Final Fantasy Resonance MRP farming: the fastest way to level your Visions

MRP is what raises a Vision’s Mastery Rank, and rank is where the good stuff lives. Half MP Cost, Arms Akimbo and Break the Limit are all rank 9 abilities. Most farming in Final Fantasy Resonance comes down to the long road to rank 9 on a handful of Visions.

How MRP works

You earn MRP by winning battles. It goes into whichever Vision each character has equipped, so put on the one you’re levelling before the fight starts. The reward is fixed for each battle, however many enemies are in it. One big enemy is worth far more than a crowd of small ones. The Battle Result screen shows what you got, and the Growth screen after it shows how far each Vision has left to go.

Most Visions follow the same curve, shown here as running totals.

Eleven Visions follow it all the way: Aileen, Amelia, Camille, Charlotte, Cloud, Leah, Vaan, Warrior of Light, Wilhelm, Y’shtola and Zidane. The rest cost extra near the top. Rank 9 needs 4,695 for Tronn, 4,785 for Noctis and Sephiroth, 4,945 for Ayaka, Onion Knight, Squall and Victoria, 4,975 for Firion, 5,075 for Shantotto, 5,095 for Terra, 5,195 for Cecil, Clive, Lightning and Tidus, and 5,245 for Bartz.

Each character earns Mastery on their own, so those totals are per character. Taking all 26 Visions to rank 9 on one person would cost 121,360 MRP, and nobody needs that. Pick the Visions that matter and the grind gets a lot shorter.

Bonuses that stack

Four things raise what a fight pays, and two of them cost nothing.

Expert and Stagger Finish multiply together. A Gigantuar that pays 600 gives 780 with a finish and 1,170 with both.

Stagger Finish

Hold back until the stagger lands, then defeat the last enemy during it. If a teammate would finish the enemy off first, tell them to hold their turn with Defend or an item until the Bonus Phase arrives. It’s worth making a habit from Chapter 1, because it applies to every fight you win.

Expert difficulty

Expert multiplies MRP by 1.5. Enemies also come with 1.6 times the HP and stagger gauge, and your party hits for 0.8 times as hard. Fights get longer, so the extra 50 percent only pays when a fight ends quickly. Pot battles have no damage at all, which makes Expert free there. Switch before the encounter starts, because you can’t change difficulty in the middle of a battle. EXP and gil are the same on every difficulty.

Victoria

You get Victoria from the Chapter 5 side quest Victoria Revivified, in the Magiapolis of Mysidia. Rank 7 takes 1,195 MRP and teaches MRP Gain +50 percent (30 AP to equip). Mastery belongs to each character, so everyone who should earn the bonus needs their own rank 7 first. After that it pays for itself quickly, since every Vision you level from then on earns half as much again.

The Mastery Pendant

The Pendant doubles the MRP its wearer earns, and it arrives late. It’s the thirteenth treasure from the Mysidia Radar on your airship, and the radar upgrades need three things. Magi-tenna comes from a man hiding by the water in Gaberada, the Undertown. The Resonance Stone sits in a chest in Mt. Reizan. The High-Power Generator is sold by the Merchant Ship for 60,000 gil once the story allows it, and you need the ninth radar treasure, Philosopher’s Stone, before that offer appears.

There’s only one Pendant, so put it on whoever is levelling the Vision you care about most. It doesn’t stack with Victoria’s ability. Only the bigger bonus applies. On the character wearing the Pendant her rank 7 adds nothing, and she’s more use on everyone else. The bonus pack in the Digital Deluxe Edition also holds a Mastery Ring that raises the MRP its wearer earns.

Magic Pots

Each of the six Pots appears in two places, so there are 12 battles in all, and every one is a one-time encounter. Don’t attack them. They have 99,999 HP. A Pot asks for an item (the Citrine Pot’s own move is called Gimme an ether!), you use that item on it from the Items menu, and the battle ends as a win.

Switch to Expert first, and each one pays like this.

All twelve add up to 6,340 MRP, or 9,510 on Expert. That’s more than the 4,195 a standard Vision needs to reach rank 9. An Ether costs 500 gil in the Dwarven Forge and Dilmagia shops and a Mist Ether costs 2,500. Walk in with the item already in your bag, and if you meet a Pot without it, run and come back. Five of the six can drop an Elixir as well, and the Crimson Pot never does.

Best places to farm

Because MRP is fixed per fight, the question is which fight pays the most for the least effort. It climbs like this as the story opens up.

Chapters 1 and 2

Early fights pay little. A Kolobos Ruins battle can give 10 MRP, plus 3 for a stagger finish, and field monsters in the Grandshelt desert pay 20 to 40, with the Minituar at 40 being the best of them and weak to Ice and Water. That’s fine for topping up before a boss, but nothing here deserves a long grind.

Cactuars from Chapter 2

The Cactuar is level 30 with only 1,111 HP and a stagger gauge of 150, and it pays 220 MRP a fight (286 with a stagger finish). Nothing you can repeat pays better until the Gigantuars show up. It dodges almost everything until it’s staggered. Open with Ice and Water multi-hit skills and the evasion disappears along with the gauge. Earth does nothing to it. You can steal Mist Ether from it, or a Magicite Shard as the rare steal.

You find Cactuars as random encounters on the world map. Dirnado has them from Chapter 2, west of the Onion Knight Sanctum, and the southern desert of Zoldaad has them from Chapter 4. Gronoa and one Grandshelt field have them too. Keep walking the field until one turns up.

For skills, Noctis’s Barrage lands four guaranteed hits once it reaches rank 9, Lasswell’s Tranquility in Tumult hits five times (some will miss), and Nichol’s Assail adds 30 percent stagger power for the whole party.

Metal Cactuars for EXP

The Metal Cactuar in Mysidia is a level-up spot more than an MRP one, with 25,000 EXP and 1,000 gil on offer for 90 MRP. Look for it around Jotunn Cave, where about a third of the fights turn out to be Metal Cactuars. It has 10 HP, but its defence is so high that hits do 1 damage. You win on the number of hits. It runs away after its third or fourth action, so the first turn is the important one. Stagger it and it stops evading.

The island past Dragon’s Maw

This is the best spot in the game. Cross Dragon’s Maw, a level 55 dungeon, to a small island in the Kingdom of Pharm. Each fight on the island is against one of three enemies, with roughly equal odds, and they pay 600 MRP for a Gigantuar, 225 MRP and 150,000 EXP for a Metal Gigantuar, and 182 MRP and 28,000 gil for a King Gil Snapper. That averages about 335 MRP a fight before any bonuses. Dragon’s Maw itself and the Crystal Tower pay around 100 to 300 a battle.

The Gigantuar is level 40 with 11,111 HP and a stagger gauge of 375. It’s weak to Ice and Water and immune to Earth, like the Cactuar. Its 10,000 Needles hits one character for a flat 10,000. I’d have Grit or a Chocobo Down Charm on everyone before the first fight. The Metal Gigantuar has 14 HP and a stagger gauge of 1,200, and it flees. Gigantuars turn up in the fields of Gronoa earlier on, though far less often.

How many fights a Vision takes

Reaching rank 9 on a Vision that needs 4,195 MRP takes this many fights. Every character in the fight fills their own Vision at the same time. A whole party climbs together.

The priciest Vision, Bartz at 5,245, takes five Gigantuar fights on Expert with a finish.

Party setup

Equip the Vision you want to level before you start, and swap it as soon as it hits rank 9. A party built to stagger quickly beats one built to heal. Nichol’s Assail and a couple of multi-hit Ice skills do more here than extra healing. Tents work on the world map too, so a long session doesn’t need trips back to town. If Stagger still feels shaky, the basics are worth another look, and the abilities that deserve a slot on everyone are the double-action skills.

EXP and gil

Metal enemies and Gil Snappers run away. Stagger them first, since a staggered Metal loses its evasion. Two bonuses help here. A win with no damage taken gives 1.2 times the EXP, and finishing off every enemy and then landing a follow-up attack in the Bonus Phase gives 1.3 times the gil.

King Gil Snapper is worth a few fights on its own. With Vaan’s Double Gil at rank 9 it pays 56,000. Two fights cover the 60,000 gil the High-Power Generator costs on the way to the Mastery Pendant.