Overview:
+ Estimated achievement difficulty: 7/10
+ Offline: 35/35 (1,000/1,000)
+ Online: 0/35 (0/1,000)
+ Approximate time to 1000: 75 -100 hours
+ Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1
+ Glitched achievements: 0
+ Missable achievements: 1 (Treasure Hunter)
+ Do cheats disable achievements: No
+ Does difficulty affect achievements: No
+ Extra equipment required: None
Introduction:
Welcome to Final Fantasy XIII, the game has 35 achievements with a total gamerscore of 1000. As with most RPGs the achievements are fairly straight forward however they are not easy to unlock and a lot of grinding is involved. The only missable achievement in the game is Treasure Hunter. Throughout the game you will acquire elemental rings and charms like the gale ring and fire charm. These are items that increase your elemental resistance, DO NOT sell any of these items EVER! None of them can be purchased from a shop. If you sell a ring without upgrading it you will not be able reach its tier 2 and 3 forms which are required for the achievement, keep every one you find to ensure you do not miss the achievement and need to do a 2nd playthorugh. However if you do make the mistake of selling one, a fully upgraded charm will dismantle into its relevant tier 1 form ring. For example an ice charm will dismantle into a frost ring.
I would strongly recommend you make a checklist for all items and accessories to tick them off as you go along to help you keep track, also try your hardest not to sell any items, as you can keep them all to make the achievement easier later on. If you need Gil try to grind enemies that drop high value items. Mission seven is a great money maker with a save point, mission mark next to the mission stone and the enemy drops items worth up to 45,000 Gil.
The rest of the achievements can be unlocked at any point after beating the final boss and saving your game (the save will take you back to your last save before the final boss.)
Playthrough Summary:
During your playthrough of the game you will automatically unlock 13 story related achievements.
Once you arrive in Gran Pulse in Chapter 11 you will be able to start working on the rest of the achievements, and have access to missions which unlock as you progress the story and complete other missions. Once you complete mission 14 you will be able to ride Chocobos, when on the Archylte Steppe you can treasure hunt with you Chocobo. After finding 20 treasures and receiving the ribbon you will unlock Gysahl Wreath. Try to complete mission 55 (neochu) as early as you can to get your hands on the growth egg, an item which when equipped earns you double CP. If you use Vanille's death spell to take down neochu in one hit you will unlock Limit Breaker, otherwise you can wait until you have a genji glove and deal over 100k damage in a single hit. Use your libra ability and librascope items on every enemy you encounter during the game, you will unlock Loremaster after 100 enemies have all stats revealed in the datalog. When you arrive at Oerba village search for a robot named Bhakti, complete his side quest of collecting items to unlock Pulsian Pioneer. When fighting the final boss, on the 3rd final (and easiest) form aim for a 5 star rating to unlock Superstar. If you missed the 5 stars don’t worry you can try again at any point later when you have a more advanced party.
Once you have cleared the game you will next want to start working your way through any remaining missions you have not yet done. While doing this you will at times need to grind your stats to level up your characters abilities in order to easily take down some of the more difficult mission marks (please refer to the achievement guide for a great grinding location.)
Once you have completed all missions you will have unlocked the relevant 7 achievements or 8 if you received a 5 star rating on them all. If not, you will have the gold watch item after beating the final mark. This item will extend the target time for each battle, so you can use this for getting 5 stars on your remaining missions to unlock L’Cie Paragon. By this point all your characters should be fully maxed out and you will have unlocked the 7 achievements for doing so. Now for your next achievement. You are going to kill a very strong enemy called a Long Gui. They replace the Adamantoise on the Archylte Steppe once you have completed all the missions that are located together in a shape of a ring. Once you have defeated one you will unlock Adamant Will, please see the achievement guide for a very effective method.
The final achievement you should need is Treasure Hunter, you should have pretty much every accessory by now so have a look at your checklist and collect or upgrade any remaining accessories you need. Now it’s on to weapons, the best thing to do is concentrate on one character at a time. Each character only needs one tier 3 Ultimate Weapon, so choose carefully which tier 2 weapon you want to upgrade for each character. A great help to this is the adamantoise at Leviathan Plaza in Eden. He drops platinum ingots which sell for 150,000 Gil each and trapezohedron which is the catalyst you need to upgrade weapons from tier 2 to ultimate status. He has a save point directly next to him, so just keep fighting him repeatedly, and if you don’t receive an item after the battle just reload the game and try again, equip a collectors catalog or connoisseur catalog to improve your chances of a drop. Now here’s a sweet little trick to the achievement, grind enough to get 3 characters weapons set complete and save your game. Now sell all your accessories and items, only keep you components and genji gloves. Doing this should get you almost 2 million Gil. Now sell all the weapons for the characters you have already upgraded just for some extra cash. You should have most the catalyst components anyway, so the only thing you should need to buy is some sturdy bones for a 3x exp (use 36) and the 50,000 Gil conductors. You can also dismantle a fully upgraded genji glove to get a free trapezohedron, Fang and Vanille's ultimate weapons also dismantle a trapezohedron as well. Now just complete another characters weapons, then sell those, and repeat the process until all your characters weapons are at max. Then go back to Oerba Village and visit Bhakti to unlock the achievement, then reload after to get your items back that you sold.
Conclusion:
It's a great game with a great story, and once you receive your 1000 after many hours of grinding, it's well worth the work. Now enjoy the gamer pictures you have unlocked.
[X360A would like to thank xentaria for the road map]