Shinra’s Bestiary
Shinra’s Bestiary is a menu option you’ll be able to access as soon as you board the Celsius and get a chance to talk to Shinra. It functions as an in-game record of all of the fiends that you’ve encountered along your journeys, with two entries for every fiend: regular and Oversouled. Encountering each fiend normally is fairly easy, but encountering each of them in their Oversouled form takes quite a bit more work.
So why undertake this monumental task in the first place? There are two reasons:
- There’s an achievement/trophy associated with completing the Bestiary called
Monster Master - Shinra gives another reward, which is less important once you’ve already seen and defeated every monster, called
The End Garment Grid, but still helpful if you plan to play New Game +.
Registering Entries
This is the element of Shinra’s Bestiary that surprises most players. You don’t have to actually defeat a fiend to register its entry in the Bestiary, and this applies to its Oversouled form as well. If you see the fiend, regular or Oversouled, and Escape or Flee from the battle, it still counts.
It’s this fact, coupled with the fact that the Oversoul effect carries over between the same families of fiends, that makes completing Shinra’s Bestiary a much more streamlined process. This process is outlined below, and the Shinra’s Bestiary Tracker on this site can help save you quite a bit of time.
Oversouled Enemies
Oversouled enemies have a section of their own, but there are three things you need to know about them as they relate to completing Shinra’s Bestiary:
Tips and Tricks
How Oversouled fiends work, family by family, and how many kills it takes to trigger one.
A fiend will be Oversouled after you defeat a certain number of fiends from that fiend’s family. For example, the “Lupine” family includes Canis Major, Coyotes, Killer Hounds, Lupus, Tindalos, White Fangs, and Wild Wolves. Once you defeat 22 fiends from the “Lupine” family, the next one you encounter will be Oversouled, no matter which member of the family it is. Defeat 22 Coyotes and then run into a Lupus, and that Lupus will be Oversouled.
You can also run away from an Oversouled enemy, and the next enemy you face from that family will still be Oversouled. Defeat 22 Coyotes, encounter an Oversouled Killer Hound, run away from it, and the next Lupus you meet will be Oversouled too. As a result, this means you can trigger an Oversoul on the weak members of a family early on and then carry it to the stronger members further down the Via Infinito, out in Spira, or in the Fiend Arena.
Defeating an Oversouled enemy resets that family’s counter to zero, so you have to start the 22 kills over again. This is why running away is the best approach, and why the Tracker only tells you to defeat an Oversouled fiend once it is the last member of its family that you need.
Via Infinito
There are two ways to approach the Via Infinito. The first is to go down once to reach the bosses and level up your characters, then go down a second time to complete Shinra’s Bestiary. The second is to try to combine the two into a single trip. Which one you pick is really up to you, and this guide simply offers a way to streamline the process either way. Just remember that 
Charm Bangles don’t work in the Via Infinito, so a second trip can be a bit of a slog.
This is explained in greater detail in the Via Infinito guide, but once you reach floors 20, 40, 60, and 80 and defeat the bosses on those floors, you can warp between those levels, which makes a second trip much shorter than the first.
If you combine the two and run into spots where your characters haven’t defeated enough enemies and aren’t at a high enough level, consider using some of these strategies to level them up outside of the dungeon:
Tips and Tricks
Are your characters low on experience, levels, or AP for abilities? This page offers suggestions for where you can level them up.
You can read more about the Via Infinito dungeon here:
Side Quests
Traverse floors 20 through 80 and defeat some of the most difficult bosses in the game.
There are a few special cases to be aware of:
Triggering an Oversouled Mega Tonberry is difficult because even a regular Mega Tonberry is likely to kill your party, and you typically only encounter them when you accidentally touch them in the Via Infinito. The other problem is that you can’t Flee from regular Tonberries that you interact with in the Via Infinito, making it impossible to Oversoul the Tonberry “family” and then go find a Mega Tonberry.
There is an easy method to manage this, though. The first step is to play your way through the Creature Creator Tournaments until you encounter team “Tonberry the Ripper,” which is a Mega Tonberry. This team can be found in the “Grand Cup: Hard” and “Fiend World Cup.” Once you’ve fought it, and likely died to it, you can kick up an exhibition match against a Mega Tonberry any time you want.
Next, head into the Via Infinito and defeat regular Tonberries until one of them is Oversouled. This will reset the Oversoul timer, which means that after you kill another 16 Tonberries, the 17th will be Oversouled, and this is when you trigger a fight with a Mega Tonberry in the Fiend Arena. You can use the tick boxes on the Tracker to keep track.
The Elder Drakes are the enemies that you see as visible enemies in the Via Infinito on some floors. They jump out of crevices or block pathways, and they are very difficult to defeat. You can encounter them rarely in Cloisters 85 through 99, but it’s much easier to find them by touching them on the maps where they’re visible enemies. Be careful, though! A battle against an Elder Drake is very difficult, so it’s recommended that you save your game before challenging one. As noted in the Via Infinito path below, you can defeat members of the “Drake” family to trigger an Oversoul against an Elder Drake.
You can’t find this fiend in the Via Infinito. Head back down into the Bevelle Underground to the Tower Puzzle and touch the correct tower to trigger a battle against Georapella. Check out the Bevelle walkthrough page for more information.
You can’t find this fiend in the Via Infinito. Head back down into the Bevelle Underground to the Tower Puzzle and touch the correct tower to trigger a battle against Precepts Guard. Check out the Bevelle walkthrough page for more information.
You can’t find this fiend in the Via Infinito. King VERMIN! is the boss at the end of the hidden cave on the Mi’ihen Highroad, which one of your Chocobos from the Chocobo Ranch has to discover for you. Fill the “Vermin” family counter first by defeating 12 Vermin (Creepers, Hug Bugs, or Hexapods on Cloisters 56 to 69 of the Via Infinito), then head to the cave and King VERMIN! will be Oversouled when you fight it. Check out the Chocobo Ranch page for how to unlock the cave.
The easiest place to find an Oversouled Azi Dahaka is the Farplane at the end of Chapter 5, not the Via Infinito. Fill the “Sacred Beast” family counter first by defeating 10 Guardian Beasts on Cloisters 7 to 9 of the Via Infinito, then head to the Farplane and walk into one of the magic barriers on the way to Vegnagun. That forces a battle against Azi Dahaka that you can’t run from, and it will be Oversouled, so defeat it and its entry is recorded. Azi Dahaka only appears in the Via Infinito, on Cloisters 70 to 74, after you have fought it in the Farplane. Check out the Heart of the Farplane walkthrough page for the barrier fights.
Aranea is the boss fight on Cloister 20, but challenging this boss when it’s Oversouled can be difficult, so it’s recommended that you hold off on triggering the Oversoul for that fight. Instead, you can find and defeat Aranea again on Cloisters 81 to 99. You may have to come back to do this later due to the boss’s difficulty and the difficulty of its Oversouled form.
Black Elemental is the boss fight on Cloister 40, but challenging this boss when it’s Oversouled can be difficult, so it’s recommended that you hold off on triggering the Oversoul for that fight. Instead, you can find and defeat Black Elemental again on Cloisters 81 to 99. You may have to come back to do this later due to the boss’s difficulty and the difficulty of its Oversouled form.
Concherer is the boss fight on Cloister 60, but challenging this boss when it’s Oversouled can be difficult, so it’s recommended that you hold off on triggering the Oversoul for that fight. Instead, you can find and defeat Concherer again on Cloisters 81 to 99. You may have to come back to do this later due to the boss’s difficulty and the difficulty of its Oversouled form.
Chac is the boss fight on Cloister 80, but challenging this boss when it’s Oversouled can be difficult, so it’s recommended that you hold off on triggering the Oversoul for that fight. Instead, you can find and defeat Chac again on Cloisters 81 to 84. You may have to come back to do this later due to the boss’s difficulty and the difficulty of its Oversouled form.
Paragon is the boss fight on Cloister ∞, and it appears nowhere else, so there is no second chance. To record its Oversoul, arrive with the Weapon family counter already full: defeat 10 Ultima Weapons on Cloisters 47 to 49, then run from the Oversouled Omega Weapon on Cloisters 75 to 79.
Using Shinra’s Bestiary Tracker
The Shinra’s Bestiary Tracker in this guide has been put together to provide you with an optimal route for completing every entry. All you have to do is make sure that the Bestiary Entries section matches your in-game Bestiary, so the tracker knows which fiends you’ve already seen Oversouled. From there, it will create a route that you can use to find each of the remaining Oversouled enemies in the Via Infinito.
Note that some of the bosses and high-level enemies in the later Cloisters are very difficult to defeat, so read up on their Bestiary pages to ensure you don’t accidentally lose a fight to any of them and wind up with a “game over” screen.
Shinra’s Bestiary
Tick off the Oversoul entries you already have, and the tracker builds a floor-by-floor route through the Via Infinito for the rest.