I'm at the point where I am supposed to sneak into the palace. Instead of going ahead with that I've been dealing with these 'marks', my most recent assignment being some cactus with a flower on its head. Is it necessary to do these marks at this point, or can I continue with the plot and come back to these same marks later on? Or if I pick up the story at this point, will I never see these specific mobs again?

I don't want to miss out on any marks that I can hunt and kill, but this is becoming tedious.

its not neccesary to do, the only one i did was the rogue tomato... other than that i just went ahead with the story...

they do get pretty hard anyway. So unless you're already in your teens, won't do much good for you anyway.

you can accept the mark on the bar's board and it will last for the whole game, it never "expires", neither if you talk with the bill petitioner, so you can make sure of not "losing" the marks just accepting them and later manage to kill them all. The thing is, the flower cactus is unkillable just by yourself at this point in the game, because he makes a last stand attack "1000 needles, that makes 1000 damage to you (instant kill at this point). The thing I did to kill him was to be with penelo when she joins you to refill the sunstone, and then go to kill the flower cactus together. Pretty easy fight.

Anyway, you should TRY TO TAKE DOWN AS MANY MARKS AS EARLY AS POSSIBLE because the rewards are most of the time GREAT for the time they appear, and later they grow weak (if you go at lv. 99 they will be very easy, but the ice sword that a mark gave me will not be as good as it was for me at the time :D)

I just killed the Thextera and said "Fuck this..."

and continued on, but my friend insists on leveling up in the Estersands to kill bigger marks.
I find this incredibly boring so I am now like 4 hours farther into the story than he is.

I guess it's just choice of what you feel like doing.

I killed that Flower Cactai without it even hitting me once. I just used a quickening.. down in one shot. Seriously.. he was the easiest of all of the marks so far.

Guys really need to farm LP and get those liscenses up. Quickenings (though hard to understand at first) can seriously KILL any boss that I've encountered with a single shot. Only two bosses took two quickenings and some other crap. Sounds cheap, but if you do them right.. you can do some serious damage. I totally OWNED that Flower Cactai. He didn't stand a chance. His little red line didn't even have time to show up before I started my mist attack.

I killed than thing regardless from one basic attack from Vaan once I got back from the Lhusu Mines.

The mark? the one with the flower on it's head? I know it's easy but dang.

haha yeah.

I did some serious leveling up. it was somewhat ridiculous.

Well worth it though

i killed the mark in the mines (the giant plant) without using any quickenings. O_o

i didn't know how to use them. and i dind't have the mp to use it anyway. lol but luckily, the over 300 lp i had saved for each character was put into battle lore and potion lore and hp+100 and stuff like that and those helped out a lot!

Killing the Marks is very useful.
Some of them gave you a weapon which is far stronger than your current weapon.

I am having some major trouble with the Wyrven Lord.


Man I suck.

yeah you get Ragnarok for rank VII

Wyvern Lord.. is that one in the Sand sea? If so.. he really wasn't that hard.... if you use some good quickenings on him he's pretty much down for the count. The thing that sucks about him is that he's a flyer, so it can be difficult to hit him with melee attacks. Telekinesis (technick) can help with that. I only used two quickenings on him which killed him. So.. but that is "IF" we're talking about the same one hehe.

Golthanos, it seems that you rely on Quickenings a hell of a lot.
I mainly used Black Magick on the Wyrven Lord with a hefty amount of Phoenix Downs and Ethers.

Thats what Quickening is for.
Its really useful. Imagine level 15 fighting the Marks White Mousse.
Impossible to win but with Quickening, I can win this level 30 Monster.

lol.. yeah I do rely on the quickenings. Because they do a hell of alot of damage. I usually take down half if not more of a bosses HP with just one of em. So .. sure.

Speaking of White Mousse.. that damn thing CANNOT be lvl 15. I just had my ass handed to me by that thing and I used two quickenings on it. WTF? I guess it didn't help that every monster in there is also lvl 39 and I'm lvl 25 though. Hell of a pain in the ass.. any suggestions?!?!??!

My point is, using quickenings on every fight that poses as a challenge in the game sucks the fun out if it.

It makes it too easy, it is more gratifying to level up and earn items from a 200-Chain, then kick something's ass.

lol!! That's funny. You act like using a quickening is cheating or something. If a monster is weak to ice, are you gonna use FIRE to it? I didn't think so. You're gonna use what's best. I built my characters to have strong quickenings. I still farm for HOURS getting loot and leveling up and gaining LP. And believe me it is MORE than gratifying seeing your quickening utterly DEMOLISH a boss.

hey Gilthanos, can you help me out a bit. um...could you maybe give me a good "marker" of how many quickenings i SHOULD have by a specific point in the game?

for example like

"by the time you reach the mines, you should at least have 2 quickenings"

something like that. i'd like to make sure i'm doing "ok" and not building up my chars wrong or anything. thanks in advance. :p

I would say.
Get all 3 Quickening not to used them.
But to have them boost your current MP 3 times.

With more MP, you can use your magic more efficiently.

I have only used a quickening twice in the game and I have had no major trouble so far.

I did not mean that it is "cheating" but knowing you are going to fight a mark and knowing you are going to do nothing but use two quickenings on it is lame.

Is it fair?

Yes.

Is it lame?

You bet.


The only time I really needed to use a quickening to save my ass was the first demon gate in the King's Tomb.

I mean it is your choice how your characters are, but I just thought I would throw my opinions in.

Erm.. But the Marks is 2x my level.
Without Quickening, it will kill me in 1 hit.
After killing it, the reward is an equipment that I will only get near end of the game.

Well, I could are less what you choose to do in the game.

But I just think you are taking the easy way out and ruining the fun of the fact that it is supposed to be "kick-you-ass-hard-battle"

Yeah. Maybe you are right.
Cause there is no hard battle for me except those Optional bosses.
I even let Gambits finished off any of my bosses battle.

You Guys Make It Sound So Simple..... I Myself Have No Idea What In God's Name Is This Quickenings... Let Alone Espers...

Haha. I did a 18 Hit Quickening; the most I have ever done.

Yes, use Quickening is a lame way to kill the boss, or any hard encounter outside the level range. I killed the 2 Warewolves south of the Nomad Village when I was level 5, instant level up :)

Some people like to progress the story line as fast as possible while others like to beef up their characters to prepare well for the upcoming encounters, the choice is yours. I just want to emphasize the fact that Quickenings are extremely powerful (it doesn't scale with level/stat as far as I know so there are certain drawbacks), especially in the early games that made everything trivial. I personally think it's just one of those things the developer put into the game to benefit the casual players. Like someone said before, the marks/rares are supposed to give you a challenge. I figured there will be plenty of those later in the game (as in any FF game) so I'm not too worried :)

Getting all the quickening as soon as possible does have the benefit of multiplying your MP gauge (double with 2nd Quickening, and triple with the 3rd). Imagine Vaan with 32 MP and 96 MP - the difference is apparent. So even if you want to progress the game "the normal way" extra boosts in MP always helps. It is part of the game mechanic, after all.

So to sum up, I personally strongly suggest anyone to spend their hard earned LP on getting at least two Quickenings as soon as possible and go from there. Most of the "key" abilities in the beginning costs little LP and you can't really use the more powerful stuff just yet because the shops don't sell them. Doubling or tripling your characters' MP gauge gets you around much longer though. And it's always a nice thing to have an "oh shit" button.

quickenings serve one purpose for me, making the game interesting by seeing how many hits i can get

resorting to quickenings to beat anything in the game is a good way to show that you are deprived of logic

I'm afraid the consolations from another thread shouldn't be carried over :)

Perhaps I didn't make myself clear: I went through the content after the first visit to Levathian without the use of Quickenings. And I totally agree, z, that one of the reason I use them on mobs in the areas sometimes is to just see how many hits I can get in. The best I did was Black Hole which was rather impressive. Truly fitting it's position.

There, that's better.

if the game was harder, would using quick's still be pussy?


think about it. don't reply. just ponder on it. i'm basically trying to set you guys up for a double-standard type of ownage where i win and you all lose. lol

but yah. feel free to answer now that you thought about it.

Heck play the game that you see fit. Style your players anyway you want. I am setting up mine like this: the gentlemen are my meatshields, warriors to some, and the ladies are my Red Mages, attack/cure magics and other types as well. Just play the game how you want to play it. Theres no right or wrong way to play it.

btw. who actually uses techniques regularly?

i seriously gotta say... i'd kick myself in the ass for being so stupid. >.<

i never gave ANY characters any techniques aside from libra and the one that recovers magic. (oh and steal). but after i decided to give everyone max quickeings (3 each) i went through some to get at the quickening slots, and out of curiosity, tested some out. i tested coin toss (or wahtever it's called) and "traveler?" the one where the dmg is calculated based on steps taken...

all i gotta say is...O_o i did like 5k in one hit. do you have ANY fucking idea how much easier some battles could have been if i had those before? ;_; it's like i wasted my time! omg. aaahhhhh lol

i can't wait to try out all the moves to see how neat they are.