I want to like you, game.

Every year I try!

But you just aururhhhh I donno if it's something I'm doing or if I'm not ground up enough or missed some gambits or leveling my characters wrong or USING THE WRONG CHARACTERS OR AUAUAUUHH

I could never get into the battle system myself :c

...I feel like this is ironic with my display name but

w/e

that's part of it.

well actually no

because it's just 11's gameplay and I still play 11 but ...

the gambits and the licenses seem super unnecessary to me.

I'm like a few hours into that game and just so.. meeeeh at it. lol I've had it for years now and just... it sits.

took me awhile to get used to that game lol

I'm at the stupid freaking tomb

though if I went back to it I doubt I'd remember any of how it works

I've been at the stupid freaking tomb for years.

I'M NOT AFRAID TO ADMIT IT

I KEEP PUTTING THE GAME DOWN. JUST LIKE... NAWP. CANT DO.

stupid fire esper thing pushes my skull in.

12 is...so hard to get through

I beat it. One time. It wasn't all that hard, but I went absofreakinlutely insane on the licenses right at the start. Like... I spent ten hours in the estersand grinding license points.

...of course this also gave me levels and some decent lowbie gear.

and gold.

>.> but I zipped through half the game after that SO IT BALANCED OUT OKAY?

But yeah, I tried playing it again and just... no. Boooooring.

If I want to grind for hours on end I'll re-up my WoW sub. >.>;;;

estersand you say

well looks like my night just got planned out.

Time to kill myself through grinding.

Protip: Focus on the lower right quadrant of the licenses on the top half of the board. The self-improvement ones.

And get the rod from the random chest in the estersand, if you don't already have something better. It really speeds things up.

(also helps if you only have Vaan in your party)

gambits help too, but you can do it right at the start of the game if you like.

my party of focus for a while has been Ashe, Penello and Fran

also is there any where I can go to get better gambits EARLY so my party members arent dumb

Really the only one I want right now is a heal that doesn't come at 60% health e_e

(why isn't something that basic free?)

Unfortunately... not really. x_x Unless you get lucky with chests, there's not a whole lot in the way of gambits available early on.

(which is why I tend to overlevel so early on)

And while I say get lucky with chests... the drops for most (if not all) of them are fixed.

to like... one of five items. Usually more like one of two or three, and one of those will be gil.

There's one that drops Aero motes which are extremely useful if you wanna power level and possibly get an awesome katana way before you're supposed to.

though I must warn that attempting to do so is risky at best and suicidal at worst.

(the werewolves at the south end of Giza Plains drop Kotetsu and are weak to air)

(but they will one-shot you if they get close enough to hit, so run like a mofo til you can hit them again, and do everything you can to draw them one at a time)

usually takes two or three motes per kill

so keep that in mind.

Stockpile a good supply, you might wanna come when it's just Vaan and Penelo in the party (before the rainy season ever hits in-game so the werewolves are still there)

because... yeah, after the first rainy season, they go bye-bye.

They also give really good exp and LP

compared to everything else you can get to at that point, barring some stuff in the westersand

(most of which you can't actually kill yet)

What I usually do when farming LP is, I go two zones past the first Estersand area (through the little neutral zone and into the next one), then kill nothing but wolves while going

to the area right next to the village on the river and then back to the zone above the neutral area, thus creating a mammoth chain while going back and forth. Keep an eye on your junk drops

and sell when you have 90-99 of both the junk items they drop (there's a merchant outside Nalbina town next to the save crystal, you don't have to go into town or touch the crystal

so you can keep the chain going)

This is probably the easiest way to get the pirate's den thingy where you have to chain so many kills.

and unfortunately, it works better without gambits.

(seriously, game needs a couple 'target only x creature type' gambits)

And whatever you do, do not kill the cockatrices

there's a rare that spawns in one zone when you kill them that will fuck you up

especially if you're soloing. =|

(Can you tell I spent a lot of time doing this?)

(Had chains well over 500 on several occasions)

It may take a while, but you'll start to get a travel pattern engraved in your mind that will take you by all the wolf spawns while avoiding the cockatrices.

how long exactly were you doing this?

....you really don't want me to answer that.

;_;

BELIEVE IN YOURSELF SHUU

Ok... how about this

what level were you when you stopped??

Put it this way.

A chain of 500? Takes a couple hours.

...Somewhere between 20 and 30, I think. Maybe a bit over 30.

on the most extreme version.

By that point I had enough rods to outfit everyone I'd ever get and enough cash that I never really had to worry about it again until the second half of the game.

plus 99 of all the basic items (potions, phoenix downs, etc)

(No, I am not exaggerating.)

The one major time?

I filled the license board.

Completely.

except the gambit slots, which I couldn't fill because they weren't even unlocked on the board yet

It takes over 13,000 license points to do that.

Thirteen. Thousand.

(Some people wonder just how patient I am.)

(Or, alternately, how completely freaking insane)

anyways, sleep, I need it.

Good God Matt, I'm gonna have to do this

But I've run into a problem and am stuck between two choices

First off vossler's a guest in my party now and I can't switch his gambits off as a result, so he just kills everything in sight unless I get lucky with fleespam.

I could just restart the game

but I might jump off a cliff if I have to replay the beginning of this game another time

so the only thing I can do is.. well. restart. or somehow beat this boss first

I think I could maybe do it with limit spam

lol I survived so many bosses that way. I'd have my secondary party folk start, have them quickening immediately, then switch to my primary crew.

I beat 'em

now we're all outfitted with golden armor, the giza plains are in a rainy season, Fran's got a kotetsu and Ashe and Penello are rocking hammers and shields.

time to grind.

oh, werewolves are GONE when it rains. w e l p

whatever I can still grind LP.

Now I'm in the process of grinding wolves with a golden amulet on Ashe, working on money and LP for the others

life is grand.

so.. much grinding... euejkwshfk

I've seen more of the sandsea than anyone has right to

but now everyone has double LP

/patpat

Sooooo.........

I found out about Dustia Chaining.

and now Fran, Ashe and Penello, barring a few slots in particular, have the entire green side of their license boards filled.

perhaps I can finally start playing the game again owo

I still need to get my magic a teensy bit updated

but this game is going to have serious problems keeping me down now.

I actually avoided Dustia. =|a Is it worthwhile?

3 LP per kill plus its easy to do so long as you don't get greedy trying to nab his drops.

I have gambits set up to do it... I literally run four steps into one zone with a char low enough HP to spawn it

said chara uses a phoenix down before it can react

then I run two steps back into the previous zone before the LP and EXP text shows up to juke the game into thinking it didn't die

waaaaaaaaaaaaaayyy easy LP

plus with my golden amulets I was getting double for each kill. it's childsplay

I'd say do it. It's a little brainbreaking but requires much less thought than actually running through zones and killing things legitimately.

and that 3 LP per kill ain't nothin to sneeze at when you're killing him for free. His drops will easily net you enough to cover the cost for more Phoenix Downs for cheesing.

just gotta make sure you're quick about grabbing the loot and getting the hell out otherwise you gotta zone out of the entire area before he spawns again.

and that's an irritating run

short. just two relatively small zones, but every second counts with something this boring and cheese

after a while I ignored the loot but

s' not like I'm exactly aching for gil at this point.

if anything I need more teleport stones -_-

Wonder if I can take the first Demon Wall now.

Probably.