Final Fantasy 15: Ascension Guide – Grids to Focus on – USgamer

Here's how to navigate Ascension, Final Fantasy 15's skill tree system.

Guide by USgamer Team, 06/27/2017.

Final Fantasy 15 features fun, fluid combat that's heavily influenced by action games, but at its heart is your party's progression as you level up, and here that's marked by the Ascension system. With so many categories of upgrades and pathways of nodes, though, it can be difficult to plan ahead and know what to work towards. Here's our Final Fantasy 15 Ascension guide to get you started on filling in the Ascension trees.

For more guides, tips, and opinions on Final Fantasy XV, check out Final Fantasy 15: Guides, Tips, Cheats, and More.

Like most Final Fantasy games, you still get experience which lets you level up and increase your stats, but you also get AP which you can use in Ascension, a skill tree system similar in concept to Final Fantasy X's Sphere Grid, but a lot less constrained. It's divided into eight categories: Armiger, Magic, Recovery, Techniques, Combat, Teamwork, Stats, Exploration, and Wait Mode. You can truly tailor your character growth to your playstyle, but let us walk you through where you should get started.

You're going to want to first get some basic battle functionality up and running. Blink and Airstep under the Combat grid are absolute musts, as they help you stay more nimble and defensive in combat. Airstep in particular works extremely well with polearms, resulting in combos that feel a lot like the Jump Dragoon ability from previous Final Fantasy games when combined with Death Drop, which is in a neighboring node. In the Teamwork grid, get Link Up to boost link-strike damage, but more importantly, to get access to Deathblow, which lets you close out battles faster after you leave an enemy Vulnerable. Also make sure and grab Analyze right away so you can use Libra in battles to learn enemy weaknesses. Boosting your HP in the Stats grid is a good idea, but it's even more vital to give your party access to two accessories as soon as possible.

One thing you're going to want to heavily prioritize, though, is getting more techniques for your characters. Their initial ones, Piercer, Mark, and Tempest, all do damage in slightly different ways, but end up being somewhat redundant quickly. Prompto should switch over to Starshell as soon as possible, as it makes for an excellent distraction/debuff that can turn the tide of battle against daemons. Ignis needs to go a little deeper to get Enhancement, but it's worth it, as it allows him to infuse Noctis's attacks with whatever element the current enemy is weak against, which is huge considering you only have limited quantities of magic spells to work with. Gladiolus should stay the course when it comes to damage-dealing Techs, so start by getting Cyclone and working your way up the branches to see which one works best for you. Lastly, don't forget that you have to equip new techs to your characters in the Gear menu.

Don't neglect the Exploration grid, as the earlier you can get some nodes on there going, the sooner you can start to rake in more and more AP to use on even more nodes. Roadrunning, Happy Camping, and Appetize are the three that you're going to get the most use out of. Aside from those, focus on getting nodes of things that you like doing more of. If you like fishing, go down the Angler Action branch. If you're going to be riding on chocobos a lot, get Chocobump. If you like racing chocobos, get Chocojockey. There's even one for using elemancy, Magic Action, but it's on the Magic grid. It's worth getting, though, as the node before it, Powercraft, gives you a nice head start when crafting new magic. For more tips on how to gain AP fast, check out Final Fantasy 15: Tips for Earning AP Fast.

Finally, when you get access to the Armiger grid, get Iron Armiger right away, as it will make your Armiger attacks last longer.

This article may contain links to online retail stores. If you click on one and buy the product we may receive a small commission. For more information, go here.