Where to farm in chapter 12

[Wappy]

I got extremely lucky last night and got my growth egg which took me 31 MINS! but still its all worth it.
so i decided to move to chapter 12 to finish the story to expand my crystarium. however i want to farm a bit more before chapter 13.

any suggestions?

[tiornys]

The only great farming in chapter 12 is the Adamantoise, which is pretty tricky to (reliably) take down in storyline play. Even with the need to regen TP, a Summon-Sazh kill on the Adamantoise is probably best. Here's a video example:
https://youtu.be/34t_tVpfvSY

For farming purposes, you ideally want to skip the fighting alongside Brynhildr (Summon to kill the legs, immediate gestalt, immediate finisher), but that requires high stats and tight execution.

Outside of the Adamantoise, any spot with Soldier groups that you can readily kill is decent farming. I particularly like Eden Park with all the 3-way battles that are easy to preempt (initiate battle by contacting the soldiers, not the Pulse monsters). The Sacrifices near the end of the chapter are also solid, but at that point you'd ideally like to push through the end of chapter boss. There's better farming both back on Pulse and in various areas of chapter 13, and you'll be able to access both shortly after the end of chapter 12.

[Wappy]

isn't the death spam method better?

[tiornys]

Death spam is less consistent and, on average, a little slower than the above method due to fights where you fail to kill and have to retry. It's also a lot slower on average than immediate Summon/dismissal fights once you can manage those. The benefits of Death spam are that it's easier to execute and a lot less demanding in terms of equipment/skills/stats.

Here's a vid of an optimized Death-spam strategy against Adamantoise:
https://youtu.be/uHHQ6jftrP4

edit: it's possible that Easy mode messes with the math behind those claims. I know that it's easier/faster to kill with Sazh on Easy mode, but I have no idea whether or not Death's chance of instant kill gets boosted on Easy. If it gets boosted enough, it might actually be better, but if Death is unaffected, then Sazh Summon looks even better than it does on normal mode.

[talgaby]

Originally posted by tiornys:

I have no idea whether or not Death's chance of instant kill gets boosted on Easy.

Nope, it is the same (1+stuck debuffs)%. You just die a little slower because you should take one attack of the adamantoise.

[tiornys]

Originally posted by talgaby:

Originally posted by tiornys:

I have no idea whether or not Death's chance of instant kill gets boosted on Easy.

Nope, it is the same (1+stuck debuffs)%. You just die a little slower because you should take one attack of the adamantoise.

With most of the debuffs gone when it stands back up, I don't even know how relevant it is to be able to survive an attack. It's probably better to just move on to the next fight rather than taking a couple more shots at tiny base percentages.

[talgaby]

Well, relevant only if you wish to try to death spam without summon. AFAIK it should work, but whereas normally you have 1-3 chances to cast with auto-haste, you have 3-5 on Easy. May be faster than summon/death? I don't know, never tried it, honestly.
But farming on easy is generally a good idea. Faster and more money, especially on adamantoises and adamantortoises.

[tiornys]

My intuition says that farming on Death's base success percentage is terrible compared to the enhanced percentage from all the debuffs you can inflict on it once you knock it down, not to mention spending less time on combat intro/exit loading. I'm pretty sure Summon-Death farming is better even with the need to farm TP. I don't have hard numbers to back up that intuition though.

[phobzy85]

Personally, I think your better farming in chapter 13. In the Tesseracts you have a section where you face against a Wladislaus / Jabberwocky & Bandersnatch. I kept looping around from the bottom save point. Take the lift up, destroy enemies along the way back down. Run to the save spot - this respawns the enemies then return (if required - i.e. lifts where out) I would save / reload.

Once comfortable with the enemies I was taking them down in 1min 30 secs roughly. With growth egg you will get crazy CP. It's about 20-30 mins work to max to 999,999 CP. You should just max out all you can on your crystarium. Once maxed. Continue to around 900,000 CP for each character if possible. You then net 100K CP / 50K with no egg for the final boss showdown. After the boss you can't fight these any more so that's why it's nice to have the extra CP as you unlock the next role tiers (costs stupid amounts of CP).

Whilst your in that area - take advantage of the templars to stockpile on perovskite as they're a rare drop. You have to face 3 at once near the end of the tesseracts. Nice spot as it drops a lot more frequently. Also take down a ton of sacrifice for some tasty scarletite if you didn't farm some already in the early chapter :))))

[tiornys]

Chapter 13 indisputably has better farming than chapter 12. The group of 4 Sacrifices in the beginning area of chapter 13 offers the fastest gil farming in the game, but only during the first segment of the chapter; once you fight the first mini-boss, the gil production drops dramatically (you lose access to very fast respawn). There's a big writeup about this farming method here: http://etrosgate.com/xiii/farming/sacrifices

The Wladislaus in the last segment of chapter 13 is the fastest practical CP farming in the game (Shalong Gui is superior, but impractical for a variety of reasons). As noted above, it gives crazy CP when you're killing in ~90 seconds. Now imagine how much better it gets when you're killing in ~20 seconds. I haven't yet done a full-on writeup, but you can see the setup and strategy in action in the Wladislaus farming section of the plat% speedrun (feel free to skip ahead to see how the strategy changes and times drop as CP is accumulated): https://youtu.be/6hqSuQV0WKA?t=9h31m40s

If you prefer a text writeup, Chapter 13.3 of the plat% run notes contains Wladislaus farming: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B2j3EEQubfRUNEQ4ZkhnQ1FXWFU

Farming the Templars to stockpile Perovskite is actually slower than farming the gil to purchase the Perovskites. If you're going to do it anyway, the group of 3 mentioned above is definitely the group to farm.

[phobzy85]

I like the above strategy, unfortunately I'm past this point now. If anyone's at the this point or will be reaching it shortly. This is highly effective. I'll keep that in mind for any future FFXIII playthroughs :D