This section is dedicated as a reference for equipment upgrade as well as how the upgrade work in Final Fantasy XIII.

First of all, upgrade is really unnecessary before completing the game so I would suggest you finish the game and leveled up all 6 roles before you should focus on upgrading equipment.

If you look at the list of components, you can easily overwhelmed because there are so many of them, that's why you should ignore them all. What matters is the number of EXP provided by those components.

There are two type of components "Organic" and "Synthetic". Organic components are usually parts of monsters and Synthetic components are dropped by machine types enemies. They can be differentiated by the icons.

• They are usually dropped from monsters.
• They provide little EXP but they also provide positive EXP multiplier bonus. Which means that whenever you use organic components to upgrade, you'll also increase EXP multiplier (default x1). For example, if you gained x2 EXP multiplier, whatever amount of EXP you apply to the equipment next will be double.
• The maximum EXP multiplier is x3.
• Usually, you only use organic components to increase EXP multiplier.

• These can be dropped by machine-type enemies.
• They provide huge amount of EXP but at the same time will decrease your EXP multiplier bonus. This mean that whenever you use synthetic components whenever you have EXP multiplier more than x1, let's say x2, it will reduce the multiplier to x1.5 or x1.
• The minimum of EXP multiplier is x1.
• Usually, you only use synthetic components after you have raised EXP multiplier up to x3.

As I've listed both characteristic of both component types. You goal is to raise EXP multiplier, then apply synthetic components to level up your equipment. So the pattern goes like this: 

• Use organic components to raise EXP multiplier up to x3.
• Use synthetic components to level up equipment.
• Repeat until the equipment reach level * (star).

This is a special type of components which are required to transform equipment after it reach maximum level (Lv. \*). Generally, there are 3 tiers of weapons while accessories can vary between 1 and 10 tiers. For example, After you upgraded Taming Pole to max level, you can use Uraninite catalyst to transform it into Venus Gospel, then max out Venus Gospel and use Trapezohedron catalyst to transform it again into Kain's Lance.

Example:
Taming Pole -> (Uraninite) -> Venus Gospel -> (Trapezohedron) -> Kain's Lance.

There are some components that are meant to be sold:

• Platinum Ingot: 150,000 gil
• Gold Nugget: 60,000 gil
• Gold Dust: 15,000 gil
• Plush Chocobo: 35,000 gil
• Tonberry Figurine: 28,500 gil
• Moogle Puppet: 18,000 gil
• Cactuar Doll: 12,000 gil
• Incentive Chip: 2,500 gil
• Credit Chip: 500 gil

So you should always sell any of these components for gil.

Now that you get the basic idea of how the upgrade works, we'll select the best components in term of price vs EXP ratio for our upgrade formula.

• Organic Components: Sturdy Bone and Vibrant Ooze have the same price, EXP, and multiplier points make them the best and only organic components you need.
• Synthetic Components: Superconductor and Ultracompact Reactor are the most efficient synthetic components that you'll ever need.
• To get x3 EXP multiplier, you'll need exactly 36 Sturdy Bones or 36 Vibrant Ooze.

Here is an example, suppose we want to upgrade Taming Pole to Kain's Lance:

• Step 1: Upgrade Taming Pole to max level. This requires 54,800 EXP, if we follow our components above: Sturdy Bone (x36) -> Superconductor (x33).
• Step 2: Transform Taming Pole to Venus Gospel. This requires "Uraninite" catalyst.
• Step 3: Upgrade Venus Gospel Lv19 to max level. This requires 334,656 EXP, which is: Sturdy Bone (x36) -> Ultracompact Reactor (x3).
• Step 4: Transform Venus Gospel to Kain's Lance. This requires "Trapezohedron" catalyst.
• Step 5 Upgrade Kain's Lance to max level. This requires 1,382,265 EXP which is: Sturdy Bone (x36) -> Ultracompact Reactor (x23) -> Sturdy Bone (x8) -> Superconductor (x7).

As you can see, we only utilize Sturdy Bone, Superconductor, and Ultracompact Reactor. This simplify everything about the upgrade, the only thing you care about now is the total experiences to upgrade equipment to max level.

For a full list of upgrade reference, please refer to Equipment Upgrade Reference page.