It's not necessarily levels that you need, though 17 does seem a bit low. More then anything you should spent a lot of hours chaining to get LP. Unlock the necessarily stuff, like more HP, and while I'm not a huge fan of it, quickenings.

Quickenings are pretty good early on in the game, with the right quickening you can get a boss down easily, so if you haven't got it already, try to unlock some quickenings for the characters that you use. I didn't like it personally, because early on it made things too easy, and later on it became completely useless.

After some chaining (100+ on those small guys, fun stuff) I got 2 quickenings unlocked. I will try that boss fight again soon, I'm tired of this ol' desert.

Actually, the Quickenings are pretty worthless. The onyl reason you should aim for them is the awesome MP boost you get for unlocking them, which helps quite a bit in tough situations. But yeah, he should be aiming for those 'Augment' abilities first and foremost (like all those Attack licenses, Warmage, HP, etc...) and get better gear. That last one is especially crucial and this is one game where having decent equipment will make a difference.

Early one they could make a big difference, but in the end they were utterly useless. The Espers are useless the moment you got them. Forgot about the MP boost, yes. As I recall it doubled what you had with each quickening.

I'm sure you figured it out by now, but quickening slots can only be gotten by one character, so don't take the same path which each character. I made that mistake with my first quickening.

Nah, you get double when you get the second quickening and triple when you get the third.

Do you mean that the character's max MP at that moment gets tripled when you unlock the third quickening, or the base MP? (meaning the amount of MP they have with no quickenings at all)

Each quickening after the first adds on an extra MP bar, the same length as the character's basic one so with three quickenings, your mp is triple what it would be with none.

What Shin said, it's an extra full bar of MP. So if your max MP is say 60, with all quickenings, you'll be able to hold 180 MP.

I myself found the quickenings very useful in a tight spot. You mostly got them for the MP boost and the summon monsters weren't very effective, but I cleared a few bosses with a good quickening chain. The Mist charge is your friend.

Beating a dead horse here, but I really can't wrap my head around how anyone could hate Quickenings or define them as "useless." A decent Mist Chain means this: You don't have to worry about any sort of setup on certain battles. You don't need to worry about whether or not you have your tank in place, whether or not you're going to have a decent survival ratio with mobs dropping around you and a boss that puts up some fucked up field that penalizes you greatly. You can literally just run in and perform a Mist Chain and clean house. I've killed things I probably wouldn't have won a traditional battle against because of Quickenings, they are the great equalizer and MP booster.

I felt that quickenings make the game too easy. It seems like an unnecessary mechanic to diversify the battle system, but it didn't really offer me much. I used it very little during my first run of the game. I'd probably be even less inclined to use it in future runs.

Quickenings when done right will remove all challenges for the first lets say 50 hours or so, but after that they won't make a big impact anymore. but like I said, WHEN done right...they are so damn unpredictable. You can be lucky and get all the right quickenings in a row, or sometimes get unlucky and get none until the timer runs out.

The espers are without a doubt even worse then quickenings. I can't imagine a single scenario where they'd be usefull. To me, it just felt like they put them in just because FF games need summons.

I did this on some of the elementals a few times, gaining a nice EXP boost. They were the kind of foe I wouldn't have been able to touch regularly.

I felt the quickenings were a nice risk/reward for something like boss battles. Timed right, you could clear a good 40% off the boss's lifebar, but you risk not getting a high enough chain and then getting stuck with an alive and angry boss with 0 MP to spare. Quickenings saved my game quite a few times, especially against bosses like King Bomb, with that spell/skill that heals entirely unless you kill him quickly enough.

Wasn't that healing supposed to happen? Every time you kill the little bombs? I believe it stopped after the 3rd wave. It wasn't that big of a deal.

Also, thank god for charge. That's one of the first gambits I set up. MP <10% = charge. Don't leave home without it. <3.

IIRC the pattern is that as soon as King Bomb is at about 1/4 HP, he creates a bunch of normal Bombs as a distraction and then heals. When I fought him recently, I don't believe he stopped at three, I didn't bother to use a Mist Chain at first because I was pretty much kicking his ass. The distractions and running away and "Restore" had me throw a Mist Chain at him, regretting I hadn't done so in the first place.

Quickenings were essential at the beginning when I wanted to level up quickly at the earliest point I could, which was Vaan on his own killing Werewolves for a big exp gain. As soon as I was sufficiently strong enough to kill them without Quickenings I carried on with the story. From that point on I didn't need to use them again.

Now for the update. I just defeated the hardest monster in the game, And I did it... in one go. That's not bad considering it has had 50 million HP.

And there's still 2 Espers I need to get yet! Somehow I don't think they will be a problem... :D

Jamma, that's not the hardest monster of the game. That last 10% is absolutely insane, but most of that fight is extremely boring. Omega's actually harder for various reasons. But yeah, that hunt is aptly named.

Alright, I just came down the Leviathan after having a slightly hard time against the Judge. I can now wander around. Got a few questions though:

1 - These hunts. How much can I do around level 11?
2 - What are the best spells/techniques to learn?
3 - Are there any side-quests I can do already next to hunting?

That's good to know then, I wasn't expecting much of a challenge from the rest of the enemies in the game, just a tedious journey through the Great Crystal... which I'm still not looking forward to :><:

So MS, how many times did it take you to finish off Yiaz? And what method did you use?

Damn, looks like I was overleveled when I got out of the Leviathan. Either way, level up a bit more get some Augment licenses since those help quite a bit and you should be able to do the ones open to you. Of course, upgrade your equipment, since slogging through an area or beating a mark is that much harder with older stuff.

Heh, might want to take that back. Without a ribbon, the Pharos Subterra and Great Crystal are brutal. Even with it, the enemies still manage to do boatloads of damage even through something like Z. Escutcheon + Protect. After doing all that gate crap to open the one to Omega, you have to progress through quite a few screens with nothing but Forbiddens.

Irritating when you're well prepared, dangerous if you're not.

Stage 1 - Took him down to ~30% of his HP, ran out of Chronos' Tears saved + restocked
Stage 2 - Reached the last sliver of his health (final piece of final bar) , but was stuck in a seemingly endless revival loop with little chance to heal, so I revived everyone quickly and bolted. Saved and restocked
Stage 3 - Came back in, he completely lost the uber-aggressiveness he had when I last left and did the typical rebuffing. Killed him while he was doing that.

I've heard and tried the Decoy + Reverse trick, but I found it falls apart too easily. I think beating him in 3 stages in just over 2 hours is good enough.

I had 3 Ribbons before I entered the Pharos :cool: And I didn't use them for Subterra because it was a cakewalk. My biggest gripe was the endless cycle of collecting the Black Orbs (funny how it took me a good couple of hours to collect enough, and then by the time I'd left the place I had inadvertedly collected a few dozen more... typical). I think I'll stand by my decision with the Crystal. I'm still more powerful than all the regular enemies I have encountered so far, even the ones in the later stages.

Not bad. I did think about leaving the area to save/heal/restock, but I made a promise to myself that I'd try and beat him in one go. And as the battle went on, I was becoming more and more sure of myself that I could do it. After I ran out of Chronos Tears I used Remedies (:() and went I got down to the last few of them I had to gambit Dispel (which I was really pissed about) The last 10% was indeed the worst though, his constant Cyclone followed by numerous death Strikes brought out the ugly side of me, like shouting at the telly (as if that was gonna make any difference :gonk: ). In fact my younger brother, who is my official Supporter-and-Advice-Giver didn't utter a word to me the whole time I was being pounded upon... probably a good thing really... :eagletear:

I didn't bother with Reverse either. It's not the type of game I play. (to be honest I haven't used it before, but it sounds like a sucky way of playing)

I see the collector's edition of this game is now cheap at GS. I play RPG's for their story/charm (Shadow Hearts, Fallout, Planescape, Dragon Quarter, DQ VIII, etc.). That being said, most of the posts I see on FFXII revolve around the battle system. Is this game worth it for the story/characters?

The story yes, although it isn't as fully developed as it could have been. The characters are cool and well-acted, but the primary focus of the game is not on character development.

No! Whatever it takes to win! I used Reverse+Decoy on both Gilgamesh and Omega, to great effect.

As PiccoloNamek said, the story in this FF games focuse on the actual plot--not the characters. Although character info is revealed throughout the game, it pertains more to the plot than anything else.

I don't think any characters really "change" or "evolve" in this game as they have in other games. Everyone stays about the same as they did at the beginning....

Oh, good then you're ready. Without their irritating breath effects, the Forbidden will be doing little more than wasting their time trying to hit you with status effects while you waste them. Collecting Black Orbs was ridiculously easy one you realized that all you needed to do was slaughter enemies left and right for a few minutes. After that, find the massive black orb and it contains all the orbs that you ignored on purpose.

BTW, as I said before, the enemies in the Subterra (and even more so, in the eastern section of Henne) hit hard even through the best armor, shields and protect. Either way, good luck with Omega once you get to him.

Ugh, that's the other thing I restocked when I left, Remedies. Godsends once you have them completely upgraded via the license board, I ran out of them at roughly the same time as Chrono's Tears. I could've easily beat him in one go had I not went into the fight with 30ish.

Heh, that bit about your brother got my laughing, since my sister clammed up as well. Especially when he hit Penelo and Vaan with 9-12 slashes because the random OHKO effect hadn't kicked in yet. Death Strike and Cyclone only added to the insanity. Man, after I beat this bastard I immediately remembered that other uber boss from a few FFs back (Shinryuu was it?).

Oh, definitely PN. If the monsters are coming rigged, so am I! The problem is, if you use it against Omega you have to uber-micromanage to the point where you might as well take him on normally. On top of that, Decoy & Reverse were intentionally made to avoid this and their duration time often ends up working against you.

Lastly, bad luck will instantly send that setup out of control. The one reversed could have it come off at an inopportune moment (during this fight, that's ALWAYS the case) and they're offed right there and while trying to revive + recast, your other two guys are wasted.

Omega's easy enough if you keep on top of things, though that gets hard as fuck after his attack power goes through the roof and he speeds up substantially (as well as quartering your damage).

I just re-started this game on the weekend, playing it solo this time. I'm about where I was before (didn't beat the game), rescuing Ashe from the airship (the Leviathan I think). It's really fantastic. I was wondering if I could get some advice for setting up gambits? Specifically for just roaming about while advancing the story. I'm not getting too great results with the stealing gambit I had set up.

Furthermore, should I put heavy armor on my tank now? The official guide recommends that you stick with light armor for the first part of the game.

Last question: what are good weapon/role setups for three member parties? So far it looks like I'm turning Vaan into a dagger/light armor/shield tank, Basch into a sword/heavy armor/shield tank, Fran into a bow/light armor magic girl and Balthier into a gun/light armor magic/support dude. I don't have Ashe or Panelo yet (although I think I'm about to get Ashe).

Thanks.