Equipment Upgrade

[Raistlin]

Edit: Rye found a thread online somewhere which said you need 36 of the cheap items - 80 gil ones from Creature Comfort - to get up to triple EXP. I've not yet tested the extent to which this is accurate but so far it's serving me well.

That does work, at least the two times I just tried it. Very helpful!

[Lightening]

I tried with 36 of whichever item is at the bottom in the shop, I don't remember its name, and I got a x2 bonus, then I got a x3 bonus a little later when I traded in some more crap I had.

[Chloe.]

I really should take some of the advice that is in this thread, I totally don't really get the upgrading thing at the moment. I've just been doing completely random things with it.

[Lightening]

doing it randomly isn't too bad as long as you save up a bunch of items before you start upgrading. A 3x bonus won't help you much if you don't have any more items to upgrade with.

[Dignified Pauper]

I have one of Hope's weapons starred, and I upgraded Lightning's Gladius to it's next thing after star powa!

[Blackmage]

I think I'm in a near-similar spot to where I'm My Own Milf is in Chapter 9; that's the best first place to really start working on upgrades, seeing as you can get some stuff maxed out real easy.

I'm probably going to start working on an FAQ for the equipment upgrade stuff, between garnering what information I acquired from the official strategy guide (I couldn't resist that hardbacked beauty) and my own observations. But, to at least give those in the dark some clue as to what's going on, here's what I can tell you off the top of my head.

Basically, there are two types of components: organic and non-organic. Organic components ALWAYS work to increase your multiplier bonus, but provide little XP themselves, whereas the non-organic components ALWAYS work to decrease the multiplier, but are worth substantially more XP.

To get the most of it all, you always want to start by maxing out the multiplier with organic goods (Sturdy Bones are the best to buy from the Creature Comforts shop initially). Then, you'll want a huge stack of some kind of non-organic component (I don't remember which is best at first, but I'm currently buying Crankshafts from Lenora's Garage, which yields the most XP per gil out of the selection) to apply to it all at once. The bonus gets recalculated after putting in a stack of items, so just try to keep it all to one type of component for best results.

In terms of the XP required, there's a base amount required per level (the amount at level 1), and there's an amount that's added each level to that base amount. For example, say you have something that starts at Level 1 and maxes out at 6. On the first level, it takes 100xp to get to level 2. Once you level, you notice that you require 120xp to get to level 3. Your "step" amount is that 20 that was tacked onto the next level, and that 20 gets added each level, so 3 to 4 requires 140xp, 4 to 5 requires 160xp, and 5 to 6 requires 180xp. Add those up (100+120+140+160+180), and you see that the item requires 700xp to go from start to finish.

If you know how much XP you'll need to get to max, I suggest just doing it in one fell swoop; just know how much to put in, so you don't over-do it (the game will let you put in as many of something as you want at once, regardless of whether or not it'll max out). Unfortunately, there's no way to know the max level of an item in-game without getting there (or buying a book that has all the item max levels listed, LOL), but I do know that all the lower-rank weapons (the ones that are in shops) max out at either 21 or 26, to give you something to start with.

Once you max out an item, if it can be changed to a higher-ranking item, you'll need the appropriate catalyst component. Each item has only one catalyst attached to it to get to the next rank item (and it won't let you use it if it's the wrong one, so no worries about wasting items to find out, LOL). Now, the downside... Once you transform something to a new item, the previous XP goes away, and the new item is back to level 1, so be wary of that (ESPECIALLY with weapons, which you'll want to prepare to re-level immediately).

As MILF pointed out, I definitely liked Chapter 9 as a good starting-point to really grind stuff out; a lot of the enemies there drop Credit Chips and Incentive Chips (which are only good for selling, and worth 500 gil and 2500 gil respectively).

In response to Shlup, all the weapons you find are the "starter" rank weapons. Each character gets access to 8 different weapon "types", and they all have different stats and abilities to them (one may have higher strength but sacrifice magic, and another may be lower in both strength and magic, but make you faster, for example). Each of the 8 weapons has three ranks, but you must max each rank to upgrade to the next.

[Cloud_Omnislash124]

i maxed lightnings sword 9 or 10 hours in. then now im 14 hours and hopes if 15 now. to get lights i just got lucky that first couple of upgrades made its multiplier 3. then yeah i got it easy

[VeloZer0]

Anyone find a guide that has how much experience is needed to max out all the accessories levels? I can find the info on the weapons, but this guess and check stuff for accessories blows. (Actually, any customization/synthesis system where you can't see the result before you do it blows.)

[Jings]

I've just started chapter 11 and all my stuff is still lvl 1 except my lvl 20 Gladius. I'm thinking I should probably invest some components into upgrading my equipment some more.

[Dignified Pauper]

If you use multiple items in one fell swoop to max an item and you used more than necessary to max it, that xp is tranferred to the upgrade high-tier item. I know this because I tend to over-level weapons and when I upgrade they are like level 19.

[Crowseye]

From what I read in a guide, it sounds like the EXP is applied before the components' multiplier additions or subtractions, which would suggest to me that you should add the low EXP, positive-multiplier components one or a few at a time to get a bit more marginal benefit from their EXP as you work up to a x3 multiplier, then use all the high EXP, negative-multiplier components in one go to get the x3 multiplier for all their EXP.

Does the multiplier stay with the item when you close the upgrade screen or does it start over at x1 each upgrade session?

[VeloZer0]

From what I read in a guide, it sounds like the EXP is applied before the components' multiplier additions or subtractions, which would suggest to me that you should add the low EXP, positive-multiplier components one or a few at a time to get a bit more marginal benefit from their EXP as you work up to a x3 multiplier, then use all the high EXP, negative-multiplier components in one go to get the x3 multiplier for all their EXP.

Mathmaticaly this is totally true, but I am way to lazy to do something like that. Naturally the benefit gets smaller and smaller the bigger your EXP dumps at 3x get.

Does the multiplier stay with the item when you close the upgrade screen or does it start over at x1 each upgrade session?

The only thing that affects it is the actions you take in the upgrade screen. I've had multipliers kick around for multiple chapters.

[sr5punk]

i believe it stays. at least it did for me when i went from one save point to the next.