So I started a "No Crystarium" challenge...

The only real difficult part for me early was the fight with Bulbasaur. He was an absolute pain in the ass to beat. Chapter 7 is where it's starting to ramp up for me with the difficulty. I'm finding myself really having to utilize the Sentinel now in boss fights.
This challenge is fun though and I would definitely suggest doing it after your playthrough.
 
Ugallu is the big ass wolf, yes. No progress for me; I haven't been able to play for the past few days. Have you made it to the farming spot in chapter 7?

:hmmm: Interesting.


I may try this after I finish my current XIII run... Sounds somewhat difficult.


:hmmm:
I definitely agree that it's a good idea to try some sort of challenge. If you're interested in challenge play but aren't sure you want to do NCU, I could tell you about various other challenges that can be done.
 
I'm right outside the room where I fight Barthandelus for the 1st time. I'm really not looking forward to this fight because watching videos on Youtube it was showing at being atleast a 20-25 minute fight :/ The only good thing about that is that I get to hear that badass boss theme the whole time xD
Brynhildr was an absolute bitch to beat. All it was was me just getting my ass handed to me left and right in that fight. Even using shrouds I still barely won that fight lmao. That eidolon is so fucking FAST!
That lightning bird was just a pain in the ass(forget its name)because it never failed when the provoke would wear off it would ironically target Lightning and wipe her out with Hellstorm Bolt. That fight took me a couple of tries before he eventually stayed keyed in on Fang and would just attack her.
 
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You're moving along nicely it seems! Brynhildr is a beast, even in normal play, but Kalavinka Striker is usually a chump with Curse shutting him down. It's amazing how some enemies become so much more dangerous when you're missing certain abilities (and HP). Good luck with Barthandelus once you're ready to try him! The fight can't go much past 23 minutes since you'll die to Doom, so the trick is dealing enough damage in time (well, that and surviving Destrudo).
 
Thanks man, I'm getting there! Yeah missing HP is the huge thing especially when you can't switch your leader. I've wished so many times that I could make Fang or Snow the leader instead of lightning. I had to max out the Gold Bangle to give her more life at 650. Even then it was pretty difficult for her not to die.
Barthandelus was an absolute pain in the ass. It took me constantly getting a gameover for between 4-5 hours to finally master surviving Destrudo. I did the method where you use a potion right when it launches so when it connects you can survive it.
I used Snow, Fang, and Lightning for this fight which definitely helped not having to use Phoenix Downs on Hope after each Destrudo.
 
Thanks! It's definitely had some difficult moments(Bulbasaur and Barthandelus are easily the hardest for me)but other than that it's not that hard. It's mainly just avoiding fights as much as you can. Once you hit Chapter 11 and have to start farming for gil is when it becomes an absolute bitch because not only will it take awhile to unlock chocobos to dig treasure, but it's mainly doing the same mission(mission 1) over and over to sell the loot until you can dig. Mission 7 was an absolute pain in the ass. It took me a solid 3 hours of game overs to finally beat Batuitis. I'm taking a break for a few days because it gets kinda tiring after doing the same mission over and over lol.
 
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This thread is making me want to go back to my No Crystarium run XD I tried it once and got stuck on Barthandelus, then beat Barthandelus but split my run into two saves with the idea of eventually doing the NCU run all the way through and using my second save to switch to a Secondary Roles challenge. That one is pretty fun, but annoying. You still can use all of the classes and stuff, but you need to get a bunch of CP when you're in Palompolom (think it was like 100k while farming for Gil for upgrades and stuff) since the secondaries come with such steep prices. Huge pain in the ass, but pretty fun.
 
I finally got back to my challenge last night. Bituitus was indeed a bit challenging, although not as hard for me as it sounds like it was for General Beatrix. It was my first reliance on secondaries to get all of the abilities I wanted. I wound up using Sazh/Hope/Fang, taking advantage of Sazh's SAB for Deprotect/Deshell/Imperil. Fang gave me Slow and Curse, Hope gave me Protect/Shell/Veil/Barthunder, and Sazh also provided Haste/Bravery/Faith/Vigilance. Vigilance + Curse meant that I could interrupt Bituitus's base Keep and his Attack Keep; through 3+ rounds of Cerberus to kill him, he only got off one Miasma.

Kaiser Behemoth was surprisingly easy using Snow for Daze spam. I'm hoping to defeat Geiseric the next time I play; he'll probably be tough to get past.

I'd say you should definitely join in the challenge play, CryofthePlanet. Maybe you and General Beatrix can keep each other going through the farming.
 
So I took a long, LONG break from XIII due to all the grinding that I now have to do for gil and upgrading my equipment. Basically all I'm doing is doing the mission where you kill Ectopudding. Over, and over.......and over. Until I can use the chocobo and go digging for treasure which thankfully I'll be getting here soon. Once I take Hope's Eagletalon to the next stage I'll be moving on and doing missions 12-14, which unlocks being able to use chocobos.

September 5th was actually the last time I played XIII. So yeah I've been away for a little bit lmao


Update: I finally upgraded Hope's Eagletalon to max and I can make my way to mission 12. It took about 8-10 hours for me to get it maxed. So yeah, this should be interesting to see how it goes.
 
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Good to hear you're still chipping away at this. Good luck on Geiseric!

I put my challenge on hold not long after my last post. I've still been playing a lot of FFXIII, but I'm working on a very different challenge at the moment. I believe it's possible to get 100% completion (that is, to earn the Platinum Trophy) within 20 real-time hours, and I'm figuring the particulars of how exactly to go about it.
 
Good to hear you're still chipping away at this. Good luck on Geiseric!

I put my challenge on hold not long after my last post. I've still been playing a lot of FFXIII, but I'm working on a very different challenge at the moment. I believe it's possible to get 100% completion (that is, to earn the Platinum Trophy) within 20 real-time hours, and I'm figuring the particulars of how exactly to go about it.

Thanks man! This guy is a pain in the ass. He hits really hard and once my buffs wear off from the shrouds he walks right over to Snow and smacks him in the mouth and, voila! GAME OVER!! :rage:
I've taken another break and been playing different games ATM. Just for the sake of my sanity and saving my controller from meeting an unfortunate end -.-

20 hours? Wow. Sounds hard as hell man, good luck bro
 
Yeah, Geiseric is kind of ridiculous. I'm pretty sure I've seen Summons used against him in NCU play, so you may want to experiment with that. For my 100% speedrun it took me hours to figure out how to kill him with less than 1000 HP on my characters, and the strategy I came up with is easily one of the hardest ones to execute in the run (so far).

And thanks! I'll post here with links if I manage to pull it off (or even if I get close).
 
I GOT HIM FINALLY!!!!! Jesus he took me along ass time to beat. The big difference maker was Fang ACTUALLY got Slow on him finally. She never ever got it put on him before now. I literally about choked it though because after I Summoned Shiva to ape shit on him my buffs were gone, and he went to do his big strike and thankfully it hit Hope. That mission was not fun at all -.-

And now after beating 13 and 14, I am now able to properly farm gil by Chocobo Farming :) It took forever to get here. Now the fun begins!
 
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