Indeed, gambits make the game much less painful. o_ob Made farming so much less tedious. And the “Run” option.
Now that I think about it- Quickenings were my friend and lover in the first 30-40 hours of the game. I was able to kill most bosses in one Quickening chain. Now that their HP exceeds the 50K HP range, I can no longer do that. On the other hand, hacking away at the enemies/bosses/hunts is much more effective. But I do use quickenings when they’re on their way out.
Wil, you mentioned giving the characters with the lowest HP heavy armor. Wrong. Give them Light Armor. The three armor types don’t vary a whole lot in defensive at comparable levels, it’s more a matter of what other stat bonus they give.
Heavy = Strength
Light = HP
Mystic = Intelligence or MP (I forget which)
Certain pieces of armor have other benefits, but that’s the rule of thumb on armor.
The only time I would need Quickenings was on bosses that spammed those invincibility spells like Zodiark. Other than that I didn’t really need Quickenings much.
Also Mystic Armor boosts Intelligence. Only Quickenings boost MP.
It sounds like the only thing everyone agrees with is that healing is a high priority. I’ll take note of that.
And yeah, I had misremembered the Armor bonuses (more unnecessary details to deal with. Sheesh.) But I won’t start playing the game until I’ve memorized the whole guide first, which should take me about a week. (I’m finishing Wild Arms 5 right now anyway.)
Honestly just pick three characters and use then exclusively while keeping the license point doubling accessory on the three inactive party members (hell, I spent the majority of the game with everyone equipped with them) as soon as you get to the point where you can buy them. The game will be way less frustrating if you just focus on three people, once you get all six characters in your party you’re never forced to use anyone specifically. Once you get to the end game and have some awesome weapons it’s stupid easy to level any unused characters to match your main party, and if you kept the lp doubling accessories on them they won’t lag behind at all. In the meantime you can whore the three unused characters for cheap healing when you don’t want to waste the mp of your primary group. I really can’t stress enough how awesome the lp doubling accessory is.
I would take a look at the license grid and get quickenings for all of your characters as soon as possible, the extra mp makes a world of different. Just make sure you don’t rush all the easy to get to quickenings with one or two characters, spread them out among your entire party.
Quickenings can be really really awesome if you get lucky and are good at doing them, I was able to one shot a few of the bosses. A trick I’ve found is to open up with a quickening to only use two characters, then as soon as it finishes start a new quickening with the third character and hope for mist charges. You could also swap out one of your weaker characters to start a new quickening, even if one of the other characters starts with no mp they can still get mist charges.
You can customize you characters however you’d like and be strong enough to win the game. Keep in mind equipment makes a big difference in determining how powerful your attacks and spells are (cloth for magic, everything else enhances melee).
To beat the more difficult optional bosses, however, all the chars you use will need to be able to heal.
Since most magic is useless , mystic armor is useless.
I agree light armor is very good, but that’s only up until you start getting most of the hp boosting license board squares, at which point only heavy matters.
Oh and I forgot auto-haste earlier.
Here’s a very elementary question which I assume the guide doesn’t mention because the game itself explains it, but I want to know right now: Once Gambits are set, can they be turned off or changed during battle? Or am I stuck with them for the duration? I noticed there are some random monster that are much stronger than their fellows in the same area, and I assume it will be easy to attack a target you’re not ready for by mistake; if I so I don’t want the characters to be stuck with ineffective gambits.
And am I the only one who finds the Summons in this game fugly? :eek: They look like they were co-designed by H. R. Giger (“Aliens.”) This applies to most of the monsters as well.
Well, if the game explains it…
But yeah, you can switch them off/change them midbattle.
You can turn them on and off at will. You just open your menu. Optimally, you don’t want to have to turn on and off individual gambits as that becomes a pain in the ass and defeats the whole point.
Keep in mind that FFXII 's combat system is NOT like other RPGs you’re familiar with. You don’t walk around, have a random encounter and then switch screens and give commands. Think of it in terms of Diablo where you’re walking around and everything is live action. So the distinction of being in and out of combat is moot.
This is why having gambits is useful. You’ll have monsters everywhere around you (and there are A LOT) and so your party will automatically perform pre-ordered actions that you would do anyway. This_GREATLY_facilitates combat because as you will see, controlling 3 characters in real time with different sets of actions_SUCKS_. You’ll have to do this for some boss fights but you will go nuts if you try doing it for everything.
Mystic armor increases your white magic potency considerably, which in turn conserves a lot of your healer’s MP. Far from useless, depending how you have your party configured.
When 2/3 your party is berserked, haste(d) and protected and getting a lot more mp from its kills than its using (because all they’re casting are a few stat boosters), mana efficiency per heal isn’t something that matters much.
Sin is right. Gambits are your most valuable tool to making this game as easy as possible. I suggest you go onto GameFAQs and read what they have to say on them, and several of the guides have suggestions on Gambit setups as well. As for specialization, it’s true the most of your characters will have most everything towards the end of the game, but giving them specific roles in your party will still be helpful. Think more along the lines of roles in MMORPGs (like FFXI, which FFXII resembles way too much for its own good >_>).
I never needed the lp doubling accessory. Never. By the time I could buy it, I had most of the buffs and was more-or-less current on equipment and spells. I was more frequently short on money.
As for magic being useless: Oil + Fire = major damage, especially on enemies that are already weak to it. Penelo and Fran were doing more damage than Bosch, Balthier or Ashe buffed.
Do haste + bravery+ berserk and tell me how damage over time compares to oil+fire. Oil + Fire will be more useful at the start of the game when you don’t have as many available buffs. Its also going to cost more mana over time so its going to be very situational.
I agree that the LP bonus items aren’t that useful. It seems like it , but once you’ve finished the game once, you realize how the LP progression works and see that it isn’t.
Sure, this is very true “when” all your conditions are being met. What about when you are using more MP than you are gaining due to damage? Or did you not bother with any of the difficult marks or dungeons?
Deck out your healer in Mystic and use Cura…and then tell me that it’s useless in difficult fights.
The only things I didn’t kill were Yiazamat and the one Esper that becomes invicincible under a certain number of HP and you need a perfect chain of Quickenings. I can’t remember his name.
When your characters are doing 9999 a couple times per second, even hard bosses drop like flies. We’re talking around 40 000-60 000 damage per second if everyone’s swinging.
Who needs a healer with mystic armor casting Cura when a boss at that point drops in less than 60 seconds? I have killed bosses who’s HP bar was empty before the red bar caught up to the drop. The fights don’t last long enough that you have to worry about having less efficient healing draining your mana and hypothetically if it did, you just swap which character is berserked as I mentioned earlier because the berserked ones will be near full.
one Esper that becomes invicincible under a certain number of HP and you need a perfect chain of Quickenings.
OH, WONDERFUL. They just had to make one of the Espers really hard to get, didn’t they? Yiazmat I don’t care much about, but I wanted to complete my Esper collection before the end of the game. Let’s see what the Official Guide says about it… 
PS: I should be done with Wild Arms 5 today; if so I’ll buy FFXII on Tuesday (tomorrow is a Holiday and everything is closed.)
FF12 is out??? o_O