One of the rarest trophies in Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age is the Mist Walker gold trophy. This is because it involves one of the more obscure elements of the combat system. Not to mention that it requires a lot of luck. If you are having trouble unlocking the Mist Walker trophy, you can check out our guide below.
About Quickenings
Quickenings are basically Final Fantasy 12’s version of limit breaks. You can unlock these special attack moves on the license boards of your characters (the Quickening licenses are usually located near the edge of the board). Each character can unlock a maximum of three attacks.
Quickenings can be used from the Mist sub-menu. After unlocking a special attack for the first time, a special yellow meter will appear under the stats of where your HP and MP of your active party members are displayed during battle. These are known as Mist Charge meters and you get a maximum of three (you get one meter per Quickening license unlocked).
You can check out the names of these Quickening Attacks in FFXII below:
Ashe
- Quickening Rank 1 Attack: Northswain’s Glow
- Quickening Rank 2 Attack: Heaven’s Wrath
- Quickening Rank 3 Attack: Maelstrom’s Bolt
Balthier
- Quickening Rank 1 Attack: Fires of Ware
- Quickening Rank 2 Attack: Tides of Fate
- Quickening Rank 3 Attack: Element of Treachery
Basch
- Quickening Rank 1 Attack: Fulminating Darkness
- Quickening Rank 2 Attack: Ruin Impendent
- Quickening Rank 3 Attack: Flame Purge
Fran
- Quickening Rank 1 Attack: Feral Strike
- Quickening Rank 2 Attack: Whip Kick
- Quickening Rank 3 Attack: Shatterheart
Penelo
- Quickening Rank 1 Attack: Intercession
- Quickening Rank 2 Attack: Evanescence
- Quickening Rank 3 Attack: Resplendence
Vaan
- Quickening Rank 1 Attack: Red Spiral
- Quickening Rank 2 Attack: White Whorl
- Quickening Rank 3 Attack: Pyroclasm
Quickening Chain
If you chose to use a Quickening during battle, you will have the opportunity to chain multiple attacks together. This is called a Quickening Chain. The chain has a timer that will start at four seconds and will constantly run until you choose a Quickening attack. So, the faster to choose an attack, the more time you will have remaining for picking the next one.
Each of the three active members of your party are represented by the Triangle, Square and X buttons. When you use a Quickening, his or her Mist Charge meter will be depleted. If you use a Rank 1 attack, the meter will be depleted by 1, a Rank 2 attack takes two meters while a Rank 3 attack takes three.
The game will randomly assign the commands to your characters. Furthermore, there is a chance that a Mist Charge option will appear. This command will allowed you to recharge the Mist Charge meter back up to the maximum of three. There is also the option to shuffle the list so that you will get a new randomized list of commands.
Concurrences
The Mist Walker gold trophy in The Zodiac Age version of FF12 directly deals with Concurrences. These are attacks that you can activate, with the right attack combinations, during your Quickening Chain. The Concurrence Attack will take place after the timer runs out. They are the following:
- Inferno (Power 90) – 3x Rank 1 Attacks in Quickening Chain
- Cataclysm (Power 110) – 6x Rank 1 Attacks in Quickening Chain
- Torrent (Power 130) – 2x Rank 1 and 2x Rank 2 Attacks in Quickening Chain
- Windburst (Power 155) – 4x Rank 2 Attacks in Quickening Chain
- Ark Blast (Power 175) – 2x Rank 1, 2x Rank 2 and 2x Rank 3 Attacks in Quickening Chain
- Whiteout (Power 205) – 4x Rank 3 Attacks in Quickening Chain
- Luminescence (Power 215) – 3x Rank 1, 3x Rank 2 and 3x Rank 3 Attacks in Quickening Chain
- Black Hole (Power 253) – 4x Rank 1, 4x Rank 2 and 4x Rank 3 Attacks in Quickening Chain
For example, in order to activate the Black Hole Concurrence, your party will need to perform four Rank 1 Attacks, four Rank 2 Attacks and four Rank 3 Attacks in a single Quickening Chain.
Furthermore, the concurrence with the higher power level will always override the lower level concurrence(s). For example, if you managed to chained 3x Rank 1, 3x Rank 2 and 4x Rank 3 attacks in a Quickening Chain, you will get Luminescence instead of Whiteout. If you are trying to unlock a lower leveled occurrence, it is best to just stop and let the timer run out once you met the requirements so that you don’t risk triggering a higher one.
Once you pull off all of the above-mentioned Concurrences, you will unlock the Mist Walker trophy.
Flow of Quickening Chain
As we mentioned above, a Quickening Chain starts with four seconds timer for you to choose a command. The timer will only paused when you picked an attack, which will then lead to a quick attack scene. Afterwards, the clock will immediately start back up again when the attack ends.
As we previously mentioned, using a Quickening Attack depletes the Mist Charge meter of that particular character. Unfortunately, the game does not display any info for the meter during a Quickening Chain. However, you can easily the amount of meter you have left as a character’s attack will be grayed out if he or she don’t have enough Mist Charges to use an attack from a particular rank.
You can refill the Mist Charge meter to three bars for that particular character by using the aforementioned Mist Charge command. Keep in mind that the timer will still be running if you picked this command. The chances of a character getting a Mist Charge command to appear depends on the size of your party:
- 1 Party Member: 1 in 6 chance of getting Mist Charge command
- 2 Party Member: 1 in 7 chance of getting Mist Charge command
- 3 Party Member: 1 in 8 chance of getting Mist Charge command
Keep in mind that the Mist Charge command won’t appear if the character already has a full Mist Charge meter.
If all of the commands on the randomized list are grayed out, you have no choice but to use the shuffle option (via the R2 button), to get a new randomized list of commands. This process takes up a lot of time and could easily kill your chain.
Tips for Getting Black Hole Concurrence
Pretty much all of the concurrence we mentioned above can be activated pretty easily. The only exceptions are Luminescence and Black Hole. By aiming for the Black Hole Concurrence, you should get the Luminescence, as well as many other lower powered concurrences, by happenstance.
What makes Black Hole extremely difficult is that it requires a Quickening Chain of 12 attacks at the very minimum. Getting a chain that high requires a lot of luck when it comes to replenishing the Mist Charge meters. With that said, there are a few things that you can do so that you will be able to take full advantage of getting lucky in a Quickening Chain.
Tip #1: Start with a Rank 3 Quickening Attack
After selecting the Quickening Command from the battle menu, you have the option of starting the chain with a Rank 1, Rank 2 or Rank 3 attack (if you unlocked all three from the licensed board). We highly recommend choosing Rank 3. This is because your chances of performing a Rank 3 attack is quite rare in the chain as it requires that the Mist Charge for that character to be full at that particular moment.
Tip #2: Be quick
As we stated above, you are going up against a timer. So, it is a good idea to pick a command as soon as possible. We recommend mashing the buttons repeatedly as soon as you can discern the list of available commands to save as much time as possible.
Tip #3: Prioritize Mist Charge command over every other command
When you see a Mist Charge command, always use it. As we mentioned above, you only have a 1 in 8 chance of getting it to appear on a randomized list for one character. Not to mention that, if you have a full meter, you will be guaranteed an attack during the next round.
Tip #4: Get the Rank 3 Quickening Attacks out of the way early
Using a Rank 3 attack is highly risky as it complete depletes the character’s meter. As a result, you are at the mercy of waiting for a Mist Charge command to show up before you can pull off another attack of any rank. Because of this, the earlier you can pull off a Rank 3 attack, the better as you will have more time to reshuffle the list when compared to the later rounds. Keep in mind that you only need to use four Rank 3 attacks in a single chain to pull off Black Hole. If you started your chain with one (like we suggested above), you only have to pull off three more. Once you get four, you can focus on Rank 2 attacks and then Rank 1 attacks if you still need them.
Tip #5: Don’t shuffle until you absolutely have to
Shuffling the list wastes a lot of time. So we recommend not pressing R2 unless you got a list of nothing but grayed out commands. In other words, if you see a selectable command on the list, you should always use it.
Tip #6: Save Crystals
After performing a Quickening Chain, the meters for all three party members will be completely depleted. In order to use Quickenings again, you will have to refill the meters. Fortunately, you can do so instantly by using a save crystal, which will fill they meters to the maximum amount.
Even if you used all the tips we mentioned above, you are still ultimately relying on luck. Your success basically depends on getting Mist Charge commands in addition to being able to avoid reshuffling the list as much as possible.
As a result, getting the Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age Mist Walker gold trophy can get tedious, especially when you considered that you can’t skip the attack scenes. For that reason, we suggest using Quickenings throughout your journey every time you have the full three meters for all members of your active party . This is because the special attacks are very useful against bosses and strong enemies since it deals massive amounts of damage if you managed to get a high hit count chain.
If you are still missing out on Black Hole and/or other concurrences after doing everything else in the game, you can then start grinding for Mist Walker.