KNOT OF RUST & DARK MATTER

As you loot chests with a Diamond Armlet equipped, you’ll come up with an item called a Knot of Rust. When thrown, it does a random amount of damage between 1 to 9999 to a single enemy. You will want to stock up on these and throw them all throughout your run. Why? Another throwable item, the Dark Matter, will have its damage based upon the number of Knots you throw during your entire playthrough. It can deal up to a whopping 60,000 damage, so it’d be smart to start investing in Knot throws as early as you can. You will need the damage formula to increase due to a missable achievement, Knot a Problem, where you have to land the killing blow to the final boss with a Dark Matter stolen from them.

Take heed that the damage formula will reset when you use the Dark Matter, so absolutely do not use one until then. It takes approximately 170 or so Knots of Rust to fully charge the Dark Matter. If you don’t want to be bothered with searching through chests for hours, you can buy Knots for cheap once you've reached Knight of the Round rank from the Clan Provisioner. It’s the second-highest rank requiring 500,000 Clan Points. I’ll quote a suggestion I saw for Knot farming on GameFAQs:

“Knots of Rust do random damage, from 1 to your current HP (maximum of 9999). They're pretty random, so it's kind of hard to say how many you may need to use to charge a Dark Matter. My suggestion is to get 99 Knots of Rust, head to the room in the Stilshrine of Miriam where you fight Zeromus and set some Gambits to throw Knots of Rust at every Dark Lord that pops up, and repeat a few times to charge a Dark Matter. There is no in game counter, but two or three trips should be good enough (go four if you really want to be on the safe side).”

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THE DUSTIA TRICK

There is a leveling exploit that speedrunners of Final Fantasy XII like to use, which involves a specific monster called Dustia. To prepare for this, have as many Phoenix Downs as you can afford, and get your party leader’s HP down to 10% or less of their maximum. Your characters can attack themselves if you want to control the amount of damage the leader receives. Phoenix Downs are not sold in Rabanastre nor the nomad camp – you need to go to Nalbina Fortress from the Estersand and speak to a vendor there. Buying 99 Phoenix Downs costs 19,800 gil. Another good idea is to go into your Inventory in the main menu and move the Phoenix Downs so they’re at the top of the list. Set your battle configuration to Wait Mode and the slowest possible battle speed. Once ready, go to the Westersand – Galatea Downs (just outside Rabanastre), and head for any of the other exits. The north exit is the closest one to Rabanastre, so let’s go there.

As soon as you spawn into the area, Dustia will appear. Make sure its red HP bar is visible first before proceeding. Now immediately use a Phoenix Down on Dustia to kill it instantly, then quickly zone out to the previous area. If you see the EXP and LP text, or Dustia’s death animation completes, you were too slow and the monster won’t appear again. In that case, move two screens away and return to try again. I like to return to Rabanastre and head through the gate into town to reset Dustia. Make sure you don’t interact with the save crystal or else your low-health character will be fully healed. The overall idea is to gain the benefits from killing Dustia, but not allow the flag for marking it as dead to activate, allowing you to respawn it constantly.

You may notice that you’ll get randomly healed while doing this grind. This is because of your chain level adding a random HP restoration effect to the monster drop table. The chance of this effect happening goes up with the chain level, and the power of the effect is based on random chance, your current HP Max, the chain level, and the chain count. If your low-HP character is healed above 10% max health, get them back down before continuing.

If you want to farm items from Dustia (which you should), immediately go into your character’s battle menu after using the Phoenix Down and Dustia dies. The death animation will pause since you’re in Wait Mode, but the item drop animation will still complete. If you want to be absolutely safe, go back into the battle menu while in the middle of picking up the item. This gives you enough time to obtain your spoils and zone out before the EXP and LP text appear. The slower battle speed likewise gives you precious milliseconds to act quickly. Dustia drops the Flame Staff and the Book of Orgain, which you would like to sell to buy more Phoenix Downs and continue this routine. With the Warmage’s Monograph, it will also drop the Arcana item. Hang on to any and all Arcanas you get! They will be extremely useful for crafting High Arcanas in the Bazaar later.

It may be finicky to execute, but Dustia gives 1100 EXP and 3 LP per kill, which is an absurd amount for the very beginning of the game. If you have Vaan and Penelo together, the EXP is divided between them, so it’s 549 per character. They’ll still get 3 LP each though. It’s not necessarily the best method for leveling in the entire game, but if you want a leg up in levels and License Board progress very early on, this isn’t a bad idea. From the minimal research I’ve done, it takes 13,741,129 EXP to reach level 99, so using only Dustia would take 12,492 kills, or about 126 trips with full stacks of 99 Phoenix Downs while using Vaan solo. From what I heard in a video, this can take upwards of 70 hours. If my numbers are wrong, I’d like to hear from someone with more experience with the game so I can correct myself. Let’s just say that it’s about as insane to do this as to level up Sora to level 99 on Destiny Islands in Kingdom Hearts. If any of you know what that means, then enough said. ;)

Take heed though, as enemies will scale with you. Since your equipment is fairly weak at the very beginning, it might not be enough to handle monsters with high defense. Not to worry though – if you’re going all-out with the leveling, you will be getting the most powerful weapon in the game through RNG manipulation shortly, so monster scaling will not be an issue whatsoever as long as you do this.

I didn’t go this crazy with leveling in my run, but I did enough to reach level 39, especially considering that future party members and guest characters always join at a slightly higher level than Vaan. I also did it while Penelo was in the party for the Sunstone mission so she could get some levels before leaving, although it is less efficient that way than Vaan doing it solo. The EXP will fall off hard at later levels, but it’s still somewhat worth it if you want to farm for LP since the vast majority of monsters only give 1 LP. I also farmed some achievements related to statues in the Sky Pirates’ Den, such as:

• The Unrelenting for getting a chain level of 50
• Plunderer for acquiring 100,000 gil by selling Dustia’s item drops
• Blood Dancer for killing more than 500 enemies
• Wayfarer for taking more than 50,000 steps
• Record Breaker for obtaining over 500,000 Clan Points. You will not likely get this one due to the obscene amount of grinding involved. I got Vaan and Penelo to level 38 before this appeared for me, which is not practical whatsoever for a casual player.

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EARLY SEITENGRAT

There is a Random Number Generator (RNG) manipulation involved with getting a Seitengrat early in the game. For those not familiar with what this is, it is the most powerful bow in the game, and by far the most powerful weapon overall. It requires arrows to equip, but Onion Arrows are commonly sold in shops anyway. You won’t see a model for the bow because it is invisible. I also won’t cover why this manipulation works – I’m not a programmer by any means, so a lot of that stuff goes over my head, unfortunately. There are plenty of comments, guides and videos explaining the nitty gritty details if you’re interested. I’m just providing the Cliff’s Notes version for those who are as dim with programming as I am. ;p

I have watched a YouTube video of someone using savestates to abuse the invisible chest spawn until they got a Seitengrat. The trouble is that you’d want to get one through legitimate means if you intend to master the set. The manipulation will assist you with acquiring at least your legit Seitengrat, and then you’re free to use the savestate method for further Seitengrats if you want.

If you do some research and find information about using a method with Reks using Cure, do not rely on that info! That method is applicable to Zodiac Age only. For IZJS, you need to use a different method. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Coupled with this video I used for my own manipulation, allow me to explain everything you need to do. One thing you will need before beginning is a Diamond Armlet, which allows for rare items to be acquired from chests. The Seitengrat will never be acquired unless you have this equipped. There is a way to get the accessory in the Westersand right at the beginning, which I explain in the A Crucial Piece achievement. Open the video ahead of time because I let it explain the later steps for me, and I think a visual guide will be more efficient than a wall of confusing text.

1. Make progress with the main story until you reach Barheim Passage, but do not advance far enough to fight the boss Mimic Queen. At either save crystal in the dungeon, make two identical saves. Progress the story with one, and leave the other one alone! Do NOT overwrite it! EVER! This is the file you will be doing the manipulating on, so you absolutely need this!
2. In your main file, return to Rabanastre, gain access to the Skyferry, and unequip everyone’s gear except for Vaan’s accessory, which absolutely MUST be a Diamond Armlet. Now take a ship to Nalbina. That’s not your destination for the story, but you need to use the save crystal in Nalbina’s aerodrome to get set up
3. Now for some out-of-game shenanigans. Download a program called FF12 RNG Helper. The second video I’ve linked explains how to use it. You absolutely need this program, or you will never be able to see the RNG you’re manipulating
4. Close out of the game completely. This is to set your RNG to 0 upon rebooting the game
5. Start up the emulator and game, load your Barheim Passage save, then control Fran and have her cast Cure, plugging in the individual healing values to see where you are in the RNG Helper’s table. The goal is to reach one of two specific RNG positions – either 543, or 544. If one position doesn’t work for you in the later steps, try the other one. The magic number that worked for me was 543. You can use the save crystal to replenish Fran’s MP
6. Once you reach either of those positions, pause the game and use the Quit to Title option, then load your Nalbina file
7. From there, I will allow the video to explain the rest since the steps are quite complicated and movement-sensitive. So long as the invisible chest is on the Skyferry and you do everything correctly, the Seitengrat will be yours
8. If you want more Seitengrats, return to Nalbina’s aerodrome and save at the crystal there, then do the manipulation all over again. You can likewise wait until later and use Bhujerba’s aerodrome instead

Congratulations. Enjoy your overpowered weapon and plowing through everything the game has to offer with ease. Do be mindful that the Seitengrat is banned for certain achievements, although you will need at least one for Floating Arrow of Doom and Zodiac’s Hidden Gifts. You also don’t want to do all 100 levels of Trial Mode with it equipped, so save that for when you have the best weapons for your chosen classes. Some players like to get six for all of the playable party members. I preferred to just get three for the active party.