Four slots, seven flavours
| Type | Feel | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Swords (1H) | Fast, balanced, strong air combos. | Your reliable all-rounder — the Engine Blade slot. |
| Greatswords | Slow, heavy, big stagger and armor break. | Warp-strikes and breaking large/armored foes. |
| Daggers | Fastest, dual-wield, high DPS, low per-hit. | Shredding fast or low-armor enemies. |
| Polearms | Long reach, excellent aerial attacks. | Hitting fliers and chaining warp-strikes. |
| Shields | Defensive, strong guards/parries, slow offense. | Survival vs heavy hitters; parry-counters. |
| Firearms | Ranged precision. | Fliers, weak-point poking, kiting. |
| Machinery | Heavy, high burst, niche. | Big single hits and special effects (situational). |
A good default loadout: a fast main (sword or daggers) + a greatsword or polearm for warp-strike burst and stagger + a ranged option (firearm) for fliers + one Royal Arm to build Armiger. Then let Ignis's Enhancement imbue your main weapon with the enemy's elemental weakness.
The Royal Arms
Scattered in royal tombs across Lucis are the 13 Royal Arms — the weapons of Noctis's ancestors. They come in every weapon type (greatswords, an axe, dual blades, a bow, a shield, throwing stars, a trident…), hit hard, and are what fill and empower Armiger.
- They cost you. Most Royal Arms carry a drawback — the majority drain Noctis's HP as you attack with them (a few tax MP, others slow you or sap defense). Power isn't free.
- How to run them. Equip one or two for the Armiger build and burst, and offset the HP drain with Recovery Ascension nodes, regen accessories, or simply swapping to a normal weapon between bursts. Don't fill all four slots with HP-draining arms unless you're built for it.
- Collect them all. Every tomb you clear adds an arm and a chunk of Armiger power — a worthwhile open-world goal. The Sword of the Father arrives through the story; the rest are out in the world and in dungeons.
Weapons worth chasing
- Engine Blade → Cid's upgrades. Hand the smith Cid (Hammerhead) the right rare materials and he reforges your Engine Blade up a chain that ends in the game's strongest standard sword. The earliest meaningful power spike — do his upgrade quests.
- Top-tier per type: high-end daggers (the Zwill Crossblades), a powerful greatsword from the menace dungeons (e.g. the Apocalypse), a strong shield (the Ziedrich), and a heavy firearm — many of these drop from secret/menace dungeons and high-rank hunts (see Endgame).
- Don't sleep on accessories. Three accessory slots hold stat boosts, elemental resistance and lifesteal — lifesteal pieces in particular make Royal Arms far more comfortable.
Spellcrafting
XV has no fixed spell list. You draw Fire, Ice and Lightning energy from deposits in the world into magic flasks, then craft a consumable spell — and the catalyst you add defines what it does.
- More energy = higher tier. Pour in more elemental energy to push a spell up its potency tiers. Spells are thrown like grenades, hit a wide area — and hit your own party unless you've reduced friendly fire via Ascension.
- Catalysts add effects. Toss an item into the mix to bolt on a property — the right item turns a plain Fire into something far better.
| Catalyst type | Adds | Use |
|---|---|---|
| Curatives | Healcast — the spell heals Noctis when cast. | Self-sustain in long fights. |
| Coins (Debased / Old / Rare) | Expericast — gain bonus EXP per cast, scaling with the coin's value. | The premier EXP farm — cast, then bank at a ×3 lodging. |
| Multi-cast catalysts | Dualcast / Tricast / Quintcast — multiple casts from one charge. | Stretch a powerful spell across many throws. |
| Potent monster/rare items | Push spells to top tiers and add big secondary effects. | Crafting your strongest nukes. |
Expericast = levelsThe fastest leveling in the game: craft a spell using a high-value coin as the catalyst (a single cast can grant tens of thousands of EXP), cast it, then sleep at a ×3 suite to bank the multiplied total. Pair with an EXP-bonus meal for an absurd single-rest jump.
The Ring of the Lucii
Late game, Noctis can equip the Ring of the Lucii in place of weapons. It grants three channelled powers that ignore defense — making it the answer to enemies your weapons bounce off:
- Death — drains an enemy's HP over a channel. The classic tool for melting absurd-HP targets (and the go-to for farming the Adamantoise).
- Alterna — opens a gravity void that can banish/instakill caught enemies; superb for clearing trash and even some larger foes.
- Holy — heavy damage, especially against daemons.
The catch: the ring drains MP rapidly while channelling and leaves you exposed, so use it in windows. Against high-defense enemies (imperial Magitek, the toughest hunts) it outperforms any blade — see the Endgame page for where it shines.