Tracking Friendly Monsters

[greenfire32]

I need help with friendly monsters. Using this list (https://jegged.com/Games/Final-Fantasy-IX/Side-Quests/Friendly-Monsters.html) and various other guides and videos, I've gotten Nymph, Jabberwock, Feather Circle & Garuda 100% for sure. No question about those ones.

The ones I can't fully remember getting are Mu, Ghost, Ladybug & Yeti.

The problem is that I'm like 80% sure I've gotten them though and I've been running around their spawn locations for the last ten (yes, TEN) hours and I've not encounted a single one of them. I'm on disc 4 by the way.

I know that FF9 keeps track of which monsters you've encountered and which ones you haven't (otherwise how would Yan know if you've seen all the other friendly monsters), but I don't know where it stores this data.

After ten hours, I've decided to either give up or just find that data file so I can see which one I'm missing and then go crawl the respective spawn point to find it.

Does anyone know where FF9 keeps a list of the friendly monsters?

I'm not looking to edit the file and just "give" me the encounter, but I NEED to know which one I'm missing and I can't dedicate any more time to this. It's really dumb that there isn't an in-game tracker of some sort.

The whole point of me doing the friendly monsters quest is in preparation for Ozma and I'm not starting the whole game over just for some stupid monsters.

tldr; I don't need spawn locations, I need the game file where FF9 stores which monsters you've met and which you haven't so I can find the one I'm missing.

[Kiss My Ax]

Look in steam folder under games i believe i cant really remember the exactly location sorry

[greenfire32]

Thank you for your reply, but I am already aware of how to get to the directory. I'm just not sure which of files inside is the one I need to take a snoop through.

I know people have found the file for magic and summon animations and stuff like that. I'm hoping there's a similar file for sidequest markers or something to that effect.

[Tirlititi]

The data is stored in your save files, which is usually in your "Documents/Square Enix/Final Fantasy IX" folder (it's not the game's folder). It's a .sav file.

But it's not very easy to grasp that information...
The file is compressed. Once uncompressed, it's a Json file with different fields. The field "gEventGlobal" is a snapshot of the different important variables (those that are saved in save files at least). "gEventGlobal" consists of 2048 bytes. The Friendly Monster flags are the 194th byte.

The Summon flags are the 207th byte, so if you know where it is (through "on the fly" RAM viewer, like CheatEngine), the Friendly Monster flags are a bit before that.

I would be you, I would try to find the others first. 100% certainty is hardly a thing unfortunatly ^^'

[greenfire32]

ah nuts. I was hoping for an easy to read list of true/false settings.

Well, I guess this means I'm going for Ozma without the friendly monsters boost. I've already spent 10 hours crawling all the spawns. Time to move on, methinks.