So...did anyone else know about this?

YouTube - Zodiac Spear from the Henne Mines - Guaranteed

Apparently, someone has found an extremely efficient (well, more efficient than the usual absurd way of obtaining it in the Henne Mines) method of obtaining the Zodiac Spear that doesn't involve missing chests that you had no idea you weren't supposed to open or taking a 1/1000 chance in the mines to look for a chest that, odds are, wasn't there. :D

The video in the link shows how one can almost guarantee obtaining a Zodiac Spear in the Henne Mines by taking advantage of the RNG (random number generator) inside the PS2. More details are in the vid description. Quite interesting. I'm gonna try it.

P.S. I'm so glad I was too lazy to get rid of my PS2 after I got my PS3, because for some reason, this trick doesn't work on the PS3.

Edit: Yes it does, though less is known about it, so I still recommend this be done on a PS2.

This is useful because I always forget the chests not to touch :)

how the funk did he figure that out

The full description says it was originally figured out by a Japanese dude. He merely extrapolated and wrote a guide and made guide videos about it. Reading the description theres a whole lot what can go wrong with it but it's still pretty funky. Essentially the PS2 doesn't truly generate random numbers more it goes through a list of them stored on the system in order so if the list was say:

10
99993
102940935
12203596303021
2
39538
4
2045398

Or so on, when the PS2 requires a random number it merely reads the first number from the list in the example's case 10 and uses that when it gets to the end of a VERY long list it'll go from the start again. There is no real way of telling what these numbers are except that they are likely to be exactly the same in all consoles so as to make coding for the console easier. Once you figure this out and grasp it and know what position/number is needed to manipulate something then it becomes trial, error and simple mathematics/logic to figure out the patterns needed to reproduce this result many times over. This is what he has done. He has obviously figured out how much FFXII relies upon this random number generator and from the start has figured good ways of getting through to everything. You should definitely take a good hour reading through and comprehending the full description to do this otherwise you'll waste a lot of time.

i saw a thing about a dude in vegas who figured somthing very similar to this out abouts slotsmachines and was beating them all till he got caught

This is bloody cool. I wonder if anyone's figured out how to get the Fomalhaut in the Cerobi Steppe with this method :3

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Originally Posted by Sword

This is bloody cool. I wonder if anyone's figured out how to get the Fomalhaut in the Cerobi Steppe with this method :3

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I got that one just by re-spawning for as long as it took. Not too long, in the end. Thankfully.

If you used the method from the Youtube video & didnt touch any of the forbidden chests you could in theory get 2 Zodiac spears!

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Originally Posted by Shattered Dreamer

If you used the method from the Youtube video & didnt touch any of the forbidden chests you could in theory get 2 Zodiac spears!

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Doesn't the one in the Henne Mines respawn?

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Originally Posted by Skyblade

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Shattered Dreamer

If you used the method from the Youtube video & didnt touch any of the forbidden chests you could in theory get 2 Zodiac spears!

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Doesn't the one in the Henne Mines respawn?

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Yes, over and over. In fact, there are people on YouTube who have 99 Zodiac Spears.

Anyway, I've tried the trick and finally got it to work. The number of times you have to hit yourself prior to entering the zone with the spear depends on the model of the PS2 you have. I have a 50001 and I had to hit myself 3 times to get the chest to spawn at a reasonable rate, whereas the guide suggests you hit yourself twice (mainly.)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Skyblade

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Shattered Dreamer

If you used the method from the Youtube video & didnt touch any of the forbidden chests you could in theory get 2 Zodiac spears!

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Doesn't the one in the Henne Mines respawn?

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In any guide I've read & from personal experience it doesn't respawn:confused:

theres only like a 1 in 1000 chance of it having respawned when you check thats why you got to do that trick that makes the random chance not random anymore