions are

• how much grinding do I need to do to make it through the rest of the story? I'm fine with having to figure out a strategy, I'm not looking to just walk through the end of the game, but I also don't want to die in 1 hit.
• Is this even the spot to do it in (i,.e. should I continue on with the missions or grind further on in the story)?
• Also, how much should I focus on weapon upgrades?
• Last, should I start new roles with the characters, or just focus on maxing out their standard roles? (it seems like a lot of the fun in the system and strategy is figuring out the battle team and paradigms based on those set roles, it's interesting that anyone can become a jack of all trades).

LIke I said, I really enjoy the battle system. It's a shame that they held your hand for 30 hours with no need for weapon upgrades and fairly straightforward leveling, only to dump you into the fire with enemies that one hit you.

When I was playing it, I didn't do any of the missions until I finished the game and I didn't struggle too much with the ending. There is a lot to do in chapter eleven so you should just carry on with the main story and grind whenever you hit a particularly tough encounter.

I mainlined the story before doing any side quests when I played. You should be fine if you continue on with the story. Just be aware that you won't have access to Gran Pulse's open world if you decide to continue the story until you see the credits.

I'm not an expert, but I don't remember doing any grinding in FFXIII.

Don't need any grinding for the main story but grinding out in Gran Pulse can make Chapter 11's boss trivial. Make sure you have haste with someon before you continue and you should be all set for the rest of the game.

Grind on the plains until you can quickly take down those yellow robot monsters in the next area.

You don't have to grind at all; the game has an extremely high skill ceiling.

I leveled up the main roles for much longer than I probably should have in that area. Using a synergist with haste and enthunder against the pterodactyl-mouth things speeds it along a bit; they drop a lot of points if you're strong enough to handle them.

Wow, ok thanks all, looks like what I had read was wrong. I'll take the cp I got from Missions 1-5 and move along the story. I was all for riding a chocobo, but running back and forth in that area to get up to mission 14 was getting really tedious already. Time to push through the story - need more Lightning cutscenes.

I don't think you can actually grind can you? It caps you to a certain level depending how far you are in the game if I'm remembering right.

My advice is this: To finish the game, you basically just have to make sure you have completed the three main crystarium levels for each character before each final boss for that section. This can be completed with little grinding, just fight all the enemies between areas as you go and you will do it fairly easily. Just do what you find interesting and ignore everything else (if you do try and complete a lot of missions, you'll just be disappointed by how they lock some of the missions prior to finishing the game).

However, there is something you will want to do which will save you a lot of time later (especially if you want to do the post-game stuff in Gran Pulse):

1. Complete Chapter 14 to unlock the ability to ride a Chocobo
2. Just before the "point of no return" which will take you off of Gran Pulse (immediately after an important boss fight, and will unlock you another tier of the Crystarium), level up a little more to unlock Death for Vanille. Head off to Oerba and accept Mission 55. Complete the mission and get the Growth Egg - equipping this as early as possible will save you a lot of time by doubling your experience. To complete it simply main Vanille and spam Death with two sentinels (this link explains it a lot better than I could).

Don't bother with the second if you have no intention of 100% the game (or at least trying the majority of missions). The first can be useful in Chapter 11 anyway (and will give you the freedom to explore Gran Pulse and get items you usually wouldn't without having to get frustrated going between save-points).

TL;DR: Don't bother grinding if you only wish to complete the main story, but it might be worth trying out different party combinations to figure out which characters you like and work well together. Chapter 11 isn't really about the missions as much as it is about exploring the different strengths of each character. Don't be put-off by the many strong enemies around and just do the things you find interesting (remember, you can't actually 100% it yet - not least of which because you are limited in your levelling)

Edit - final thing: ignore weapon upgrades for now, if you have the stuff to do it then that's great, but the results are quite minor and should be left as a secondary form of levelling (in order: Crystarium First, getting good accessories second, and weapon upgrades last).

My fiance didn't grind at all, just explored naturally and proceeded with the game and beat it NP.

there is enough variety in the planes to just level up. So the grind won't be the most painful thing to experience as long as your seeking out new hunts to explore the environment. The final battle is pretty linear so your going to just need quick reaction time on your changes and you will do well. When your near the end at the Tesseract you can come back to the great planes. Honestly, I'd save another save file by the great planes, all of that open environment is actually excellent and worth exploring some really fun hunts that your not going see in single player.

How much grinding you need is more or less dependent on how proficient with the battle system you are.

To complete the game you may need to do some, but you won't have to do an inordinate amount. Really depends on you and how you leveled your characters.