|| Star Ocean: Till The End of Time Money Making FAQ v1.04 ||

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|| Star Ocean: Till The End of Time Money Making FAQ v1.04 ||
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Copyright (c) Xythar ([email protected]) 2004

This FAQ is for private personal use only. You may not make money off this
FAQ in any way or reproduce it in any other form than its current electronic
form. As an exception, you may print a hard copy for personal reference
purposes provided you do not use it to make money in any way, shape or form.
This FAQ may not be hosted on any other website than GameFAQs
(www.gamefaqs.com).

This FAQ is GameFAQs exclusive, meaning that www.gamefaqs.com is the only
website allowed to host it. Please do not email me asking for permission to
use this FAQ on your site, as I will refuse it. If you see this FAQ on any
other site than www.gamefaqs.com, please email me.

Star Ocean: Till The End of Time is a trademark of tri-Ace and Square Enix.
All other trademarks are property of their respective trademark holders.

This is version 1.04 of the FAQ, last updated 20th December, 2004.

This FAQ was written with regards to the North American version of the game. I
would assume it would also apply completely to the PAL version but I won't
know for sure until it comes out. It should also apply to the Japanese
Director's Cut version, but obviously the names of things will be wrong. There
will most likely be inconsistencies between the advice in this FAQ and the
original Japanese version of the game and I do not recommend using this FAQ
for it.

========================
|| TABLE OF CONTENTS ||
========================

1) About This Guide
2) Early to Mid Game
2a) Completing Maps
2b) Who To Go After
2c) Rune Blades
3) Late Game
3a) Celestial Homonculi
3b) Turbo Controller Fun
3c) Runic Chess
4) Post-Game
4a) 20 Million Fol In 10 Minutes
5) Acknowledgements

=======================
|| ABOUT THIS GUIDE ||
=======================

Money makes the world go round, as we know. In a similar fashion money, known
as Fol in Star Ocean: Till The End of Time (henceforth referred to as SO3
because typing out the full title every time is annoying) is an intriguing
form of truly universal currency (even on underdeveloped planets!) that is of
vital importance in the game not only for the usual RPG reason of buying
stuff, but because it's required for all item creation and more advanced item
creation costs a *lot* of it. Therefore even during the post-game activities
when there's no equipment left to buy it is still important to have a large
supply of Fol to use in item creation (and for buying a certain 6 million Fol
accessory).

The purpose of this FAQ therefore is to serve as a compilation of strategies
to get large amounts of Fol in as little time as possible at various stages of
the game. I'm going to kick this off with a bunch of strategies of my own, but
feel free to send any get-rich-quick schemes to me at [email protected]
(relating to SO3, not to real life... I already get enough of the latter in my
email every day :P) and I'll add them if they're worthy of addition (although
it might take a little while depending on how busy I am at the time with
university).

Right now there are three sections for the early to mid parts of the game,
late parts of the game, and post-completion parts of the game. Obviously you
can still use strategies intended for an earlier stage of the game at a later
stage, but you probably won't want to by that point. To start with each will
have one strategy of mine, and more will be added in the future. Strategies
for a part of the game you are not up to yet could well contain spoilers, so
if you haven't beaten the game yet, don't read too far.

=======================
|| EARLY TO MID GAME ||
=======================

-------------------
| Completing Maps |
-------------------

For much of the game's story, a pretty significant portion of your income will
be from, as the section header suggests, completing maps.

Completing maps will always give you some kind of bunny. Easy maps generally
give 1/144 Scale Bunnies, while harder maps generally give 1/60 Scale or 1/1
Scale Bunnies. All three bunny items affect the in-battle speed of all your
characters by just being in your inventory - the 1/144 Scale and 1/60 Scale
both give a +5% boost in speed and the 1/1 Scale Bunny actually *halves*
everyone's speed (guess it's tough carrying a full scale bunny statue
around...) Why would you want a 1/1 Scale Bunny, you ask? Well, I'll get to
that. An important point which should be made is that speed bonuses do *not*
stack. Even if you have every 1/144 Scale and 1/60 Scale Bunny in the game,
you will still get only a +5% bonus. Therefore, you should only keep one.

What to do with the rest? Well, there's your source of income. 1/144 Scale
Bunnies sell for 9000 Fol (quite useful in the early game especially when
they're vastly easier to get than either of the other two), the 1/60 Scale
Bunnies sell for 36,000 Fol and the 1/1 Scale Bunnies sell for 82,000 Fol. As
a point of emphasis because this gets asked so often...

KEEP ONE 1/144 SCALE BUNNY AND SELL THE REST! SELL ALL 1/60 AND 1/1 SCALE
BUNNIES! IF YOU'RE MOVING SLOWLY IN BATTLE, SELL THE 1/1 SCALE BUNNY YOU HAVE!

Ahem.

Completing maps isn't as easy as it sounds... it's actually quite tedious and
downright sadistic at times. To complete a map, more often than not you will
have to carefully hug every single wall or edge of the map with your camera
pointed outwards in order to get all those tiny little pieces on the edges
that count. Fortunately you only need 99% of a map for it to count as
complete, or completing maps would just be way too frustrating to be worth
bothering with.

The easiest maps to complete by far are those of the "field" areas between
towns like Traum Mountains or Sanmite Steppes or Palmira Plains, etc, etc.
These places are typically just one relatively simple area you can map out
much more easily than any dungeon. Of particular note is Irisa Fields which
consists of two easy areas (one main one, one sub-area to the northwest) both
of which count as their own map. On the other hand you'll only ever get 1/144
Scale Bunnies from field areas, but in the early parts of the game they'll
still help a lot.

An important thing to remember is that many areas are not fully mappable the
first time you visit them - you'll need to return later with an item (in most
cases the Ring of Disintegration you don't get until close to the end of disc
1) in order to map them fully. Don't bother trying to map them out beforehand
unless you like wasting time.

Here is a list of all the areas that I believe you can map out fully the first
time you visit them. I'm not 100% positive about this list so feel free to
correct me about anything I've got up here mistakenly or (more likely) don't
have up but should.

While this is just area names, if you feel reading area names will spoil
things for you then you might want to skip this section or not read all the
way down.

Pesotto Forest (1/144 Scale Bunny)
Traum Mountains (1/144 Scale Bunny)
Bequerel Mountain Path (1/144 Scale Bunny)
Kirlsa/Aire Hills (1/144 Scale Bunny)
Granah Hills (1/144 Scale Bunny)
Kirlsa Training Facility (1/60 Scale Bunny. According to bryanbackas you have
enough leeway to get this the first time you visit here and checking
MJEmirzan's FAQ confirms this, so I've added it. It is, apparently, a huge
pain but worth it.)
Palmira Plains (1/144 Scale Bunny)
Sanmite Steppes (1/144 Scale Bunny)
Irisa Fields (2x 1/144 Scale Bunny)
Aquatic Gardens, Surferio (1/1 Scale Bunny, will likely be your first)
Sealed Cavern (1/60 Scale Bunny, but it's a pain)
Shrine of Kaddan (1/1 Scale Bunny. I was always stuck at like 98.95% for this,
but several people on the board have confirmed it is possible without the Ring
of Disintegration, so I will put it here. You will only barely have enough so
you will have to be very thorough, break all breakable walls, do the 'split
your party for 4 single battles' part, and basically just scour the shrine
multiple times for any bits you might have missed, including in the moving
blocks room. Best time to do this would be AFTER beating the dungeon so all
the enemies are gone. Good luck.)
Passage from Parch to Plenty (1/144 Scale Bunny although by this point it may
no longer be worth the effort.)

As far as I know there are no more mappable dungeons from the Passage from
Parch to Plenty until you get the Ring of Disintegration, at which point you
don't need a list any more (and likely can't be bothered mapping dungeons any
more). So I will end the list here, but do tell me if I missed any areas.

-------------------
| Who To Go After |
-------------------

I've received plenty of strategies that involve pointing out that particular
enemies in the early game drop more money than most, and are therefore worth
killing repeatedly. I will be gathering all such strategies into this one
section, and without further ado here's what I've received so far:

hexxfox advises that the skeletons in Norton's Hideout drop Jewels of Refuge
that sell for 602 fol - if you're really desperate to buy the Holy Sword the
first chance you get (you don't need to at all, tho), they might be a good
source of income for that or for anything else you might need. He also states
that later on, the statues in the Surferio Aquatic Garden pay out good amounts
of experience and Fol.

And secondly, Phoenix Fyrestar has the following two pieces of advice:

"In the field between Arias and Peterny, there are these big
elephant/turtle looking things, and giant scorpians. These things are
fairly easy when you first confront them, and by the time you retrace
your way through this area they do almost no damage to your
characters, but they give at least 300 fol per battle. I found that
just doing these battles, and resting at the free bed in Arias, I was
able to raise about 10,000 fol in a couple of hours. This goes a lot
faster if you get a triple fol bonus battle started somewhere else
before you do this.

In the cave between the lost city and the desert, there are a couple
of those ice based elemental type enemies, they give almost 2,500 fol
each battle, and fairly good experience. You can rest for free in the
house right outside the cave in the lost city. This is another great
way to get fol fairly early on, and earn some experience."

Once you get to Gemity, a decent way to make some cash (although I recommend
you check the Runic Chess section below also) was submitted by Phil Malko:

"When you're in Gemity, go to the fighting arena, and choose to fight Get Em!
Twin Beasts. These enemies give you a base of 6666 exp and 16000 fol!! Now, if
you can get the double fol bonus, you're lookin' at 32000 fol a fight!! I've
been doing this for about 4 hours now and I have almost 2,000,000 fol. plus,
the exp is really good as well. These are the guys you gotta look for man!!"

And last but HARDLY least, the very popular Biochimera. Alright, guys, I get
it, you can stop emailing me now :P Basically, on the 10th floor of the game's
final dungeon, there is an enemy called Biochimera who gives 54,000 Fol (or
108,000 with double Fol) - best room to harvest for this is the second-last
one in the dungeon (save at the final save point). Pretty good money, I think
whether you use this or the Celestial Homonculi trick is up to how quickly you
can kill them (but considering they make about as much as a full set of 20
Celestial Homonculi, it's not a bad deal). The main disadvantage is that you
have to go alllllll the way back through all eight million or whatever areas
you have to go through to get to the final dungeon, which is of course a
gigantic pain. And all the way back out if you want to spend any of the money
which is an equally gigantic pain (unless you've already beaten the game). So
it's not a lot of fun to get set up for this, but once you have you should be
rolling in it in short order. Thanks to everyone who tipped me off about this
- particularly chase knutson, MaliceDR, and louis demers.

---------------
| Rune Blades |
---------------

Courtesy of Phoenix Fyrestar is this trick that's of the same principle as the
Celestial Homonculi method below, but can be used a good deal earlier in the
game. As early as you can hire Grats in fact (which is from the first time you
reach Aquios. He's in the factory at the Becquerel Mines, and costs 13,500 Fol
to recruit.) Once you have him, to quote, "it becomes very easy to use him,
Fayt, and Cliff to make Rune Blade swords, these things can be made for around
5000 fol and sell for 10,000; and creation almost never fails." Certainly
sounds like a good way to me to double your money before Ansala becomes
available (or is worth trying to get).

===============
|| LATE GAME ||
===============

-----------------------
| Celestial Homonculi |
-----------------------

There are a few ways to make money with Item Creation, but the most effective
is to make Celestial Homonculi through Alchemy and sell them. Celestial
Homonculi have a base cost of around 10,000 Fol (they're easy to get because
they're the most expensive thing by far you can make with Alchemy) but sell
for about 20,000 Fol. Patenting the Celestial Homonculous DOES NOT affect this
selling price (in the original Japanese version they went for over 400,000
unpatented, but unfortunately this doesn't apply in the Director's Cut or US
version). While you could technically make the Celestial Homonculous with
Misty Lear, it is not recommended you try this strategy until you have Ansala
and his 99 talent level as it's not very effective in terms of time or money
unless you're succeeding just about every time. Not to mention why would you
need this kind of money until then anyway? Put those Orichalcums away, you
cheapass. :P (This may actually fit better in Post-Game and I may consider
moving it there, as I recall I mostly used this to finance my weapon
remodelling before tackling the first bonus dungeon).

Anyway. The most effective way to go about this IMO is to get a team together
of Ansala, Misty Lear and Sophia (look at her eyes light up when you succeed!
Awww...) and have them making Celestial Homonculi. You should exceed the
talent level by well over 100 points with this team and the Alchemist's Stone,
meaning you should be able to make at least 10-15 without failing at all. If
you've got a bit over 200,000 fol, try going for the full 20 and then sell
them to double your money in a relatively quick process. If you're doing
something like refining orichalcum at the time, try setting up a Celestial
Homonculi line alongside it so you can make money back as you go. That's
really all there is to say about this, it's not a complicated strategy.

As an alternative to this I recommend you look at the final paragraph of "Who
To Go After" above if you haven't already.

------------------------
| Turbo Controller Fun |
------------------------

A turbo controller's actually of decent use in SO3 for getting certain battle
trophies, well near anything from the bunny races, or Tri-Emblems from the
Santa's Boots. It looks like there are also renewable battles you can fight
using a turbo controller, such as with our first reader-submitted strategy
from Jon Hewett:

"Now, this strategy does require use of a turbo controller, and I'm not sure
if that bothers you, but here goes. This is for midgame I guess. When you
first get to Gemity, if you have a turbo controller (not sure what level you
need to be, I was about 60 when I started) you can go to the fight arena and
activate it in front of the lady. I suppose you need a good weapon. I had 8
orichalums on my weapon and two +30% to attack accessories (bangle of
accuracy?). Now when you talk to the lady you'll always fight in the single
battles with Fayt at level D, but it's more than worth it. You can also only
do weak attacks, but that was fine because I did about 7-8k a hit. The
awesome thing about this tactic is even if you die, you just start over and
eventually get back up to full hit points because of the regeneration at the
end of battle. I did this for about 8 hours I guess one night while I slept.
I gained 2 million Fol (Not nearly as cool as your millions in 10 minutes, but
hey, it's not too shabby) overnight. In addition, I went from level 60 to
level 106. :) Helped both ways. I'm not sure how much you slow down if you
keep trying this for leveling up, but I didn't keep doing it because I just
wanted to level up my character on my own, but at these high levels Fayt never
died."

My comments on this strategy: Decent if you don't mind leaving your PS2 on for
a long time and have a turbo controller to use. I suppose in ways it feels
almost like cheating, but if it's fine with you, go ahead. I'd probably say to
not even run it for that long, it's not like you need 2 million fol or to be
level 106 in the middle of the game anyway. My guess is that even just an hour
or two should produce sufficient results. Reminds me of the Lete River in FF6
actually... but I digress. Something else I thought of is the dragon doors in
Barr Temple - you could try standing in front of one with X and O turboed to
get battles, although I haven't tried that so I don't know how effective it
would be compared to this. Give it a shot if you like and have no qualms about
these cheap turbo controller tactics :P

---------------
| Runic Chess |
---------------

'...' (yes, that's someone's real Internet name too :P) has sent in the
following strategy for making money from playing the Runic Chess game at
Gemity:

"1st, Play the Advanced 'S' level of the Battle Chess mini-game in Germity.
2nd, Beat the easy stage
3rd, Collect Lezard Flask
4rd, Find a shop where you can sell 'other' items (I think the shop that's
right next to the free food/healing which is above then left of the entrance
to Germity is the best place.) and sell lezard flasks for 100,000 each.

I recommend that you just place your four chess pieces and walk away, then
come back in five minutes and rinse and repeat until you have enough FOL."

I've been hesitant to include this because I seem to remember that there was a
limit on the number of each item you can win from Runic Chess, but it's still
easy money while it lasts (no different from completing maps really). If
anyone knows for sure what the limit is or if it exists, let me know and I'll
mention it here. Update: According to Volicio the limit is 6 Lezard Flasks.
Still an easy 600,000 nonetheless.

===============
|| POST-GAME ||
===============

-------------------------------
| 20 Million Fol in 10 Minutes |
--------------------------------

This is the big one. Firstly, this is intended for people who are at least
halfway or so through the Sphere 211, so if you're still on the Maze of
TribulAURGH IT'S THE CAVE OF TRIALS DAMMIT then you might want to either stick
to Celestial Homonculi or really just fighting the enemies there, they pay out
pretty well. This really shouldn't be necessary until the Sphere 211 anyway,
just ignore Santa's more exorbitantly priced items until then.

Once you're there, the first thing you will need is a 'money weapon'. Three of
the ultimate weapons have a Enemy ATK +30% (2) factor on them. When the weapon
is refined, it will either disappear completely or become an Enemy ATK +30%,
Fol x3 (1) factor (this is a point of no return so be careful) which can then
become a Enemy ATK +50%, Fol x5 (1) and then finally a Enemy ATK +100%, Fol
x10 factor through refining. The last one will solve your money issues
forever, but it also has the nasty side effect of basically ruining someone's
ultimate weapon for normal use (unless you're particularly masochistic) by
doubling the enemy attack power. The three weapons in question are Roger's
ultimate (the Hybrid Helm), Maria's ultimate (the Dragoon Laser) and Fayt's
ultimate (the Levantine).

Now, if you don't use Roger, the solution to this is simple - just refine his
ultimate weapon (dropped by the Green Mojara boss on floor 159 of the Sphere
211) until it gets the Enemy ATK +100%, Fol x10 factor and then synth it to a
weapon you can actually use (ie a Laser Weapon for maximum flexibility). If
you DO use Roger and don't want to ruin his ultimate weapon, or you're not
happy with Fol x10 and would rather Fol x20 and don't mind working for it,
then things will get a little bit more complicated.

If Roger's weapon isn't an option for you, you will need to use the Loot Item
skill on a boss that drops one of the three weapons mentioned above. If you
wanted Fol x20 (bearing in mind that this will triple the enemy ATK), you can
either get two Hybrid Helms and synth them both to the same Laser Weapon (that
is, if you don't use Roger), or you could get an extra Dragoon Laser as the
Dragoon Laser can get two Fol x10s naturally. The downside to this is that the
Dragoon Laser is dropped by a harder boss about 10 levels later in the Sphere
211 (the Arch Demon, level 170) and the Levantine is out of the question
because the Hybrid Helm is the same and far, far easier to get. The problem
here is that Loot Item is a pain to use as it really doesn't work often, so my
personal advice is that if you don't use Roger, just use the Hybrid Helm you
get for free from just beating the boss and be happy with the 10x Fol (which
is more than enough).

Once you have a weapon with one or two Enemy ATK +100%, 10x Fol factors on it
(it won't stack beyond two, so don't bother) it's time to really make some
money. Where? Why, the Dragoon Knights ranking battle at the arena, of course
- they drop about 173,000 Fol (I don't remember the exact number) and are
particularly vulnerable to certain cheap tactics. Here's the strategy I use
with my party of Fayt, Cliff and Nel. If you don't use those three (like
seemingly nobody else does) you'll have to be a bit creative. Fayt and Cliff
can be substituted for any two fighters that can wear the Reflecting Plate,
and Nel can be substituted for Maria if that's your fancy. Onto the strategy!

1) Before the battle, equip Reflecting Plates and Anti-Incapacitation Amulets
(or Tri-Emblems if you have them, but likely you're doing this to be *able* to
afford Tri-Emblems) on Fayt and Cliff. Equip Nel with the money weapon with
its Enemy ATK +100%, Fol x10 factor (mine also had a +1000 ATK on it from the
Hybrid Helm, which helped) and the Victory Trophy.

2) If this is the first time you've done the battle since loading, keep an eye
on the bonus gauge. When it's nearly full, quickly open the menu, then set
everyone on manual. Do strong (O button) attacks with someone until the gauge
is full, and because you filled it using a strong attack you will get a Double
Fol bonus battle. Then you can leave it like that for the rest of the battles,
and put your characters back on auto again. This is assuming your characters
aren't such a high level that the bonus level isn't enough to fill the gauge
in this one fight (I was at level 145 and still got a good 120% by the start)
- if this is the case, you'll have to fill it elsewhere.

3) Now, have Nel throw a Flying Guillotine (Maria users can use Energy Burst)
at the flying dragon rider enemy which should freeze it thanks to the Victory
Trophy. Fayt or Cliff should then shatter the frozen enemy (the equipper of
the Victory Trophy cannot). That's one 2 million HP enemy out of the way in
record time (and yes, this does work in the US version)

4) The Crystal Dragon can't be dispatched so easily, but with the Reflecting
Plate protecting you from Flaming Breath and Atomic Breath and the Anti-
Incapacitation Amulets protecting you from Death Howl, you'll be immune to its
strongest attacks. It can still do the occasional physical attack on you or
such, but nothing you won't be able to keep up with by healing occasionally if
your characters have decent defense.

5) If you've got good weapons, this battle should be over in a minute or two
and assuming a Double Fol bonus battle you will receive nearly THREE AND A
HALF MILLION FOL for that one battle, and that's just with one Fol x10 factor
on the weapon. Not to mention the 12,000 you get afterwards as prize money -
every little bit helps, right? :P

You can see how it's not at all hard to get 20 million fol in 10 minutes with
this strategy. No need to bother with Santa's Boots and a turbo controller,
you can simply buy all the Tri-Emblems you want (don't forget Cinderella
Tablets for a major price cut). The huge costs for synthing onto the ultimate
weapons should no longer be an issue, and so on.

Now, if you're a relatively low level and can't defeat the Dragoon Knights in
a minute or so, you might find the Render Tyrant (big yeti-looking thing) on
Floor 7 of the Maze of Tribulations to be a better target for you. While he
only drops 60,000 fol base compared to the Dragoon Knights' 173,000 (1.3
million with Double Fol bonus battle and a 10x Fol weapon, or 2.6 with 20x),
if you can kill him much more quickly than the Dragoon Knights then you'll end
up making Fol faster overall. There's no real strategy to beating him unlike
the Dragoon Knights, other than to again wear the Reflecting Plate if his ice
attacks are giving you trouble. This suggestion comes courtesy of an ass. No,
that's his name. Really.

Additionally, Momochi Zabuza suggests that if you did not recruit Albel,
towards the end of the game you can fight the strongest version of him at the
Urssa Lava Caves (where Crosell is) as a one-on-one duel. It only pays out a
base 130,000 fol (although the Boots of Prowess you get might be handy also)
but if you find him significantly easier (and in particular, faster) to beat
than the Dragoon Knights, by all means fight him instead. It's not worth it if
he takes any longer than twice as long as the Render Tyrant, however. Of
course, you should enable the Event Skip to speed this process up.

That's about it for this guide at the moment. Please do send in any good
strategies you have, but please also be patient with me as I'm pretty busy
with my studies through a lot of the year. Have fun!

======================
|| ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ||
======================

EChang, kern, A l e x, LegaiaRules, etc... you guys know all and you've been
really helpful with board advice, FAQs or both. Thanks.

tri-Ace, for making one of the better RPGs I've played of late.

CJayC, for hosting this FAQ and working tirelessly on making GameFAQs the best
gaming site ever. Many thanks as always.

And thanks of course to all those who contributed to this FAQ.

Until next time..
--Xythar Darkmoon, Master Magus