I’ve been playing a lot of Patapon 2 lately and I just recently finished the main story. As all real gamers know, the game is not finished until you’ve done all the side-quests, upgraded everything and beaten the hardest monster in the game. So I started defeating bosses again to unlock new levels and gather materials. If you don’t change your army at all, you will get between 2 and 5 materials per fight at the earlier levels. The bosses will level up quickly and you won’t get much stronger in the process. However, with some little adjustments to your army you can start bringing home 10-20 (and more depending on the boss) items per fight including rare items from time to time. That’s called farming!
Farming
The principle of farming is to get the most out of every fight. To accomplish that you have to maximize (or minimize) various stats and status effects.
Stagger
Bosses drop items when they are staggered. Your chance to stagger is indicated by Cnc% in the stats. This is the most important stat to boost when farming. Divine and thunder weapons usually have good staggering abilities.
Damage
The next most important stat is damage (Attack), keep it as low as possible! Especially for the weaker bosses like Dodonga otherwise they will die too early. Your goal is to finish a boss when your HP is as low as possible. To keep your damage low, you can do two things: equip weak weapons and most importantly do not bring all your troops. A great farming setup is to bring your Hero with a team of Kibapons, that’s it. This keeps the damage to the minimum and you will get plenty of stagger and other special attacks with them. Divine weapons increase the damage a bit, but their staggering is too good to not equip them. Be careful with the Critical % of some weapons and rarepons, don’t get it too high.
Status effects
By status effects I mean effects like Stagger, Knock-back, Sleep, Freeze and Ignite. Every boss has a weakness to one of these and using this weakness will let you gather better materials and items. Here are good ways to boost those effects:
Stagger: Tree-pons (Menyokki, Kisuk, Moriussoo) and divine/thunder weapons
Knock-back: Mushroom-pons (Mashu, Mashuro, Mashuriro) or huge weapons (those that slow your attack speed)
Sleep: Mushroom-pons again
Freeze: Penguin-pons (Koppen, Suppen, Supengu)
Ignite: This one is tricky since the Dragon/Fountain-pons (Gyaba, Gyabaan, Wagyanba) have a good ignite rate, but add a lot of damage (too much in fact to be good at farming). The second best rarepons are Monkey-pons (Uhoho, Uuhoho, Uhokkya) but they don’t help much. Use the fire weapons to boost this stat.
Materials
Here’s a list of which boss to hunt to get each material, I’ll also mention their weakness to help you:
Rocks (stones, hard iron, titanium ore, mythril, adamantine)
The rocks are dropped by the dragons (Dodonga, Majidonga and Kachidonga) which are all found on the same stage depending on the weather).
All the dragons are weak against knock-back.
Bones
The bones are dropped by the birds (Motiti and Phoeniti).
Motiti is not especially weak at anything (except damage), Phoeniti (the “phoenix”) is weak against ice (obviously).
Fangs
The fangs are dropped by the spider things (those in the fog, so annoying to fight so farm them well).
They are weak against sleep and fire.
Wood
Wood items are dropped by the robots (those that shoot lasers from their mouth).
They are weak against knock-back.
Meat
Meat is dropped by the mammoths.
They are weak against fire.
Vegetables
Vegetables are dropped by the sand worms.
They are weak against sleep.
Seeds
Seeds are dropped by plants (makes sense).
They are weak against fire.
Hides/Skins
The hides are dropped by a Garuru (the boss from Patapon 1).
He is weak against knock-back and fire. Go with knock-back.
Juices/Liquids
Juices are dropped by the crabs.
They are weak against ice.
Alloys
Finally, alloys are dropped by the living fortresses and are quite so easy to farm.
They are weak against knock-back.
Farming Dream Team
The “Farming Dream Team” ™ consists of your hero with 3 Kibapons (horse-riding patapons). Your hero should be level 10 Tree Yumipon with either a normal bow (for low level bosses with low HP), a thunder bow or the Divine bow for maximum staggering abilities. The three Kibapons should be made into level 10 Tree-pons, Mushroom-pons, Penguin-pons and possibly Monkey-pons (although they are that useful). Switch their type depending on the boss you are about to fight.
Building the Dream Team
You do not start with a Dream Team so here’s how I suggest you get there:
- Level-up a Tree-Yumipon (archer) to level 10
- Consider taking a Kibapon to a level 5 Tree-pon in parallel
- Level-up a Kibapon to a level 10 Tree-pon
- Level-up a second Kibapon to a level 10 Mushroom-pon
- Level-up the third Kibapon to a level 10 Penguin-pon
- Level-up all the Kibapons to level 10 Tree, Mushroom and Penguin-pons.
Make sure you get the Divine weapons for the Patapons that you are using as soon as possible (Divine weapons are made by playing the level 2 smith mini-game and using a Mythril).
Once this is done, consider leveling-up the remaining Yumipons (archers) to level 10 Tree-pons. You might want to use them once the bosses get more HP. Also consider using the Mahopons (magicians) for staggering and for healing. Give one or two Mahopons a healing staff (one that does not attack on the Pon-Pon-Pata-Pon song like the Defense staff or the Soothing staff). The other Mahopon should be a Tree-pon and use a staff that calls thunderstorms for multiple hits (switch the staff if you want to freeze or ignite the boss).
Farming for money
Leveling-up Patapons costs a lot of money a good way to get a lot of money rather quickly is to do the second training over and over.
Sources: GameFAQS & Gamestop Patapon 2 Forums
Looks like I missed quite an important news at the E3 this year (2009).
