Catnip

catnip is a wonderful item and probably one of the best in ANY FF game. the reason you give it to a gunner is because once you have trigger happy LV3 you can shot trout loads of times. so when your gunner, who doesnt have much HP anyway, goes into the yellow, use trigger happy and each shot will inflict 9999
this basically means with careful tactics you can beat almost ANY villian in the FF game.

but to get it, you have to beat the dark elemental, no easy task you may find. i was stupid enough to read the guide, so i did several attempts but my team was only on level fifty and flare nocked 9999 off, while ultima killed everyone.
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theres an easy way to win tho, with pain as a dark knight, make sure your white mage goes first and cast reflect. if he casts flare it will reflect and destroy him, if he uses ultima, kiss your butt good by and try again, it's worth it

Or just do what I did and whip out your songstress and Magic Masque him... then you can do whatever you like

dont you need the magical song books to get magical masque.....which i didnt have first time around since i wasnt useing the guide

You only need the second which you get from beating Experiment at lvl 5. I think

ah there you are, i wanted catnip before i decided to embrace that challenge, at least theres a number of easy ways to get it, and with new game plus i should have two when i reach chapter five again

cat nip is actually very useful with the dark knight ability BLACK SKY. i have yuna with moogle and arcana abilitys avaliable. this makes sure my defense is high but i can also do damage. true its not as powerful as trigger and sumtimes i do return 2 gunner. but i beat trema with ease using that.

To beat the dark elemental i mastered spare change and threw a crap load of money at it killed it in 1 hit as it only has 9999 hp.

well thats one expensive way to do it lol. another is Zanmato, it has a very weak defence against Zanmato, so if you get that in