Final Fantasy XIII Eidolon Battle Strategy Detailed

The characters in Final Fantasy XIII each have a respective Eidolon. Eidolons are the game’s summoning monsters and appear in the story once a certain character loses their focus. They are a beacon of hope for the characters so to speak. Before you are able to summon an Eidolon it must first gain the users’ trust. The only way to do that is by beating it!

There are six Eidolons in all and Just Push Start has created a guide for you to best beat these bosses. All you need to beat them is to use a bit of strategy and the right class combination. If you are struggling to beat one of the Eidolons then don’t worry we have you covered.

SHIVA

Character: Snow
Chapter: 03

Strategy: In order to impress Shiva, switch the Paradigm Shift to Sentinel. Have Snow use Steel Guard all the time and wait for the Gestalt Meter to fill up. Don’t worry about your health because Striria (Sister of Nix) will heal you.

ODIN

Character: Lightning
Chapter: 04

Strategy: This is one of the hardest fights you will encounter so far as Odin is fast and deadly. Before entering the battle, make sure that you changed your Battle Speed under Settings to Slow. The key to fill up the Gestalt Meter fast is when Odin sees a lot of healing and chaining up your attacks. Start off with Hope casting Protect and Shell then change the Paradigm Shift to Dual Casting allowing both Lightning and Hope cast magics. When you see one of your characters HP is low, switch to Yin & Yang Paradigm to allow Hope heal Lightning while she’s still attacking with a magic.

BRYNHILDR

Character: Sahz
Chapter: 08

Strategy: Start off by having the characters switch their Paradigm to Saboteur and Synergiest. Have either of the two cast Vigilance and Haste. If the HP runs low on either of the characters, change the Paradigm to War & Peace to have one of the characters use Cura or Cure. The main key to this battle is to chain up the Chain Gauge. Do it by always focusing on Dual Casting Paradigm to have both characters attack with magic (Ravager).

BAHAMUT

Character: Fang
Chapter: 10

Strategy: Making a pact with Bahamut is a very challenging one as it attacks rampantly. Focus on the health of your party. I suggest to have someone in your party cast Shell and Protect to lessen the damage that you get from Bahamut. Start off by debuffing Bahamut. Have one of your party be a Sentinel (preferably Fang) and the two becomes a Ravager. Keep on attacking Bahamut until the Gestalt Gault fills up.

ALEXANDER

Character: Hope
Chapter: 11

Strategy: Make sure Hope has a lot of HP by this time as he will be the Party leader. Start off the battle with Alexander by shifting to Delta Attack Paradigm. Have Fang be the Sentinel while Hope and Lightning do the attack. When you see the party’s HP drop significantly, switch to Combat Clinic Paradigm to do the healing. Keep on doing it this until the Gestalt Meter fills up.

HECATONCHEIR

Character: Vanille
Chapter: 11

Strategy: With only Vanille and Fang fighting this Eidolon Battle, it can be tough. Start off the fight by having Vanille be the Ravanger and Fang be the Sentinel. Keep attacking Hecatoncheir with Vanille’s Magic and watch his Chain Gauge goes up. When the HP runs low, change to a Medic Paradigm and have Vanille heal and switch back to the first strategy. Keep on doing this and the Gestalt Meter will go up.

17 thoughts on “Final Fantasy XIII Eidolon Battle Strategy Detailed

  1. Had trouble with HECATONCHEIR

    Maybe my character development problem. Combo gauge will not go stack due to lack of speed or interruption from hits.

    I had Vanille switch between SAB and MED. She will continue to cast deprotection spells that has slows the gauge drain to get the job done.

    If you run out of time, sneak in an extra technique in-between her gauge charge helps as well (quake).

    Help this help some of you. I had a hard time with this one cause I neglected these two character on development.

  2. Only Eidolon battle I had a problem was with Vanille’s when I was doing RAV and MED. I beat it with SAB and MED just like Eric.

  3. I had trouble with Hecatoncheir as well, I had even did some grind time to raise the levels of my characters before facing him. After trying the recommended process given above and failing numberous times I decided to try something different. I tried something close to what Eric suggested.

    I made Vanille and Fang Saboteurs and Hecatoncheir’s gauge filled up rather quickly, when health got low I switched Vanille over to a medic with Fang taking on the role of the Sentinel. I only had to switch to the medic role twice during this battle.

    Hope this helps as it worked for me; good luck!!

  4. Make sure that you buff your characters up *as always* and debuff the enemies. Thats the number one tip!

  5. I’m having trouble with BRYNHILDR. My pain problem is I don’t have Haste yet with Sazh. Any tips?

  6. Hey Micheal,

    If you are having trouble with BRYNHILDR, developing haste in Sazh is the key. After the boss battle and before the BRYNHILDR battle you have a chance to go back to the save point and save your game. So while you are out there, you’ll have a chance to fight some of the weaker monsters that will help you level up to haste.

    Worked for me.

  7. Also, guys, for anyone having trouble with HECATONCHEIR: it’s IMPERATIVE, I found, for Vanille to have 4 ATB gauges, instead of the 3 she already has, before the battle–the crystal for an ATB upgrade is in Vanille’s medic tree (if you will), the first one after her second role level crystal (so the first crystal of level three, in other words).

    Also, don’t even bother with RAV/SEN or even worse, RAV/COM, since the eidolon yields to CHAIN bonuses, which won’t build with just one RAV (and you’ll die really quickly on RAV/COM, I tried it).

    I used SAB/SAB to start, and for every time the eidolon switched to Looming Wrath (if the name’s wrong: whenever he didn’t attack); SAB/SEN to keep the purple gauge going; and MED/SEN to heal (heal only when necessary, as healing doesn’t seem to make the gauge go up much). From personal experience, SAB FILLED UP THE GAUGE FASTEST.

    WHENEVER THE EIDOLON IS ATTACKING, HAVING FANG AS SENTIEL IS CRUCIAL (since Vanille can only heal if she’s not being attacked)!

    I used this strategy and BEAT THE EIDOLON WITH 700 TO SPARE ON THE DOOM COUNTER. Hope this helps.

  8. For Hecatoncheir, I just backtracked into the mine before the save point. Two battles gave me enough CP to activate Fang as a Ravager. Two or three rounds of Dualcasting (rav/rav) with an occasional heal took it down in a little over a minute.

  9. I don’t know how you can say hopes is easy bc I am ready to throw my box off my balcony bc of this. I am using hope lightning and fang. Light weapon at lv 20 fang at 16 and hope around a 8. Have avg hp of 1560 on all chars yet am getting one hitted off rip everytime. It honestly happens so fast I don have time to swith to a sentinal pardigm. Not to mention it’s the most frustrating bc when you have to start over your forced to re level up all crystal as well as configure your pardigm roles. I tried 4 times and gave up. It’s been a week now since even though of playing and been sticking with mlb2k10 in fear that my xbox will be in pieces if I got owned once more. Any ips anyone. Thanks a bunch

  10. HECATONCHEIR:

    I tried what it said… didn’t work then I tried the SAB/SAB to SAB/SEN to MED/SEN shifts and failed again. Then I realized I had two Aegisols and so used one before the cut scene. This helped dodge his Quake and also stop using the auto chain which really just did not fill the Gelstault Gauge. I noticed strong spells like Dispel or any other that costs 2 TP bars quickly started filling the bar. Switching to MED/SEN only when Fang’s life was about half way. Then Quickly shifting back to SAB/SEN. Due to Vanille’s speed I often used cancel to get the Dispels casted quicker back to back. Hope this helps someone.

  11. HECATONCHEIR

    Impossible!? i tried 39 times so far using all your methods, i get so close but the doom counter kills me!

    SAB/SAB(must have)
    MED/SEN(must have)
    SAB/SEN(must have)
    SYN/SEN (optional good for haste)
    MED/MED (Helps lots, Optional)

    Equipment should be the ones that either raise health or ones that resist magic (for the earth moves). If you kept the Entite ring (worth 60,000 gil) from barthandelus/Galeth Dysley (i think), you can beat him Easy!

    Still trying to beat HECATONCHEIR as he is the hardest of all eidolons (pronounced: I-DOE-LIN-SS)

  12. Thanks for all the info..

    I was stuck with using the RAV/COM roles.

    Using SAB/SAB and SAB/SEN and MED/SEN (when low in hp) did the trick.

  13. Yeah the advice this article gives for Hecatoncheir sucks big time. It completely neglects the need for Vanille’s Saboteur role, and simply doesn’t work. Clearly the writer didn’t actually play the game because there’s simply no way this would work.

    Definitely go with Vanille SAB and Fang SEN/SAB, then switch to MED and SEN. Maybe throw in a little RAV time too. Either way, just using RAV alone comes nowhere close to defeating this mofo…

  14. ok with the right setup vanille does better as a RAV than as a SAB…
    so not his fault it doesnt help everyone
    but with SAB/SAB to start off
    MED/SEN when needed to heal
    and RAV/SEN when he’s attacking fang i did this just fine with maybe 300-400 left on timer

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