FF13 adamantoise farming

I’ve been playing a lot of Final Fantasy 13 lately, and am trying to finish up the post-game content. The most efficient way to gain power towards the end of the game seems to be farming the adamantoise class monsters. These are the giant turtle-like monsters you see walking around on the surface near the end of the game.

Their common loot drop is a platinum ingot (プラチナインゴット) which sells for 150K. Their rare drop is a trapezohedron (トラペゾヘドロン) which is the catalyst for upgrading each character’s weapons into their final form, which otherwise cost 2M. They also give 40K CP. (80K with a grow egg)

They are easily the hardest of the normal non boss/mission monsters to beat, at least without some technique/preparation.

Prerequisites

I’m using a party of Fang, Snow, and Lightning.

• Beat the final boss for the 10th Crystarium level.
• Finish the default classes for each character. It helps to get the CP doubling グロウエッグ (grow egg) accessory from completing mission 55, which is feasible even before beating the game because the mission boss is vulnerable to Vanille’s death (デス) spell.
• Upgrade Fang’s enhancer class until she gets ヘイスト (haste). Fang also has shorter but more powerful ダブル versions of bravery/faith/protect/shell.
• Equip both グッドチョイス (good choice) and ベストチョイス (best choice) accessories. The former increases loot drops in general, the latter increases rare drops. You can buy good choice or get it from mission 8; best choice is the upgrade of good choice.
• Get a 源氏の小手 (Genji Glove) accessory from completing mission 51 and equip it on Fang to remove her 100K damage cap.
• Equip suitable second level weapons on your party. High attack power is crucial.
• Equip some upgraded パワーグローブ (power glove) accessories, which max out at +250 strength. They are upgrades to ウォリアーリスト which you can buy from B&W. You might even upgrade one to a カイザーナックル (kaiser knuckle) for +300, but that requires an expensive ダークマター (dark matter).
• Do not unlock the super adamantoises by completing missions 56-62 yet, they replace most of the normal adamantoises, or so I understand. (I’m not there yet.)

Adamantoise Types

There are four types of adamantoises. The easiest are アダマンケリス which do not have tusks. They also have less than 1M HP and do relatively little damage, but have relatively weak loot drops: 砂金 (gold dust) and ヒヒイロカネ (scarlet gold?). These do not have tusks. They wander the plains, and a number of them guard treasure spheres with 金塊 (gold nuggets/bars) which sell for 60K.

アダマントータス are the weakest of the tusked adamantoises. There is one standing still in each of the two entrances to the area where you first encounter サボテンダー (the cactuar/cactus monsters). One of the two encounters has three dogs.

アダマンタイマイ are (initially) the hardest of the adamantoises. You find them wandering the plains (Their breakpoints are double that of アダマントータス (500% for the body, 300% for legs) and they have about 50% more HP.

The “super adamantoises” (シャオロングイ?) are stronger versions you see after completing missions 56-62; you get a trophy for beating them. They’re probably not suitable for farming.

Techniques

The stronger adamantoises have three targetable parts: two legs and a head. As long as they still have legs they do powerful stomp attacks (thousands of damage each). Once you knock out their legs they fall for a while, at which point they stop damage and are a lot weaker.

Bahamut (Technique 1)

This is the easiest way to take one down, but requires 3TP. The key here is to use Fang’s バハムート (Bahamut) summon to take out both legs at once, then break the head and ATK/ATK/ATK it to death. My technique is:

1. Start with ENH/ENH/ENH. Cast ヘイスト and ブレイダ on Fang.
2. Switch to JAM/whatever/whatever. Summon Bahamut.
3. Throw a bunch of debuffs. デプロテ is important. Continue until it’s heavily debuffed and almost broken, at which point you’ll still have 10-20K SP.
4. Switch to ATK/whatever/whatever. Attack until SP runs out, switch to drive.
5. Use bahamut abilities. (Does this time count against the time it’s down? If so you might be better off finishing early).
6. Once you’re done with Bahamut, switch to ENH/ENH/ENH. Cast ヘイスト and ブレーダ on Fang and Snow, maybe Lightning too.
7. JAM/BLA/BLA until it’s around 800%.
8. ATK/ATK/ATK until it’s dead. Hopefully this will be before it stands up. It might help to use ハイウィンド (Highwind) if it’s close to dead and the break gauge is almost out.

This approach will fail if you can’t kill the adamantoise within a single break. I found the アダマンタイマイ actually a little easier this way because they do not break as early, so you spend more time with a very high break gauge doing 90K+ damage per attack.

Time saving tip: you can press select to skip summon animations.

No summon (technique 2)

The idea is to break the legs and take them out with Highwind (ハイウィンド). Highwind is Fang’s special attack, intended as a finishing blow: it uses all her ATB and does a lot of damage, but returns the break gauge to 100%. Note that Highwind requires a Genji glove to be effective, otherwise it will just do 99999 damage — not enough to break a leg which has 246600. (356200 for the -マイ)

The problem with the Bahamut approach is that it uses 3 TP, so you need to do several combats to recover TP in between each fight. Ideally you want to beat one without using TP. I didn’t succeed until I upgraded Fang’s weapon; the sixth ATB helps a lot especially with Highwind damage. Note that Highwind *requires* a Genji glove to be effective; it will otherwise just do 99999 damage and unbreak the target.

This approach works better against the weaker アダマントータス, since their legs are easier to break. It still can fail if you get unlucky, either due to unlucky distribution of damage or a bad Highwind.

1. Throw power/barrier smokes, start in ATK/BLA/BLA
2. Do a round of attacks on the right leg, then get ready to Highwind once your allies break the leg
3. Highwind the leg, hopefully taking it out. (If not, restart)
4. Repeat on the left leg.
5. Hope the fall doesn’t kill anyone.
6. (If applicable) Kill off the dogs.
7. Switch to JAM/BLA/BLA. Continue until it reaches ~800%. Switch to ATK/ATK/ATK and DPS it to death.

Note that it is okay to use power/barrier smokes because they can be bought for 12K each. Ether smokes (fill up TP) can not be bought, or else we could ust use the Bahamut strategy repeatedly.

Vanille summon/death (technique cheap)

I haven’t tried this myself, but I saw a youtube video — you can use Vanille’s summon and then デス all the parts. This isn’t going to be reliable but may be feasible even before the ending.

Farming

My current technique:

1. Kill the two アダマントータス, using two smokes each. This puts me over 3TP.
2. Kill an アダマンタイマイ using a summon and no smokes.
3. Assign my 240K CP.
4. Save at the save point near the アダマントータス without wolves.
5. Return to title, reload, repeat.