Can you do it faster?! [Strategy, tips and video]

[Gray-Fox-44]

Hi everyone!

 

I wanted to share with you my road to fastest achiever #1  as well as my approach to this kind of task. By careful planning my roadmap, I managed to lower the former fastest achiever time by 1 hour and 13 minutes, from 2 hours 59 minutes to 1 hour 46 minutes. A pretty big difference if you ask me!   In this post, I’ll mention my tips in case anyone else wants to give it a try!

 

First thing I usually do is to “test” this kind of short game on a secondary account. If I like it enough so as to 100% it more than once, then I check the fastest time on the site, and I plan a trophy speedrun to try and beat it. Before anyone complains, I know some might say that “this is not a speedrun.” Well, at least not a traditional one. I still consider it a speedrun, only that the objective is to get every single trophy in the shortest possible amount of time instead of just finishing the game.

 

Now let’s dive into my strategy for A King’s Tale: Final Fantasy XV !

 

The most important thing is to get to the final boss area without popping any trophies, so that you are as close to the first unmissable trophy as possible. That way you can significantly reduce your 100% time. Some of the trophies pop after you kill enemies in a specific way, so you have to make sure those trophies wouldn’t pop too soon, or else that could ruin your run.

Those trophies have the following requirements:

• Lights Out: Use the Armiger on a tonberry.
• Big Bang: Detonate 3 bombs simultaneously.
• Return to Sender: Deflect 50 stingers or needles.
• Group Discount: Kill 5 or more enemies with one spell.
• Combo King: Perform every move in one combo string.
• Bonded: Execute the Bonds of Battle.

 

While one can avoid making a mistake for most of those, there is one which is particularly hard to miss and which will determine whether you get a super fast time or not: Big Bang. During the fourth segment of the story, Duscae Trail – Side by Side, the second area spawns 6 garulas (3 on each side of the screen) and 7 bombs in the middle. Activating one by accident can ruin everything, since the final boss is still too far ahead. The best thing to do is to practice this area a few times in a secondary account. My strategy there was to slow them down with blizzard (making sure to use level 1, or else it could pop another trophy!) and slowly toss them out of the screen with  (check minute 15:37 in the video for a visual reference). If you happen to activate one by mistake, quickly hit it with to cancel the detonation countdown! There are a few areas with 3 bombs on screen at the same time, but those should be super easy to handle. Just toss them to the opposite direction from where the other ones are standing.

 

To prevent Group Discount from popping, never use a level 3 spell with multiple enemies on screen. And, if you use level 2 (or even level 1), make sure enemies aren’t ready to die. If you have 5 with really low HP left, they might join the army of the dead Plus, always be aware of Flans on screen. These enemies are weak against spells and they will die in 1 spell hit (level 1), even if they are at full health. Do notice that they are resistant to spells from their same colour. So, if there are 3 blue and 3 yellow ones, you can use either blizzard or thunder, and only 3 of them will die. You cannot, however, use fire, or else you will kill the whole group at once.

 

Another tricky one is Bonded. After you find Clarus, your third and last ally, you must be aware of this trophy at all times. If you call in all three of them into battle with their respective commands and then you trigger the Armiger with , this trophy will pop. Avoid that. If you summon all three of them, then get hit, thus cancelling the possibility of making a mistake. You can still use the Armiger if you only called two of them in. However, pay attention to the next tip as well!

 

In order not to pop Lights Out, NEVER use the Armiger ( attack) when a Tonberry is on screen. You may accidentally hit one, because the attack will choose a random enemy on screen and go for it. This is even worse if you summoned any allies, because you multiply the chances of hitting a Tonberry (allies called in through Armiger can pop the trophy if they hit a Tonberry). You can use allies alone to enhance damage, but avoid hitting !

 

Return to Sender is an easy trophy to miss, which is exactly what you want. Just make sure you do not return cactus’ needles or bees’ stingers too often. There aren’t too many of these enemies during story mode, and you can easily farm this trophy during some of the Dream Battle missions while you wait for the crystals to be ready (more on than in another paragraph! ). If you deflect the stingers/needles with , they will go back to the one who threw them. If you deflect them with instead, they will hit another enemy, thus giving more deflecting instances during a stage. For example, if there is only one yellow bee and you use , you’ll kill it, so only one deflected stinger. If you use , it will hit another enemy, and the yellow bee will keep on throwing stingers, making your grind easier. If it stops attacking, just get close to it and it will attack again. (Check hour 1:34:30 for a visual reference. God, I hate cactuars…

 

Combo King requires you to use every possible attack combination without getting hit in between. All the same, there is unlikely that you will use all different movesets just by change. I, for instance, never used the +  sequence, simply because I didn’t find it useful.

 

Throughout the course of the story you have to make sure you die 9 times. You can easily farm this during the last boss fight. That way, you will be ready to die one last time and pop Still Awake? Two important notes here:

1. You cannot stack Still awake and Bedtime Blunder. I tried, but only Bedtime Blunder popped, even though that was in fact my 10^th death. I suppose that the game doesn’t count that one as a death, maybe because you don’t actually die, you just lose. Who knows?
2. If you farm your 9 deaths in the last boss fight and you exit to the main menu, that progress won’t be saved (I learned this one the hard way… ). So, you’ll have to farm those again when you decide to continue your journey.

 

Once you are ready to jump into Dream Battles, take these things into account:

• You’ll pop Fallen Army at about your 8^th-10^th stage.
• As far as I have tested, in battles where you summon Ramuh, Leviathan or Titan by keeping pressed next to a crystal, killing enemies makes no difference at all. Regardless of what you do, the crystal will be ready after some time. For example, about 4:20 minutes for stage 6 (the waiting time changes from stage to stage). If someone else finds any way to make that faster, please let us know!
• Taking the previous tip into account, you can easily farm I Dream of Awesome during stage 6. Just move around, escaping from enemies for 4 and some minutes (further info about this in the next tip!).
• About escaping from enemies in areas with a crystal… Only 5 enemies will spawn at a time in those areas, and only 1 of those 5 will actually try to attack you at a time. The other 4 will just get close, stop and look at you. That way, you can even make the attacker get stuck on the crystal. (Check hour 1:39:15 in the video for a visual reference on how to take advantage of these situations).

 

My last piece of advice is to try and find your best way to approach the order of the trophies. If you plan that carefully, beating my time should be sort of a walk on the park! After 3 full 100% trophy speedruns for this game, I can tell you that there is more than one way to do this and get a great time!

 

Well, I think this is it. If you are still here, thank you for reading until the end! Now, take a minute of your time and leave a comment here in PSNP telling me what you think about my speedrun strategy, and follow my tips if you want to beat my time! I made a few mistakes, so there should be enough room for a faster time (not too much, though)

 

See you next time!

 

[The video shows my whole journey, from the beginning of the game to my last trophy. I included trophy timestamps in the description, text notifications on screen whenever I earned a trophy, and my trophy screenshots at the end of the video]

 

Edited September 25, 2020 by Gray-Fox-44

[TheDarkKratos]

Thank you for this.

 

I just started playing this game yesterday. Your guide will come in very handy.

Combo king has me a bit worried. And also completing all 25 x Dream Stones too.

 

😎

[Gray-Fox-44]

On 10/12/2023 at 1:20 AM, TheDarkKratos said:

Thank you for this.

 

I just started playing this game yesterday. Your guide will come in very handy.

Combo king has me a bit worried. And also completing all 25 x Dream Stones too.

 

😎

Don't worry too much, they are definitely doable!  🙃