Booster/Cheat Information

The game features 7 cheats, or boosters. This guide will provide all known information about them.

Introduction

[Note: I am pretty sure at this point, 5/11/16, this guide contains all information regarding boosters that is available, though if anything new is found out I will update the guide accordingly.]

The PC port of FFIX, like the other PC ports of the FF games, features "boosters" which can help players get through the game quicker and easier. This guide will simply tell you what they are, how to activate them, and how to tell if they are on. All the boosters, to my knowledge, have an icon that displays in the lower right corner of the screen indicating it is turned on.

Turning on a booster, even level/stone max, WILL NOT disable achievements.

Also, if using a gamepad, you need to pause the game in order to apply any boosters.

There are two types of boosters, I call them "Temporary Effect" (F1-4/shoulder buttons) and "Permanent Change" (F5-7/config menu options) respectively. Temporary Effect boosters are the only boosters that are mapped to the gamepad by default and can be freely toggled on and off without much of a long lasting effect on the game (though Battle Assist will use up your Trance gauge once you turn it off). These include Super Speed, Battle Assist, Max Damage, and Max Damage. Permanent Change boosters make a change to your gamefile that cannot be undone (except for reloading, if you have a savefile from before you activated the booster) These include Max Level/Stones, Master Abilities, and Max Gil. These three boosters will always throw up a confirmation window when you try to turn them on to ensure no one that doesn't want to play with boosters can't accidentally screw up their file.

Boosters

This is the format in which I will be listing the booseters:
Booster Name
- Default Keybinding
- Bottom Corner Icon
- Description
- Additional Notes
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Temporary Effect Boosters

Auto-Attack
- J
- Flashing arrows with the words "Auto-Attack"
- Sets all characters to use the Attack command immediately when their turn comes up.
- The effect lasts between battles.
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High speed
- F1/RB
- Fast forward arrows
- Increases game speed. Character movement, battle speed (all aspects), and menu cursors are affected.
- This does not affect game time, countdown timers.
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Battle Assistance
- F2/LB
- Horizontal/parallel sword and staff
- HP/MP/Trance/ATB are set to max and do not decrease, has no effect outside of battle.
- Always full ATB affects enemies as well as your party. Party members can still be KO'd if damage done is more than max HP. Trance will never decrease as long as this booster is active. Spells that cost more MP than your max remain unable to be cast (if max MP is 50, you cannot cast a 54 MP cost spell, but you can cast infinite spells costing <50 MP)
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Max Damage
- F3/LT
- 9999 over a sword
- All your attacks/abilities do 9999 damage.
- Does not affect healing or enemy damage. May give slight increase to steal rate*)
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No Enemy Encounters
- F4/RT
- Bomb (enemy type) in a crossed out circle
- Sets enemy encounter rate to zero

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Permanent Change Boosters

Master All Abilities
- F5/option in config menu. Requires confirmation, mastered skills/abilities cannot be undone.
- Star
- Instantly master all skills/abilities of items in your inventory. Teaches Quina all blue magic if s/he is in your party while this booster is active.
- The item does not need to be equipped to master the ability, just in your inventory. Characters will instantly master an ability when an item with an ability they can learn is picked up while this booster is active.
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Level/Magic Stones Max
- F6/option in config menu, requires confirmation, cannot be undone
- ??? (assumed: None, not an ongoing effect)
- Instantly sets your level and Magic stones to 99. There is no way to boost level or stone max without the other outside of using an external cheating device.
- This will not max character stats. I am aware of an algorithm which determines character stat growth, I do not know it very well, but I have heard the booster levels characters in such a way that they do not receive optimal stat growth.
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Max Gil
- F7/option in config menu, requires confirmation, cannot be undone
- None (not an ongoing effect)
- Instantly sets your gil to the maximum amount.

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* I have heard of people getting rare items easily with the 9999 booster enabled, as well as conflicting reports of people having it on and still not getting successful steals for 20 minutes. Until someone is able to datamine the game and see for sure if the 9999 booster alters the steal rate, I will leave the effect in the guide with this footnote explaining it may or may not be accurate.

Exploits

This section is here to point out some things you can do with the boosters that may not be readily apparent to everyone.

Beating the timer
- Activate Super Speed in any circumstance where you are fighting against a timer. You will move incredibly fast while the timer remains at normal speed.
- Note: The character movement is a bit more difficult to control when you're moving so fast, so you may end up negating any advantage you gain from the speed.

Easy Thieving
- Set cursor to "memory" in the config menu
- Activate Max Damage (makes it quicker to KO the party/possibly increases steal chance)
- Have everyone in your party KO'd except for Zidane
- Activate Battle Assist (if you start off with this on, you won't be able to kill other party members)
- Select "Steal"
- Activate Super Speed
- Hit the "confirm" button until the enemy has no more items to steal.

[Griede Starless]

also, F5 master abilities. this may be how it worked for you, but i had to equip the items then activate the cheat each time. still worked, but other then quina, it didnt automatically give me all of the skills for the equipment in my inventory.

[Griede Starless]

SO just my 2 cents.
when useing a controller and the speed boost. the speed boost will activate and deactivate just fine without pauseing the game. only difference in this case is that the icon will not show up at the bottom of the screen.

[PD711]

I was trying to steal the flute from the Gigas using the above method (Everyone KO, Max Damage, Battle Assist, Super Speed, etc.) and it wasn't really working. So I tried doing an experiment and turned off battle assist (I think) and almost immediately got it. As in, I was kind of fumbling with the various modes and suddenly I got it.

It could have something to do with turning the mode off while the steal animation was happening, it could have something to do with having just turned off battle assist and/or max damage. I am not sure, maybe someone more diligent than me can experiment, I got my flute so I am done ;)

[dray11]

Very helpful, thanks!

[PhDinNoob101]

Just confirmed. It does apply to characters that haven't joined your party yet.

[PhDinNoob101]

Will these boosts apply to characters I have yet to obtain in my party?

[Lukanroc]

Oh damn. This is super helpful. I was worried I accidently disabled my ability to get achievements by turning on those config menu boosters. Thanks for this helpful little guide.

[thib_oh]

Thank you so much for this detailed and smart little guide.
Take my points dude !

[Edwrd_T_Justice]

Thanks Edale1. For me it was the mods. I tested after turning on and could still steal items.

[Sonan X]

"These include Super Speed, Battle Assist, Max Damage, and Max Damage."