Return of the Founder King Trophy in Final Fantasy XV

  • Return of the Founder King

     

    Earned the top ranking in EPISODE ARDYN.

    How to unlock Return of the Founder King

    Missable!

    This is the hardest trophy in the DLC but is perfectly manageable with the right approach. You need to get an A+ ranking, this is determined by 9 separate categories but you only need to focus on a couple of them especially that aren't really farmable, max combo and damage incurred.

    Do note that to get an A+ overall ranking you need to either have an A+ in at least 8 of the 9 categories, with one other being a B, or A+ in 7 categories with the other 2 at an A. Getting a C or lower in any will automatically void an A+ ranking.

    General tips and advice:

    • Save often - I cannot stress this enough but save before and after every guardian battle, this way you can easily reload if you have a bad fight. You can also save before the final bosses so you can reload if you fail to get an A+ ranking and farm more enemies or whatever it required.
    • Royal Retribution abuse - This attack is extremely exploitable and is key to eliminating guardians and royal guards very quickly. Once available buy Ethers in bulk from vending machines and unlock the Spectral Charge ability (16 AP). Now you can use your MP to regenerate your spectral swords to 12 and just spam it over and over, you are invincible whilst performing the attack and it almost always makes guardians vulnerable.
    • Stat boosts - Buy the Power EX and Mettle VX boosts from vending machines and use them before any guardian fight and during if they run out. They add 100 to attack and defence during battle which will make you way more powerful and resistance to damage in case you do take some hits.
    • Avoid enemy/royal guard patrols - Enemy patrols are marked on the map and take longer to defeat and can cause more damage to you, stick to the random royal guard spawns instead so you don't waste time.
    • Royal Crown/Final Boss - Once you have disabled all 7 amplifiers you can buy the Royal Crown hat from a shop on the right side of the area which grants Ardyn an additional 50MP, this makes royal retribution even more easily spammable against the final bosses as a single use of Spectral Charge at 212MP will grant a full 12 swords, then you can use ethers to quickly restore your MP and rinse repeat.


    Ranking Categories and requirements:

    • Total Score - This comes from combat and destroying objects. You can farm for points against the random spawning royal guards and destroying the many objects around Insomnia, guardians the final bosses will award a large amount of points additionally. Do not enter the final before without at least 1.3-4 million points already.
    • Max Combo - Try to get this out of the way early, I recommend the guardian in section A close to where you spawn. Kill a few enemies to max out spectral swords at 12, fight the guardian making sure to avoid his attacks whilst building your combo, summon Ifrit when able and make sure to wail on him it if it goes in to a vulnerable state, you can easily rack up the minimum require combo of 400 for an A+ here.
    • Enemies Defeated - You need to defeat 150+ enemies for an A+, you should easily get this naturally from having to daemonify 100 enemies and from the mandatory battles. If not they can easily be farmed before the final boss.
    • Daemonifcations - The key here are the Royal Guards that will randomly ambush you as you traverse the streets on ground level after defeating your first guardian, press and then mash to win the QTE and quickly daemonify them. This racks up AP, points, enemy kills and daemonifications whilst minimising over battle time (only takes 5-8 seconds). You need 100 for an A+.
    • Sectors Controlled - This is an easy A+, simply disable all 7 amplifiers marked on the map.
    • Undying States - Undying State occurs when your HP is reduced to 0 and your attacks become more powerful, this cannot happen even once to get an A+. The undying state in the tutorial, doesn't count.
    • Damage Incurred - This is the trickiest category as there is no way to track it. A+ is less than 15,000 damage, A is 15-20k which is pretty generous. Use Mettle VX boosts to double your defence and spam royal retribution over and over and you'll take little to no damage in every fight, don't be afraid to reload if you feel you took too much damage somewhere.
    • Successful Strategies - Another easy A+, just make sure to successfully complete all 4 tutorial goals early on the DLC before the timer bar the top runs out, this is very easy.
    • Battle Time - This is for total time spent in combat. You will spend the most time fighting guardians, royal guards and the final bosses. The time allowance is very lenient with the requirement for an A+ is 50 minutes or below. Just make sure to avoid the enemy patrols on the map as these take longer to complete and also avoid royal guards (apart from random QTE ambushes). Royal retribution and summoning Ifrit is the key to having battles over with quickly.


    Your main focus needs to be on damage incurred and max combo, if you can nail at least an A or B on damage and A+ on max combo, the others are just about farming if anything, see the screenshot below of my score so you can get a good idea of what you need to do for your own A+ rank:

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Comments
  • Not to hard. Got this after the second try on easy. Found this very usefull: https://psnprofiles.com/trophy/5611-final-fantasy-xv/98-return-of-the-founder-king

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