Hey everyone, welcome the Love of Gaming Blog and this post is all about providing useful information to anyone who is looking to or currently playing Final Fantasy 12 The Zodiac Age. I've spent a lot of time with the game and I've had the time to reflect on the things I would have done differently and what would have been handy to know going in. Without further ado, let's get into it:
TIPS
Weapon superiority - Each class can select between one to two different weapons. Not all weapons are equal. Fortunately you are able to select a second job about a fifth of the way into the game so if you find the weapon your currently using unhelpful all is not lost.
A few weapon types I would advise against wasting your money and LP on are crossbows, bows, ninja swords, daggers, rods, staffs, measures, gilts and maces.
Some of the strongest weapons you can use are swords, axes, guns and katanas and great swords. I tend to recommend swords over great swords because taking a shield in hand is very useful in mitigating damage.
Guns are far better than any other ranged weapon because their damage is consistent, they never miss and pierce defenses.
The axes, although deal fluctuating damage can be ridiculously powerful when used by a character buffed with haste and berserk. The axe weapons have a high chance for rapid strikes as well which is useful.
Katana's are the go to weapon for any mage type character as their damage is boosted by the magic stat.
Choosing the right weapon is an important choice in FF12 as the majority of your DPS throughout the entire game will come from your weapons.
Job combos - As mentioned, you can select a secondary job class. When it comes to flexibility a secondary job is a god send. With that said, spread the skills about. There's no need to have one healer out of six characters, even just two healers. Sure, most classes can access white magic on their boards, but only by obtaining the license for an Esper and an endgame one at that.
Not only that, as mentioned the Katana's which you obtain the license for on the Bushi job board, are perfectly suited to high magic characters such as the white and black mage.
The other issue if you put all your healing and buffing into one character as a support or healer main, means that character is going to burn through their MP reserves. In this situation you're always going to have one character struggling to hold onto their MP and two sitting with full bars, that's not efficient.
Search everywhere - The chests or pots, have had a major shakeup in this version. Most contain small amounts of gil but there are many now that contain useful items, equipment, spells and technicks and even large sums of gil.
In fact it's so worth checking every pot out that you can miss out on spells and techniks that you'll never obtain any other way.
Don't neglect your side party - You may be tempted to play the game with your three favourite characters but I would advise against this, the game has given you a backup party for a reason and it's for when bosses go into an Enraged state and quickly wipe out your first group with chain attacks. This tactic becomes commonplace against latter bosses, also it's handy to have a second party ready to unleash their mist knacks. It may feel like a chore, but it's an essential part of the game and overall strategies.
Prepared against the air - Despite the close proximity an aerial opponent will have against your party, only certain weapons will strike them. The Spears, poles and ranged weapons being the only types. If you have learned any black magic that too is useful. If you've got a diverse group of characters you should have at least two party members that can deal with air borne foes.
Don't disregard dispel - Later into the game enemies and bosses will begin to buff themselves. The spell dispel is purchasable in shops so there is no reason not to get it. The best thing about Dispel is that it will remove every single buff from a target, not peel away each buff. Don't let a single boss keep their buffs up longer than a few seconds, it's so easy to counter why wouldn't you?
STRATEGIES
When to grind - FF12 has some difficulty jumps, things will be fine one moment and the next you'll be getting slapped left right and centre. This may be partly due to not having a properly equipped party due to financial troubles but sometimes your characters will be just too underlevelled for an area or boss. Fortunately FF12 TZA has given us the double and quadruple speed up option. When you need to do a spot of grinding these two options will be an absolute time saver. I generally don't recommend 4x for anything other than grinding for materials and levels, 2x is fine for pretty much the rest of the game, even some bosses.
The occasions I found you will need to do some grinding are as follows:
-The sand sea; Raithwall's tomb is home to Belias, a particularly powerful foe. You will then have to face another powerful boss that can enrage itself, meaning they can chain their melee strikes. At this stage of the game that boss can wipe your party out in moments.
This is also the point of the game where you can purchase a slew of new weapons and magicks so you'll be thankful for the loot.
-Paramina Drift; everything is pretty easy up to this point. You'll lose your fourth as well and you'll feel that loss in both healing and DPS. There's also plenty of new and powerful equipment to purchase at the entrance to Mt Bur Omisace.
As for tricky foes; the Stillshrine of Miriam has some very powerful mobs and the Esper boss there too is a dangerous foe. Once you've dealt with the Esper however you'll soon square off against another Judge who also likes to use Enrage when his HP is almost out. He'll gain enough DPS to one shot any weak characters so it's also a good idea to unlock those HP+ licenses.
-Gurivegan: Lot's of powerful Mobs are located here and in close proximity to one another. The boss you'll encounter before you even enter Gurivegan is another Enrage nightmare, although the Esper boss you encounter isn't anything special.
Possibly the worst thing you'll encounter here are the Marlboro type enemies that can inflict every status on your party.
Once you've levelled yourself to this place you should be set for the rest of the game.
As for where to do some grinding, the Sandsea is a fine place to grind for the first suggestion. The Ozmone plain is good place or the woods outside the Viera town.
Lastly, the final and best place for grinding is the Tchita Uplands. Good XP and loot make this the go to place for any grinding needs you have, though if you're looking for more XP with a slightly higher risk, the Feywood is fine enough.
Mist Knack attack - I won't lie to you, I'm not particular sure myself how the mist knack system works. (I did read about it in a Prima guide but meh) Now that Mist Knacks don't require any MP they're perfect as your ace in the hole. You can play the entire game and never use them, but when things get desperate such as a boss Enraging themselves, dropping two parties worth of Mist Knacks can deal tens of thousands of HP damage.
I find the best way to get the most out of your Mist Knacks and have the best chance of racking up a big chain is firstly; have each character learn all three of their Mist Knacks.
Secondly, start shuffling as soon as you start the quickening. At about chain number 7 you won't have time to shuffle and mist charge. By that point you'll be relying on free charges and free knacks.
You'll get a split second window to see who can charge a Mist Knack or who has a Mist Knack to unleash before the time counts down. Combos in the range of 12 are what you really want for doing the most amount of damage.
Incidently, regardless of the element of the Quickening ending, the damage dealt is always non-elemental.
Buffs, debuffing and ailments - There's a plethora of statuses that can afflict your party and enemy alike but with such a selection comes a deal of surplus. It's also very tempting to setup gambits to have everybody fully buffed but I'm going to tell you first and foremost "Do not spam buffs"! Do not even gambit buffs, just forget about buffing virtually all together for most situations. That's crazy you're probably thinking but here are two arguments against having all your buffs up:
-Buffs last a short while, especially under 2x and 4x speed conditions.
-Protect and Shell do not halve damage as in previous titles, it's more like a quarter.
-Fully buffing your party means a huge downtime waiting for spells and is incredibly costly, so costly it'll cost you hundreds of MP every ten minutes.
With that said, there is no need to keep buffs up whilst you are dealing with the low level mobs. The fights last seconds and you want to keep a momentum. Furthermore, once you obtain Cura and Curaga your cure potential goes through the roof and pretty much renders it pointless to use buffs during grinding or general travel moments.
In my last playthrough I rushed the game, I didn't go out of my way to hunt marks or grab every last item in every corner of Dalmasca so I was missing a lot of spells, mainly the high level buff spells. Because I didn't hunt marks I was unable to obtain green magick as well.
I had no trouble getting through the game without these buffs because their effects are marginal.
My biggest gripe with buffs is the time it takes to cast, especially if they all disappear at once, that's a huge amount of downtime and it could all happen at the wrong time such as all your healers are recovering from protectga and faithga when you could use them popping Cura or Curaja after the boss has unleashed a powerful attack.
My advice is to only use buffs manually, the only gambit I set was Haste to counter slow. Assess each situation as it goes on and save yourself the MP.
Now comes the darkside, the status ailments. Final Fantasy 12 is status happy, there are lots to be hit with and about halfway through the game it will start throwing status ailments at you left right and centre. Especially when Marlboro type enemies appear in every other area. You need to be on top of all these status ailments, setting up counter gambits is one slightly inefficient route, the second option is to keep on top of your licenses for accessories and keeping at least two of each accessory that grants immunity to a status affliction.
Generally speaking, you won't have more than one status to deal with in any one area. In Gurivegan for instance, aside from the Marlboro's there, the small imp enemies cast stop.
It's easy to write off accessories and just sit on battle harnesses for counter attack, but their real benefit lies in these resistances. Using items and esuna may seem like a good idea at the time, but Esuna is expensive to use and removes one status at a time and what happens if you forgot to stock up on your Echo Screens? You'll be stuck.
The only status I had a genuine struggle with was Disease, which is virtually game breaking and so fortunately it's only encountered several times during the main story. I found no accessory in the shops that would prevent it and you cannot buy items to cure it, you can only find them and the white magic spell cleanse is also not purchasable in shops and was well hidden enough that I didn't find it on my quick run through the game.
Ending
Thanks for reading this blog entry, I hope some of the information found within is useful. If you have any tips or strategies of your own to share I'd be interested to hear them.
I've really enjoyed writing this entry and plan to do more tid bit guides in the future and to also expand on them and cover more topics.
Anywho, if you've not started The Zodiac Age yet then what are you waiting for? It may not be the best Final Fantasy game but it is enjoyable and worth your time.
Have a great week everybody!
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