The Final Fantasy series has always followed the standard RPG rules of risk and reward when it came to items. You won't find the Ultima Hackmaster +12 sword in the first dungeon guarded by goblins, rats, and skeletons. The best items are guarded by the most powerful bosses, which encourages you to use your lesser items and abilities in a smart way, so as to overpower greater foes and earn the treasure that they are protecting.
Square Enix used to be heavily involved in the strategy guide business and it shows. There are some Final Fantasy items that are downright impossible to find without a guide.
There are also the items that were never meant to be discovered by players. Square Enix has buried many intriguing weapons and key items in the Final Fantasy games, as some needed to be removed at the last minute. These include some of the most powerful weapons in the game, while others are indications of plot points that never saw fruition.
We are here today to look at the Final Fantasy items that are the most difficult to discover. From the best weapons of the members of AVALANCHE to the perverse undergarments that were rightfully buried in the code of Final Fantasy VII, here are the 15 Final Fantasy Items That Are Impossible To Find!
Barret & Cait Sith's Ultimate Weapons - Final Fantasy VII
The Shinra Electric Power Company is the first antagonist of Final Fantasy VII. It was responsible for turning the afterlife into a power reactor, which is about as villainous as you can get. The Shinra executives were replaced by Sephiroth, who remains the main villain for the rest of the game.
You are given the chance to finish off Shinra during a raid on Midgar at the end of the second disc of Final Fantasy VII. It is during this section of the game that you can find the best weapons for two of the main characters: Barret Wallace and Cait Sith.
Barret's ultimate weapon is called the Missing Score. You can only find it if you bring Barret with you to the Sister Ray during the raid on Midgar. If you don't bring him, then the item is lost forever.
Cait Sith's ultimate weapon is called the Marvelous Cheer. You have to go out of your way to return to the Shinra Headquarters during the raid on Midgar. If you don't do this, then you will not have a chance to return once the mission is over.
Pink Tail - Final Fantasy IV
The Flan Princess is one of the earliest examples of Square Enix hiding something in a game that most players would never discover without a guide. They were known as Squaresoft back then and they hid the best items in places you would never look.
In order to create the best armor in Final Fantasy IV, you need to take an item called the Pink Tail to the Adamant Isle Grotto. It only has a 1/64 chance of dropping from the Flan Princess enemy, which can only be fought in a very specific room in the Lunar Subterrane.
Once you finally get a Pink Tail, you can trade it for a set of Adamant Armor. This will drop the damage from most attacks to the single digits. Wearing the Adamant Armor will make the rest of the game laughably easy, which is useful for people who are having trouble against Zeromus.
Killer Bow - Final Fantasy II
When video games are being developed, they have to go through a debug phase. This is the point when testers go through a game in order to discover bugs so that they can be fixed before release. The game usually features a set of a debug tools, which allow you to travel to any point in the game and use any mixture of items. Final Fantasy VII actually shipped with its debug tools intact, which people can access using a cheat device.
Final Fantasy II has one of its debug items still in the game, though it cannot be accessed without a cheat device. This is a weapon known as the Killer Bow and it has an 80% chance of killing any enemy in the game when it is fired.
The Dawn of Souls remake of Final Fantasy II also has a copy of the Killer Bow in its files, though it comes with a message from the developers. They ask the player if they found the Killer Bow through a bug or if they are just a "1337 haXXor."
Venus Sigil - Final Fantasy X
The ultimate weapons in Final Fantasy X are pretty much useless on their own. You need to find special items known as Crests and Sigils in order to unlock their full potential.
Lulu's ultimate weapon is an animated doll of the Onion Knight from Final Fantasy III. You need to find the Venus Crest and the Venus Sigil to power it up. The Venus Crest is easy to find, as it is within the Farplane entrance in Guadosalam. The Venus Sigil, on the other hand, is one of the most annoying items to find in the entire Final Fantasy series.
In order to find the Venus Sigil, you need to travel to the Thunder Plains and dodge two-hundred bolts of lightning. This involves performing a difficult QTE exactly two-hundred times. The Venus Sigil will then appear in a chest in front of Rin's Travel Agency.
If you try to leave the area or save your game before dodging two-hundred lightning bolts, then the counter will reset and you have to start over.
Zodiac Spear - Final Fantasy XII
The Internet had become commonplace enough by the time that Final Fantasy VIII had come out that most players never needed to buy a strategy guide. Websites like GameFAQs have been around since 1995, so fan-created guides for big games have been around for a long time now. The Final Fantasy series was no exception to this, as fans either created their own guides or just outright copied the official ones.
It took a while for Square Enix to get the message, as they were still hiding obscure secrets in the Final Fantasy games well into the PlayStation 2 era. One of the most difficult to find items in the whole Final Fantasy series was in the original version of XII.
The Zodiac Spear is the best weapon in the game, but the only way to find one involves you not opening specific chests that you find throughout the game. You are given no indication about which chests shouldn't be opened. This was changed in the Zodiac edition of the game, which gave you several different ways to find the spear.
Angel Ring - Final Fantasy I & II Dawn Of Souls
The original Final Fantasy has been remade on numerous different platforms. These updated ports tend to feature new bosses and items in order to encourage old fans to pick up the game once more. This has included bosses from the later Final Fantasy games, as well as new creatures like Chronodia, which is basically the other bosses from the game glued to a ball.
Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls featured a new dungeon called the Whisperwind Cove. You can find some of the best items in the game here, as well as face off against classic Final Fantasy bosses like Typhon and Death Gaze. There is an item hidden within the Whisperwind Cove called the Angel Ring, which raises your stats and heals some of your hit points every turn.
The Angel Ring was a little too well hidden. It won't appear in the Whisperwind Cove due to a programming error. You can only acquire an Angel Ring with a cheat device.
Tinkerbell - Final Fantasy V
You might think that a bell is a lame idea for a weapon. The creators of Final Fantasy V thought that they would make the bell the signature weapon for the Geomancer job. Geomancers are mages who use the current terrain to power their attacks. We're not sure where exactly a bell fits into this, but it's the weapon they choose to wield on the battlefield.
The most powerful bell in the game is called the Tinklebell, which is a name that is guaranteed to strike fear into the hearts of your enemies. The only way to find a Tinklebell is a 6% drop from the Twintania boss that you fight in the Interdimensional Rift.
What makes this such a pain to get is that you have to keep reseting your game and fighting a powerful boss over and over again, just so you can get an item for a mostly useless class.
Paladin Shield - Final Fantasy VI
One of the best shields in Final Fantasy VI is difficult to acquire for different reasons than normal. It isn't hidden in an incredibly hard to reach place or held outside of the reach of players. Squaresoft decided to be extra cruel when it came to acquiring the Paladin Shield, as you needed to equip a cursed item for 255 battles.
In order to create the Paladin Shield, you need to transform a Cursed Shield. To do this, you need to give a party member the Cursed Shield and have them survive for 255 battles. The catch is that the Cursed Shield inflicts every status element in the game. This forces you to grind for a long time with one party member who is basically inactive.
It's possible to alleviate the effects of the Cursed Shield by also equipping the character with a Ribbon. This will remove most of the status effects, save for Doom, which will kill the character in a few turns.
Ribbon - Final Fantasy VIII
The Ribbon is one of the most iconic items in the Final Fantasy series. It is an accessory that offers protection from almost every status effect in the game. There are some games that limit the Ribbon's usage by gender (like in Final Fantasy Tactics), but they are generally available to everyone.
Final Fantasy VIII is the one game where most players never got a chance to find a Ribbon. This is because it required the usage of the PocketStation, which was a Japan-only device that was compatible with certain PlayStation titles and could load games onto a small handheld computer.
When the PocketStation was used with Final Fantasy VIII, it allowed you to play a game called Chocobo World. This was the only way to acquire the Ribbon ability, which could be given to one of the Guardian Forces.
Those who bought the PC version of Final Fantasy VIII were able to find the Ribbon, as the PocketStation was recreated as a separate program that could be loaded up and played on the desktop.
Magitek Suit V2 - Final Fantasy XV
Final Fantasy XV has a superboss called the Adamantoise, which is physically the biggest boss in the series. This is a Godzilla-sized turtle that the developers originally touted as taking hours to defeat.
The presence of the Adamantoise in Final Fantasy XV has obscured the fact that the game has several other impressive looking superbosses. One of these is the MA-X Angelus, which is a robot that was designed to take down both Noctis and the surviving Astrals.
The MA-X Angelus is the only creature in Final Fantasy XV that drops the Magitek Suit V2, which is one of the best pieces of equipment in the game. It only has a 5% chance of dropping the item, though players have discovered a way to repeatedly fight the boss, as it is possible to load a fresh save on the Report screen and have another chance at fighting the MA-X Angelus straight away.
King Of Jump Rope - Final Fantasy IX
The Venus Sigil might have been incredibly annoying to acquire, but at least you got a decent item at the end. Final Fantasy IX has a minigame that is even harder for a prize that is utterly useless.
At the start of Final Fantasy IX, you get to play as Vivi as he visits the city of Alexandria for the first time. There are a group of kids playing jump rope in the streets outside of the ticket booth that Vivi needs to visit.
He can ask to play jump rope, which starts a QTE minigame where you have to press the button at just the right time to make Viva jump. As the game progresses, the rope gets faster and faster, which means that you have to increase the pace of your button pressing.
If you complete over one thousand jumps, then you will be awarded the King of Jump Rope key item. This does absolutely nothing, except sit in your key items slot.
Dream Harp - Final Fantasy III
Final Fantasy III is one of the most brutally difficult games in the series. This is due to some horrible design choices that force you to rely on specific jobs at certain points in the game, as well as the limited amount of saving options while in the middle of a dungeon. The DS remake of the game did little to make the game any more forgiving.
You shouldn't be afraid to cheat a little in Final Fantasy III, due to how hard it is. One of the most effective cheats is called the Item Upgrade Glitch, which relies on you finding 99 copies of a single item and then winning another one in battle. This will cause the game to change one of your items into something else.
The Item Upgrade Glitch is the only way to acquire the Dream Harp in the NES version of Final Fantasy III. This is a Bard weapon that inflicts the Sleep status on a successful hit. It was later turned into a purchasable item in the DS remake of the game.
The Secret Summons - Final Fantasy IV
The vast majority of the summon monsters in Final Fantasy IV are involved in the story. Rydia arrives in the land of Feymarch, where the Eidolons live in secret. It is possible for Rydia to gain their power for her own, but the party has to defeat them in battle.
A lot of people who played Final Fantasy IV weren't aware of the fact that there was a whole group of optional summons that Rydia could learn. These were based off monsters that you fought in the game and included creatures like the Bomb, Cockatrice, Goblin, and Mindflayer.
The reason most players never found these summons is that they were all 1/64 drops from common monsters that most players never had a reason to fight more than once.
The Pink Tail was a pain to find, but the Adamant Armor made it worth it in the end. These monster summons aren't as good as the ones you find in the story, so it was pointless making them so hard to find.
Excalibur II - Final Fantasy IX
The old days of gaming were filled with playground rumors of insanely difficult ways to unlock items and cheats in video games. Who can forget all of the things you needed to do to the truck near the S. S. Anne in Pokémon Red & Blue to find a Mew or having to type out the rhythm to "Wannabe" by The Spice Girls in order to unlock the revealing code in Tomb Raider.
Final Fantasy IX decided to include a ridiculous method of finding an item that was just as stupid as the urban legends. Steiner's best weapon in the game is the Excalibur II, but the only way to find it is by reaching the final dungeon in the game in under twelve hours. If you reach Memoria a second later than that, then the sword will be gone forever.
The quest to find the Excalibur II was even more difficult for people playing the game on PAL systems, as the game ran at 5/6 the speed of the NTSC version. It was still possible to do, but you now only had ten hours in which to reach the final dungeon.
Mystery Panties - Final Fantasy VII
One of the reasons that Squaresoft broke away from Nintendo and moved to the Sony PlayStation was because their games had to endure harsh censorship in order to be suitable for release on the NES and SNES. The people at Square wanted to tell more adult stories, as the average age of gamers across the world was rising. This is why Final Fantasy VII features a lot more adult content and themes than the previous games in the series.
It seems that the creators of Final Fantasy VII went a little too far in places, as the Honey Bee Inn section of the game features a lot of cut content that was considered to be too racy. This includes more overt references to the fact that the Honey Bee Inn was a brothel and that patrons were showing up to sleep with prostitutes.
One of the dummied out key items in the game is called the Mystery Panties. These were meant to be used as part of the quest where Cloud had to dress up like a girl. According to the cut content from the Honey Bee Inn, these were stolen from the Seventh Heaven by a guy who thought they were Tifa's. The description of the item reveals that they actually belong to Marlene, the six-year-old daughter of Barret...
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Can you think of any other items that are impossible to find in Final Fantasy? Let us know in the comment section!