War of the Lions and Original FFT Hacking, etc (Help)

[Alchemist]

Hello there everyone!

I'm pretty new to this forum. For the longest time, I have absolutely loved Final Fantasy Tactics, and all of it's installments. Tactics is quite possibly one of my favorite games of all time.

For a the longest time now, I've been interested in some of these amazing hacks and patches I've been looking at here even before I joined the Forum, and I have some basic questions that I desperately need help with. Especially the Dark Knight patch/hack for the Original, which I thought was absolutely amazing, as well as the Slowdown Removal Patch for War of the Lions.

So onto the matter at hand. I have a PSP-3001, (I bought it used, practically brand new, but I have no idea what Motherboard it runs on, according to my inefficient research) with a UMD of War of the Lions. I also have the Original Final Fantasy Tactics on my PS3, and I am looking to Download it to my PSP and install some of these amazing patches/hacks I've seen, as well as some of the patches/hacks for War of the Lions as well.

The Questions I really need some expertise with, are the following:

1) Where is the latest, and safest Custom Firmware I can possibly Download for my PSP, located?
2) How can I download it safely, and install it to my PSP, so that I can get the Slowdown Removal Patch for War of the Lions to work?
3) Will I need applications like homebrew, or chickHEN in order to run these patches/hacks efficiently in conjunction with the Custom Firmware?

ANY and ALL help will be greatly appreciated! I apologize profusely in advance, if this is the wrong forum to post this thread in, and for my insufficient knowledge of hacking. This is all brand new to me, but I have never been so interested in all of this, especially hacking one of my favorite games of all time.

[Vanish Mantle]

PSP hacking has come a long way since it's earlier days of battery modding and such. This method is 100% safe and you can even flip back to Official to access to PSN. If the install happens to fail worry not it won't brick your PSP. This method uses a RAM flash exploit so the modifications last only until the system is turned off/reset.

CFW PRO B10 6.60

Just follow the guide on that site and you should be fine. Should you happen to be beyond the current CFW you should just wait a while for the hackers to crack the latest update to the OFW. Once they do that you should be able to patch it just fine. If this isn't the right FW for you then head to the home section of that site and find it there. As for certain hacks they should work perfectly fine without any extra homebrew. The main thing you want to do is make sure you have things in the right folders. If you need help with the folder structure let me know. If you need me to walk your through it contact me on Skype (search: kobayashi-teruko) and I will do my best to help you out.

[Alchemist]

Awesome! Seriously, thank you so much for your help! I sincerely appreciate it. I knew I made the right choice signing up here for the adequate and accurate help I needed! One of the main reasons I purchased a PSP in the first place was to simply play War of the Lions and Tactics to begin with, and enjoy all the hacks/patches developed by these brilliant minds.

Just one quick question though before I follow through with this. You mentioned that the CFW will only last until I either shut off or reset my system. Does that mean that It will always be installed on my PSP once downloaded, and that I can freely switch between my Custom Firmware and the Official Firmware?

EDIT: Okay, I downloaded the Custom Firmware flawlessly. It worked like a charm! Now, I only seem to have one question left. I managed to do the Slowdown Patch before I downloaded the Custom Firmware, meaning that I did the Step by Step process in xiongh2001's video on Youtube. I'm wondering; now that I have successfully downloaded the LCFW, do I have to repeat the process for the Slowdown Patch to Work Effectively? 

[Vanish Mantle]

It should work just fine if you followed a tutorial. If not just repeat the steps again to see where you went wrong.

The great thing about the new method is that is written to the flash memory of the PSP and takes a few simple button presses to get the mods back.