Final Fantasy Xii The Zodiac Age Rare Game Guide

[Benita Vandervoort]

Anyonewho's played the original Final Fantasy 12 will probably remember the hubbub around the Zodiac Spear, a superpowered weapon that required you to fulfil a series of impossible-to-stumble-upon tasks in order to earn it.

Well, as with many things, the method for finding the Zodiac Spear in Final Fantasy 12 The Zodiac Age has changed - and the Spear itself has too. Here on this page we'll take you through the new method of finding it - the Hunt Club - and the changes to the Spear itself.

The Zodiac Spear is infamous in Final Fantasy 12 because of its power - it's a 141 attack weapon and has a chance of disabling the enemy on hit, making it one of the most powerful in the game - and also one of the most difficult to get your hands on.

Note - if you are playing the original Final Fantasy 12 on PS2, the method of acquiring is different to that in the remaster The Zodiac Age. In short, you needed to have avoided specific chests in order for it to then appear in a late game chest in order to get it. It caused a lot of confusion and frustration, so understandably, things are a little easier in the remaster!

The chest is in a locked area of the Henne Mines, which officially opens once you've got 10 Espers and have talked to the Geomancer in Jahara. However, you can also reach the location as soon as you've done the Mindflayer hunt then taking a long route.

Either way, you then need to check into the area over and over until it appears. Here's Kyr Cookies on YouTube explaining how to get it as soon as possible, and where to find the Zodiac Spear chest location:

Ignore the bunny that spawns on Level 62 of Trial mode, find the Biding Mantis, and attempt to steal from it. If unsuccessful, then quit out of the game and reload to try again. Here's LemonEatingKow explaining how from the 4 minute mark:

Play the Hunt Club until you have the maximum amount of Trophies - 30 - then give 10 Trophies to each brother. You then need to pay 999999 Gil. This is the more predictable, but a much longer winded, way of getting the Zodiac Spear, though you'll get other rewards along the way.

It also means you'll be locked out of getting a second pair of Genji Gloves (the other method is by stealing from Gilgamesh) which is arguably more useful if you can get the Zodiac Spear through the chest method.

Speak to the Huntmaster near the Hunt board and say "You're a bird of prey". You'll now be given the task of hunting down a Thalassinon - he'll tell you it can be found in Vaddu Strand, but that's all you'll get out of him.

Head to Vaddu Strand and stand on the tall hill in the area, and then wait ten seconds, and your prey will appear. Deal with it, grab the item it drops, and return to the Huntmaster with it. He'll welcome you to the Hunt Club, and then you need to speak to either Atak, Blok, or Stok for an explanation of the club's activities.

You'll soon find there's a list of 80 rare creatures to hunt, and bringing back up to 30 trophies from them - and giving those trophies to some combination of brothers - will allow you to purchase new and exciting items from the club's shop. Below is a table showing how many trophies you need to give to each brother to unlock which items - but note that there are only 30 trophies available, meaning it's impossible to unlock everything. You'll need to choose your rewards carefully!

For more help with? Final Fantasy 12? Our Final Fantasy 12 The Zodiac Age guide, walkthrough, Switch and Xbox differences gives an overview of the game to get you started. Elsewhere, there's our hidden Espers strategy and locations and Elite Hunts and Marks pages, how to get the best Zodiac Jobs for each character, advice on farming LP from Jellies and even how to get the Zodiac Spear.

Each of the creatures spawns in specific locations under certain conditions, and tracking them down can be very time consuming. Any that have a certain spawn percentage simply require going in and out of an area a few times until they show up, but bear in mind that a "20% chance" doesn't guarantee it'll appear once every five visits - you're somewhat at the mercy of RNJesus, so to speak - and some also won't appear until you've joined the Hunt Club.

After about 12-15 hours of story, you can use a nice leveling cheese by setting up the proper gambits and having the right equipment that will allow you to gain nearly max level for characters in a single overnight session. You can learn more about this here. The one adjustment I would make to this strategy is to have everyone wear Bowline Sash accessories so they are immune to confuse. I was getting hit with this and killing my own teammates which would interrupt the process. Even if someone isn't immune to poison (due to the mirror mail armor reflecting it) and dies, they'll get resurrected so it's no big deal. Having a confused party member kill the white mage doing the resurrecting though is not good.

Your main focus for the first step would be to simply play through the story and enjoy it. It's maybe a middle-tier entry as far as characters and story go in my opinion, but it's pretty decent. As you go, you can keep an eye on various things: hunts from the clan and the Phon Coast Hunt Club side-quest. Collect/purchase every technick and magick. I liked this walkthrough which pointed out things like that, as well as helped with choosing jobs for each character, helpful gambits to assign, etc. You could also try to spawn some of the rare monsters as you go, but it's honestly easier to do that after the end-game portion and trial mode.

Now you'll want to mop up just about all the optional content in the game. Continue to level (or use the trick mentioned above) so you can take on all the most powerful enemies in the game. Complete every hunt from the clan and hunt club, collect every esper, complete every side-quest, etc. All of these things are listed in the walkthrough I linked in the previous step.

Trial Mode is a very difficult set of 100 battles that will allow you to get two connected achievements, lots of great equipment, and most importantly nearly fill out your bestiary much easier than hunting all the rare monsters in the regular game world which would normally have unique spawn conditions.

I want to stress that this mode must be tackled in one try, so read up on any items and accessories you may need before trying it. You don't want to get to Trial 100 and realize you don't have the accessory suggested in every guide and you're out of elixers for the esper cheese. You'll just make things harder on yourself being unprepared.

You should have very little left here after doing all the end-game bosses and the trial mode. If you somehow missed any random creature, check your bestiary in the menu and find which entries are missing and hunt them down.

Overall this is a fairly easy completion, though it does have one hell of a traditional JRPG list. Tons of grinding and end-game content to get through with a lot of unique fights that will require very specific setups. However, the gambit system lets most battles play themselves and only the tougher ones will require any player interaction. With the help of walkthroughs and wikis, you should get the right setups to make all of them fairly painless though. It'll still take a while either way though.

This will come naturally as you play through the game. You will use the "cure" spells constantly and attack spells very often as well. Set up a gambit for cure on allies less than 50% health and it will unlock very early.

This will come naturally as you play through the game, and you'll likely unlock it simply by working toward the 50 steal achievement. You'll also likely have one party member constantly casting Libra on themselves.

Steal is the first technick you'll have with Vaan. You can use this manually from the menu or wait about two hours into the game and set up a gambit so he uses it immediately at the beginning of any fight. You'll get a notification in the top left of the screen when you fail or succeed when trying to steal. You'll need to successfully steal 50 total times to unlock this. Bear in mind, each enemy can only be stolen from once.

Another one that should come naturally. This sounds like a lot, but most of the later-game equipment and spells cost tens of thousands of gil each, and you sometimes need multiple of each to outfit your entire party so it adds up rather quickly.

Yet another that should come naturally. You'll get stacks of item drops from monsters that sell for decent amounts of money (which is how you afford the above achievement), and you need to sell various ones to unlock different bazaar packages as well.

To get an average level of 50 for your party, the total levels of all your party members must reach 300. You could literally have all six at Level 50, or have someone at 70 with another at 30 to balance it out. This should come naturally as you work toward all the other achievements. Swap in a lower level character when you're killing basic enemies to help them out, then put back in your main setup when you hit tougher enemies/bosses. The Embroidered Tippet accessory will double the XP for a character.

You get at least 1LP from every enemy you kill, and this gets applied to every character for a net gain of +6LP. You should get this naturally while playing through the game, and definitely if you're working toward all the achievements. If you get a Golden Amulet accessory, this will double LP for the equipped character.

A full Bestiary for every enemy in the game can be found here. Play through the game normally and don't worry much about spawning rare enemies, because as I mentioned in the Road Map you can get a good chunk of the rare enemies in Trial Mode. Once you have completed all the trials and transferred back to the main game, now you can check your Bestiary and see what you're missing and hunt them down with the link provided previously.

The Morbid Urn can be purchased from the Bazaar section of any shop once you have sold the following items: Horakhty's Flame, Phobos Glaze, and Deimos Clay. These are rewards from Hunts 35-37. Once they have been sold, the Morbid Urn can then be purchased for 250k gil.

3a8082e126