Final Fantasy 15 guide, walkthrough and tips for the open-world's many quests and activities

Our complete story walkthrough and guide to the many activities in the long-awaited RPG.

Guide by Mat Hall Contributor

Updated on March 12, 2018

Final Fantasy 15 (or Final Fantasy XV) has been a long time coming. Starting life as a spin-off in the Fabula Nova Crystallis series around a decade ago, a combination of scale, ambition and protracted development saw it morph into a fully-fledged entry in the series.

Whether you're a long-time Final Fantasy fan, or fresh to the series and RPGs in general, there's a lot that's new and unusual to take in at first.

Our Final Fantasy 15 walkthrough can help you navigate the huge open world and challenging dungeons, while this Final Fantasy 15 guide page provides tips on how to make the most of the game's many systems, and in the coming days, explain how to tick off the game's many side-activities and post-game challenges.

Final Fantasy 15 walkthrough

Final Fantasy 15 more or less spits you out into the open-world from the off, giving you plenty of distractions and side-activities. You can track it easily with the menu's Quest log that offers story objectives in red, side quests in blue, while smaller activities like tours are in green and monster hunts are in yellow.

You can dip into any of the above as you see fit, though it's well worth prioritising the story quests to begin with to open up the game world and raise your levels in a natural way.

Final Fantasy 15 walkthrough:

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Final Fantasy 15 tips for the game's many systems and activities

You can sprint indefinitely

Until you get the flying car Regalia Type F or a Chocobo, you'll be spending a lot of time on foot. While Noctis has a short stamina bar which means he gets out of breath easily after a quick sprint, you can circumvent this by using an infinite sprint trick that allows you to refill your sprint bar as soon as it depletes. It takes some timing and practice, but proves invaluable if you want to explore the world at a reasonable pace.

Learn how your car navigates the world

Navigating the three core regions of the world requires your trusty Regalia car, and it pays to know how it works. You'll need it to navigate the game's huge world, but it's a fairly linear affair, sticking to the game's highways and dirt roads rather than allowing you to go off the beaten track. You can, however, manually drive it from A to B if you wish, and stop at the side of the road to look at points of interest.

Learn where and how your car can navigate the world of Eos.

These journeys take a while, and while we recommend taking in the sights as you drive somewhere first time, by visiting parking spaces you can then fast travel around without the lengthy journey first. On foot, you can also fast travel to your parked car and the last place you rested. Also, it's well worth visiting each mechanic at every outpost you visit to buy new decals, upgrades and most importantly, soundtracks from other Final Fantasy games to listen to as you drive.

Always visit every new restaurant and diner

When you arrive at a new area, speak to the local food vendors and select the 'Talk' option. It'll add out nearby points of interest on your map - places you can camp, quest givers, elemental magic sources, treasures and sources of natural ingredients - to help when exploring new locales. Even if there are multiple food vendors in an outpost or town, chat to them all, as they will add even more points of interest nearby.

Rest up and eat meals regularly

Before any dungeon or tough encounter, make sure you eat a meal or rest up at a campsite and have Ignis prepare you a status-boosting meal for the party. The game naturally nudges you in this direction when night falls, which is when more dangerous enemies (known as daemons) emerge, so if you want to make life easier, rest off the dark hours, get a good cooked meal and try again when it's light.

Sleeping is also when you tally up your earned EXP for the day, leveling you and putting you in the best shape you can be for the coming battle. If you're interested in logging your EXP only, then make sure you locate more luxurious accommodation - like a hotel - gives you more of a multiplier to make those EXP gains worthwhile. We discuss this and other ways to get experience in our EXP farming and sources page.

There are easy ways to get bonus AP

As well as experience, you also need to amass AP - or ability points - to unlock new skills in the Ascension ability tree. You can get AP in a number of ways, but it's best to unlock nodes in the ability tree that give you AP as a byproduct of doing common activities, such as driving, riding a Chocobo, or casting magic. You can see where to get more points in our Final Fantasy 15 AP sources and how to get AP fast page.

Having a good status-boosting meal inside you will make tough encounters much more bearable.

Items are everywhere

As you play, you'll notice many sparkling pieces of light as you explore the world. These are items you can collect to sell, combine into recipes (your recipe list grows as you get more ingredients, so collect everything you see) or for crafting with Cid at Hammerhead, and it's worth grabbing everything you see. It's one of the best ways to get Gil - the game's currency - which you can read more about alongside other ways in our how to get Gil fast through farming and other sources page.

Combat is deeper than you think

Initially holding Square / X to dodge and Circle / B to attack while your team mates do their own thing feels a little straightforward for a Final Fantasy game, but there's a lot more to combat than it first appears, which will become evident when you come up against tougher adversaries. Learn to use Libra to scan for an enemy's weaknesses and you'll find out the elements and specific weapons they're weak - and strong - against, forcing you to tweak your arsenal on the fly.

Positioning is vital; make use of Warp Points around the arena to retreat and gain health and MP, before returning with powerful attacks (the further you are away, the more powerful the Warp Strike), and if you attack enemies from behind or return a block with a parry, any nearby teammates can follow up with a Link Strike. If you're struggling to keep up with the frantic pace of battle, then changing Combat to Wait rather than Active pauses the attention whenever you sit still, giving you time to focus on what to do next.

Don't worry about side-quests or Hunts too much

Apart from set moments in the story - which the game will tell you about in advance - you can break off and participate in side-activities pretty much whenever you please. While it's ideal to take part in side-quests and Hunts as you come across them - there are certain dungeons that will require a small bump in level in order for you to tackle them - you don't have to grind extensively to progress through the game's main story beats.

So while it'll make life easier to accumulate AP, EXP and resources by exploring, don't feel guilty about leaving a huge list of quests hanging. Same applies to Fishing and other mini-games, too. It's worth noting that nothing is missable - they'll be waiting for you to come back to them - so feel free to mop them up later when you're more powerful. There's also a series of quests that open up when the story is over, so feel free to see the credits if you're towards the game's end, and come back later.

Ignore those locked doors at the end of dungeons (for now)

You have to come back to them much later as part of end-game content to take on some bonus challenges and bosses. We'll have more on end and post-game activities in the coming days, from how to access and complete them, so stay tuned.

Be on the look out for seasonal events and DLC

The game's first Timed Quest has recently gone live, tasking you to take on a hunt - a battle against 100 Cactuar and Slactuar targets - for a limited-time only for a series of rewards. The end date has yet to be revealed, but expect more of these to roll out in the coming weeks and months.

Before that, during January and February, we saw the Moogle Chocobo Carnival, introducing new mini-games, quests and exclusive items in a special version of Altissia. It's no longer playable, but hopefully players will have a second chance of visiting one day.

There is DLC for each party member - starting with Episode Gladious DLC, as well as hopefully other events to come, so keep your eyes peeled on new game updates.

Dancing with costumed characters was one of many strange but brilliant activities in the Moogle Chocobo Carnival.

Watch Kingsglaive and Brotherhood if you care about the story

Final Fantasy 15 centres around a long-standing conflict between two countries - Lucis, the last nation in possession of a powerful crystal, and Niflheim, an empire of warring factions who lost their own crystals over years of battle - but despite a day-one patch to address some absences in story-telling, the game generally does a pretty poor job about telling you about the state of the world's politics or the backstories of your party members.

If you can, it's worth watching Kingsglave: Final Fantasy XV, a feature-length CGI film which centres around the royal guard protecting the King of Lucis and explains what happens at the start of the game, as well as animated series Brotherhood: Final Fantasy XV, which delves how Noctis got to meet Ignis, Gladiolus and Prompto. The former is on Blu-ray and digital download, while the later is free-to-watch on YouTube. While it's a shame to rely on transmedia to fill the gaps of the game's storytelling shortcomings, Final Fantasy fans will get a kick out of watching both.