============================================================================= Learning Blue Magic Guide by CreeDo ============================================================================= [INTRODUCTION] This guide is to make it easier for you to master the Blue Mage job or to learn just skills you want. It lists the locations of monsters who can teach you these skills and explains how to equip yourself to make it easier. [GENERAL STRATEGY] The basic idea is to send your blue magic 'students' and 1 beastmaster into certain random battles. First you kill the monsters that can't teach you anything. If there are 2 or more monsters who can teach you the same skill, you only need to keep 1 alive. Once the distractions are gone, you surround the monster(s) you're learning from and get everyone close to it. Then use the beastmaster to make it use the skills you want to learn. Not every battle will go smoothly. Sometimes you need to keep 2 or 3 monsters alive because each one teaches you something. Surrounding them all won't be possible. Others can teleport or fly so you must chase after them. But others can hit from anywhere on the map so only the beastmaster must follow them. A few skills cannot be forced by your beastmaster so you'll need patience to learn those. Some have a high mp cost so you must feed the monster ether. It's easier to do this when you're far in the game, and everyone's a high level. You'll take a lot of damage and eat a lot of debuffs doing this, so having a good HP, equipment and jobs is important. You can learn these skills even after beating the game and doing all 300 (301) quests. [===========================================================================] [JOB SETUP] - You don't need to be a blue mage to learn skills. You can use one long enough to master the "Learn" support ability from the Light Saber. - Once you've set "Learn", you might try powerful jobs that can do lots of damage or equip good weapons and armor. It's actually not bad to stay as a blue mage... they are pretty strong when equipped with a talwar and it's fun to try the new skills you just learned, some of which are very good. It also makes it easier to see what skills your blue mage has or still needs. - Remove reaction abilities that cause damage. You don't want to accidentally kill the monster you're trying to learn from. The ideal ability is reflex. Absorb damage is also fine. You might figure Evade Magic would also make sense, but then you might avoid some of the spells you're trying to learn. :::::Useful Jobs/Secondary Jobs:::::: - White Mage (sub) - Two skills require Reraise to learn. You can get Reraise from Angel Rings, but if you don't have enough rings, you'll need White Magic to do it. You may even want Reraise and Angel Ring both, since it's easy to come back to life with low HP and then immediately get killed again. You'll also want the Refresh ability to remove bad debuffs and of course Cure to heal damage. - Items (sub) - At least one item user is very useful to give the monsters Ethers, so you can be sure they have enough MP to use the spell you want to learn. Items are also a good safety valve in case things go wrong, you can heal or raise units and give them ether so they can use powerful spells like Ultima. You may find knots of rust or dark matter useful to remove a little bit of HP on Shellings (see below) or to smack a teammate who is charmed/confused. - Hunter - Hunters are great for dishing out big damage. They work as a main or subjob. You will mostly use Sidewinder to damage unwanted enemies, and Ultima Shot if it's available. The ability 'Hunting' is great for learning Cornered. It does a tiny bit of damage, and the enemy can only hit with Cornered when his HP is 10 or less. So if your regular attack might do too much damage and kill him, you can use Hunting to safely wear his HP down bit by bit. - Time Mage - This will be the subjob for your Nu Mou beastmaster. You can haste yourself and make the enemy use their skills want more frequently. You can use slow on it, and of course haste your party. You can also stop other monsters that you want to keep alive, so they don't harrass you while you're busy with the current monster. You can quicken your items user to feed them ethers. In some cases you will even want to quicken a monster to get it to keep trying skills that you can't force (like Roulette). - Any 'asskicker' job combo. If you are fielding less than 5 Blue Mages, then you will have at least one open slot. Fill that slot with your strongest units, who can kill off unwanted monsters fast and make life easier. Some well-known nasty combinations include: Paladin/Paravir with Geomancy - huge damage elemental skills, no MP cost. Paladin/Seer with Dual Wield - use magic frenzy to hit 3 times. Trickster or Cannoneer/Gladiator with Halve MP - fast long range ultimas. Assassin/Green Mage with Halve MP - Tranq yourself then get easy OHKO's. Red Mage/Summoner with Halve MP - Doublecast summons, damages a big area. (beastmaster)/Sage with Halve MP - Bring a 2nd beastmaster who can Ultima. Ranger with Item Lore - use Mirror X-Potions for easy 400 damage. Fusilier/Moogle Knight or Juggler - Spam stopshot to end enemy harrassment and occasionally bust out Ultima or use smile tosses where needed. My job setup was mostly Blue Mages with White Magic or Hunting as a sub. There are stronger setups, but really you spend most of the battle skipping turns, waiting for the beastmaster's turn and staying alive. So the exact setup doesn't matter. Just be sure to bring along at least 2 with white magic and 1 with items. ============================================================================= [EQUIPMENT SETUP] - *ANGEL RINGS* for everyone. You must have Reraise to survive Cornered (aka Limit Glove)and Roulette. If you don't survive them, you don't learn them. Without angel rings, you must waste turns casting reraise, so just use them. It's not hard to get lots of them, just use the following strategy: 1. Make 4 Thieves who have Lv. 3 and Lv. 4 loot mastered. 2. Look for the "Of A Feather" random battle to appear near Goug. If it's not there, sleep 20 days at the witch's & check again. Repeat as needed. 3. Enter the battle with your 4 thieves plus Al-Cid. Also bring a strong unit who can easily kill enemies and also use either Stop or Stone. An Assassin is perfect. Use green magic to Tranq her and to sleep enemies. A Fusilier with Stopshot is also ok. 4. Use Al-Cid's "Interrogate" to see which chocobos have Lightwing Crystals or Mythril. These are 2 of the ingredients needed to make Angel Rings. Steal as much of each as you can. It's important to stop or stone the enemies carrying these items... it makes stealing from them easier. Kill anything that doesn't carry the loot you want. It takes patience; you might end up stealing loot you didn't want and then you must try again, but your success rate will be cut in half (from 100% to 50% to 25% on the third attempt. After that it's not worth bothering). Each enemy has an unlimited amount of the loot they carry, so in theory you can steal more than 1 from each. That also means that if you get the wrong loot, you won't have a better chance on your next try, you might get the same wrong thing. I consider it a good battle if I get 3 useful pieces of loot. 5. Use your Assassin/Green Mage to finish off enemies who aren't useful or who have already given up the loot you need. Have her use sleep when you can hit 2 or 3 enemies with it. Otherwise use Shadowstitch or Rockseal on the guys who carry the good loot. Use Last Breath on the rest. Also, once you know for sure which enemies are worth stealing from, you can kill Al-Cid so you don't have to waste time skipping his turns. 6. The third ingredient to Make Angel Rings is a Wyrmtwig. To get these, sleep in the witch hut until the "Wonders of Loar" quest is available in the Pub. Dispatch the quest, sending your 4 highest level units. I think around lv. 60 or so they will jump up and down when placed in the dispatch slot, which means they're guaranteed to succeed. Go straight from the pub to the witch hut and sleep 200 days. They will return from dispatch successfully and you'll get a Wyrmtwig as a reward. You may need to sleep again to make the quest reappear on the roster. Repeat until you have enough. After you have the needed loot, make an Angel Ring at the shop. It's in the Mystic Arms category, level A. You can only build one at a time, then you must buy it and return to the bazaar screen and build another. You can get by with 5 or so, but you might want to make more anyway... the final quest has a really hard bout where multiple angel rings are very useful. While you're at the shop, load up on ether. - REMOVE debuff protection items, like Orb of Minwu and Ribbons. A lot of the skills you learn are debuffs, and if you're protected from them you can't learn them. That's why it's important to bring that White Magic sub. You can keep the Orb of Minwu on your beastmaster, and you might also want something that protects against stop and doom. - NINJA TABI, because it sucks being too far away to surround a monster... or if you're too far away to get hit with the skill you want to learn. - GOOD ARMOR, with high resistance ratings. You'll be taking lots of damage. ============================================================================= [THE SKILLS] I'll also list which monster teaches it. They're roughly in order of usefulness, from best to worst, though of course opinions will vary. I try to name the lowest level monster that can teach the skill, but some of these skills can be learned from multiple enemies and I might have gotten a name wrong (but I'll make sure know which monsters I mean in the walkthrough). - Matra Magick (Adamantitan) This switches HP and MP, with about a 50% success rate. Since MP is usually under 100 (especially at the start), this will almost always bring the target to critical, so one more attack will finish them. If the enemy's MP is 0 (which you can make happen with an MP draining ability) then Matra Magic will kill them. It's pretty much an Instant KO spell with a decent success rate. On rare occasion, you will use it on a teammate if he's been building MP for a while and is near death. - Angel Whisper (Sprite) Grants reraise to any target, and has decent range. Also restores some HP, enough to be useful just as a cure spell. - White Wind (Sprite) Pretty much the strongest cure spell in the game, it can target multiple panels like a regular cure, but it restores HP equal to your own current HP. So the healthier you are, the stronger it is. If you're at a high level, this will usually be much stronger than curaga or similar spells, even if the user has already lost some HP. - Sandstorm (Antlion) A generic magic spell that hits multiple panels. Causes earth damage, which isn't very common, and has a high chance of inflicting the blind debuff. - Quake (Headless) More or less the same thing as Sandstorm, but doesn't cause blind. The only reason you'd use this instead is because it can work with the Seer's Magic Frenzy ability. - Doom (Deathscythe) Cast doom on a target with a decent (60%ish) success rate. While three turns is enough time for you to kill the enemy some other way, Doom is nice at the start of the battle when you can't get close enough to use a better skill and you only have a little bit of MP. You can try Doom with no risk and if it hits, you can ignore that target for the rest of the battle. - Bad Breath (Malboro) Inflicts Blind, Silence and Poison on enemies. Hits multiple panels in a T-shaped area in front of you. It's worth using when enemies line up nicely for it, and you can nail 3 or more in one turn. Good vs. mages. - War Dance (Dreamhare) Give the Attack Up buff to units in an area. While Dragon Force is nicer, this lets you hit up to 5 teammates in one turn, so it's more useful. Buffs like Attack Up seem to last forever so you'll use this right away. - Dragon Force (Nidhogg) Give Attack Up and Magic Up to 1 unit. Good range. - Mighty Guard (Thunder Drake) Give Defense Up and Resistance Up to 1 unit. Also has good range. Better than doing Protect/Shell because it lasts longer. - Expose Weakness (Fire Drake) Give Defense Down and Resistance Down to 1 unit, the opposite of Mighty Guard. Worth using on enemies with high HP so you can finish them faster. - Screech (Wolf) Do a bit of damage from long range to 1 unit, plus a good chance of causing the Confuse debuff. Might be worth using if you're too far to hit an enemy and Sandstorm can't be used without hitting a teammate. - Magick Hammer (Baknamy) Removes some MP from 1 target. If you're too far to hurt them and you can see they have enough MP to use a nasty spell on their next turn, you may find this worth trying. - Self-Destruct (Bomb) Blow yourself up, doing huge damage to nearby units. Generally dying is not a good way to win battles, but the damage from this nasty, 800+ sometimes. So if you're in a hurry and you're sure to win anyway, you can use it to take out even the strongest enemy in 1 turn. If you see the chance to hit 2 or 3 enemies, go for it. You got an angel ring, right? - Cornered (aka Limit Glove)(Great Tortoise) If your HP is in single digits, this move will hit for 999 damage. Has the same success rate as a normal attack. You can use Self-Destruct and a very low level unit with an angel ring to set this skill up. Credit to "tried42long" for sharing this tactic with us, he has a video on Youtube showing it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQ7J8Ofh9dQ - Roulette (Plague) Randomly KO's 1 unit. Can be on your team or the enemy's. While this is a gamble, it's not entirely insane to use it. One way to make it useful is to enter a tough battle with only 1 Roulette user. Since you will be facing 5 or 6 enemies, the odds of hitting an enemy are pretty high. You can use equipment that is immune to instant KO like the Master sword to prevent it, or just load up on Angel Rings. A video of this strategy is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ux8XGwOHpc Credit again to "tried42long". - Unction (Red Marshmallow) Causes the Oil debuff, which makes the target take extra damage from fire element attacks. You almost have to set your party up specifically to make use of this, and even then it's not that hot. Get it? Haha. - Eerie Sound Wave (Malboro) Dispels buffs from 1 unit. I find dispel skills are pretty useless, because instead of indirectly hurting the enemy by removing a buff, you can just directly hurt them by causing damage. An exception might be to remove the reraise debuff from enemies. Killing them twice is a pain in the ass. - Roar (Werewolf) Dispels buffs from everyone on the screen, including teammates. You'd only use this if the enemy has been buffing themselves like crazy and you have virtually no active buffs. Otherwise... see above. - Night (Lamia) Puts everyone on the map to sleep except for the person using the spell. I guess if you have lots of females with ribbons, or some other equipment that protects against sleep, this could be useful to sleep the whole enemy team. Might be worth experimenting with. ============================================================================= [THE WALKTHROUGH] Here I list of the random battles you need and where they appear. You can learn more than 1 skill in most of them. They aren't the only battles where you can learn skills, but they are available throughout the game and are pretty easy if your level is high. The way they work (I think) is they're available for a few days (10? 20?) and then they go away for about 50 days before popping up again. Remember: bring White Magic, items, plenty of ether, beastmaster with time magic sub, and angel rings. Something else to think about before you go in is how many Blue Mages you plan on teaching. Adelle, Frimelda (aka Blago), and Vaan can learn it as well as your hume generics and Luso. It's easiest to bring all of them into the battle to learn at once. One nice setup is 2 beastmasters, 1 with time magic sub, the other with sagacity. You use the Halve MP support ability and maybe also the MP Efficiency clan privelege. Then one beastmaster supports with time magic, the other just ultimas all the useless enemies. You don't have to do these in any order. Some are easier than others. You'll have to pass time to get them to appear. On the western continent, you can use Lezaford's hut to sleep 20 or 60 days. But after beating the game, this becomes a pain in the ass and it's almost better to just walk from the ruins of delgantua to targ wood. Each lap burns 10 days. On the eastern continent it's easier, just use the witch hut. BATTLE A - (learn Angel Whisper, White Wind, Magic Hammer) "Fey Mischief" (Targ Wood) Difficulty: easy -------------------------- Remember this from the beginning of the game? The enemies leveled up but they're still no big threat. Kill the bunny, chocobo and red sprite. Don't kill either blue sprite, you need them both. They look identical but only one can teach you White Wind, and the other teaches Angel Whisper. The Baknamy (goblin thing) teaches Magic Hammer and will use it a lot even if you don't coach him with a beastmaster. Hit him with slow or stop & go after the sprites first (which are harder to debuff). Surround one with your whole squad and hastega your beastmaster and item user. Feed the Sprite ethers and have the beastmaster keep forcing the skill out of them until everyone's learned it. White wind is easier, it can target multiple panels and you may only need to make the sprite to use it twice to teach everyone. Since it restores HP, you may need to be hurt for it to be learnable. Have a teammate smack anyone who isn't hurt yet, just to be sure they learn it. The other skill, Angel Whisper, will take longer but it's no big deal. Once you have a Sprite's skill, kill it, and save the Baknamy for last. BATTLE B - (learn War Dance, Bad Breath, Eerie Soundwave) "Open Wide" (Zedlei Forest) Difficulty: a little tougher -------------------------- The enemies here are a bit stronger, and will cast buffs on each other. The bunny especially is annoying and you can't kill it. Kill the green chocobos and the purple Malboro. Keep the green Malboro and the Dreamhare. Surround the dreamhare first, and try to cluster your units so that when you make it use War Cry, it hits 2 or 3 guys at once. Once everyone's learned it, slay it and the slow Malboro will be easy. Again try to line people up to get multiple hits with Bad Breath (it will probably try this even without the beastmaster). Have your item user or white mage remove the annoying debuffs. Once you've mastered that, don't kill it yet, you must then give all your blue mages some kind of buff. It doesn't matter what, try to pick something that's more or less permanent. If someone has Blue Magic available, now's a good time to hit everyone with War Cry or Angel Whisper. Then force the Malboro to dispel the buffs one by one. BATTLE C - (learn Screech, Roar) "The Strength of the Wolf" (Bisga Greenlands) Difficulty: mildy annoying -------------------------- Roar is easy to learn here, the Werewolf uses it every chance it gets. Just keep buffing anyone who needs to learn it, and eventually you'll get it. Of the red and purple wolves, you only need 1, get rid of the other 2. There are 2 werewolves so you can kill one and spare the other until roar is mastered, then take him out. The only trouble in this battle is if you have a low level unit (in my case Vaan), then a strong attack from the wolves will almost kill you. Also irritating is when you're down to 1 wolf and it uses the "summon pack" ability to bring another. In that case, the other will be a low level brown wolf. Learn screech from that one and kill the rest, since brown ones can't use summon pack. If anyone gets confused and you want to fix it, a knot of rust works great. BATTLE D - (learn Quake) "Formidable Strength" (Aldanna Range) Difficulty: medium -------------------------- These enemies can do some damage, but luckily you only need to save one. You can kill all the werewolves and the chocobo. My memory is fuzzy but I think there's 2 Headlesses, and only one of them can teach you Quake, so be careful which you kill. Since it's an area affect spell you can easily teach 2 or 3 units at once. Definitely helpful to have an asskicker unit here, everyone's got pretty high HP. BATTLE E - (learn Self Destruct, Sandstorm) "Burning Soul" (Kthili Sands) Difficulty: easyish -------------------------- If you're at a high level, these guys can't hurt you much. The chocobo always runs into a Charm trap at the start to help you out. You need only 1 of the big spiders (Antlions), so kill the other. Kill the blue bomb as well. Kill the red chocobo last since he's your buddy. Surround the antlion and learn Sandstorm, then kill it and and surround a bomb. This is a little tricky - you must get it into critical and coax it into self-destructing. They won't let the beastmaster force it to blow up (aww come on!) There are only two things that can make this battle a pain. First, the traps are a nuisance. The second is that you must remember to bring White Magic (or a Blue Mage with Angel Whisper) to cast Reraise. The bombs must kill themselves to teach you Self-Destruct, and with reraise they can come back and teach someone else. Don't let the charmed chocobo accidentally kill it. Reraise yourself to be sure you survive the explosion. You may even want to leave the 2nd bomb alive just to be safe. BATTLE F - (learn Dragon Force, Mighty Guard, Expose Weakness) "Dire Rotundity" (Aisenfield) Difficulty: medium -------------------------- This can get hairy, as you must leave 3 different monsters alive, and they do lots of damage. But actually learning the skills is super easy, as they can't miss and have pretty good range. Work that beastmaster hard. Hastega everyone at the start, and have them chase after and kill the cute fat cockatrices, which use Wake-Up Call (aka Chicken Quicken). You'll leave the two drakes and the dragonish Nidhogg. Try to learn mighty guard first from the yellow drake, then kill it and learn Dragon Force from the Nidhogg. The red drake will be last and will use Expose Weakness on its own. I think the Nidhogg can also use it. Mighty guard will cancel it out if you're worried about dying. They key to here is to watch HP and keep healing. BATTLE G - (learn Matra Magic, Cornered) "A Hard Place" (Fluorgis) Difficulty: a bit tough -------------------------- This can be frustrating if you're not prepared. To learn Matra Magic you must let yourself get knocked into critical HP (usually) and to learn Cornered you have to actually die. The turtles will piss you off with headbutt (immobilize), Resonate (disable), and Munch (destroys your weapon or armor. Don't wear really rare stuff). Send your stronger units (hunters etc.) to the top and kill the purple toughskins first, they can't teach you anything and their Resonate skill is a pain. Don't kill the yellow turtle. You have 3 green turtles. In theory you only need 1, but since you must bring them to critical HP you might keep a 2nd alive just in case. Kill the 3rd. This goes a bit faster if you split up. All the heavy hitters who rushed to the top should surround the yellow turtle (Adamantite) and 1 item guy should feed it ether, then the beastmaster forces it to use Matra Magic. The success rate is low so you must try many times. Once someone has learned matra magic, send him down towards the green turtles and try it on them if possible. Keep the beastmaster and item guy up top, you won't need him for the green turtle(s), they will spam Limit Glove once their HP is low. By the way, Cornered = Limit Glove, it's just a different name. To learn it, you must get a green turtle down to 9 or less HP. It will keep trying Limit Glove whenever it's critical, but it misses unless HP is below 10. Getting their HP that low is tricky. Getting them to critical HP is easy, but then you must find a way to chip off 10-40 HP without killing it. The hunter can use 'Hunting' to do it, remember that you can adjust the damage a little depending on whether you're facing the front, side, or back. If Hunting looks like it'll cause too much damage, try dark matter (~16 damage) or knots of rust (usually less than 10 damage). In my case, I used Vaan. He was so low level, his physical attacks always caused 1 damage. This is one of the skills where an Angel Ring or Reraise is NOT optional, Cornered WILL kill you, and only reraise lets you 'survive' it, though you technically died. You will also want reraise for Matra Magic victims. It helps to use time magic to stop/slow the green turtles while you're busy with the yellow one. A note - reraise brings you back to life even if you break the law, so just ignore the law. It works whether you cast the spell or use an Angel Ring. BATTLE H - (learn Doom, Night) "Otherworldly Visitors" (Aisenfield) Difficulty: makes me sad -------------------------- Battles with the undead suck because they keep coming back. You really want some kind of skill to banish them, like the Hunter's Oust. You can also petrify them. Get rid of the 3 ghosts, they're useless. Save the deathscythe and 1 of the Lamias. The Deathscythe keeps teleporting away so you must chase him all over the map. Keep forcing him to use Doom, it's a bit tedious due to doom's low success rate. You can help things along by sleeping or stopping your own teammates. Hope he doesn't use his other skill, it's a pain. Ignore the law and forget the Lamia, as it will use Night on its own and isn't a huge threat. Once everyone's learned Doom, banish the Deathscythe and get everyone far away from the Lamia. You only need to chase it with the beastmaster to force it to use Night, and if it's far from everyone else it won't use other attacks to hassle them. BATTLE I - (learn Unction) "Just Desserts" (Ruins of Delgantua) Difficulty: easyish -------------------------- Here you just need to kill all the jellies except the red one. Also kill the flying eyeballs. The only thing to watch out for is the 'Acid' skill, which causes some nasty debuffs. Mostly only the yellow jelly uses it. Cluster everyone together and trap the red jelly, hit them with unction, and maybe use refresh if you've gotten hosed by too many debuffs. BATTLE J - (learn Roulette) "One Eyed Evil" (Galerria Deep) Difficulty: tough -------------------------- Probably the hardest skill to master if you're trying to teach a lot of guys, but with a little luck it's not bad. Kill every enemy except one of the big eyeballs (I can't remember if they're Plagues or Ahrimans). Once you're down to that last enemy, cast Reraise on it. Also reraise everyone on your team who doesn't already have an Angel Ring. You can't force it to use Roulette, so you can skip the beastmaster and just bring an asskicker instead. Equip that unit with something that prevents instant KO, like the Master Sword. Now it's just a waiting game. The eyeball will use Roulette about 50% of the time. Once it KO's someone and they learn it, you should kill them again. That way you improve the odds that Roulette will hit someone useful next time instead of hitting the same guy again. The downside is you might lose once you get down to just two guys. ============================================================================= Summary & Credits ============================================================================= That's pretty much it, once you've mastered Blue Magic you'll find it's a lot of fun to bring along. One handy combo is to use it with your seer, cast dragon force on yourself, then use dual wield magic frenzy with Quake. You can also use Recharge to get access to the stronger Blue Magic. Have fun with Matra Magic. Try bashing someone with a Magic Hammer to get MP to 0, then use a Juggler with Smile Toss (or Time Mage with Quicken/Haste) to give you another turn before they recover. Matra Magic them and they die. Or a less elaborate version of this is to have a teammate get their MP to 0 just before your turn. And check out the videos on Roulette and Cornered abuse. Thanks to: Gamefaqs FFTA2 message board, where all the good info is. Gamespot FFTA2 message board, which also has some nice info. tried42long, the guy who showed that matra magic isn't the only strong offensive skill in your arsenal. Element_Seraph, who lists some strong builds I never knew about on the board. Warfreak, for an awesome and very large general FAQ that I've used a lot.