Final Fantasy Hacktics

After playing my 50th game or so of Tactics I've come to notice quite a few interesting things that can occur in the game that maybe helpful for others to know in case they want to trigger it or find out where it will occur. This includes some very basic information as well as rare occurrences. I know a lot of veteran players will already know most of this , but it may come in handy for new players since this can be used for the WOTL version as well.

1. Undead: Life equals death for undead enemies (i.e. Gusts/Skeletons/Zombie stats, etc.) using curative items and spells will have the adverse affect on them. Conversely, using drain or night sword will deplete HP from you and replenish the undead instead.

2. Eliminating the undead: The best and most resourceful ways to eliminate undead monsters from resurrecting are to petrify them, seal them (using snipe), or to poach them which will remove their carcass from the field eliminating any chance of resurrection.

3. Guests: Every so often a random battle will occur where you may have a guest ally fighting beside you (could be a chocobo, a female lancer, male knight, or whatever) there is a small chance that after the battle the guest will try to join your party (this has happened to me a few times, I always declined because my party had reached maximum occupancy). I am not 100% sure on what you need to do in order to trigger an invite from a guest, I've been experimenting around with this and have tried killing the guest off and ressurrecting him/her or increasing the length of the battle. So far I think it is just a matter of chance that there is a 05 - 10% chance that a random guest will try joining your party after the battle.

4. Soft Resetting + Gameshark Codes: Gameshark codes will not be affected by a soft reset (L1 + L2 + R1 + R2 + Start & Select) and will remain active unless you manually press the console reset button or power the device off.

5. Two Swords: This command works well with just about any weapon; swords, daggers, katanas, ninja swords, knight swords, and even rods & staffs. If you have a gameshark you can shark in an additional gun into Mustadio's left hand [3005xx87 00??] (so long as he has the Two Swords support equipped) he can fire a gun twice in a row.

6. Snipe Command: The snipe command works beautifully with the Bow/Crossbow combination, and as we have seen before it works well if the user is unarmed or is using a dagger or a gun.

7. Countering: certain weapon equips/conditions can prevent a character from countering an attack. I've noticed that characters with guns who are equipped with counter as a reaction ability can counter with an average success rate from long range and the same goes for archers as well, I've tested this out on book-users (Oracles, and Olan) and it doesn't seem to work the same way (most likely because of the attack pattern of the books). Brave is also a factor in countering, the higher the brave the better chance of a counter attack. The only reaction ability (for PSX mind you) that I have had little to no success with is "Hamedo", where almost every time the enemy lands a perfect close-range physical attack without triggering the effect.

{More to come later}

Edit: Ok fine. If some totally clueless person comes by they might find this useful

Quote from: "DonalbaneBeoulve"3. Soft Resetting + Gameshark Codes: Gameshark codes will not be affected by a soft reset (L1 + L2 + R1 + R2 + Start & Select) and will remain active unless you manually press the console reset button or power the device off.

It was the only one I didn't know

Quote from: "DonalbaneBeoulve"I know a lot of veteran players will already know most of this , but it may come in handy for new players since this can be used for the WOTL version as well

Keep on, maybe some noob will find your info usefull (but I think that there are few FFHnoobs here)
Maybe it would be better if you post some FAQ like:
- Short charge works with dance?
- Lancer with lance that jump...more damage with 2 hand or att up?
Etc...
P.s: You used "3" twice

[nm]

Quote from: "Dome"

Quote from: "DonalbaneBeoulve"3. Soft Resetting + Gameshark Codes: Gameshark codes will not be affected by a soft reset (L1 + L2 + R1 + R2 + Start & Select) and will remain active unless you manually press the console reset button or power the device off.

It was the only one I didn't know

Quote from: "DonalbaneBeoulve"I know a lot of veteran players will already know most of this , but it may come in handy for new players since this can be used for the WOTL version as well

Keep on, maybe some noob will find your info usefull (but I think that there are few FFHnoobs here)
Maybe it would be better if you post some FAQ like:
- Short charge works with dance?
- Lancer with lance that jump...more damage with 2 hand or att up?
Etc...
P.s: You used "3" twice

I'm still in the process of testing some of these "phenomena" out such as the 50/50 chance of getting an infamous dragon battle, or other things that are gameshark related but that is a good idea.

God damn there is no need to test this stuff. If you want to know something just ask about it. We know everything about the game

joke post

Hmm? Personally I'd never heard about the Guest joining, if it is random as he says and not anything to do with ENTD...

I've noticed Zeklaus 5 and Barius 5 originally has a few Blue guests to help you out with the battles granted they appear (Zeklaus has the Knight, Barius has Hydra, Behemoth, Dragon, and Chocobo.)

In Dolbodar 5 there's a chance there would be a random Porky that will join you after the fight.

In Finath 5 there's a fight between Behemoths vs. Minotaurs and a Goblin, neither join you though, you are on the Minotaur's side.


Heh, Yuguo actually has a pretty interesting 5 where each of the Samurai there are weilding every Katana from Asura Knife to Kikuichimoji.

In Bed Desert 4 there's a Red Dragon who's Always Present who is a guest, but doesn't have Join after Event.

I am to believe that the Porky is probably the only Random battle Join After Event guest in Random battles. If that is the case and if what this fellows says is true, there might be something which might make the other guests join? But I'd need a more indepth explanation of that. In any case yes, the other information is pretty well known. Regardless it's only trying to help, no reason to get on his case for *trying* to help.

Quotethere might be something which might make the other guests join?

Beyond that ENTD flag?  Pretty sure.  I've had guests from various randoms attempt to join -- the most notable ones being the guest chocobo in mandalia and a guest chocobo in the SMB of Barius Hill.

Well, the Mandalia Plains Chocobo is set to Join After Event (I meant to look through the rest then just assumed from that point on of otherwise 5's there wouldn't be anything noteworthy) But yes, oddly enough the guest Chocobo in the Super Monster Battle doesn't have "Join After Event" so that is quite a curious case...

I could be getting old and senile as well.  savestates and a little bit of work can clear up my head; I'll post results in a few days.

^
I had a similar thing happen after a mandalia plains battle a cuar or red panther guest wanted to join my party.

Added some other weird/interesting information (glitches?)

Gameshark related: I had made a complete Zalbag clone and entered the battle in the Murond temple (after the fight with the Shrine Knights) and inserted Zalbag into my party. At the very beginning of this fight I noticed something odd about his sprite, it was a bright white/bluish color. When Vormav mentions that Zalbag will be Ramza's opponent, the white pillar of light appeared next to Ramza (where I had placed my Zalbag clone) and I had complete control over the boss as well as my own party! From what I have noticed in this fight, it is most likely triggered by in-game scripting and the console recognized my Zalbag clone as the enemy Zalbag. (Someone else can probably give a better detailed explanation than I can, I am still an amateur hacker at best :p)

Notes: So far I have tried this twice, and it has worked both times. Each time the boss (undead Zalbag) looks exactly like my party clone, and has the same stats, equip, abilities as he does. After killing him and he explodes in battle, he remained in my party in-tact.

Glitches: I am not sure how to trigger this as I think it was most likely due to a corrupted memory card/save file (I was using a blue Madcatz memory card at the time). I had saved just before the fight with Velius in Riovanes and I recall loading the game without any problems, however my dancer character (who looked like a chapter 1 Ramza) was terribly glitched, not to mention her equips were totally removed and replaced by (if memory serves right) 1; Save the Queen, Defender, Windslash Bow, and Lightning Bow. Iirc I think she may have also had cure as a reaction ability or something (it's been at least 10 years ago). She was very glitchy in battle I think (like the dancing Altima glitch), I have no idea what those prior equips mean if has anything to do with a bad save or corrupted card or something else.

Sticky?

Quote from: "CidIII"Sticky?

Might be good to consider it, I'm not only adding well-known information by the veteran players but also weird glitches/rare occurrences.

Quote from: "DonalbaneBeoulve"Gameshark related: I had made a complete Zalbag clone and entered the battle in the Murond temple (after the fight with the Shrine Knights) and inserted Zalbag into my party. At the very beginning of this fight I noticed something odd about his sprite, it was a bright white/bluish color. When Vormav mentions that Zalbag will be Ramza's opponent, the white pillar of light appeared next to Ramza (where I had placed my Zalbag clone) and I had complete control over the boss as well as my own party! From what I have noticed in this fight, it is most likely triggered by in-game scripting and the console recognized my Zalbag clone as the enemy Zalbag. (Someone else can probably give a better detailed explanation than I can, I am still an amateur hacker at best :p)

Notes: So far I have tried this twice, and it has worked both times. Each time the boss (undead Zalbag) looks exactly like my party clone, and has the same stats, equip, abilities as he does. After killing him and he explodes in battle, he remained in my party in-tact.

Yup.  In a similar vein if you have the Princess class in your party thanks to gameshark, when you hand over Agrias and Ovelia at Lionel -- your princess will be removed from the party and you're stuck with guest/nonbattle Ovelia until the end of the game.

Same with Algus, I did Villians(not Kanbabrif) playthough and my Algus got switched for the guest.

Quote from: "akwikone"Same with Algus, I did Villians(not Kanbabrif) playthough and my Algus got switched for the guest.

I've noticed that you can avoid this by not creating a "complete" clone until said guest has left the party. I created a Gafgarion, and Algus clone (using soldiers from the shop) and then changed their sprites via gamesgark to make them the real deal after the guests left, I haven't had any problems since.