Tips and Tricks: A Beginner's Guide to FF16

Know more about Final Fantasy 16 (FF16) with our comprehensive beginner's guide! Learn how to master your abilities, choose the right difficulty level, and unlock the power of the Eikons in Square Enix's latest entry to the Final Fantasy franchise!

Beginner's Guide: Essential Tips and Tricks

Essential Tips
Selecting Your Difficulty Mode Understanding the Eikons Mechanic Utilizing Abilities and Skills Master Parrying Early On Using Limit Breaks Effectively Making Use of Cid's Hideaway Features

Selecting Your Difficulty Mode

When starting in Final Fantasy 16, you'll be immediately greeted with initial settings such as language options and even language voiceovers. The most important setting, however, is the ability to select difficulty modes. There are currently two existing modes which are Story Focused mode and Action Focused mode. You can change between them anytime.

Recommended Difficulty Settings

Story Focused and Action Focused Modes

Story Focused mode automatically adds the Timely Accessories to Clive to make battles much easier, so make sure to choose Story Focused Mode if you want to entirely just enjoy the game's story. But if you want to truly experience the challenges of the game's combat, setting the option to Action Focused will allow you to challenge the game's battle system in its entirety. Timely Accessories can still be equipped in Action Focused mode.

Should You Choose Story Focused or Action Focused Mode?

Using Timely Accessories to Ease Difficulty

Timely Accessories make the game easier by providing shortcuts or assistance. Pictured above is the Ring of Timely Focus which shows an indicator for when to dodge an enemy attack when equipped. There are other accessories such as a combo simplifier where you won't need to do several inputs and just use one button for combos.

Timely Accessories Guide

Understanding the Eikon Mechanics

Eikons are massive entities and are central figures in the storyline of Final Fantasy 16. While the main highlights of Eikons are their battles, they also serve as an integral part of the game's combat system as Clive can learn skills and abilities tied to these Eikons.

You can equip up to three Eikons in the game and can freely switch between them, greatly changing Clive's moves during battle! In the image above, Clive is currently using Titan which lets him use Stone and Titanic Block. Use your Eikons to stagger your foes and unleash powerful damaging skills against them!

Eikons Guide: All Eikons and How to Use

Utilizing Abilities and Skills

Aside from changing the main movesets, there are also several Abilities you can learn under each Eikon skill tree which can affect how effective certain Eikons are when equipped. You can obtain ability points from multiple sources such as redeeming rewards using renown points in the Patron's Whisper or defeating enemies and leveling up!

Best Abilities to Learn and Master

Master Parrying Early On

Watch Clive take a chunk of Gigas' health by parrying!

To successfully parry attacks from enemies, you need to press the Square button right before the attack hits you. The trick here is to study the enemy's attack pattern and yours!

Learning how to parry is extremely worth mastering as it allows you to deal lots of damage, especially in boss fights! Remember to study the attack patterns of your enemies to take advantage of this skill.

How to Parry Attacks

Unleashing Limit Breaks at the Right Time

A Limit Break is a temporary empowered state for Clive that lasts until the Limit Break gauge is fully depleted, which happens after a few seconds upon activation by simultaneously pressing L3 and R3. During this mode, he deals more damage and heals up every time he deals damage.

Using Limit Break is most effective when an enemy is staggered because enemies take more damage at this state. Since the enemies can't retaliate when staggered, it also allows you to deal damage uninterrupted, allowing you to make the most out of the buff.

How to Use Limit Breaks Effectively

Making Use of Cid's Hideaway Features

After progressing a bit through the game, you'll unlock Cid's Hideaway, which acts as the central hub area of the game.

Here, you'll be able to access all sorts of services such as buying items from the shop, taking bounties, crafting and upgrading weapons, and more!
Everything You Can Do at Cid's Hideaway

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List of Categories
Main Quests	Eikons
Abilities	Tips and Tricks
Gear and Equipment	Side Quests
Hunt Board	Bosses
Map and Regions	Cid's Hideaway
Chronolith Trials	Characters
Enemies	Items
Story and Lore	News and Updates