Final Fantasy XV Royal Edition Trophy Guide | The Honest Platinum Roadmap (World Wanderer)

Intro | A 10-year rematch I picked up for 300 yen

This one’s on Final Fantasy XV (Royal Edition). Let me start with why I’m playing it now.

I actually played this at launch, ten years ago. I got every trophy except fishing, then burned out. I did a quick single run of the DLC when it dropped, and even though I later bought the Royal Edition, I never touched it and eventually sold it to a used-game shop.

Then the other day I wandered into a used shop and saw it sitting there for 300 yen. “For that price, why not one more go.” I picked it up, started replaying, and it’s genuinely good. As an action game and as an RPG, the polish holds up better than I remembered. It got roasted hard at launch, but playing it today, it’s just a solid game.

On the trophy side: the base platinum, The World Wanderer, is still fully obtainable offline. Rarity sits around 9%, which makes it one of the easier platinums out there. The one catch is the online expansion Comrades — those trophies can’t be earned anymore now that the online service is gone. That’s on the service side, so nothing anyone can do (more on this below).

The Royal Edition and post-launch patches added some trophies too, and I re-ran all the DLC to finish those off. This guide lays out what you actually have to do and how hard it really is, so anyone starting fresh knows what they’re walking into. I also messed around with the non-trophy endgame stuff (the Menace dungeons), so there’s a bit on that too.

Trophy spec block

• Release date: 2016 (Royal Edition: 2018)
• Played on: PS5 (backward compatible), Royal Edition
• Version: Royal Edition, fully patched
• Total playtime: ~70–80 hours for the base platinum
• Time breakdown: roughly 55–60h main run + exploration, ~15–20h cleanup/skills; more if you do all the DLC
• Playthroughs: 1 (chapter select handles the cleanup)
• Platinum difficulty: ★★☆☆☆ (2/5)
• Sense of achievement: ★★★★☆ (4/5)
• How close I came to quitting: ★★★★☆ (4/5 — I literally shelved it for ten years over fishing)
• Need for a guide: Medium
• Missable elements: Yes — one timed Royal Pack datalog set, and one Royal Arm with a known blocking bug
• Online requirements: Comrades trophies are now unobtainable, but they are NOT required for the platinum
• Biggest wall: Omega (Through the Dimensional Rift)

The base platinum is on the gentle side. The stuff that actually tests you is in the DLC score attacks.

Before you start (this makes it 90% easier)

A little prep completely changes how this feels. Get these into your head first.

• Play on Easy. You can switch anytime in the options. The only trophy that forces Normal is Chosen King (beat Ifrit on Normal), one single fight. Even if you accidentally kill him on Easy, chapter select lets you redo it.
• Use the Chocobo the moment it unlocks. Travel is the biggest source of friction in this game, so the earlier you get mobility, the more time you save. That said, the driving-around is also part of this game’s charm.

One more thing that’s easy to miss: the Ring of the Lucii. You get it in Chapter 13 and it’s absurdly strong. Its normal attack has a death effect, and it can wipe trash by dumping all your MP — and since point-warping refills MP instantly, it’s basically free to spam. It was mediocre at launch, but patches turned it into a monster. Even the Adamantoise fight later becomes busywork with it. From a trophy-hunting angle, the real run starts once you pick this up.

About the Comrades trophies (you can’t get these now)

This is the part that’ll frustrate anyone starting today, so I’ll be straight about it. The online expansion Comrades was released on December 13, 2018 as a standalone game, and at that point the in-game DLC version of Comrades stopped launching. As a result, the online trophies that only unlocked in the old DLC version can’t be earned by new players anymore.

Here’s the important part, though: the platinum, The World Wanderer, does NOT include any Comrades trophies. The platinum and every DLC episode completion are all still obtainable. The only thing that’s off the table is “full 100% including Comrades.” That’s the whole story.

⚠️ Missables

A lot of guides say “nothing is missable,” but to be exact: the base game is basically fine, and the Royal Pack has one trap.

• The 80% datalog (Pursuit of Knowledge) is timed. There are time-limited datalog entries locked to Chapters 10, 12, 13, and 14. If you don’t grab one in each of those chapters, you’ll never reach 80% no matter how much else you collect. This is where I got burned once. Grab one per chapter before you push those chapters forward. If you do miss them, chapter select can still recover them.
• The Sword of the Tall has a reported “can’t obtain” bug in Costlemark Tower. It bites you on the 13 Royal Arms trophy (Faithful Heir). Investigate the Tomb of the Tall to the southwest before you tackle the tower and you avoid it. Just a matter of order. Also, side note: Costlemark’s layout itself was too much for me.
• Tri-Headed Triumph (defeat Cerberus) requires Chapter 14 via chapter select. In the post-clear Chapter 15 state, Cerberus isn’t home. Omega can be fought in Chapter 15, so no chapter select needed for him.
• DLC item collection is often point-of-no-return, especially Gladiolus. Collect with a map open or you’ll lock yourself out.

🎯 The biggest wall | Omega (Through the Dimensional Rift, gold)

The single hardest thing in the base experience is, without question, the Royal Pack’s Omega. I threw myself at him blind and got flattened the first time. This one needs prep.

Here’s the approach that worked for me:

• I cleared it at level 107. You want roughly that much raw power.
• Core loop: Enhance, then hammer him with the Armiger Unleashed finisher.
• When he goes berserk, answer with the Electon spell. Have one around 338 power ready, and stock up on casts beforehand with an accessory that raises your spell-cast count so it stays stable.
• When you need to buy time, swap to Prompto and keep firing a ranged attack. That “make yourself a breather” rhythm quietly matters.
• Recovery items (Elixirs, Hi-Elixirs, Mega Phoenixes) — the ~20 I’d collected from the Menace Beneath Lucis dungeons were enough.

Fun detail: the Omega fight has an FF5 track in it, which is a nice hype boost. On my second attempt, bringing Electon from the start made it noticeably easier.

…and about the crashes. My single worst moment this whole run was a hard crash during the Omega fight. Grinding a long fight almost to the finish and getting dropped — the deflation is real. Before you take on Omega, seriously, save right before and take a breath first.

Base-game trophies, grouped by how annoying they are

I split these by “how much of a chore they feel like.” Stars here are a rough annoyance/difficulty gauge.

① You’ll get these without trying (★☆☆☆☆)

Chapter-clear trophies just happen as you play. Photo Expert maxes on its own because Prompto keeps snapping shots — it’s usually the first thing to cap. Immortal Photobomb triggers on its own too; Gentiana eventually photobombs a shot if you just play normally. Playing Justice Monsters once, summoning the six Astrals, and point-warping are all one-and-done. Zero care needed here.

② Long but not hard — the grind trophies (★★☆☆☆)

• Weaving a Tapestry (80 sidequests): mostly fetch quests. There are just a lot of them; each one is simple. The “enemy” is travel time.
• Self-Mastered (50 ability nodes): fill the cheap-AP nodes first and it goes fast.
• Cooking Expert: spam cooking at camp each night. Buy up ingredients in advance and it flies, and the buffs are strong anyway, so it pays off.
• Survival Expert: just walk. The classic move is a rubber band on the stick plus a held movement button for AFK walking, somewhere wide like the Galdin Quay parking lot.

This whole group clears while you do something else. With AFK tricks the actual hands-on time drops a lot.

③ Where I quit ten years ago | Angling Expert (★★★☆☆)

The villain trophy. Max your fishing skill to level 10.

Ten years ago this genuinely broke me. Grinding fish one at a time, trip after trip — I couldn’t take it and put the controller down. That’s what kicked off ten years of leaving the base game, the DLC, and an unopened Royal Edition on the shelf.

But replaying now, I found out patches added boat cruising, and it makes fishing dramatically easier. I took it from level 1 to max in about four hours straight via cruising. The thing that crushed me a decade ago, fixed by a boat. When I finally cleared this, it felt like the 10-year cleanup had actually started moving, and I got a little emotional.

One caveat: boat fishing seems heavy on the engine and the image quality drops noticeably. And beyond fishing, this whole game crashes a lot. I ate plenty of forced quits, so frequent saving is genuinely mandatory (my worst crash is in the Omega section above).

Don’t brace yourself with the old “fishing = nightmare” mindset. With the boat now, grinding it later once you’ve got strong tackle is nowhere near the old hell.

④ Collection and detour trophies (★★★☆☆)

• Faithful Heir (13 Royal Arms): touring the royal tombs. Fine to sweep post-clear. Just watch the Costlemark / Sword of the Tall bug above.
• Regalia Pilot (fly the Regalia Type-F): collect the mod parts and fly it after clearing. Not hard, but you’ll wander if you don’t know the steps.

It’s a knowledge check — grasp the flow in advance and nothing here traps you.

⑤ Looks like a boss, plays like a chore | Tortoise Toppler (★★☆☆☆)

Beat the Adamantoise (5.6M+ HP). Looks hopeless, but the Ring of the Lucii is so strong now that firing the ring from range and topping up MP with point-warps is enough to end it.

⑥ The one Normal requirement | Chosen King (★★☆☆☆)

Beat Ifrit on Normal, a single late-game fight. Set the difficulty to Normal just for this. If it goes wrong, redo it via chapter select.

⑦ Easy-to-miss patch additions (★★☆☆☆)

• Noct You Like a Hurricane: land a link-strike final attack (after a parry). You unlock link-strikes once you pick up two specific Royal Arms. Weaken your gear and farm it against something like a Bandersnatch.
• Love Turned Tragic: clear the recommended-level-99 quest (defeat Mélusine). Easy to overlook, so don’t forget it.

Two you won’t even notice exist unless you check the list. Don’t forget them.

⑧ Royal Pack trophies (the real wall lives here)

• Maiden Voyage (captain the royal vessel) / Narwhal Watching (encounter Bismarck, from the sidequest “The Legend of the Tide”): ★☆☆☆☆
• Pursuit of Knowledge (80% datalog): ★★★☆☆. Mind the timed entries (above).
• The Power Within (Armiger Unleashed): ★★☆☆☆. Equip the mark of the true king and press L1 + R2.
• Tri-Headed Triumph (Cerberus): ★★☆☆☆. Requires Chapter 14 select (above).
• Through the Dimensional Rift (Omega): ★★★★☆. The biggest wall in the base game. Covered above.

The only base-game trophy you have to prepare for is Omega. Everything else is generally easy.

Efficient Platinum Roadmap

Not a copy-paste of wiki order — this is the route I wish I’d taken so I wouldn’t have doubled back.

The order I actually took (and stumbled through): main story → scattered cleanup → skills → Royal Pack → Omega → DLC, roughly in that shape, but I backtracked a lot.

How you should do it:

1. Prioritize clearing the main story. During the run, just secure one timed datalog entry per relevant chapter, and do the Ifrit fight on Normal.
2. Post-clear cleanup phase. Remaining Royal Arms (Costlemark: do the Tomb of the Tall first), Regalia Type-F, the level-40+ imperial base stuff.
3. Knock out skills in parallel. Photo is passive, Survival is rubber-band AFK, Cooking is camp spam, and fishing you grind later via cruising once you’ve got strong tackle.
4. Level up at the Royal Suite in Altissia for 3x EXP (note: it doesn’t apply to skill EXP).
5. Clear the 80 sidequests and 50 ability nodes.
6. Royal Pack content (cruiser, Bismarck, 80% datalog, Armiger Unleashed).
7. Adamantoise with the Ring of the Lucii, quick and easy.
8. Cerberus (Ch.14 select) → Omega. Base platinum done here.
9. DLC episodes in the order Gladiolus → Prompto → Ignis → Ardyn. Clearing heaviest-first keeps your nerves intact.

DLC episodes

The DLC has few trophies and most fall into your lap by just playing. The only sticking points are each episode’s score attacks and extra battles. So I won’t list everything — just the ones people call hard and the ones that actually gave me trouble.

Up front: the hardest thing in all the DLC is Episode Ignis’s A New Protagonist. Even the guides rate it “the toughest of the episode DLCs.” Buckle in for that one.

Episode Gladiolus | the walls are “1,000,000” and the Cor fight

• A New Blademaster (1,000,000 in Score Attack): treated as a big deal, but the standard method is simple — just perfect-guard into counter, over and over. I got through it counter-first. Once it clicks it’s not as bad as it looks. The earlier No Pain, No Gain (500,000) falls out along the way.
• Transcendence (beat Cor in Extra Battle): tougher than the base game’s Gilgamesh. It’s all about whether you can land perfect guards. This is really the heart of the episode’s grind.
• Collection (Picker-Upper = all items / Column Colossus = the rotten columns): not hard, but heavily point-of-no-return, so sweep it in one pass with a map open.

Episode Prompto | the mildest of the DLC

• Dogged Rider (top ranking on all three Time Trial courses) is the one real hump. The snowmobile’s three courses are quietly fiddly. Beating the times takes a little practice — the third one is the only one that annoyed me until I got used to it. Clear video below for the racing lines (I didn’t manage to capture Grace Avalanche).

• An Emperor Deposed (Kaiser Behemoth) has a safe spot, so you can chip it down calmly. The Dragoonslayer (Aranea) works with dodge-roll into shots, or just running and using arts. Fight Aranea while running away and it’s very winnable — way easier than Gladiolus or Ignis.

Episode Ignis | the hardest thing in the whole DLC

• A New Protagonist (rank S in Extra Battle): the boss of this guide. Noctis is brutally strong, and his Royal Arm summon attack is nearly impossible to dodge if you’re moving normally — basically a one-shot. My approach: attack with the standard button, always land a counter when you get knocked back, and jump only the summon attack — over and over. I burned through nearly all my items and scraped an S. Come ready for a war of attrition. (The prince shows no mercy.)

• Master of the Elements (take down 100 with Total Clarity) and Swift Retaliation (10 counters): the counts won’t climb unless you go for them deliberately. Ice has a wide area and is easy to rack up with.
• Altissian Ambassador (collect all records): the map’s big and it’s a chore, but not hard.

Episode Ardyn | just aim for the overall rank S

The trophies themselves are straightforward; the real target is Return of the Founder King (overall rank S). The key is total score, and 1.5M is the S line. Play through to Chapter 3 normally, buy the “safety helmet” immediately, then just pad your score. The finale (the Regis and Somnus fights) nets around 150k, so lock in 1.35M before it and you’ll comfortably hit the overall S.

Other endgame stuff | the Menace dungeons

Not required for the platinum, but I got hooked and did them anyway.

Menace Beneath Lucis. Honestly, with Armiger Unleashed and the Ring of the Lucii, you can clear these. Trying it on some early build without those, I can’t imagine finishing. The video flow below cleared basically all of the menace dungeons for me.

The hardest one — the menace dungeon beneath Costlemark Tower. It’s behind the sealed door at the very bottom of Costlemark Tower. 60 floors, and items are banned inside. It’s widely called the single toughest dungeon in the game, recommended level 99. The deepest part of that tower I already couldn’t stand, and this is even further in. I went in geared up, and with this approach the clear was straightforward. (Boss: Bilrost; the final floor drops the Dark Matter Bracelet.)

I also went well past what the trophies need — the extra quests and summons added by patches were fresh, and I ended up clearing every optional superboss I could reach. Too much fun to stop.

AP farming | Toutetsu infinite spawn (for the efficiency-minded)

You’ll want AP for the DLC and for leveling, so here’s the infinite spawn I used.

1. Head to the combat area by the Blade of Brennaere treasure spot near Hammerhead.
2. Wipe out the Toutetsu enemies in a group with the Royal Arm Shield of the Just. (Up to here is covered on other sites too — I used those as a reference.)
3. Here’s the actual trick: after killing the Toutetsu, before you do the “clap,” hit R2 to “call nearby enemies” and hold R1 at the same time.
4. After calling with R2, walk toward the small rocks in the area (there are several) and Toutetsu will spawn.
5. Repeat, moving rock to rock, and it loops forever. A single rock works too (there’s occasionally some lag).
6. Wiping them before the red line appears is peak efficiency.
7. Tip: if you circle around the whole area the spawns don’t reset, so always start walking toward a rock.

Verdict

As a game: ★★★★☆ (4/5)

The combat is solid enough that even the grindy trophy parts are often fun. Having trophies where the fighting itself is enjoyable — the hunts, the Omega fight — is a big plus. When that FF5 track kicked in during Omega, I grinned.

The downsides: the travel drag (especially the Altissia back-and-forth), and how much the whole game crashes. Getting dropped mid-Omega genuinely almost broke me. And I’ll dock it honestly for the Comrades online trophies being unobtainable now.

It’s a good fit if you:

• want a platinum you can take your time with, even if your action skills are only okay
• like trophy hunts where the fighting is the fun part
• don’t mind score-attack grind games (especially if you’re doing all the DLC)

If you’re chasing a true 100% including Comrades, that one point is impossible now, so you’ll need to make peace with it.

To close: ten years ago I broke on fishing and shelved this game, and a 300-yen rescue got me all the way to the platinum. The boat did it. I’d love to tell my past self “just wait a bit, the boat’s coming.” If you’re starting now, skip my ten-year detour and just enjoy the version of FFXV we’ve got today — it’s a much smoother ride.

What I’m platinuming next is still up in the air. Come back and check.

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