Easy Job level grinding with AHK

Take some of the pain in the neck out of grinding out for the level 99 in all jobs achievement

Intro and Setup

Prerequisites:

You'll need AutoHotKey [www.autohotkey.com]installed.
Additionally, this script has no logic. It doesn't auto heal, or auto save, or anything. Its intended for post-endgame level grinding, or at least far enough along to require minimal babysitting

Best place to run this is inside the initial dungeon of the game, as the only thing that matters for leveling jobs is # of actions - not strength of monsters. Goblins and Red Dragons will take the same # of battles here.

To use:

1. Level enough so that your jobs can survive a long time of non-attention
2. Find a spot to run left and right with weak enemies.
Inside the starting dungeon is a good choice
3. Enter a battle, and press the button to turn on auto battle mode
4. When back on the overworld/dungeon, press 'p' to start the script
5. If you want to pause the script, press ctrl + p, or just click outside
the game window
6. To resume, press ctrl + p
7. Pause and check every few hours to see where you are, leveling wise
8. When everyone's at level 99 - change jobs and keep going.

The AHK script

#NoEnv  ; Recommended for performance and compatibility with future AutoHotkey releases.
^p::Pause ; Pressing ctrl+P once will pause the script. Pressing it again will unpause.

; Made by JippenFaddoul
; Based on scripts by Doubtful and Delta Omega
; This script assumes default keybindings.
; Change left, right, and confirm if you're not using the defaults

; To use: 
;   1. Level enough so that your jobs can survive a long time of non-attention
;   2. Find a spott to run left and right with weak enemies. 
;      Inside the starting dungeon is a good choice
;   3. Enter a battle, and press the button to turn on auto battle mode
;   4. When back on the overworld/dungeon, press 'p' to start the script
;   5. If you want to pause the script, press ctrl + p, or just click outside 
;      the game window
;   6. To resume, press ctrl + p
;   7. Pause and check every few hours to see where you are, leveling wise
; 8. When everyone's at level 99 - change jobs and keep going.

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
;If FF3 is the active window
#IfWinActive ahk_exe FF3_Win32.exe
{
    
    ; Press Esc to force quit the application
    Esc::ExitApp
    
    ; Press 'p' to play
    $p::
        FF3Auto()
    return
    
}

FF3Auto()
{
    while 1 = 1
    {
        FF3WalkLeft()
        Sleep 300
        FF3WalkRight()
        Sleep 600
        ;Sleep 34000
        FF3ConfirmAbunch()
        Sleep 200
    }
}
return

PauseOnWindowChange()
{
    if WinActive("ahk_exe FF3_Win32.exe") {
        Sleep 0
    } else {
        SplashTextOn, , 50, FF3JobLevel, PAUSED
        Pause On
        SplashTextOff
    }
}

;Simulates a 1-second long press of "left" key
FF3WalkLeft()
{
    PauseOnWindowChange()
    Send {Left down}
    Sleep 1000
    Send {Left up}
    Sleep 30
}

;Simulates a 1-second long press of "right" key
FF3WalkRight()
{
    PauseOnWindowChange()
    Send {Right down}
    Sleep 1000
    Send {Right up}
    Sleep 30
}

;Press Confirm ABunch (Usually after battle)
FF3ConfirmAbunch()
{
    Loop 12
    {
        PauseOnWindowChange()
        ; Press the select/confirm button
        Send {Enter down}
        Sleep 30
        Send {Enter up}
        Sleep 100
    }
}
return

Shoutouts

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[Seko]

Is there no way to leave the game in the background?

[azhx]

There is a very good way to increase the efficiency of this script. Instead of using a random class to always attack, use monk and set autobattle to use retaliate. ofc still guard with other characters. This will extend the # turns per battle by a lot on average which will reduce time needed to get lvl99 by about 2-3x i believe

[Jippen Faddoul]

That is something I absolutely won't do, brachragon.

[Brachragon]

Hey Jippen, thanks for the script.
But wouldn't it be easier to just share your save file?

[Jippen Faddoul]

Feel free to do so, Chocobo.

As for that bug - dunno why you'd hit that. I was testing in the endgame, and running your characters unarmed, but with armor equipped is probably good enough to keep things going even if you are hitting yourself.

If you're grinding endgame like I was, just equip people with no weapons, or very early game ones if that causes less damage - and endgame armor. Should make it so hitting yourself is pointless anyways.

[Councillor Chocobo]

Hi Jipen! Thanks for your simple script, I have managed to use it to achieve some extremely convenient methods to grind the game efficiently and intend to write up about it. Would it be okay for me to make references to this guide and script of yours? I will link it to your work ofc.

Also, there is the issue of targeting yourself after a while with auto battle that I do not know how to tackle, do you have any idea why?

[Jack Hart]

This is a simple and nice script. Can be used for both normal and job leveling.

For normal leveling you just find a place you can handle and set all your party to attack. Depending on how strong you are it can be adviceable to check once in a while if someone have taken to much dmg/dead.

For job leveling I found it perfect to move down to the 2nd floor of the starter dungeon. In this area you are quaranteed to meet 2-3 mobs every time you enter a battle. So you set 1 to attack and 3 to guard. This way you will always get 2-3 rounds of job exp/points on all 4 characters instead of only getting 1 round on 2-3 characters.

My only problems with doing this is there are alot of idle time cause of how the script works. And for some reason my game feel like minimize itself after x number of battles. So I can only have it running for 45-1 hour at a time, before it get's interrupted (if is normal issue or just me I have no idea about).

[Eroc]

I then went outside the Crystal Palace and decided to grind there because you get a lot of encounters with 2-3 enemies that are highish level that take about 2 shield hits to kill and dont deal to much damage to you. With this setup my heroes were almost impossible to kill (one did die so far but I attribute that to lucky enemies) and 3 hours later had 4 lvl 99 Knights
But what about jobs that don't use shields? Max defense, use guard, and have one shield job guy in party. So far so good

[Eroc]

I'm sure it might work at low levels, but here's what I did at a high level after beating the game around LVL 60. At this point in time I had 4 ribbons and after visiting the shop in Eureka all the Crystal Armor.
To test the concept. I changed my characters job to Knight. Equipped my characters with Two Crystal shield, Ribbon (so no status effects accidently kill you), Crystal Mail, and Crystal Gloves. I moved 3 to the back line and had my main attacker in front. Then I used Attack with my main, and Defend with the other 3.

[Eroc]

You know what I take it back. This script is simple and awesome! I figured out a sweet method to level characters JOBS to 99 in (3-4 hours) just using this script.

So all this script does is basically move left/right and presses select a bunch at the end of battle. Well how do we use this to level jobs, I said to myself.

We try to do the least amount of damage to the enemy while maximizing our defenses. To do this we attack with SHIELDS. (SPACE's SHIELD METHOD copyright pending) That's all you have to do and let Auto-battle do it's work.