OK I'm having a little trouble with Belias seeing as he decimated me 8 times. My party goes as follows:


----Level----HP----MP---Quicken

Vaan------16----679----63----(=))-------Speed
Balthier--14----533----48---------------Gunlinger
Fran------14----474----56----(=))-------Dark Mage
Basch-----17----732----53----(=))-------Heavy Hitter
Ashe------15----471----67---------------Healer
Penelo----13----507----63---------------Potion Monkey

I usually start the battle running in and atempting the do a quicken combo. The most I can get with is 4 if I'm lucky it does no more than ~2200 damage. This takes him down to ~13700 health. Water being his weakness, I ether up Fran and continue to use that which does ~300 till shell goes into effect and it does no more than 150. Vaan, Basch and Vossler begin swinging away doing 250 if they're lucky. No matter what I have tried, I can't seem to get this health below 10,000 which is still far above 1/2. Perhaps some body could help me.

Is he really that hard? I'm about to face him and if you can't beat em with those levels then I won't have a chance.

Set Fran up with Water gambits and have her consistantly cast Water until her MP is empty, then have her attack. Throw an extra potion/cure gambit on her just in case. Give the Manufactured Nethicite to your "tank" and have Ashe keep the heals up constantly, throw a Curaga out if everyones health is low. If Ashe's MP gets too low, switch her up with anyone with the Cure license. (if you wanna blow Ethers, feel free)

Theres multiple ways of doing this, you don't have to do the water thing, and you can switch the Water-caster up if you want to when Fran's MP is empty. It's not hard; I didn't use any quickenings. Just make sure, if you're going to use them... only let the noncasters throw out their quickenings because the casters need the MP.

Your levels should be ok though they're just making it. Personally, I would head back out of the tomb and grind a bit with the party you'll use. Preferably Fran, Basch, and Ashe (providing you'll use them)

Curaga is just out of my reach as of now so I'm heading back to eastersand to get tons of LP

Good idea, my main party's levels were roughly 18-19 for this fight.

When Belias appears on the licence board, is it like the quickens where only one can have it and it disappears?

Sadly, yes. So you might want to choose ahead of time who you will license Belias too.

So if I wanted to i could have Ashe be my summoner and have them all?

Yeah, once someone get's that Esper, that block dissapears for everyone else. levels 18-19 is a good place to be. Once your done, get ready for some nice story telling.

Would I be unwise to have a sole summoner?

Unlike Mist Quickenings, a party member can have as many Espers as he or she wants, so yes, if you want Ashe to be your summoner, have yourself a ball.

But you might want to reconsider her being "the summoner" if she's your healer because she needs the MP to heal. And you might want to consider that each Esper isn't next to each other on the license board and it would require you to buy up alot of unused licenses.

I was about to say Yuna pulled it of quite nicely forgeting that there was no energy used while summoning.

BTW - Why does all the guns suck so much?

I used a quickening and then just melee/blizzard on him until he died.. healed as needed. Wasn't too terribly hard for me.

BTW - Why does all the guns suck so much?

in the status screen the attack power seems lower than any other wepon, but when used, it actually neglect the enemy defence, so the stronger the gun , the better the result.

I was about to say Yuna pulled it of quite nicely forgeting that there was no energy used while summoning.

BTW - Why does all the guns suck so much?

I wouldn't go with a solo summoner.
IMO it'd be wiser to distribute the high rank summons among all your chars ( or at least the 3 main chars) so you'll have the chance to summon them all in a chain without needing to use ethers.


Guns pierce def, i believe they're to be used effeciently against high def monsters.

I'm still stuck with adrammelch... >,<!!!!

I'm still stuck with adrammelch... >,<!!!!

he is weak against ice magic, use blizaga if you have it, or blizara , i reccomend to put it in the gambit command for atleast 2 party members in the battle.

I also used quickings Vs Belias and as usualy the best combo I can get is 5. But he was really easy to me. I dont remember I used cura more than 2 times and I got him down with normal swings after that 0 KOs , dead in the first try.

Dummy Question...
When do espers show up on the license board so i can purchase them.

When I defeated Belias it automatically showed me a place with an Esper icon on the ‎license board, so I choose van and activated that icon.‎

so within the storyline I will fight the espers

yes...but you will not fight all of them...like with all final fantasy games there are a few that are outside the story and have to be found as sidequests

I have a hammer that is equipted to Basch, for some reason it never does like an average amount of damage. While the rest of the party does like 100-300 damage he is always 50-90 or 700-800 but nver in between could this be because of the hammer or the game just being extremely random?

There are 5 espers within the storyline and about 8 extra espers. You gain access to espers on the license board upon defeating them.

There's a huge gap between axe/hammer type weapons' maximum and minimum damage.

Jesus that was easy. A little training and a few licenses does wonders for one's party.

yea you will find that is very common early on in the game later on you have to change up your strategy...but dont be cheap and use nothing but quickenings...while i do understand that they make it really easy to kill harder enemies and it is very tempting to do so....make the game at least a little challenging....i used them just to see what they looked like and while i do appreciate the work put into them i will probably just save them for the near impossible to beat side bosses

Good advice

Where do the Espers derive their stats from?

they say from the same character that holds him, i saked before in another topic, but now it seems i am stronger than my Esper,
especially when you face certain enemies with specific resistance.

I tried to find out on google but it kept giving me the FF6 espers

I was lvl 16, by now and I had everyones 2nd lvl quickening and Basch's 3rd lvl quickening. I got a chain of 10 with the girls. changed to the boys and got a chain of 5 then Vossler killed it with a hit. I had spent loads of time trying to get the Quickenings though.

I rarely used quickenings. They seemed to make beating the game to easy.

Beat him around 14/15.

Trust me; having a lot of Hankerchiefs in hand really helps.

Another reason why I probably beat him is because of the Iron Hammer Basch has.

Demonsbane ftw! But if you cant beat Belias there's no chance of getting Demonsbane.

Try to use Katana Combo again Belias.. Althought the evasion just 5, they can make a triple combo.

And for the Espers, dont ever try to make sole summoner coz u will lose all MP when summon 3 bar orange bar of MP. The 3 bar MP espers are Zodiark, Ultima, Chaos and Farmfrit. If you fast enough controlling your joystick, the 1st thing you need to do after summoning is syphonin ur summon espers.

The most you can get is 4...see that's a problem. I never fully understood the quickening thing until later in the game that you only need to press the R2 or L2 buttons until you see a hi-lighted button to continue your quickenings. It isn't really hard to get above 4 quickenings though. After a quickening combo. Why not use ethers on everyone or 1 person to start another combo...if you don' want to just have vaan hasted or something that speeds him up and let's hope he can combo:D. quickenings are the main thing to do in this battle to own him ya...

Do you mean you can't get above 4 quickenings in a chain?

BS, duder. I've hit 22 before, and I average 15. If you can't pull off chains higher than 4 you'll never get Gabranth for your Sky Pirate's Den. You have to pull off a 12 chain (4 quickenings of each level) to get Black Hole, the "ultimate" concurrence.

Check out the quickening thread in the forum charter for help.

the highest i can get quickening combo is around 13 hits (i dont remember how many lvl quickening i used since the time was too fast) and the final attack was cataclysm.. i used it again ultima and reduce 1/3 of its life bar.. and my lvl that time was around 80/69/69 if im not mistaken..

I got Gabranth after finally pulling off a black hole on a Dire Rat in the Garamsythe waterway after escaping Rabanastre palace. I was in the Estersand for about 20 hours, so I had all of Penelo's and Vaan's and enough saved LP to get Fran's and Baltheir's. I was bound and determined to get it as quickly as possible :D

I am not saying I can only go 4. The thread starter said that I think. I hit 29 once:D but didn't get black hole...and an answer about where espers str come from. It depends on the summoner's own stats. So if Vaan got Belias on his board w/e level vaan is belias would be around there or at that level with certain stats. I'm not 100% sure though. If you wanted this game to be a challenge don't tell people not to use quickenings...just do elite marks and sidequests. Or beat the game without doing any. Without any side quests or doing any real training you would only reach around level 40-45 and see if you can beat the game:D...

Yeah, I gotcha now, Claud. If you pulled a 29 and got 4 of each level you should have gotten a Black Hole as it is given priority over every other, You must not have had 4 of one of the particular levels.

I hate that too, I'll get a huge chain and end up with only 3 lvl 3s. Grrr. :D