Max Out Every Skill | Cooking, Fishing, Photos, Survival

There are four skill trees in Final Fantasy 15 — each with their own benefits. Cooking allows you to create delicious dishes at camp sites to buff your team before battle, while survival skills unlock bigger combat rewards. Fishing can net you some sweet seafood, and photography is all about appreciating the fantastic environments. Here you’ll find tips to reach Level 10 in all four categories.

Beware, some of these will take days of real-time work to complete, even when you’re using every tip and trick available to make things (slightly) easier. Whatever the case, here are some ways you can grind out those skills. I recommend that you start with Cooking first and Survival second, but you should start working on all of these skills early and often.

Introduction

Each of your four main characters has a skill — cooking, fishing, photography, and survival. To increase these skills, you’ll need to do the following activities:

Cooking skill
Increases every time you cook a meal at a campsite.
Fishing skill
Increases when you catch fish at lakes.
Photography skill
Increases when you take pictures.
Survival skill
Increases as you run around the environment.

There are individual tricks to make these skills easier to increase. Let’s go over each one, and how you can reach Level 10 with the least amount of effort.

Cooking Skill

It doesn’t matter what type of food you cook to increase the cooking skill — start with the basic ‘Mystery Meat Sushi’

And cook it about 60-75~ times to completely max out this skill, unlocking the best recipes in the game.

Purchase Luncheon Meats (100 Gil)
From vendors in Lestallum.
Buy about 60-75~ meats then you’ll need them to cook ‘Mystery Meat Sushi’
Cook 60-75~ ‘Mystery Meat Sushi’ using (1) Luncheon Meat per cook.
Using this method, you can max out the cooking skill in about 20 minutes of grinding.

Fishing Skill

To improve your fishing skill fast, you’ll need to catch lots of rare fish. To do this, you’ll need the best fishing equipment and a great spot to fish is the Vesperpool fits the bill on both counts.

Purchase high-level reel and fishing rod from the Vesperpool fishing shop.
Equip and start fishing at Vesperpool. The more rare fish you catch the better.
Take a break at a campsite to increase your rank to make catching easier.
Continue to catch!
Vesperpool is the best fishing spot in Final Fantasy 15. If you’re willing to dump 3-5~ hours (depending on your luck) then you’ll max out this skill.

You can do a lot of various activities in Final Fantasy 15, but fishing has to be one of the best for most players. If you’re trying to get some great catches you’re going to need the best fishing gear in Final Fantasy 15. Most would agree that the Llymlaen Reel and Tranquility Rod are the best. This article covers the best fishing gear you can find in Final Fantasy 15 and how to obtain it through Navyth’s Angler's Nightmare side quest and other activities, so sit back and prepare to catch some whoppers.

Navyth Side Quests - Tranquility Rod

The best rod in the game is the Tranquility Rod, which can only be obtained by completing all four of Navyth’s side quests. You can find Navyth near the Neeglyss Pond in The Nebulnwood around the east side of the world map. Keep in mind he changes location for every quest.
The first quest, Fishing Buddies, you can start fairly early in the game. Make sure you have the Sweet Jamming: Custard lure found at the Coernix Station due north of the fishing spot where you first speak to Navyth. Once you have the bait, use the fishing spot near Navyth to catch a Crag Barramundi. Do this and Navyth will reward you with a Knife T. Tonberry lure.


To find Navyth for the second quest, head to the far west side of the world map to the Wennath Riverhead parking spot. Just northeast of the camping grounds here you’ll find Navyth again. For the Fishing, Naturally side quest, Navyth wants the cherrycomb trout, which only comes out at dawn or dusk. You want to use the Whiskers: Crystal lure to ensure you catch the trout quickly.
For the third quest, Navyth’s Challenge, you need to head to the west bank of the Vesperpool, located in the northwest corner of the world map. You can find Navyth near the southern portion of the lake on the west side, just off the road. You are tasked with catching a Vesper Gar. Ideally you want to use the Stinker: Malboro lure to reel in this fish.
The final quest, Angler’s Nightmare, can be started by finding Navyth in the Galdin Quay area around the southeast portion of the world map. Navyth is found on the north side of the lake by the fishing spot (there’s a second fishing spot on the southeast side that you do not want). To complete this quest you need to catch the Murk Grouper. The recommended lure to catch the Murk Grouper is the Burrower: Abyss Worm or Stormer: Chert Focalor. Speak with Navyth one last time and you will receive the Tranquility Rod, the best fishing rod in Final Fantasy 15.

Altissia Colosseum - Llymlaen Reel

If you’re looking for the best reel in the game, after you complete the main story head out to the Altissia Colosseum to find the Llymlaen reel for a price of 85,000 medals. It’s a mid-range reward and shouldn’t take too much effort to get from betting on the fights.

Photography Skill

The toughest skill to max is photography. Right away, you’ll want to unlock the ability to take combat photos.
Purchase the “Snapshot” Ascension to take photos during combat.
This costs one Tech Bar.
Purchase “Tech Strike / Tech Damage / Quick Tech” to recharge your Tech Bar faster.

To fully max this skill, you’ll need to take pictures during every combat encounter, every time Prompto gets a Tech Bar.
That’s going to take a long time, but there’s another way — one that requires a little less input.

You’ll need to roughly take about 1,200 pictures to completely max out your photography skill.
Thankfully photography isn’t that useful, so maxing it out doesn’t have to be a priority. No matter what, it will take a very long time.

Survival Skill

Survival will also take a very long time to complete, You don’t need to sprint, just moving around is enough to get what you need and he will grab random iteams up and this will help level his skill up.

As you and your the team run around for a full day or more, depending on your progress in the story.
You’ll do lots of running as you play, so this will be unlocked naturally during the story — the game in total takes about 50~ hours to complete, and the survival skill requires about 25-30~ hours of running.

To speed things up, you can also use the infinite sprinting trick. With Noctis, just as you’re about to run out of stamina, press the sprint button again — wait for him to slightly straighten up, then hit sprint to refill your stamina bar instantly.

[fajanser]

Does running with chocobo increase survival?

[᲼]

Thanks

[theboomerpride]

Would using a rubber band on a controller help with the survival skill?

[Ketsuno Ana]

actually i had photography skilled first. dunno why, but i reached lvl 10 in no time since the rest was on 5-6lvl