The Trial Mode in Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age provides a series of 100 continuous battles. At the end of the mode, you have to fight all five Judges at once. If you have a hard time beating them, you can check out our Trial Mode Stage 100 strategy guide below.
Preparations
The Stage 100 battle in Trial Mode is considered to be one of the hardest in The Zodiac Age. As a result, we don’t recommend tackling the mode until you at least defeat all the optional bosses in the main game. That way, you should have end game accessories, armor, weapons, magicks and technicks in addition to being at a very high level with more than enough license points to max out both boards for your primary party.
Our party makeup is most likely different than yours. With that said, you can take a look at our most used weapons, accessories, magicks, technicks, summons and items when we went through the Trial mode in the PlayStation 4 version of FF12 below:
Weapons:
- Seitengrat
Accessories:
- Bubble Belts
- Ribbon
- Nihopalaoa
Magicks:
- Bubble
- Cleanse
- Cura/Curaja/Renew
- Dispel or Dispelga
- Esuna/Esunaga
- Float
- Haste/Hastega
- Protect/Protectga
- Raise/Arise
- Reverse
- Shell/Shellga
- Sleep/Sleepga
- Silence/Silencega
Technicks:
- Addle
- Expose
- Shear
- Wither
Summons:
- Zodiark
Items:
- Elixir
- Hi-Ether
- Megalixir
- Remedy
- Serum
- Phoenix Down
The aforementioned Seitengrat has the most attack power of any weapon Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age, high evade stats and has a long range. As a result, you should be able to plow through a vast majority of stages with this invisible bow equipped to your party members. You can learn how to easily acquire the Seitengrat in our previous guide with this link.
Ribbons were also critical in our run though the 100 stages as you will run into enemies that will inflict you with many negative status effects. You should also head in the Trials Mode with a Nihopalaoa as it is crucial in our strategy of beating the 100th stage. You can find out where to find ribbons with this guide and where to acquire a Nihopalaoa via this page.
Again, you do not really need all of the weapons, accessories, magicks, technicks, summons and items we mentioned above. For this guide to work, however, we definitely recommend having Seitengrats (for all three active party members), Ribbons (for all three active party members), Nihopalaoa, Addle, Expose, Wither, Elixir/Megalixir, Remedy, Serum, Esuna/Esunaga, Sleep/Sleepga, Reverse and Zodiark.
Trial Mode Stages 1 – 97
A vast majority of the enemies you will fight in the Trial Mode are from the main game, so you can use the same strategies as you did before. The aforementioned Seitengrat bows will make quick work in a lot of stages. With that said, there are some situations where you can’t use physical attacks at all. So make sure you have some kind of attack magick in these rare circumstances.
The deeper you go in the Trail Mode of The Zodiac Age, the more deadly enemies you will encounter. For tougher opponents, make sure to use the Dispel spell as well as the Addle, Expose, Shear and Wither technicks to debuff them. You can also buff of your active party members with Bubble, Haste/Hastega, Shell/Shellga and Protect/Protectga.
One last note is Stage 91. The Magick Pot enemy is invulnerable until you give it an Elixir. At the start of the stage, turn off the gambits of your party so that no one will provoke it with an attack. If you don’t have an Elixir, one can be found inside a treasure chest in the arena. Keep in mind that there floor traps and Hecteyes are waiting to ambush your party as well. The stage will end once you defeat the Magick Pot.
Trial Mode Stages 98 and 99
A big factor when it comes to whether or not you will succeed in Stage 100 is the status of your active party members going into it. This is because the opening moments is very crucial as the Judges can quickly overwhelm your party if you aren’t prepared.
Unfortunately, you have to face off against two of the toughest bosses in FFXII with Yiazmat (thankfully with just one HP bar) in Stage 98 and Omega Mark XII in Stage 99.
In order to get your party as pristine as possible after these two encounters, we highly recommend using the Reverse spell on all three members of your active party. This effect will swap damage and healing effects. As a result, any damage you take while in Reverse status will restore HP while any healing effects will turn into damage.
Keep in mind that there is a percent chance of getting the reversal. Thus, there’s are times that the effect won’t work. With that said, it will work more often than not. When fighting Yiazmat and Omega Mark XII (or any other enemies you have having trouble with in Final Fantasy 12), we suggest keeping Reverse on at all times. Just make sure to turn off any healing gambits when the effect is active.
Furthermore, we also recommend debuffing these enemies with Addle, Expose, Shear and Wither technicks. You can use each of these techs multiple times as it will stacked infinitely as they reduce the current Attack, Magick Attack, Defense and Magick Defense stats by half every time. After stacking three of four times of the same spells, however, the decreases will become negligible.
If you do decide to use Reverse to take care of Omega Mark XII, you should try to remove the effect before delivering the final blow to the enemy. This is because the Judges in Stage 100 will throw Elixirs and Potions at your team if they see that your party members are still in Reverse status. So make sure to use Esuna/Esunaga to get rid of the effect.
Trial Mode Stage 100
If you managed to clear the other 99 stages, you will finally arrive at Stage 100. Awaiting you here are Judge Bergan, Judge Drace, Judge Gabranth, Judge Ghis and Judge Zargabaath. What makes this fight difficult is that a lot of the Judges will heal each other with Elixirs, which will completely restore their HP. Not to mention that there are members who will be buffing the team and inflicting your party with negative status effects. You can check out the HP amounts for the enemies below:
- Judge Bergan – 382,348 HP
- Judge Drace – 194,543 HP
- Judge Gabranth – 343,243 HP
- Judge Ghis – 123,244 HP
- Judge Zargabaath – 224,843 HP
The key to winning this battle is knowing which Judge to take out first. Another key is to also know what enemy is vulnerable to a particular negative status effect.
Defense
You can get quickly overwhelm in this battle. Fortunately, there is a few ways to make your survivability easier. The first is to have all three members of your team equip Ribbons. You should also use Bubble spells to double the HP of your active party in the beginning of the fight. Last but not least, have someone on your team use Dispel/Dispelga to remove any buffs from the Judges.
Step 1: Defeating Judge Ghis
Once the stage starts, you have a few precious seconds where the Judges will slowly walk up to you and start to buff themselves up. You can take this opportunity to heal or strike first.
We highly recommend taking out Judge Ghis as soon as possible. Not only does he have the least amount of hit points, he is also the most troublesome as he can dispel your buffs and inflict negative status effects. Not to mention that he can also use Elixirs to heal himself and others.
Your first move in this fight, if possible, is to summon Zodiark (it will require three Mist Charges). Once you regain control after the short summoning animation, immediately have the Esper use the Final Eclipse technick attack. This attack will take off 60,000 HP on all enemies within its wide attack range. As a result, you will be hurting the other Judges in addition to Ghis.
Once Zodiark leaves after its Final Eclipse attack, immediately use an Elixir or Megalixir on the party member who summoned the Esper. Doing so will not only restore his or her HP/MP but also the Mist Charges. You can then summon Zodiark again for another Final Eclipse.
At this point, Ghis should be nearly dead. Finish him off quickly before the other Judges use an Elixir on him. Hopefully, you will be able to kill Ghis without any of your party members taking much damage, which should set you up well for the rest of the battle.
With Ghis gone, you can replace the Ribbon accessory with something else. We recommend Bubble Belts, which will save you precious time as you don’t have to recast the Bubble spell every time to keep your party members’ HP doubled.
Step 2: Inflicting Negative Status Effects and Debuffs
Once Ghis has been dealt with, equipped one member of your team with Nihopalaoa and then have him or her use a Serum item on both Judge Drace and Judge Bergan. This will cause both enemies to be inflicted with the Disease status effect, which prevents them from being healed.
While you are at it, you can also have the character equipped with Nihopalaoa to use Remedy on all four of the remaining Judges to inflict other status effects such as Blindness and Silence. Make sure to dispel any buffs from the Judges as well if you haven’t done so already.
You may also want to debuff the stats of the Judges if you feel like they are dealing a lot of damage to your party members. Addle will weaken the attack power of the target while Wither will lower the magick attack power (the latter is only applicable to Drace in this battle). Furthermore, you can also weaken their physical defense with Expose and magick defense with Shear.
If you managed to inflict all the aforementioned negative status effects and debuffs, then your tteam will be in great shape for the rest of this battle with the Judges.
Step 3: Defeating Judge Drace
The next Judge that you should defeat is Judge Drace as she will constantly be buffing her other compatriots with Hastega, Protectga and Shellga. Not to mention that she will also use Elixirs on herself and other members of her party.
If you followed our previous step, you should be able to take care of Judge Drace relatively quickly as she won’t be able to heal herself with due to being inflicted with disease.
Step 4: Defeating Judge Bergan
Next up on your hit list is Judge Bergan. Although he only attacks, he can be quite dangerous due to the other judges buffing him. Not to mention that he also has the most HP of the group. With that said, using Addel to decrease his attack power and Dispel to remove buffs should make him quite ineffective.
Again, if you followed our previous steps correctly, you should easily dispose of Judge Bergan.
Step 5: Defeating Judge Gabranth
The next part is a little bit tricky due to the fact that Gabranth and Zargabaath will constantly be healing each other with Elixirs. To prevent this from happening, you have to make Zargabaath fall asleep with the Sleep or Sleepga spell. You might want to dedicate one party member to ensure that Zargabaath stays asleep for as much as possible. You should also avoid attacking him when he is asleep as he will be immediately woken up.
Once that is done, take control of the party member that is being target by Gabranth. From there, lure Gabranth as far away from Zargabaath as possible in the arena. This is done to ensure that Zargabaath will have to travel a long way to heal Gabranth with an Elixir when he wakes up. Hopefully, someone will put Zargabaath asleep again before he can do so.
With Zargabaath asleep and far away, start attacking Judge Gabranth. The goal is to take out all of his HP before he can be healed by Zargabaath. If you are having trouble doing so, remember to use Expose to weaken his defenses. Eventually Gabranth will go down.
Step 5: Defeating Zargabaath
With no one else to heal him, Zargabaath should be very easy to deal with the other four Judges defeated. Congratulations on beating Trails Mode in Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age!
If this is your first time clearing the mode, you will unlock the Imperator Gold Trophy. You will also gain access to the New Game – mode, where you start a new game at level 1 and will never level up.