Deathgaze was much longer than I'd anticipated, as I didn't know he'd have a paling that cut out physical damage for the first 80% of his life. I should have waited until Reddas was gone for that one, as he blindly went in getting himself killed repeatedly, then the thing cast Reverse on itself and he started healing it. Oh, well. Carrot was far easier than I expected, too - it didn't really get anything off before I killed it with all normal physical attacks. :/ And I'm only averaged out at level 53.

Roger, will proceed NORTH in the Estersand and scope out another entrance into enemy territory, over and out.

I found a guide on gamefaqs, that tells you how to auto level your characters. Did you use that? If so, could you get to lvl 99 there?
How should i level my secondary characters, without getting bored?

RPGs might not be for you, sir. :p This is a timeless quandry.

Well, I'm on my way to Draklor Laboratory and I figured I'd grind up a bit and farm for some loot before heading in.

I brought my main party up from lvl 36 to lvl 42 and wrapped up a few hunts. I fought the Ring Wyrm (hunt #7? in the westersand) and it was pathetic. While it took forever because of his high HP, he was only hitting me for 80hp damage.

Strangely enough, I had some trouble fighting that White Mousse in the Waterway. He kept nailing me with who-knows-what until I was forced to call in a summon and heal Ashe in the corner so she could resurrect the rest of the team. It was bad.

Yeah, as I recall the only thing that kept me alive against the Mousse was having Fran and Balthier attacking from range and abandoning Vaan to all of the melee and status attacks. I haven't yet used an esper against a hunt, though - I think I'm a bit afraid to, because it doesn't have gambits that I control, so I'd be unable to predict what it's doing. I like to be in control.

I put the Mousse to sleep and just used magic on it until it died. Easy as pie. All I had to do was equip the Nihopalaoa on Basch (my party leader) and use a Remedy on Mousse, inflicting a huge amount of negative status effects.

I didn't have access to the Nihopalaoa at the time. I think I was in the low-30s for my level at the time - the other slime hunt in there was so easy (same 2 range attackers and Vaan absorbing all the lightning attacks he was throwing out) I figured the Mousse would be cake, too, but it wasn't to be so. And for some reason I've never really been successful using sleep on hunts. :/

The White Mousse and Orthos are basically in the same area, and they're both blobs. I beserked the white mousse so it didn't do much, or maybe I beserked 2 of my members and they kept pounding that thing to dust.
The Othos I just kept spamming with ra level spells. It didn't really do much.

I think the most challenging mark so far was the rank VI Overlord. Yeah his light attack with hit all party was annoying, but I had auto-phoenix down, so they'd be revived immediately. Very helpful. This set up totally reminds me of auto-item - union plume for Valkyrie Profile 1.

Can someone tell me if the new section of Barheim Passage is difficult? I checked up and the new place has TONS of bombs (5000 hp) and Dark Skeletons (6000-7000 hp) and those look like seriously tough customers. Please do tell me there is a save point here. My guys are around level 46-49 now.

You can get the embroidered tippets that give you double exp when you fight, NOT the Golden Amulets, those give you double license points. Level 99 is basically a legendary status (wasn't it level 100 in FFVIII?) in which if you want it, you've got to work for it. I don't know how much difference it is with 99 vs maybe level 50 (as in terms of how easier the tougher boss fights will be), but obviously the higher you are, the easier it will be, me thinks.

Your party is higher than my team when I went through the Barheim Passage, so yes, you shouldn't have much problems there. The bombs, however, are neutral, just to let you know.

When I went through that place, it was hell. Those skeletons and ghosts were damn annoying, and I had to cure myself a lot.

Well there is a save point but it's basically at the end of the passage (right before the Zalera or Zeromus esper, can't remember). But the good news is the bombs wont attack you, so it's basically just the skeletons. They are pretty easy, if you have fought the dead-bones and such in the deadlands then these should pose no threat to you. It is annoying though because right before the Bloodwing a whole shitload of ghosts and skeletons will spawn at you.

I have curaja but damn it's expensive - 68 MP, even with the augmentations to lower the casting requirements. I better check my gambits because one of my members constantly attack bombs even though they're neutral, or aggros them. I better go "FOE: Party leader's target", not "FOE: Nearest/Any".

Yeah, though the bombs are neutral I always ended up waking them up anyway. :p They're not that bad. The whole area really isn't too bad, just a few spots that are mostly annoying. Especially if you're already leveled to the late 40's.

Oncde you get to Archades, there's a merchant who sells Embroidered Tippets (?). if you have the $, buy 6 for all your characters and equip them immediately!!

You still have to fight to get the exp, so it might be too boring to you. but once you head into the difficult areas (nabudis), you'll gain exp and levels in no time.

I'm lazy, but where are the dead bones??

I tend to keep Golden Amulets on the three characters not in the active party and Embroidered Tippets on the active party only, since LP are still assigned even when inactive. Then again, Vaan is almost always in my active party, so he doesn't get an Embroidered Tippet at all most of the time. He's still 5-7 levels higher than everyone else.

It's absolutely worthless to have more than three, as people in your inactive party gain no experience.

Give them Golden Amulets, instead.

If you go to the Northwest section of the Slumberhead in the Nabreus deadlands you'll find a foobar, after you kill it keep heading past it and it will lead you to a hidden path to a place called the fog mutters. Past that is overlooking eternity (The place where the Roblon hunt is). Tons of dead-bones spawn and you can keep zoning to get massive chains. MS told me about this one, and I had a chain of almost a thousand. With the Embroidered tippet on it makes leveling up extremly easy!!!

The max chain amount in this game is 999, found that out while leveling B-Team from 77 to 99 way back. Bad news is that my PS2 croaked. It literally won't read anything. If anyone has any good resources that say how to fix this, I'd appreciate it.

Anyways, you can manage in Barheim easily in your late 30s/mid 40s. Of course it won't be a total cakewalk, but it'd definitely doable and you won't be near-death 50% of the time.

Yea I was getting close to 1,000 but then I had to leave for work and didn't feel like trying to break it, nice to know you can't though rather then finding out the hard way. The same shit happened to my old PS2 too. I tried to get it fixed and spent like 80 bucks on part and shit for it to find out it broke again two days later. Sorry man, but I would say rather then paying to have it fixed and then having it break again, you'd be better off with getting a new one.

What model number is your PS2? Is it the fat one or slim one? I've had mine for 4 years now and haven't had any major hiccups, however, I wouldn't be surprised if it tanks out sooner or later. However, the 70000 series (thin ones) are pretty cheap now at about $130 CDN. And thanks for the tips for the Barheim Passage. Just as long as there's a save point RIGHT before the Death Seraph, I think I should be A-OK. I can just restart the game if the timer runs out. That's what I'm most concerned about, after reading the guidebook.

SCPH 39001. Yes, this is one of the models that doesn't have progressive DVD playback and it's closer to the 30001 series than the 50001 or 70000.

So should I attempt to fix it or just grab a new PS2?

New PS2, seriously. Even if you can repair it, where will you do it? They'll probably charge $40 for labor and $30 for parts if necessary, and still you know your PS2 will have a history. Plus you get a sexy slim line, how can you say no? Unless you absolutely NEED the harddrive for it. =/

Never mind, I found this guide and followed the instructions. It took too tries and a more vigorous laser cleaning, but I managed to get it to work. Now it doesn't get stuck at the browser thing when it starts up with a disc inside, and it's reading DVDs (hasn't done this for about a year and a half).

Anyways, I've started my rare game hunting and and amassing quite a bit. A few more and some other monsters and Ba'Gamman will be in my Den for sure.

I finally defeated Yiazmat. I hope I never have to do anything like that again.

Wow, I completely forgot about that. How was the last few bars? So far, I haven't seen anyone who said it was cakewalk.

And, honestly, who did you find more annoying?

Omega or Yiazmat?