Metal Sphere, if you want Black Hole to complete that part in Sky Pirates Den, just keep fighting a monster near a save point and if you fail, go back and recharge via save crystal and take it out on some poor regular enemy. Poor bunny.

Hmm, good plan. There's this one place in the Tchita Uplands that's a good spot. It's also the same map where the croc that drops Antarctic Wind for the Ice Cloud Arrows spawns, if anyone wants to do this and get more ammo.

Man, I finally defeated Behemoth King. Being in the high 90's certainly helped a lot. The 500,000gil gift was well worth it. The Rod of Faith seems kind of useless, though. Aside from a small (very small) boost in MP and Magick Attack, it doesn't really do anything. I suppose I can attack myself with it to gain Faith without a spell, but why bother?

I think rod strength is based on enemy M Defense and your M Defense or M Attack. I could be confusing it with staves, which might be the same thing.

Either way, Rods/Staves don't operate like the others that have at least some of their power based on the strength stat.

Edit: I just heard Behemoth King has ~2,000,000 HP. If that's the case, then anyone who's fought him has had a taste of what Hell Wyrm/Yiazmat/Omega are like.

God damn, I finally defeated Zodiark. Even with all of my characters at level 92 with black masks it sucked, hard. Toward the end, he never let down his physical paling, and the instant death effect from Darkja made the masks almost useless. But I kept rezzing, and I eventually defeated him with some Scathe Motes, Heh.

Nah, don't say that. Imagine how hard it is for folks that never picked up dark absorbing gear?

With the way he was spamming Darkja when I fought him, he would've interrupted my Curaja gambit and killed off Penelo with ease and crippled the other two. That actually made the battle far more reasonable, but that random death effect is a bitch. Did he ever wipe out your entire active party like he did mine?

What I hated the most about that fight, as as you said, the palings. Switching them back and forth was a pain, though in the end I took him out with Scathe gambits cooked up. Gigantic beams of death finished him off. The only other battle in the game that got my team that fired up is Yiazmat, and that was when he was going berserk.

Hmm...no.

That is very much like ozma from FFIX you are either lucky or not. if he keeps using darkja it will constantly kill your main, you ress them with your backups, they die, etc. Hate that fight.

However if your lucky you can kill him fast enough before that chain can start. The levels of your backups won't really make a difference in that fight.

Unfortunately, experience proves me right. Main party was 95 when I reached him and the second one was still 77 way back when. He used Darkja, wiped out the first team, used Darkja again, interrupting Arise and killed off 2 of the reserve team members. Luckily, he just started buffing himself and the Arise gambits kicked in.

Read above. I agree that it's very much a matter of luck, and if you're unlucky, he could wipe out your reserve and main party with constant Darkja spamming.

Except they do, since he can cast/attack faster than you, and the last thing you want to rely on in that battle is luck. Of course, if you want a challenge, go in there at level 45 or something with level 15 reserves.

Yiazmat 2 - Me 0 -_-

This guy is just plain annoying, the fact that he can kill you anytime with a regular hit (apparently it's only a 5% when you start, but looks like his success % will go up near death) even if you have reverse up is god damn annoying, especially if he's in his "Death Strike Spam" phase. Oh yeah do I mentioned that Stop overrides Decoy? Gotta apply it again, and if you are unlucky like me he will kill anything in less than 30 seconds.

Round 3, tonight.

Yeah, when he's near death his speed jumps up quite a bit. It basically makes buffing a liability, and his Rake/physical swipes have a high KO rate at that point. You're close though, don't give up.

BTW, ditch Reverse and make sure everyone's got every relevant buff up before you go in. Even with all the vitality boosting items I had on Vaan, it never lasted more than a few seconds. To top it off, he'll focus on him alright, but chances are he'll KO him or use Death Strike (wasting the buff).

Just stick in there. I'm looking forward to your "victory" post.

My party was level 99. backups were 40, I certainly didn't notice a difference they died just as easily. The reason they died was because of darkja ofcourse, and since there's nothing you can do about it it makes no difference what level the backups are.

All you need is 2 seconds for them to use a phoenix down then it's away with them. Usually your stuck in a endless cycle of ressing, but sometimes luck is on your side and he does something other then darkja.

Looking back now, I'd say the most annoying thing wasn't the boss, it was the fact that if you went game over, you had to walk that long way up to the boss again, and you can't just leg it and ignore the enemies on the way either, since those bastards kept teleporting and very easily killing you if you didn't fight back.

I'm up to the Sochen Cave Palace. Boring dungeon. Oh well. I'm doing some sort of puzzle right now, at least according to the book. I don't like how there won't be a save point for a while, besides the first crystal bug.

The palace is extremely short, so don't worry about the save point. Just watch out for the traps, some of them are pretty brutal. One that comes to mind is the one set just outside the northern door of the circular area (Destiny's March?).

And what puzzle is that? The one where it makes the waterfalls move so you can access the treasure chest? Or the one that opens the way to Hell Wyrm?

Well, that's true but I don't like to rely on luck. It saved my sole remaining character (Basch) since he started buffing himself after both Darkja turns, but had he done what he does later on (no buffs, just Scathe) I would've been gone. A low level reserve character against something like that or Shining/Banishing Ray without the proper gear/shell would be gone and seeing as how he gets spell priority it'd only take 2 Scathes to wipe them out if they were spread out.

Edit: Question about rare items - When you run up the the chest and it only has 1 exclamation point, that means the rare item is there and you might get it? I've had this happen about 3 times while reloading my file and going for the Zodiac Escutcheon chest in Barheim. Is there any trick to it?

Where is the Zodiac Escutcheon in Barheim, and at what point in the game can you get it from there?

It's in the West Annex map, there's a treasure chest in a dead end there (there's a line of traps leading up to it). You need to have the Diamond Armlet to get it though, which you can't get for some time.

My three main characters are level 64 and I'm lookin for a good place to go grind for a little bit, any reccomendations?

Just to get the Koga blade. Nothing too special. The next boss was a joke. I wonder why. At any rate, I'm done and got my FF fix for today. I'm just in before entering old Archadis. LOL Hell Wyrm. I don't think so!

I'm talking on the Hell Wrym now. I'm doing pretty good damage. This shouldn't take too long.

Nabreus Deadlands, head for the hidden map, Overlooking Eternity. Run along the northern side of the The Slumbermead and you should run into a Foobar or whatever those Flan are called. Kill it and follow that path. Once at said map, just slaughter the Deadbones with Tippets on. Normally they give you ~1598 without them, so you'll be raking in big exp. If you want tons of loot, flee back to the Slumbermead and back to Eternity to keep your chain.

I've reached ~670 Chain like this, with hordes of Ancient and Blood-Darkened bones.

Yeah, the storyline bosses are cake in this game. Imagine if we had to fight Behemoth King or Fafnir as regular bosses, heh. Anyway, glad you're cruising through the game.

Yeah, he's pretty easy. I forgot the name of his "special" attack, but it's a real pain because all it does is waste time.

You know, his attack "Invert" has really been a blessing in this battle. I was wondering why Ashe (my healer) never lost any MP, and now I know why. Invert instantly restores all of my MP, and it takes me less than a second to heal my health back up to normal. Thanks, Hell Wyrm!

Double Post:
Well, I beat him. Piece O' Cake.

Yiazmat round 3: working on it.

He went Death Strike happy on me with 3 bars left, killed everyone but Vaan, I managed to recover somehow and had to leave the arena. No way I'm gonna waste 3 hours of work just because I wanna (or should I say, wanted) beat him without leaving. Hell, he likes to cheat, gonna repay him the favor.

Gonna fix the strategy, no use in using Decoy now since it's gonna get wasted because of Death Strike. Gonna use reverse with everyone then try to toss him everything I have and just hope it's enough to bring him down.

I think it's called "Judgment".

I've just started doing some more Hunts, and I finally started that hunt game that was at The Phon Coast. Just Killed Diabolos, and now i'm on to kill Pescaodaemon in Giruvegan. Everyone in my party is around lvl 65 at least, but Ashe and Vaan are my highest lvls with 66 and 67.

What I am trying to do is find Death Powder so I can make Ultima Blade, I know there's a monster that drops it...gotta remember who though lol. I know you people know :P

Heh, you're almost to the point where you have to take down Hell Wyrm to activate the Yiazmat hunt.

Bogeys in the Zertinan Caverns drop them fairly frequently if you have the Grimoire for undead monsters.

Yeah, just leave. Trying to force it and get that last bit in all at once is simply out of the question once his OHKO % reaches a certain rate. Come back fully buffed and you can take out whatever he has left with ease.

Thanks for the refresher on HW's special. Personally, I think Cyclone looks better if only because there were very few wind-based attacks in the game.

After you got the weapon from the riddle, you should go back to save your game, just in case. The two bosses are not that hard, but there won't be a save point until you get to Archades.

There's actually a red save crystal right after you take the elevator lift up. I saved there.