Noob question about quickening

[bufossil]

Hi, FF12 is my first FF game. I have watched a couple of videos, read a long description of quickenings, and tried it a few times. There is still something I don't understand.

Three of my team members have one quickening available, the other three have two.

The videos I watched and the written description say I should start the chain with single charge quickenings (and then they talk about other strategies after that, which I will not go into here).

I do not know how to use a single-level quickening during the chain sequence.

This is what happens.

1. I select a quickening from Mist > Quickening.
2. The team members show up (but only one of them has a single charge bar).
3. I press the button for the team member with the single charge bar.
4. The animation starts.
5. I see the timer, and I have to quickly press a button for another team member.
6. All I see are the two buttons for the other team members, both of whom have two charge bars.

I do not see a way to press a button that uses only one of the charge bars from the remaining two team members. If I press either button, the game consumes both charges for that team member.

My question: If a team member has two or three charge bars, how to I use only one of them?

Thank you in advance.

[Rhyagelle]

While in the menu on the battle field, you go to the Quickenings and select the first Bar. That will instantly load up their first bar Quickening. Now if you don't do anything else and don't select anything else in the screen, that character will only use that Quickening you selected. Will it help if I get a screenshot of what to select?

EDIT

In my example, I'm using Balthier who has only one Quickening, his first one. This is how you access and select it:

https://imgur.com/nCR7j0M

https://imgur.com/Otfqmcw

https://imgur.com/rAa0EJD

Now if you have more than one, you do so like this:

https://imgur.com/SfFFIQf

You can tell in the menus by their names or if you aren't familiar with that yet, the orange boxes next to them to the right. One for the first Quickening, two for the Second and three for the Third.

Now if your intent is to continue to just reload and use their first Quickening for elemental reasons or whatever have you, you have to reload the quickening bar to get the single slot version of their Quickenings. This could potenitally mean resetting their Quickening bars though if you fail or don't get the button prompts in time (it gets faster and faster and faster the further you progress), which means losing your chance at Quickenings at all if you fail.

To know which is which in the actual Quickening screen, where you have to select them, you need to remember their names and press the "jumble" buttons until they come up. For example, if your intent was Fulminating Darkness, Basch's first Quickening, you keep reloading your Quickening until Fulminating Darkness appeared. Usually you only have to reload a Quickening after you expanded all your MP though, or too much of your MP to perform the higher Quickenings.

[bufossil]

Thank you for answering so quickly!

So, if I understand you correctly, this is what the next steps would be:

7. Press R2 to make the game reset all quickenings available, and hope it shows me a single quickening for someone who has two charge bars full.
8. If so, use the single bar quickening, which would leave the unused single bar for that team member.
9. Use that character's last bar for a second single-level quickening.
10. Press R2 again to reset/shuffle what is available, and hope for a level 1 quickening for someone.

Does that sound right? Sorry if I did not understand.

[Rhyagelle]

I made edits to my post if it'll clear things up.

Originally posted by bufossil:

Thank you for answering so quickly!

So, if I understand you correctly, this is what the next steps would be:

7. Press R2 to make the game reset all quickenings available, and hope it shows me a single quickening for someone who has two charge bars full.
8. If so, use the single bar quickening, which would leave the unused single bar for that team member.
9. Use that character's last bar for a second single-level quickening.
10. Press R2 again to reset/shuffle what is available, and hope for a level 1 quickening for someone.

Does that sound right? Sorry if I did not understand.

Yes, exactly that. If you're aiming for something specifically and it isn't there, you need to shuffle to get it, unless you just want to exit out and perform them seperately and not in a chain (which is not something I would suggest until you have infinite MP/a cheat on lol). This is also a great tactic to use if you only have one character left with any Quickenings to quickly recharge other characters Quickenings and get them back into the fight.

So this boils down to your speed and luck mostly. Eventually you get the hang of quickly shuffling and you'll build chains of 20+ with some ease.

[bufossil]

Thank you very much. I will give that a try!

[tungstic]

For folks playing with an xbox or gamepad controller, shuffle is RT.