Carbon Ocelot's Final Fantasy XII Walkthrough

Emulator Notes

Chain-Leveling

To get enemies to drop lots of the best loot, you'll want to get a high-level chain bonus. There are four levels of loot - normal, blue, yellow, and red (look at the color of the text telling you how many enemies you have in the chain. If you don't pick up loot until you get to the fourth level, you'll get there faster. However, sometimes you'll want to keep killing enemies until they drop really rare loot, so skipping those drops might mean missing a cool item. With an emulator, you can create a save state just before picking up the loot, and then load that state if the loot wasn't rare. NOTE: Some times when you kill an enemy the chain number appears in flashing text with no color coding. This means that any loot dropped there can be picked up without resetting your chain level requirements (i.e., if you see the flashing, grab the loot!)

Ultra-rare items from chests

Items in chests are randomly chosen at the time you open it. On an emulator, you can create a save state, then check the chest. If it's not what you wanted, go kill a monster, and try again. When I'm going after a Diamond Armet on the Tchita Uplands or a Ribbon on the Cerobi Steppe, I use this trick to radically cut down the number of attemps it takes to find something.

Diamond Armlet on the Tchita Uplands

There is a 1/10 chance that a chest will appear along the southern boarder of the Garden of Life's Circle in the Tchita Uplands. Teleport to the crystal in the Chosen Path and go counter-clockwise along the map until you get to the blue save crystal in The Nameless Spring. Save at the crystal, and create a new save state. Head south to the next screen and flee along the southern (right) edge. If you don't see a chest by the time you come to the eastern edge, reload your save state. For your second attempt, head NORTH and fight a single monster. After that, save over your last save state, then flee south past the save crystal and look for the chest again. Again, if you don't see it by the time you get to the eastern edge of the map, reload that save state and fight another monster. Eventually the chest will appear. When it does, create a new save state before opening it. If it doesn't have the Diamond Armlet, reload your save state, do something that requires the system generate a random number (attack, cure, etc), and try again. You should be able to get the Diamond Armlet reasonably quickly this way. (Trust me, it's faster than rebooting the emulator and loading the previous save over and over.)

Ribbon on the Cerobi Steppe

You must have a Diamond Armlet for this to work - see above. You're going to leverage a similar strategy to the one above for this. Teleport to Balfonheim Port and head North and West through the Cerobi Steppe until you get to the blue save crystal in Journey's Rest. Save at the crystal, then create a new save state in your emulator. Look at the map and notice on Crossfield (the next screen to the North), you'll see a square looking gap in the map close to the top of that area, about 1/4 of the way west from the eastern transition to The Northsward (meaning it's to the right of the map area.) There is a chance that you'll see a chest along the north edge of this square. So after you've created your save state, you can head north to Crossfield and flee directly to that location. If you don't see a chest, reload your save state and head SOUTH to the Terraced Bank and kill an enemy. Save over your previous save state and then go look for that chest again. Repeat until it appears.

Once the chest appears, save over your previous save state, then check to see if it has a ribbon. If it doesn't, do something that requires the system generate a random number (attack, cure, etc), and try again. If you want to go for another Ribbon, head south through the save crystal area and head counter-clockwise around the map until you get to Feddik River. Create a new save state just before you transition from Feddik River to Crossfield. This should allow the chest to respawn. Using hot-keys to map "save state" and "load state", I was able to get three ribbons in about 30 minutes. YMMV. FWIW, I set all three characters to have gambits disabled, then got close to the chest. I'd save, check the chest, and reload if it wasn't a ribbon. Then I would have one of the other charcters cast cure, and then repeat. It went super quick.

Diamond Armlet in Giruvegan

You'll notice the various chests in Giruvegan may contain cool loot. If you equip the diamond armlet and do the save / cure / try / load trick, you should be able to ensure you get the cool armor from all chests. However, be sure you DO NOT WEAR THE DIAMOND ARMLET if you are trying to get the Holy Lance. It won't show up unless you do NOT have that equiped. In the Uldobi Phullam Udiipra region, you can get the Glimmering Robes.