OIC, is it really worth a quarter million quid? And yes, that final shit with Ultimecia and her nether regions down below which is the FINAL FINAL FINAL boss of FFVIII. WTF is that.

Metal, thanks anyway, but I already have the Beastlord Horns. I had to keep killing Humbabaas in the Mos. Highwaste to get them, and it took an extension of time.
Didn't know where the Giruvegan Ash Wyrms were, but I plan to get to the Upper Great Crystal sometime later because I think thats where the Zodiac Escutcheon shield is as well - but thanks for the heads up.

However, I'm not sure where exactly to find Soul Powders. I've got it noted that a creature in the Henne Mines Special Charter Shaft has em?

The big mistake I made in this game was that I sold ALL of my loot I got, up until the storyline progressed to around the opening of Cerobbi Steppe. Had no idea which loot should have been kept - I just sold the crap loot and rare loot I got from the first 30 marks for the gil. New weapons and armor kept arriving at the new areas I made it to, so I needed the money.
Now I remember, 'damn I should have kept that adamantite piece, and all the snake skins from the Giza snakes earlier in the game - doh!'

As far as I know, it doesn't matter when or where you sell your loot. Any Bazaar will restock as soon as your total number of loot items sold hits the required mark, so keeping your loot is pointless.

That is true, I got the Hi-Potion pack (now pretty useless) multiple times by selling some bones or something, I dunno. But yes, *some* of the bazaar items are re-doable, while others, like the Grimore books, are 1 time only.

YES SPAT, IT IS WORTH IT! Without the Jar, you'll never get the Arcana. And without that ... theres no chance of getting the best weapon in game.

Thanks for the input Rock. I didn't think the game kept tabs on what loot you sold earlier. Heard in a GameSpot forum that once you unlock a new Bazaar good, the loot system is reset to nothing. Guess that was false.

K, I've been on this forum for about 4+ hours now. I'm goin to bed - Cyas!

If you have some Espers that you can escape from while you steal High Arcanae from? No, but otherwise, yes. That's for the Tournesol and maybe some other items, but that's it. I think you get a Den figure for it.

I never even got a good look at that thing, but all I could tell was that she was hanging from it from her hair (or I hope to God that it was hair). Either way, the creepy meat-dangling and overall grotesque look puts her in the same category as Anima and Zalera (all their names end with A, =/).

Heh, if you had told me that, I would've simply pointed out that there's an Ash Wyrm on the platform that leads to the Taurus I and II gates. While you run back and forth from the Zodiac Escutcheon chest to Capricorn II and back again it'll spawn due to the zoning. That's how I got enough Moon Rings to make about 5 Sagittarius bows.

Reaper-type enemies called Etems drop them. You might get lucky like me and get them from consecutive monsters. Oh, and if you've finished "The Dead Ought to Sleep Forever" hunt with Ixtab, you only need 2 Soul Powder if you sold the reward for that hunt.

Don't worry about it, like Rock said.

Don't be silly, just go for it right now and use the Souleater technique with two characters while your third character keeps everyone healthy.

I couldn't agree more; getting the celestial weapons in FFX was fun and challenging. Even Catcher Chocobo. Getting the most powerful weapons in FFXII is a matter of pure luck for some of them, and hours of collecting rare items for the rest.

What? Getting the weapons in FFX was a total pain in the buttside : / Dodger Chocobo is a hideous game.

Alas, I'm not playing FFXII as much anymore, as you can see from my decreased activity in this thread. I got my hands on ToTA recently and I've been playing it with my little sister :3

Besides, you guys are always talking about hunts and weapons that even I haven't done or got yet, so all your posts are going over my head.

Yeah, I almost thought that I'd stepped into an alternate universe where people liked the tedium/evil that was the FFX weapons quest. I'm happy XII took another approach, one where you had to put some effort into it, even if it was little more than a timesink. Just the mere fact that there's various systems and things to affect the apperance of an item is more control over the outcome than the games in X had.

You got ToA? Congrats, it's an awesome game. Too bad the thread died a while back.

Believe it or not, that's actually a good thing, because some of the things we're saying might convince some folks not to pursue certain items/enemies. I'm sure someone glancing at PN's comments on Yiazmat or Omega would shit themselves ten times over and reconsider any exploration they had in mind.

You're kidding, right? I'm not even going to bother with the quest.

I disagree with Catcher Chocobo and on some levels the lightning dodging. Everything else was pretty fun. At the very least, it was varied enough to keep things interesting. Always trying to get rare loot sounds like it'll get pretty inane pretty fast.

Spent the whole day to and from NYC and tomorrow's busy, so I'll have to get back to the game on Monday. Until the Rose Bowl starts.

Yes, I'm at the Springs now, and it's too bad the thread died. I've been recording my progress and thoughts on the game in my journal instead, but I'm not getting much replies. I thought lots of people like that game :/

XD so true. I shudder at the HP totals for some of these monsters, but I still want to try to tackle them some day. FFXII sidequests are fun.

It was my favorite game of the year. Awesome story, awesome characters. Aside from Suikoven V, it's the only game I played this year that had me on pins and needles for the next plot point. I hope that you're enjoying it. :)

I just got the game, lol a little late but it was worth it. At first I thought the battle system was slow paced and boring, but as soon as I got the other characters, the license board and gambit system, I was like damn this is actually fun.
Right now I just got out of Raithwall's tomb, I barely used anyone's license points until I actually reached the tomb because I couldn't beat the first wall boss. My characters are all level 21 except Vaan 11 and Penelo 15. I also got everyone's 3 quickenings except for Vaan who has none.
I like how theres so much more CG scenes and how the transition from gameplay to CG is so much smoother than the previous final fantasies. This is an awesome game and I plan on playing it for a very long time.

Unfortunately, no. You also have to catch Renn, the Cockatrice in Rabanastre which is somewhat of a hassle. He gives you something as well.

Wow, you were in NYC? Tis my town, friend. Sounds like the end of '06/ start of '07 is pretty busy for you.

Hmm, you could always post in the thread, as you've already found two folks who've played the game. I'm sure there are more that are interested in it, or are playing it now.

Aye, especially those that illuminate the world of Ivalice in more, like the chop gathering one in Archades. Though, you may change your mind when Omega shoots his little "BWEEEP" at you several times, heh.

Oh, definitely. I loved the game, the characters (fucking Jade is one of the best JRPG characters around. The VA really nails him), and the world. But, you should find the ToA thread and post in there so we don't get OT.

I'd actually love to replay the game since I missed on a LOT of the sidequests but I loaned my copy to a friend (who isn't playing it in favor of FFXII, ironically enough).

That poor ToA thread! It's not even on the first page! :o

The FFX quest for celestial weapons was hard but worth it. The only annoying quests were for Yuna and Lulu. Lulu's wasn't that bad of doging 200 ZEUS JUICES, if you just read up on gamefaqs and had a good concentration, but yeah didn't feel like going to collect like 10 of every monster for Yuna. Tidus', Auron's, and Wakka's ultimate weapons were worth it though. 40,000 damage for the win. Talk about OVER POWER. I hear the highest damage in FFXII is only 60,000 - the black hole, which is pretty tiny in the scales of damage - the ultimate limit breaks for Cloud and Squall easily surpassed 60,000, I'm sure. What was it, 12 hits of Lion heart for 9,999 damage each strike? And I can't remember Cloud's Omnislash, but that was pretty high as well, and the chances of scoring that a pretty damn slim, but with Anima and Bahamut, you could over drive and score 50,000 damage easily. Honestly, which monsters even needed that type of damage? Only the Omega weapon, but that was a joke if you had all your aeons on overdrive. I'm starting to miss FFX now ;__;.

I think that's the main short comings of FFXII - such weak "massive" damage - especially when you've got so many difficult insane bosses - and well as the weak summons/espers. Hell Wyrm, Yiazmat, Zordiak, and what have you. The quickenings are all based on slim chances which you can't alter, even more so than FFVIII and triggering limit breaks. I honestly never complained of having to be in critical status nor casting aura, since the limit breaks for that game were SWEET.

At any rate, FFXII concentrates more on gambits than attack GIANT ENEMY CRAB FOR MASSIVE DAMAGE, so that's that. And it's fair in the end.

Easy, they took out all the shit you could abuse in FFXII. Limit Breaks? Replaced with Quickenings that are basically desperation attacks that require a ton of luck. Overdrive-Summon fests? Replaced with summons that remove 2 party members and use their specials under certain conditions and only once.

In other words, this actually made the optional stuff in this game harder than if we had Zodiark capable of reaching 200k+ HP when you summoned him and the ability to break damage limit on Yiazmat with Darkja. Due to the way battles work in this game, it'd be tremendously cheap.

My main complaint is that they made the replacements for limit breaks and classic uber-summons entirely too weak. They overcompensated, if you will.

Doing things like dodging lightning bolts or doing the butterfly race, and especially Blitzball all require much more genuine skill than running around collecting items, and they weren't completely boring, either. I've done the lightning dodge game on three separate occasions. I won't ever be collecting the items needed for a second tournesol, even if I play through again.

How difficult is it to forge this legendary tournesol?

Skill? Nah, especially since you don't control much more than when you dodge. Unlike here where you've got chaining, grimoires and zoning all working in your favor. On top of all that, only a few items are in the <10% range of dropping. Not surprisingly, those things aren't worth it. This actually gives you more of a chance, though the tedium aspect is there in both. One of them is simply easier to jump back into if you screwed up (you can't exactly screw up getting items).

And like I said before, you can take your time. The lack of random battles lends itself to the overall low pressure feel of the game and item collection.

Blitzball is the only thing there that I may give a nod to for requiring skill (or just having a decent Guado, some Ronso and Tidus standing by to shoot).

If you've done a good bit of the hunts, and sold the loot, very. There's a lot of items there that simply require a bit of farming, others can be stolen right off (and dropped) like the Snake Skin.

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree then. Getting weapons in FFXII was incredibly boring and tedious for me. And not only that, but unneccesarily time-consuming. (Well, at least for the Tournesol. I was VERY lucky to get weapons like the Excalibur on the first try. Which leads me to another point: relying purely on the luck of the draw to get some of the most powerful items is stupid and a waste of time; there should have been awesome mini-games for them...). To me, it was much more fun (and challenging) in FFX. Furthermore, there were no random battles after I got a Peaceful Shield from Geosgaeno just after beating Yunalesca. ;)

I think the best minigames to acquire rare stuff was the Triple Triad of FFVIII. NOTHING comes close to how fun and addicting that minigame is. The most boring side quests so far? Collecting those sun stones in Giza Plains. Seriously.

At any rate, Just finished cleaning up the Great Cockatrice Escape. Boring sidequests but whatever. My interest for this "Nebudis Medal Collection" has grown, as it looks like the longest side quest (probably 4-5 hours worth) of time. Any tips for that? I'm just having a brief look in my guidebook now.

Triple Triad was so dang easy, though. That took some of the fun out of it. I preferred blitzball to triple triad. I think I prefer the hunts to blitzball, though, because the results are more immediate. The Den is kinda silly as a side-quest, if you can call it that. Only completionists will really care about it. Luckily there are enough of us completionists that it is at least worth having, to some extent.

The Hunts are actually a pretty good "minigame" if you could call it that, and probably a refreshing part of the static type of games. Initially I HATED blitzball, but I grew to love it when I got around the basic mechanics and basically owned every team with the Jecht shot.