Best Ways to Farm EXP
- See also: Guides
This is a compilation of what the community has found as the most effective.
1 - I finished the story with around 20 hours played and at level 40, I did very little side questing/hunts prior to finishing the story and I’d imagine many people are in the same boat. You need to be mid 40's to make best use of this guide (I was 46). If you are below that level I suggest visiting a rock just NW of Hammerhead around the NW treasure spot where you will find a Cactuar that spawns each game load/day worth 5000+ EXP, along with an infinite spawn of Imperial ships, and finally a ton of low lvl enemies you can spam warp strike on for free AP. While you wait for re-spawns blow your summon enemy whistle for even more level 1 - 2 monsters to spawn and gain even more AP! You can also journey to the NE area where there is a Bandersnatch that awards above average EXP as well. These aren’t the best forms of EXP but at lower levels it’s not bad.
2 - 1. Rare Coins can be farmed in the Cleigne region. Find a blue shiny and simply save your game. If it's not a Rare Coin when you pick it up, reload the save and try again. Repeat this until you have at least 24 Rare Coins. This can take up to 1-2 hours depending on how efficient you are. You can also use any remaining currency items you may have. 2. Craft Expericast with a lvl. 96 EXP Bonus by combining any 1 magic (no need to max). With 8 Rare Coins you will receive 5 uses of Expericast spells to use. You want to use the as many uses of the Expiracast as possible without killing the monster. 3. Visit the Wiz Chocobo Outpost and buy the Fat Chocobo Triple Decker food for a 50% EXP boost. If you haven't unlocked it yet, do the quests for the Wiz until you complete A Feathery Feast. It should be the 3rd quest. The sandwich costs 1,100 gil. 4. Travel to the area just north of the Hammerhead and fight the lvl. 38 Bandersnatch. Unload all of your Expericast magic in one battle with him. If the Bandersnatch dies before you can use all your magic, you can get him to respawn by saving at the Hammerhead and reloading your save. You should be able to use all your magic in less than 10min.
3 - Zu! Another great way of farming EXP, gil, and Zu’s drops (important material for late game spell crafting and cooking)
4 - You are first going to want to enable EASY mode and travel to to Costlemark Tower. Complete the dungeon up until reaching the very bottom puzzle section. The point of using easy mode is simple - you can't die and it allows you to easily cheese a majority of the fights including your EXP farm on the bottom level. You will find an item called the Moogle Charm along the way - This will increase any characters EXP who have the item equipped - give it to whoever is under leveled. The Moogle Charm also drops in other higher level dungeons like Crestholm Channels and perhaps one more. Basically I had 1 charm per party member eventually. Continue down through the dungeon till you reach the bottom puzzle. Activate all of the puzzle levels as if you were going to complete the dungeon, but on the 3rd or 4th descent below do not go through the route that would lead you to the boss (that would be the path with the circle in front of the path selection). Meaning - you will continue to choose the wrong path each time thus leading you not to the boss but to a trapped pit with 3 Fire Demons, 1 Naga, and many small enemies. The puzzle will drop you below into a long hallway. The idea is to run out of the hallway to spawn the monsters (starting the fight) and then run back in. You will be completely safe in this hallway and the monsters will not be able to harm you. You now have 2 options - 1. Complete this excruciating long fight repeatedly to gain EXP or 2. Wait a few minutes for the L2 Astral theme song to play and 1 shot everything giving you over 15,000-20,000 EXP per clear. I basically netflix’d and chilled till the Astral music came on, then proceeded to 1 shot everything. If you are having a hard time triggering your L2 try letting Noctis and the party get kicked around a bit. You won’t be able to die because of EASY mode and even if the party wipes they’ll all still get EXP! After, take the elevator up and repeat the same path, you should be able to grind out a few hundred thousand EXP per hour. I realize this sounds quite complex but after doing it once you'll see how simple it really is. MOST IMPORTANT - This method appears to net many coin drops to repeat the above Step 1 (Expericast Spells). Ideally you want to be in the realm of 800-900k EXP if you are sub level 50 before traveling to to Altissia to sleep at the 3.0x hotel (if you want to cap at 99). The coins and ability to 1 shot everything made this a very attractive EXP farm for me - but you may prefer something more hands on.
5 - The Rogues of Rydielle Ley is a lvl 35 Hunts Quest that you get from The Coernix Station in Alstor, the quest is to kill 3 Cockatrice. The drop you can get from killing these monsters is the Cockatrice Crest - this item has the same effect as the EXP Coins and can be used to make Expericast Spells - this item can easily be farmed too because the hunt is also repeatable! The EXP gained from these item additives is far less than the currency pieces but it’s still a farmable EXP spell worth noting.
6 - Also an excellent source of EXP are the Legendary Weapons quests that are covered in point #1 in the next section (weapons guide).
7 - What I’d consider be the most normal way to level up in post game content. Hunt! Do every single hunter camp, when you reach Rank 4-5 the EXP begins to get very good. Around lvl 8 Ignis receives a 100% EXP bonus recipe that can really add to it. (more info on cooking later).
WHERE TO SLEEP - Finally when you have the desirable amount of EXP head to Altissia to rest in the 3.0x hotel (it costs 30,000 gil so do some hunts if you're low on cash). I suggest only using this hotel once because gil would be better spent on items and materials for end game. Or if you can get by with only 2.0x try the hotel in Galdin Quay for 10,000 gil.
