The Enemy Chains thread.

Done some digging/research and I found out a couple of really neat/interesting things about Chaining. I supose most of you know most info I am about to share with you, but I’m just being thourough and give you the complete rundown about Chaining and loot.

But first of all, I’d like to share that there are two different kind of Chains. There’s your Regular one, and a hidden one. I’ll start with the Regular.

The Regular Chain starts as soon you kill 2 or more monsters of the same classification. It can go up to a maximum of 999 and is broken when you: kill a monster of a different classification, enter a town or touch a save crystal.

Now we all know, the higher your chain, the better the loot they drop. You can tell by the loot tokens dropped by monsters. There’s 4 levels of items, going from Very Common to Very Tare. You can tell the level has increased by a few factors: you’ll hear a certain sound when you aquired the next level in the loot chain, the icon will change from a bag to a token (becomes larger as you progress to the fourth level) and the number of your current chain number will change.

Your current chain level actually will go up alot faster if you do not pick up the loot dropped by monsters. If you manage to avoid loot, you’ll reach the next level of chaining after killing 6 to 10 creatures. Meaning that you can reach a level 4 chain after a maximum of 30 kills. This will help you severely when hunting for Very Rare loot.

Should you pick up the loot every time you slay a monsters, it’ll take you this many kills to reach the next level:

Level 2: 31 Chain
Level 3: 82 Chain
Level 4: 163 Chain

You might notice that your chain total (the number) flashes white occasionally. This means you can safely pick up the loot without having to kill more monsters to increase your chain level. This is rather important to know, specially if you are looking for some rare loot that’s only dropped at level 4.

After killing 10 specimens of the same creature in a row, there’s a chance that more than one piece of Very Common or Common loot will be dropped simultaniously. After 18 or more there’s also a chance that more than one piece of Rare or Very Rare loot will drop.

Important note, this only applies if you kill the same monster, not a different monster of the same classification. Again, this is rather important if you are looking for certain items/loot and it’ll help you get those really rare/hard to get items. This will make your hunt a little easier.

Now, we’re moving onto the hidden chain.

The hidden chain is known as the Reverse Chain.

As the name suggests, it works in the opposite way the Regular Chain does. This chain is broken when you kill 2 monsters of the same classification in a row. So basically, just make sure you kill a different monsters each and every time. This also means that there is no way to combine the two different Chains together.

The main difference is, that the Reverse Chain has no counter like the Regular Chain does. So you’l have to keep up with the kills yourself. It’s not that bad really, you know you’ll break your Reverse Chain the second you start a Regular Chain. You also won’t get other bonusses (the 10% HP bonus or the 10% MP bonus for example).

Also, the max chain level for the Reverse Chain is one level lower than for Regular, meaning, the maximum level you can reach for Reverse Chains is 3. You’ll never get better than Rare loot, never Very Rare. And at a lower frequency.

For example: the chance to obtain the same loot as a level 3 chain is after killing 20 or more creatures 15%.

This means that Regular Chains are far more effective for collecting loot. But the advantage of a Reverse Chain is, that if there’s many different creatures around and/or a few very rare creatures, this is a good way to still try and get better loot.

Hope this has been of any help.

Thanks a lot!
I was about to make a thread about this last night, asking what the levels were for, how high they could go, who had the highest, and so forth.

I figured out the general idea of a chain while playing and trying to figure it out when I started to get past 20, just get the same class of creatures over and over. I think I got up to 47, and thats my highest for now. I just started the game and I’m 14 hours in with level 13-ish characters, done four hunts, and just passed the battle with Judge Ghis.

I fuckin’ LOVE this game, I’m addicted! 😛

so thats what chains are for…I was up to like 15 chain in the swears while getting to level 10 but thats it.

Oh, I dunno if you’re on Gamefaqs or not, but I think it would be a GREAT idea for you to post this as an in-depth FAQ for FFXII there.

Just a suggestion, I think it would help out a LOT of people. 🙂

Naw I don’t think I’llp ut this on gamefaqs. I don’t frequent the internet enough and I don’t go on gamefaqs all that much.