Help with Gau and learning all Rages.

[xmac]

In order to unlock the king of the beasts achievement, do you need to simply encounter all of the enemies in the game? Does Gau need to be in your party when you encounter all these enemies? Since all the formations you find should appear on the Veldt, do you need to 'leap' to each enemy formation to 'learn' them all? If so, how do you get end-game enemies?

So many questions, so unsure of what I should be doing with the guy. Any help would be great!

[Nicholai]

For bestiary purposes you have to encounter and defeat the actual mob to obtain it for completing the bestiary..

Now as for Gau.. He has to be taken to the Veldt and you use the "leap" command. You will obtain the rage for the monsters in the battle you used Leap in.. and the battle he returns in only. So if you leap in battle one, and he comes back in battle six.. You will learn the rages if applicable from battles one and six only. Not two through five. Note there are some enemies that he will not gain a rage from.

Some other stipulations with Gau is after you leap he will only return by chance in a "basic" battle formation. (Means all your characters on the right side of the screen) He will not return during Pincer, (Characters surrounded in center) or back attacks (party on the left side of screen.)

For any further questions involving Gau, a wonderful guide to just about everything you'd need to know is in the link I'm providing below. Hope this all helps.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=583222214

[xmac]

Thanks for explaining, that makes sense. I was just grinding in the Veldt and started seeing some of that unfolding. Referring to the guide (thanks by the way!) it is implying you would always have Gau in the party, say I didn't always want Gau, when would be some key points to go grinding in the Veldt for rages? I'm taking good care of the bestiary, so everything SHOULD be in the Veldt.

[xmac]

You know, looking at this guide more, I might just grind the Veldt to get the beasts I already have in the bestiary and just put Gau in my party, seems like it will save much more time. Thanks again nicholai!

[Nicholai]

Originally posted by xmac:

You know, looking at this guide more, I might just grind the Veldt to get the beasts I already have in the bestiary and just put Gau in my party, seems like it will save much more time. Thanks again nicholai!

No worries. One thing I would love to point out is while gathering rages is that it is a perfect opportunity to teach your group spells. On the Veldt you gain no exp. This allows you to learn spells and save actual levels for esper training. I would highly recommend it as it helps take some of the boredom out of the grind for rages. It's also a great opportunity to practice blitzes with Sabin if you have difficulties with handling the controls, and even working on Setzer's achievement for his slots should that be your thing.

Without spoiling the story for you usually after major plot points is when I'd recommend it. That way you can take Gau out and about in intervals and worry about obtaining monsters after you've logged anywhere from 6 to 8 in your bestiary at a time. That way you aren't overwhelmed with a ton of them at any given time to pick up.. I personally don't use Gau much myself, but for a "portion" of the game he is actually valuable as some of the rages you get early like Aspiran's Gigavolt with dual earrings will murder just about anything in one attack. Stray Cat's cat scratch with a higher strength value or Gigas Glove will also bring out some sick damage, (My Locke with Genji glove and dual Hawkeyes were doing in total about 1.8k while Gau was doing 3.1k or more) as you fight and will be a backbone attack for the "portion" of the game I used him for. Good luck and happy hunting!

[xmac]

Thanks again, that's some very sound advice. FF always has notorious grind sections and this really is some great stuff to plan ahead with levelling, I've actually finished the game once before but that was years and years ago and I didn't pick Gau at all. Still not mad about him to be honest (you got it right with Setzer) but I want to try '100%' this playthrough.Time to put my head down and get to the grind!

[Zunnoab #931]

Also do not use Cyan's Bushido abilities when waiting for Gau on the Veldt. If one is charging people mentioned the game can crash when Gau returns.

[xmac]

Ouch, thanks #931, I'll keep an eye out for that.

[Bamethyst38]

Originally posted by Zunnoab #931:

Also do not use Cyan's Bushido abilities when waiting for Gau on the Veldt. If one is charging people mentioned the game can crash when Gau returns.

I never had that problem, but then again, I never really use Bushido commands in the Veldt all that often as I usually plow through enemies with Edgar or Sabin (as I suggested in the Veldt Battle Formations portion of the guide).

My guide was also designed for helping people use Gau properly. It does provide a walkthrough (and a checklist in one of hte appendix) to help people who want to get the achievement but don't want to use Gau all that much. Just ignore the parts where I write about how to deploy Gau.

To answer the overall question: You will need to encounter every Rageable enemy and then learn the Rage of every possible enemy. The game will then check your entire Rage variable against the one that is the complete Rage list. If both are a match, you get King of Beasts. This is arguably the hardest achievement to get as not only there are a LOT of chances to miss enemies, but you also need to play around with the mechanics of the Veldt to encounter enemies without having to go around an entire cycle to get a few enemies.

To make things easier, use the Checklist in the Appendix in Notepad(++) or print it. 1 checkbox is for encountering the enemy, the other is you learned it. Use that and the Walkthrough together to acquire everything. You can ignore the Gau battle strategies, but use them if you wish to use Gau while you acquire them.

[Zunnoab #931]

Yep, thanks for that. I actually used Gau a lot more than usual even if I didn't plan everything around him.

It's really interesting the "missing" rages are learnable, if only you could unlock their encounters on the Veldt. I wonder why they didn't do that.

Granted perhaps it's best the Typhon rage's suicidal Tornado spam isn't accessible.

[xmac]

Since I opened this topic I have a much better understanding of what I am doing and how I am doing it. The advice of playing the story and going back every once in a while is solid. I chip away at my list of monsters and it goes down, sometimes in chunks, sometimes slowly.

Originally posted by Zunnoab #931:

It's really interesting the "missing" rages are learnable, if only you could unlock their encounters on the Veldt. I wonder why they didn't do that.

Can this last post be elaborated on? I am following a bestiary guide to make sure I miss no monsters, been going well so far. This has made me think twice.

[xmac]

@ChrisH36 Kudos on the guide by the way, it's really detailed and I embarrassingly answer most of the questions I ask after I read just a bit more (every time!)

[Bamethyst38]

That is what it was designed to do. Solve your 2000 questions so you don't have to ask them later ;) All without having to travel to GameFAQS and lern SNESese XD

And the reason they want people to pay attention to the Gameplay, that is why they added missable tidbits like this. I hate it too. I had to restart my save file before because I missed about 4 enemies (but I am good now).

[xmac]

Just got King of the Beasts. I had to use the quick save/battle/quicksave/battle trick for the last few but it worked a treat. Thanks again!

[Gnord]

This should be useful in learning how formations work:
http://www.rpglegion.com/ff6/algs/veldt.htm

Also, the Soul Shrine does unlock formations that you fight there. I missed the Platinum Dragon and Raffelsia in my attempt, and the Soul Shrine definitely unlocked both for me.

I'm generating an in-order list of rages here, as I work towards the achievement:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cDBdAPTk5vozp76jo-8ORGymPsGb3z3aT_egjcHJH0E/edit#gid=0

And finally: There are some rages that don't unlock properly, but rather unlock as part of some other formation, so beware. I don't know the full extent, but I know for sure Anguiform unlocks from an Acrophies formation and not its own, and there's websites claiming other problems with Tonberry/Tonberries.