h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I shouldn't be allowed to play Final Fantasy games before bed. I get all wound up. Especially when boss fights are hard. And then the save crystals turn out to be crystal bugs that nrealy wipe out my already decimated party.

I need to get rid of all this adrenaline somehow...

which FF is this?

I stowed me PS2 in the loft when I couldn't beat the zodiac guardian spirit in the wossname mine thingy. Im-bleedin'-possible.

Twelve. About fifty hours in now, and no sign of the end yet. I'm quite enjoying it, having had a year-long break at about thirty hours.

Which game were you playing? Ten or twelve?

I can't remember now, the last one with the yellow haired kid, there were airships and guardian spirits or something, which existed as walk-about real interacting creatures on the map not cut-scene animations of pow! kasplaat! shazzam! wooosh!, (which I secretly prefer )

I got really quiet far with it, collecting all the secret and rare items to combine into ultra hard-as-nails weapons and armours etc, and was busily collecting all the guardian spirits which were available as side quests, including the one called Zodiac (the toughest of the tough beasties) when I gave up because I kept getting so close, and there are NO save crystals so you have to repeatedly battle through the underground mine, each time you die, which i did frequently because at that point the traps are deadly and the enemies overwhelming. Even when you've been training them as I had. That was annoying not fun. So I stowed it in the loft.

It was 12.

And damn.

Talking about it has got me wanting to play it again!

Noooooooooo!

I've never even loaded XII up, I've still to finish X and X-2...maybe I should spend less time playing CC, CC:RoF, Revenant Wings, and FF I-IV.

I've been looking up FAQs this afternoon, the longing to open up the loft and fetch down the PS2 is overwhelming.

I find myself rationalising it, like "maybe just for christmas"

I gave in, went into the loft, fetched it down, and switched it on.

I'm going to spend some time levelling up.

One half of my party is in the 71-72 range, the other half is between 63-64.

That probably explains why I was having such a hard time taking down Zodiac.

I have just found a GREAT way to level up my team.

In two hours, I've increased me weaker trio's stats to equal the stronger team.

It involves making use of a wee trick.

You may not have any of these items yet, but when you do, use them like this.

In the Henne Mines (after you've defeated Tiamat, beaten 10 espers and completed the mindflayer challenge)

Teleport to Henne and take three team members from the orange save crystal east to Pithead Junction C.

There is a four-way crossroad, and a switch for opening the gates (blue and red) pressing this switch unleases 20 Level 65 Abyssteels (bats)

To *easily* defeat them. Set up as gambits.

cast on ally: Hastega, Protectaga,
Cast on self, faith, bubble (x2 HP)
Enemie: undead curaja (target all maximum healing spell) and have one member cast sleepga (target all sleep spell)

Everyone should have arise and < 30% HP Curaja, as a matter of course.

Switch off any targetted attacking, it will break the sleep spell.


for weapons have three main gauche from the weapon shop in Rabenestre, and three Demon Shields (which you need to buy during the game) These massively improve your evade stats making it harder for the bats to land a blow.

As an accessry give everyone the embroided tippet - this will do crazy thigns to the level of EXP you gain by fighting the monsters and becuase each Abyssteel is worth around 3000 EXP, in this number and with the embroidered tippet you will rapidly up-level your team if you can kill the bats before they kill you.

Luckily that isn't hard.

Because you are hasted, you'll usually beat them to the punch almost every time.
The sleep spell will render them immobile, and because they are undead creatures the curaja spell *harms* them. Boosted with faith it will do anywhere between 7000 and 9999 damage. with three people casting it simultaneously this makes *very* short work of the bats.

To reset the trap, turn the switch a second time to open the gates, leave two screens and return, and face them off again.

In around two hours, I've moved my three from 63-64-63, respectively to a respectable 73-73-73.

I'm now going to go and do similar things to the other three and then go kick some monster in one of the several scaly behinds!

I leave you for one day and look what happens...

I hope you had fun! I'm still hanging around the L38 mark, so no bats for me, but I'll remember that. Thanks.

How's it going?

I've apparently played it for 200 hours (probably left it on pause for some of that! )

All of my team are now on level 83-84.

I going to try to get them all to 85, before I take on Zodiac. He can hit for 5000 HP (above 85, you HP will be over 5000, meaning you can, theoretically, survive and heal)

Also Zodiac has special attacks for any level divisible by 2,3 or 4. since 85 is a prime number I should be immunised from those.

I decided I'd maybe trying synthesising a megalixer from the bazaar goods, but although the ingredients are simple (rat tails and onions) there's no bad guys to get them from.

I think they're all running away rather than take me on!

Yes, and you are a terrible influence!

I'm sure you're loving it really!

I just beat Zodiark!!

Here's how.

There's no save crystal so you have to arrive at the fight fresh as a daisy. That's hard, as in The Henne Mines there are some *really nasty* creatures. You'll want to have levels up to 80+ (which using the bat-trick is quiet doable)

So to get through the mines set up gambits for using curaja on undead foes. and have, faith, hastega, protectaga, arise, <50% curaja set to automatic to cast on your party.

To kill the blobs, come dressed n a Rubber suit to be immune from the lightning attacks, have accessories that protect you against confusion. and set up a agmbit to target ice-weak creatures with blizzaga.

Abyssteels take down with multiple rounds of curaja.

To kill the Etem's (large flying voodoo skull creatures) use disable on them to render them immobile and then go to town with curaja. That way you'll avoid their devastating move which wipes out all of one characters MP. Since they tend to gang up on you this is a problem, especially before you take on the hardest esper battle in the game - and THERE IS NO SAVE CRYSTAL TO REPLENISH YOU.


Explore the special charter did to find the esper's cave (trial and error it doesn't appear on the map) BUT DON'T GO IN.

Take a moment to collect your thoughts and do the following.

Turn off all gambits - you'll do this bit manually. Give all three in your team protectga, hastega, shellga (especially shellga!), faith, bravery, float, regen,

Designate two melee fighters and cast beserk on them.

Now deselect them from your team - the statuses stay active in limbo, ready to be called upon when you need them and you won't have to waste time casting those spells mid battle.

The one that's left is your nurse. So set their gambits to be any ally arise, esunaga, HP < 50% Renew

YOU WILL NEED BLACK MASKS and AEGIS SHIELDS.

Equip the nurse with the aegis shield and black mask you purchased in Balfonheim port you want them and them alone to survive the first round with Zodiark.
(The mask will absorb Zodiark's darkja attack which is both devastating and potentially lethal, however combined with the high magic evade stats of both the mask and the sheild, and being already cast in shell you stand a good chance of not only surviving this attack but being healed by it! )

Their accessory should be the bubble belt you can buy from the bazaar in Rabanestre which will give you permanently double HP, which you also WILL NEED.

I sent them in unarmed because all the Holy weapons (which Zodiark is weak against) requir two hands, so let him have just the shield to begin with then armed him afterwards.

You 2nd team, meanwhile, need arise, but keep health boosting to items only, like X-potions, DO NOT USE MAGIC IN GAMBITS TO HEAL YOUR 2nd TEAM.

The reason is, you can pull off a nifty trick using a reflect spell and if you cast healing magic you'll heal the beastie.

So to strategy.

Have just the nurse in your party.

Run into Zodiark's chamber, trigger the cut scene and battle.

Immediately cast dispel to remove his benefical status magics. (watch for if he recasts them and dispel them again during the fight.

He should respond with darkaja, a devastating move which can kill you outright. However, with any luck (and shield and dark mask and aegis sheild stackignt he odds in our favour) you should survive.

Now is the time to unleash the beserked fighters with all of their protective and power-boosting spells pre-cast. Add them to your team and let them wail on Zodiark who will swiftly start haemorrhaging health points.(at this point give the nurse a weapn and adjust their gambits to atuomatically atack as their last gambit option) That way they keep the melee fights in good health and join in when possible. (a holy-imbued weapon is a good choice now since it'll do double-damage but beign to-handed you'll losse the protection of the aegis shield.

Now Zodiark may well succeed in killing one or several of the party at this point, in which case the arises and renew should kick in healing everyone. Provided everyone stays under shell and has black mask equiped the odds ar high that you'll survive darkaja.

When Zodiark gets down to the last raction of his HP, he'll put up a barrier which will heal him if you attack him.

So switch out the beserked melee fights and bring in the 2nd team.

Quickly cast relectega on someone to cover everyone in the reflecting barrier, and then each of them have set as a gambit Ally status reflect cast scourge. This is a powerful non elemental area spell, which will be reflected back a total of nine time (one for each reflection of each time member for each spell cast)

And few of those and Zodiark is history.

Since there is still no save crystal you face the joyous prospect of fighting you way back out of the mines to get to safety.

Happily there is a shortcut which takes you half-way there, so just reinstate the undead: curaja / ice-weak blizzaga combo and set off back to when you loaded up and SAVE!!!!!

Do all of that a the fight should go something like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTl4RxYL5l4

I was just rereading post 4 and wondered if you knew that casting float causes you to float over all those nasty traps.

Yup. Very useful in some levels. You need Libra to see them too.

I completed the Clan Centrino side-quest of hunting down Marks and Elite Marks, which triggered the hunt for The Ultimate Mark - Yiazmat a beast with 50 million HP- found him lurking inside the Collesseum of The Pharos at Ridorana but I'm going to train my team up to level 99 using the bat-trick before taking him on. I've got me team up to level 93 now, so not far to go.

Triggering the Yiazmat hunt also released The Omega Weapon, he lurks behind some tricky time-locked gates and status inflicting undead creatures of fallen warriors in the heart of the The Great Crystal in Giruvegan. But I took him on and took him down first try using a mixture of Reverse (so physical attacks healed me and I switched off automatic cure magic) and Berserk .

Doing so gave me The Omega Badge: 1/3rd ingredient of the most powerful weapon in the game (not the strongest: that's the Zodiac Spear, which you'll need to goggle to get the solution to because it involves NOT opening certain crates as you play and the only way to know which one is to read one of the online guides. The Zodiac spear has a healthy 150 attack points.


The second best weapon is probably the Murasame samurai sword which you need to steal along with the armour and accessories (including the fish rod - more on that later) from Gilgamesh. The Mursame (and the gengi gloves alters your combo potential from 0.5 to 4.0,


The Best weapon of which I spoke is the Wrymhero Blade which has a combo potential of 8.0.

To get it I need to defeat Omega Weapon (done), Defeat Yiazmat (er.. not yet) and Defeat the bloody fishing side game in the Dalmasca Estersand (near the orange save crystal) - you need to have done the mission to obtain the services of the fisherman and the ferry man, and then you can go fishing, (with the fishing rod you also stole from Gilgamesh) eventually if you get enough perfect scores, you advance to a different area of the river. There are 5 areas, so far I've advanced to the fourth and when I get to the fifth I can dredge up the 3rd part of the weapon and when I assemble them The Wyrm Hero Blade will be mine.

I then need to find ALL the creatures in the bestiary (check in the triangle menu ) - there's a charge bar and number against each of the beasties. When that table is FULL (which involves huntign down all the marks, elite marks, bosses, hidden creatures bosses espers etc) and all the number of beasties collected. I will gain the Order of Ambrosia.

With the Wyrmhero Blade and The Order of Ambrosia, I will have officially *COMPLETED* The game.

The best Final Fantasy Guides I have found are here:

http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/ps2/game/459841.html

Couple of things have just come up.

Relaxing after xmas, trying to secure to necessary items before taking on Yiazmat (50 million HP!!)

When you reach the stage where events take place at the Pharos of Ridorna - this location hides some very useful and powerful armours, which are well worth getting, however, you'll need to consult a guide on them - since many lurk behind false walls and have an appearence rate of less than half (i.e go to location if no chest appears reset and try again) then the probability the chest may contain the item comes in as a factor. Also some items are only available if you equip the Diamond Armlet as an accessory, othertimes you need to leave it off. The complexity of this is why I suggest reading an online guide.

Among the benefits of farming the hidden chests at Ridorana is you can secure a Ribbon (immunity against almost all status ailments! - VERY, VERY useful!) and the only two Duelling Masks in the game are here, but are tricky to get becasue of the spawn and containing probabilities. The duelling masks I have discovered will come in very useful when I fight Yiazmat, becasue they add +800 to your maximum HP.

For a party that's been raised to a high level who already have over 5000 HP normally, when under Bubble-status (using either the magic linked to a perpetual gambit or using the accessory Bubble-belt), which doubles your HP to over 9999 - and extra 1600HP could make all the difference in survivability when facing down a big beast like Yiazmat or Omega weapon etc. If you combine this with Mirage Vests (sold by the vendor in Lowton underneath Rabanastre) which also have the bonus effect of adding +800 HP to maximum HP. This means at a minimum, characters who may be put into high damage situations can start with 11, 400 HP before other augments are taken into consideration.

This makes for a very powerful team - and is something I think you should consider but it begins by very carefully following the rules for which superior items are available form which chests in Ridorana.

If you haven't yet reached that part of the story - then just ebar this advice in mind.

If like me, you've already passed it, and wonder if you've missed something big then you probably have.

Luckily for me, I checked my inventory and had two duelling masks so I must have been doing something right to have got them without intending, but have them I do.

So having purchased the mirage vests and the Hermes sandals (Barheim passage merchant) I'm off to go hunt down several Staff of The Magi and then on to go try and have a go with Yiazmat.


---------------------

Incidentally, When you start the rare trophy hunt you'll comes across a beast called an Adaimantitan (basically a bleedin great turtle shell on legs) roaming around the Cerobi Steppe.

ABSOLUTELY, ON NO ACCOUNT, KILL THIS CREATURE. (not immediately anyway)

The reason: you can steal from it a very, very useful and very very rare loot called Scartletite.

When it comes to making the ultimate weapons in the game (which is a really worthwhile subquest to embark on) You'll need plenty of Gemsteels, which you get by selling items in the bazzar.

To make a gemsteel you'll need 2 damascus steel (stolen froma rare enemry blusang - appears on the cerobi steppe between the windmills), 2 hell-gate's falme dropped by the flaming cerubus that wander around the feywood) and....dum dum dum...1 scarletite.


Here's an example.

Fighting Yiazmat I need high combo weapons on my attacks to do large amounts of damage to him swiftly. He's vulnerable to dark so a Yagryu darklbade is a good choice becuase being imbued with the dark element it also has a combo rate of 22 and a damage rating of 80 (double to 160 because of his weakness to dark)

However a better sword would be a masamune.

There's only 1 masamune in the game, which you steal from Gilgamesh in another sidequest mission) however you can make one in the bazzar. The masamune has an attack power of 93 but a combo ratio of 40.


To make a masamune requires 3 orichalum (stolen from raregame Vishnu in Ridorana) , 3 mallets (stolen from raregame bombshell in the Lhusu Mines - who also drops the yagryu darkblade when killed) and 3 gemsteels (which would requires 6 damascus steels, 6 hellgates flames and 3 scarletites to be sold in the bazaar in the correct order prior.


So lots of fighting and farming of loot to make that second sword if I want it - and I'm giving you this heads up incase you want to do that same.

It's worth reading a guide on how to exploit the bazaar to make rare items though.

Depending on the order in which you sell particular loots and how many, it's possible to trigger several items at once to appear, which if bought separately take a vast number more invidiual items to make.

An example:

You can make a masamune and one of the best swords in the game The Tournesol appear together.

Sell
3 serpentaurias
3 gemsteels (bearing in mind the recipe for those has to have been already completed)
3 Empyrreal Souls
3 Orichallium
2 Mallet

And the masamune and the tournesol will both appear in the bazzar (as the master-crafted blade and the sunflower, respectively) The will cost a massive 950,000 gil, but luckily with all the fighting you'll be doing acquiring those rare items that shouldn't be a problem.)

If by the way you do kill the adimantitan, then the scarletite can still be obtaiend in the nabruias deadlands , but it's a creature drop and the percentage chance is horrifically low so my advice is don't kill adimantitan until you've gathered enough scarletite to make lots and lots and lots of gemsteels 'cos trust me you'll be using them.

Clive.

Having just checked my inventory and discovering I already have 1 spare gemsteel, am giving some serious thought to making the masamune afterall so thought I'd take the opportuity to correct my statistics from before

Hell-gate flames are a 5% special item drop from Cerberus (flame-headed dogs from the feywood) You'll need the hunter's monograph to trigger this - and it's a 95% chance you'll not get it.

Just in case you don't or can't heed my advice regarding the adimantitan: scarletite is farmed from Emerealdtitans in the nabreus deadlands it's a 6% special item drop and you'll need to have acquired the hunter's monograph

The hunter's monograph is obtained by talking to gaxly at the clan provisionser's shop at the mnutrhu bazaar in rabanaastre, and is purchased in the bazzar as 'the forgotten grimoire'

One other tip, if you'll indulge me:

I've just discovered a really good way of navigating the monsters of the Henne Mines Special Op Sector. This is accessible after you've defeated Zodiark, and is a place to farm Ribbons (55% spawn rate) (Lordly Robes - excellent magic boost) and Brave suit (casts brave on the wearer and boosts strength stats) - again all items I'll be needing for taking on Yiazmat.

Anyway, on with the tip.

Somewhere along the way you will have the option of purchasing the magic spell Vanish (single) and Vanishga (area). This will seem practically useless as, when cast on your team, enemes spot you nevertheless.

However, cast it on particualr types of enermy and it effectively banishes them into a nether dimension where they cannot harm you!

The particular enemies I speak of are Etems. Furry, hovering skull creatures with big claws. Sneak up on them with the backs turned (if they see you they'll attack) and cast vanish or vanishga, and they are turned invisible with the peculiar effect that they can't see you!! (they appear on screen as transparent outlines)

The other kind of enemy found at this point in the Henne mines are Necrofiends and this vanish trick DOESN'T work on them. not that this matter overmuch as with the Etems taken care of, picking of the necrofiends is actually rather fun and easy.

Etems can wipe out all of your MP in one go and afflcit you with all kinds f status ailments so having ribbons or other status counter acessories is a must, but sicne with a bit of patience you can snipe them from a distance and render them harmless, they pose elss of a threat, and this will allow you to pick up as many ribbons, and lordly robes and brave suits as you can be bothered to spend your time spawning.

Wow. Fortune favours the brave, indeed.

I acquired all the items I needed to make the Masamune in one afternoon!

The first Emeraldtitan in the Nabreus Deadlands dropped the nugget of scarletite I needed.

The Cerberus in The Feywood were obliging enough to give me enough Hell-gate's flames with successive battle chains.

The Deidars in Pharos dropped several Orichcalums

I stole the damascus steel from The Anchag monster in the Paramina Rift (kill every creature in the area, even the benign ones and he'll appear)

And I stole the mallet I needed from Bombshell in The Lhusu Mines.

damascus steel + hellgate flame + scarletite = gemsteel.
gemsteel +orichcalum + mallet = masamune.

I'm just going back to Pharos to acquire 4 Staff of The Magi to boost my characters magical stats so they can cast restorative and protective magic extremely fast, and then I think I shall have everythign I require to take on Yiazmat.