A Life Less Ordinary

Since I got back from work at 5pm last night, I've added 9 hours to my Final Fantasy XII game clock, bringing it to 175:03:51. I've had the game for 11 months now. Anyway. I decided I'd temporarily give up on my unsuccessful attempts at beating the Behemoth King in order to get some of the more elusive weapons in the game. Put it this way, I now realise why they're so elusive.

First off I went for the Durandal. This was the easiest to get so far, after being able to steal a Leshach Halcyon at the first attempt from a Leshach Entite (not bad considering there's only a 6% chance of stealing one). The problem there was getting the snowstorms to start, taking about 15 minutes of re-entering the Paramina Rift. Emperor Scales weren't too hard either, having to Poach the Archæoævis in the Zertinan Caverns - 7 Poaches got me the three Scales I needed. After having already sold a few Lifewicks, I got the Durandal an hour after I started getting the required loot.

The Saggitarius bow was a pain. I started at about 7pm and didn't get it until four hours of gameplay later. Starting with the 3 Beastlord Horns, these were obtained by Poaching the Humbaba in the Mosphoran Highwaste, took a couple of hours. The Ash Wyrm, also at the Highwaste, dropped a Moon Ring after the third battle, which was lucky too. I had already sold 2 Moon Rings in the past so I only needed the one.

The problem was the 4 Saggitarius Gems. I spent the rest of the night in the Henne Mines, working my way down to the areas where the Hecteyes lived and from there, chaining them. After three hours reaching a chain of 89 Hecteyes, I had only obtained two of the gems and gave up as my eyes were burning. Next morning though, I tried a different approach and went to the Stilshrine Of Miriam to steal the gems from the Oilings that lived there. Annoyingly, I got two gems in only 8 steals, also with only a 6% chance of the gem appearing. Pah, curse you, chance.

Lastly I've spent two hours this morning getting the ingrediants for Serpentarius, one of the three ingrediants for the Tournesol sword. I have one piece of the required three Serpentarius so far. One ingrediant is the Snake Skin, dropped by only one non-rare enemy in the game, the Wildsnake in the Giza Plains. I had to wait half an hour for the Dry Season and even then, there's only one Wildsnake in the Plains so I had to refresh the area loads. I got 14 Snake Skins after about half an hour, selling one of these to get my first piece of Serpentarius.

I knew where to get Serpent Eyes - the Basilisks in the Feywood, probably the most annoying place in FF history. Two of these are needed for each piece of Serpentarius, and after chaining 56 Basilisks I picked up the four Eyes I needed. Now I need High Arcanas... and now these need three ingrediants of their own. So to summarise: I'm getting the ingrediants (Arcanas, Feystones and Souls Of Thamasa) to get one of the ingrediants (High Arcana) to get one of the ingrediants (Serpentarius) of the Tournesol.

Yeah, I have a headache from reading that last bit too.