Monster Infusion!

[SquallXIII]

Let's talk about FFXIII-2's monsters, a very well developed subject of this game imo, with a lot of depth.

This is not a guide or sth, just ask whatever questions you may, and whoever knows the proper answer can reply.

Basically I need to point this out first:

There are certain *very useful* abilities for each role that will only be unlocked once you infuse your monster with monster-s of the respective role, as long as the sum of their levels is at least 99.

The respective roles/unlocked abilities are as such:

Commando infused with 99 levels of Ravager-s unlocks JEOPARDIZE

Ravager infused with 99 levels of Commando-s unlocks VIGOR

Saboteur infused with 99 levels of Synergist-s unlocks JINX

Synergist infused with 99 levels of Saboteur-s unlocks BOON

Sentinel infused with 99 levels of Medic-s unlocks REPRIEVE

Medic infused with 99 levels of Sentinel-s unlocks CURAJA

example: I have a sentinel (his own level DOESN'T matter) and I want to teach him Reprieve. I can either level a Medic up to lvl 99 (let's say Cait Sith) and infuse him into my sentinel, or capture and raise more medics, level them up and infuse them into the sentinel, so long as their COMBINED levels reach 99 (random example: instead of infusing a single lvl 99 Cait Sith into my Sentinel, I will capture and infuse into sentinel 9 Cait Siths at lvl 11 each)

I hope this is clear enough. If not, ask whatever!

Soon I will post other useful stuff here.

[LuckySeven]

I completely understand now! Thx man this helped me alot +rep!

[Zodiark]

So, to put it simply, every monster you obtain has a Static number that is only influenced by Infusion Levels.

What would happen if you went over 99?

[SquallXIII]

Glad I helped. There is also info in monsters that are recommended for this job, so that you don't get a lot of useless abilities into your main monster in the proccess, or simply cost less than others to infuse. I will find and post this soon, now I need to go to sleep...

ps: this info +more to come are based on random notes I kept playing the game and viewing random threads in random forums. It's kinda hard for the time being, but soon I will collect any sources so I don't get accused of stealing other people's work or anything.

edit:

What would happen if you went over 99?

Nothing special, the main man just earns the wanted ability :P Done that by mistake the first time I tried this, actually

[DZXtreme]

thx bro this was a huge help

[Terrina]

Hmm didn't think about using them that way. Thanks SquallXIII

[Nevfx]

I always knew off this, but never understood it, thanks man, great little tutorial shall we say here :P

[SquallXIII]

So here I go again, playing Know-it-all :P

As i said in our main thread, I considered myself to have finished with all infusion matters for my team in XIII-2. Haven't made a decent Medic or Sentinel yet, and haven't finished with Light's ability list either, but I don't think I need it.

The roles that are "incomplete" for Serah and Noel are definetely Synergist and Saboteur. If you think you need more sabotaging than what Serah is capable of, and also need Bravery/Faith which Noel doesnt provide, go for it. That's what works for me anyway, I find that a 3rd ravager is too much, esp if you have chain bonus boost II in your monsters, while Noel/Serah are sufficient for the job. For a medic, Serah alone is more than enough, and you can always enlist Noel to your healers in a pinch. Lastly, a 3rd Sentinel might even be considered overrated, as our priority is making at least one of our monsters quite tanky, and that will fit over well in a sen/sen/whatever-the-monster-is paradigm.

The gilgamesh battle taught me that in a battle that really pushes you to your limits, only the best can suffice. you can't have a useless paradigm, not even a paradigm where only one of your characters stands still watching. So, try to make a list of paradigms where everyone/everything is useful and working properly. Infusing obviously develops that matter with a huge boost.

Today we will talk about the 3rd commando. You need a commando with armour breaker or mind piercer. I can't stress this enough. In the only battles you need to finish fast and deal tons of dmg, where the opponent is usually resistant to physical/magical dmg, a cerberus-X paradigm alone won't do the job. the 3rd member MUST be dealing 50000-99999 hp at a fast rate, or you're screwed. Think about typhon, nabaat, raspatil and of course Gilgamesh to know what I mean. I raised an Odin like my child spending many thousands of gil and lots of time and monsters just to know he's useless against a WORTHY opponent, because he can't pierce through armour and he takes a break between each ruin cast/physical combo.

So, find a good commando with armour breaker like Chichu or Gilgamesh himself, raise him with power crystals or potent crystals (mana if he's magic oriented with mind piercer instead) and welcome to the forging of a great living weapon

REMEMBER THOUGH: levelling up Gilgamesh MUST STOP at lvl 9. reaching 10 and above teaches him Stagger: Wound, which replaces the armour breaker/ mind piercer abilities when the opponent is staggered. THAT-IS-A-WASTE. he doesnt get as much in stats in the 10-13 levels anyway, so it's not worth it. NOT AT ALL.

(tested it myself, lvl 13 gilgamesh vs Raspatil. pre-stagger dealt over 16000 dmg, post stagger around 2000 dmg....you don't want this.)

The rest is simple, more than lots of guides/faqs present it to be; no need to get frustrated over abilities ranking and yellow locks etc. There's a small list of high-priority abilities which you want your commando to have, and are all easily obtained.

these are:

Strength +35%
Magic +35% (both gained from a tonberry lvl 24. his other passive is low priority and will get overwritten soon)
Attack: ATB charge II ( yeoman lvl 1 at academia 500 AF)
Stagger Maintenance II (zwerg metro lvl 20 at the augusta tower, 200 AF. gilgamesh starts with it)
Siphon Boost II (time-reverse Academia 400AF and capture a Fencer, that white cyborg. lvl 18)
Chain Bonus Boost II (pink lily at oerba 300AF, lvl 30 iirc)
Role Resonance (frag leech lvl 30 at oerba 200AF)

You might also like HP +30% for any of your monsters (I do :P) and the last ability is to your choice. Gilgamesh came with Quick Stagger and I'm more than fine with it. Chichu has pack mentality which is very good too, if used properly.

HP +30% comes from a forked cat lvl 54 (the one accompanying Zanghals in Oerba 400AF)

If we are talking about a gilgamesh lvl 9, the rest of his abilities except the accursed and unwanted Stagger: Wound can be gained by these monsters:

that previous frag leech will give you powerchain and faultsiphon iirc. get Ruinga from a Scutari lvl 20 (the green robot in Archylte Steppe). the rest commando abilities get be gotten from Archylte Steppe's regular goblins, and an Orion from Augusta Tower. (adrenaline, scourge, blindside etc)

If we are talking about a gilgamesh lvl 13, either infuse him to some other monster and recapture him, lvling only to lvl 9 this time, or use another monster like chichu. A lvl 13 Gilgamesh isn't worth your time and gil. (don't worry, the crystal drop rate is pretty high; I only beat him 2 times and captured him both times.)

These basics apply to all commandos; there are differences in red-locked abilities etc, but the essence of the ability list is the same. Don't forget to infuse a bunch of low-levelled ravagers to your commando to teach him Jeopardize; you already have 48 ravager levels inside him from pink lily and Fencer, get another 51 levels. I infused some circuitrons from snowy Bresha while farming for tonberries.

Remember to save before infusing, to be able to revert to your old save in case of doing anything stupid

[SquallXIII]

My bad, I forgot to mention the "Feral Speed II" ability in the above list, you might want to add that as well. I have that for all my monsters since it helps both in farming crystals and in long boss battles. Plus, chichu's and gilgamesh's feral links are ideal in finishing off monsters, with a high synchro-percentage as well.

So, today's post will be dedicated to creating the perfect synergist. FFXIII-2 players generally consider synergists and saboteurs not worth their investments, which is true for almost all of the non-dlc challenges, but i beg to differ. While in the story and fragment collecting quest you will only find yourself needing their assistance against Yomi and that serah vs Caius paradox battle, in most dlc coliseum challenges their assistance is crucial in winning the battle. A great example of this is, again, the Gilgamesh battle, that can hardly even be won without the assistance of deprotect/deshell/imperil and bravery/faith/en- spells respectively.

What is true, is that timing your offensive buffs right is one of the keys to winning this battle, but the SYN AI faces huge "concentration" issues in dealing with this. I haven't yet broken the code in which they'll buff your team. They tend to prefer defence over offence almost always, and can't decode exactly how they will buff your team; using single or AoE (-ga) spells (using a widespread paradigm won't affect their choices, for example)

So, one thing to take into consideration, is that, since they'll probably start with protect/shell/etc, you either want a syn that never acquired these abilities in the first place, so he'll jump straight to bravery/faith and en-spells once you stick imperil on an enemy, or have a synergist with all -ga spells that will get the job done asap, helped with some ATB refreshing.

Yakshini and the purple Chocobo belong to the first category, just infuse to them all en-spells, and they'll get the job done really fast.
Our dlc favourites Ultros and Sazh are in the second. Esp Ultros will take a while in learning all syn abilities, doesn't have augment maintenance and has a slot occupied by some random ability so I think he's a bad choice, but if you are a fan, go for it. I am a fan of Sazh myself, so i favoured him over the better-for-the-job yakshini and purple fella, so I am not one to judge you for using Ultros.

Here's a list for some skills to help your synergist become more complete:

Bravery – Clione (1)
Faith – Oannes (1)
Bravega – Testudo (14), Yakshini (13)
Faithga – Testudo (18), Yakshini (26)
Shellga – Luminous Puma (18)
Protega – Luminous Puma (40)
Veilga – Yakshini (70)
Vigilaga – Yakshini (63)
Enfire – Amanojaku (1), Mewmao (3)
Enfrost – Amanojaku (3), Gancanagh Ace (6), Luminous Puma (7)
Enthunder – Amanojaku (20), Oannes (20), Miquiztli (11)
Enaero – Gancanagh Ace (1), Miquiztli (2)

Sazh is generally a good choice for a good all-around synergist, since he's in need of only a lvl 40 luminous puma and a lvl 70 Yakshini for his list to be complete.

At this point, I shall say that if you only want a good buffer for the gilgamesh fight, and don't care for synergists at all, DON'T bother doing this. It takes a lot of patience and gil and isn't as much worth it; just grab a goblin chieftain and a cloudburst from the archylte steppe, max their levels and put them in your team just for the gilgamesh fight. you'll probably be needing a good sentinel and another ravager when serah will be fullfilling her saboteur duties anyway. Their feral links will give you ALL the buffs you need to kick gilgamesh's ass, no synergist with good timing needed. just use goblin's feral link just before you stagger him, and cloudburst's just after you stick imperil on him. Job done!

The rest will kind of remind you of the above set up we made for our Gilgamesh/Chichu/other commando. But since our Synergist isn't going to be attacking at all, he won't find use for all chain-boosting, atb-returning and damage boosting abilities. So, we got ourselves the better candidate for that tanky monster build I talked about earlier. He shall fit well into a sen/sen/syn paradigm, and a healing one, being a hard nut to crack, boosting his allies attributes at the same time. Ultros and Sazh come with the great "endless blessings" ability, so even if they finished buffing, they'll do their best to maintain all buff on their team, while other syns would just stand there doing nothing.

The list of abilities we would like to have looks like this:

HP+30%
Resilience +40% (both from a lvl 72 necrosis. i told you, patience and gil :P found at yachas massif 10AF)
Resist Physical +36% (green chocobo lvl 48 iirc, yachas massif 100+AF)
Resist Magic +36% (mewmao lvl 23, archylte steppe's marshes)
Defence Maintenance (yakshini lvl 3 iirc, vile peaks 10AF) <--put a yellow lock on this one!
Magic +35% (tonberry lvl 22)

This list completed my Sazh's list, since he has 4 red locked ones already. Augment maintenance ii is important, i don't know if it can be infused, i only know of monsters that learn it naturally and it's always red locked. defence maintenace NEEDS a yellow lock asap, because tonberry's ally KO: power surge will ovrwrite it. Just infuse a second yakshini and you get this lock.

Basically, start off infusing the maxed-out puma and the yakshini to get all -ga buffs and defence maintenance. Infuse a lvl 3 yakshini to get a yellow lock on defence maintenance. the rest is easy. Always save before starting the process to return in case of doing sth stupid.

Magic+35% is there because ppl over the internet say it affects buff's duration a little.It's not bad to have it, even for Sazh whose Feral Link seems to be doing physical damage but is there mostly for boosting a staggered enemy's stagger gauge.

Remember to get Boon to your synergist. It's not hard now, you've already infused a lvl 72 Necrosis so you are missing on 27 levels. get a hedge frog from archylte steppe or ceratosaur ( sunleth iirc) at 14 lvl, infuse it, get another one at lvl 13, infuse it as well, and there, Boon acquired. If you are using endless blessings as well, you shan't run out of buffs easily now.

I haven't tried Gilgamesh with my fully infused Sazh yet, but remember, if you just want to defeat him, with a good time as well, create a badass commando like the guy in the above post, and just go for a cloudburst+goblin chieftain feral link combo. Easier and FAAAAAAAAAR less time and gil consuming.

See you next time, a sadistic laugh awaits...

[SquallXIII]

I know I didn't get any comments/feedback/whatever about the previous infusions guides i made, but it was in my plans to do my last one and I promised it as well, so here it is:

Today's final post is devoted to a good saboteur; not any saboteur in general (i admit my previous guides weren't too generic either) but mostly Nabaat, since out of all she is capable of many things, big things, better and more versatile than what other saboteurs; heck, any other monsters have gotten us used to.

A lot of players noticed that a lack of saboteurs isn't that bad in this game, since they offer little in contrast to other roles, and when they are needed, Serah's saboteur role is more than enough to do the job. Notice that there is no castable by the player slow or daze spell in this game. These are merely tools for bosses to get big advantages over your team, which is a pity, but I'm ok with it for balancing reasons.

So, what's there for Jihl that makes her worthwhile despite her being "the least useful" role in this game? She comes with Pressure II. Mostly this, but she has cool stats if raised with potent materials (which you should do) she features the rare but since FFXIII favourites "Improved Debuffing" and "Improved Debilitation II" abilities, a good casting time, a powerful single-target nuke as a feral link and a bunch of powerful AoE spells. Not too bad eh?

Jihl features an awesome ability list with "endless nightmare" and all of the game's debuffs; except the most basic ones! That's right, she is missing on Deshell, Deprotect and Dispel.

Infusing these 3 to her isn't that hard; the hard work comes when you decide you want her to be complete with their powerful AoE versions as well.

Deprotect
Deshell - both are easily acquired from a Breshan Bass or two

Dispel
Deshellga - capture a Mimi (the summoner) from Academia 500AF. Level him up to 38 and choose to infuse these two.

Deprotega
Dispelga - level up a forked cat all the way to 70. It's the same cat we use to infuse HP +30%, just choose to infuse the two spells as well. It's the cat accompanying Zanghnals in Oerba 400AF.

Now that this is taken care of, Jihl's spell list is complete with all available debuffs, some of them in their powerful physical versions too (like fog II, pain II etc). Now we shall devise a useful passive ability list to make her a beast:

HP +30% (this is not really essential, but it comes with the forked cat above and boosts her HP to over 9000 so it's not a bad thing in any way either)

Str +35%
Mag +35% (yes, BOTH of them. Nabaat deals physical damage with half of her spells and it's also possible that Str also affects the debuff success ability of said spell. Tonberry lvl 24- you know the drill :P)

Attack: ATB charge II ( yeoman lvl 1 at academia 500 AF)
Chain Bonus Boost II (pink lily at oerba 300AF, lvl 30)
Stagger Maintenance II (zwerg metro lvl 20 at the augusta tower, 200 AF)

you might also consider Feral Speed II from a Gancanagh (archylte marshes), otherwise, infuse whatever you want to her. The last 3 abilities we infused, in conjunction to her good (now both at 900+ ) stats are supposed to make your Saboteur something sort of a ravager, with surprisingly good results as well. Don't bother infusing Siphon Boosts though! don't forget she's still a saboteur and she doesn't get ANY siphon abilities to be boosted.

Last but not least, our favourite "unlock the secret ability!" infusions. travel to sunleth waterscape, snow's timeline (don't remember the date). There, you encounter a lot of fachans at a common rate. Capture-lvl to ~17-infuse-capture-lvl to ~17-infuse-capture-lvl to ~17-infuse-capture-lvl to ~17-infuse, etc. until Nabaat unlocks her "Jinx" ability. Useful only for the longer fights (Raspatil, Gilgamesh etc), but still, it's something.

Now wrap all the above in a single, sexy, sadistic, snake-eyed woman, and this is what you get:

In a Smart Bomb paradigm (rav/rav/sab) Nabaat raises the chain gauge by good percentages, all the while stabilizing it because she is a saboteur, and unlike ravagers she maintains the chain instead of causing it to drop fast.
In ANY paradigm, esp Wide ones, she will spam AoE -ga spells like Deprotega, Heavy Cursega etc. If used in conjunction with Curse and Vigilance, her "Pressure II" ability is bound to interrupt the hell of your enemies' actions, all in a wide area! This way you utilize debuffs in a Ruinga sort of way, she becomes just as annoying as she and her pets were in her coliseum fight and in a Com/Com/Sab paradigm, she will deal a lot of damage (esp wound damage) as well.
Staggering in a paradigm with Jihl will result in aprox +30% time to stagger gauge by her "stagger maint II" ability, while she will stick almost all debuffs-the enemy is susceptible to- in no time.

This is Jihl Nabaat ladies and gentlemen, Chaining, Interrupting, Maintaining, Debuffing, Debilitating and Wounding the hell out of her opponents all in one.

And with that, I am done. Consider the above (all three) staples for anything you want to create. Like a powerful medic; get one, raise him with Mana crystals and follow the Sazh build, only give him Improved Raise II and Improved Cure II instead of Defence/Augment Maintenance, etc. Your desired Ravager monster wouldn't look too different from my Jihl, consider placing Siphon Boost II and Quick Stagger on that one though. If you have any suggestions, questions, want to show your creations too etc, go on. This is what this thread is for.

See you around!