News | Trails From Zero: Rise and Don't Grind trophy tips

I had a lot of questions in regards to this trophy, so I decided to give couple of tips for one of the most anyoing trophies in the game. The trophy itself says that you must beat the game while being max at level 40. That is not so hard, but tricky. 

A lot of the guides and topics says to stop fighting early in the game, but I did not do that, instead I just stopped fighting in the Sun Fort, plus I stopped opening monster chest in the final chapter completely, plus avoided combat a bit (scan and run), and managed to unlock the trophy. The dowside is that you need to open all chests in the new game plus, but you have to beat the game again anyway, plus due to the fact that the Geofront - B Sector Lower Level being only available on a second playthrough, which means you can't open all chests in your first playthrough. Make a separate save when you enter, just in case. I will share the most stronger character status screen (the one with the most EXP):

So, I was level 35, with 447 EXP remaining for Lloyd, while others needed more EXP to reach level 36. Joshua and Estelle starts with level 38 in this (last) story dungeon. What I suggest from the entrance is that you kill off Joshua and Estelle so they don't get EXP. Keep them in the reserve. Try not to overkill bosses along the way, aim for the less bonus multipliers to get less EXP.

I was playing the whole game normally, opened all monster chests, did all the sidequests etc. I stopped fighting in Sun Fort (although I was just scanning all last dungeon enemies and ran away afterwards). Also, I opened all of the regular chests in Sun Fort, but avoided monster chests. When you pop the trophy you can load the game and then clear all monster chests, finish the game again, and make a clear save game data (to carry on the better state of your playthrough).

You can revive your support members (Joshua and Estelle) before the final boss fight, meaning after you beat Garcia. Lloyd was level 41 when I beat the first phase of the last boss - so I restarted and loaded just before the final fight, killed of Lloyd and used Estelle instead. That way Lloyd never reached level 41 (I just got too much bonus EXP in some previous boss fights). 

Important Note: Only the first phase of the last boss fight gives EXP (And I got EXP multiplied by 1.4 here, and all my members reached level 40 after). If you do it exactly the same as me, you should never reach level 41 and thus unlock the most anoying trophy in the game. The important part is only to fight the fights you must, and avoid all others while keeping the EXP multiplied by a minimum (Garcia fight granted me 1.9 boost which almost cost me to reach level 41, but I still didn't after the last boss).

I'm off to collecting monster chests now and finishing the game the regular way, and I just need my nightmare run now.