Pink tail problems

This is probably the only post I'll ever make here, but I've been checking this place every day ever since I saw that delightful "power of cheese" thread (just to see the updates).

Anyway-- I have the usual American cart of FFIV, and have dedicated quite a bit of time to finding that pink tail. I am now starting to believe that it does not exist, at least in my version. I have been playing off and on for about four years now. The time counter says 73 hours plus, but it may have reset at some point, I don't remember. My characters are on levels 68-73. I don't know where they were when I first got to the room, but I hate leveling up and try to push my guys through on the lowest levels possible.

Anyway, short story long, I have fought endless pink puffs and-- if I'm lucky enough that they drop something-- I am rewarded with ether2's, and the occasional elixer or ninja star. What I want to know is-- is this normal? I mean, I know the thing is rare, but shouldn't I have gotten it by now? Is this all just some cruel hoax, or does it exist? And if it exists, to anyone who has gotten it-- when will the light come at the end of the tunnel? Am I close? Basically, should I be having this big of a problem? I am now frustrated enough that I actually registered just to ask this.

That's all.

You're absolutely correct to be so frustrated, and yes, it is perfectly normal. To say that Pink Tail is rare is a horrible understatement, ESPECIALLY if you don't have any Alarms. If you do have some Alarms you can save and then use them to automatically encounter Pink Tails in the room, and continue to reload your game and repeat until they eventually drop the item.

Without the Alarm item you have to go through the incredibly painstaking process of the awful 1/64 chance to encounter and THEN the 1/64 chance to drop. It isn't unheard of for this to take days of gametime done totally legit without Alarms. Honestly, it may be more time efficient to completely restart the game, making sure to stock up on Alarms this next time around.

Cruel? Yeah, I mean, I suppose you could call it that.

Hoax? Nah, it exists. Haven't you seen the latest episode?

^ Yes I saw, which is what prompted me to make this thread. I was wondering how on earth you did that. But I thought maybe you were using a ROM and reloading or something. Anyway-- I don't think alarms exist in my version, do they? It's been so long since I played this game for real.

My original goal was to create a save and get every rare item in it. The tail, the zeus gauntlets (which I also have spent an obscene amount of time on) and Rydia's summons. The only rare item I ever got was the bomb summon on a save that deleted itself somehow. So yeah, I'm thinking about giving up on the original plan. I still want that tail, though.

Are my guys all going to be on level 99 before I get it?

I would say getting Pink Tail eclipses attaining a level 99 party in terms of time investment and accomplishment. Don't give up! It's just like grinding on an MMO. Oh yeah, and getting Zeus Gauntlets, as well as all those other crazy items you get from random drops, such as Rydia's additional summons, are also insanely rare and require huge amounts of mindless grinding to get. The thing that sucks about those additional summons and the Zeus Gauntlets is that they're completely worthless except for collection, where as the Adamant Armor is damn good.

Also, no, you won't get any Alarms in your original FFII US cart. Sorry.

Indeed. Alarms are not on the SNES cart, but you can get pink tails though. I have to admit that, by the time I got one (which was really just pure luck), all my characters were at level 99.

What the hell are the Zeus Gauntlets?

I've fought two batches of Pink Puffs in my life, and neither of 'em dropped anything. Keep trying, don't be lazy like me and say "smurf it".

Zeus Gauntlets are a pair of arm gear that are randomly dropped by Skeletons, they have an extremely low drop rate and they're pretty much crap.

Let's Dance!
The More you Know
Did you know that multiple chocobo tunes play during encounters with Pink Puffs?
Did you know that the chances of encountering a group of Pink Puffs is only 1/64? And the chance that one will drop a Pink tail is 1/64? That means that your chance of getting a Pink tail from that battle is 1/1024!!
Keep on fighting!
Also, if you are on that rare drop quest, you can also win the Imp Summon from Tricksters in the same room as Pink Puffs! You may come out with something.

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the chance that one will drop a Pink tail is 1/64?

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I've always wondered-- is it 1/64 period, or 1/64 if they drop something? If it's the latter, please lie to me.

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you can also win the Imp Summon from Tricksters in the same room as Pink Puffs! You may come out with something.

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Ooh, thanks, I didn't know that. I only fight those things when I need to use Rydia's Asura to heal (to conserve Rosa's magic, because I have a limited number of cabins and Rydia can psych those imps afterward). I guess I'll try fighting them more. May as well.

I'm keeping myself entertained by reading while I walk around, and keeping the screen just enough in the corner of my eye that I notice when I go into battle. Right now I'm in the middle of Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms . So, it isn't completely mindless.

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Originally Posted by ,,,

Ooh, thanks, I didn't know that. I only fight those things when I need to use Rydia's Asura to heal (to conserve Rosa's magic, because I have a limited number of cabins and Rydia can psych those imps afterward). I guess I'll try fighting them more. May as well.

I'm keeping myself entertained by reading while I walk around, and keeping the screen just enough in the corner of my eye that I notice when I go into battle. Right now I'm in the middle of Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms . So, it isn't completely mindless.

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Speaking of Hemingway, you do know about the Hemingway's store, right? On the Moon? After fighting in the path to the Core, you get a hellovalotta money, and you can put it to good use.

I ended up with 99 Elixers, 99 Ether2s, 3x 99 Ether1s...it's great.

it's 1/64 chance that they will drop a Pink Puff Tail.

I would say with your levels the clock hasn't reset yet. Just a little bit of extra information.

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Originally Posted by Sasquatch

Speaking of Hemingway, you do know about the Hemingway's store, right? On the Moon? After fighting in the path to the Core, you get a hellovalotta money, and you can put it to good use.

I ended up with 99 Elixers, 99 Ether2s, 3x 99 Ether1s...it's great.

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Humingway, actually, because they hum, but close enough. :p

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Originally Posted by Marick

it's 1/64 chance that they will drop a Pink Puff Tail.

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See, that's why I'm having a hard time understanding this. If there really is a 1/64 chance they'll drop a tail, that means the odds of them dropping are the same odds as finding one in a random encounter. Well, I've fought countless random encounters. It really isn't even that hard to find them. I play for about two hours per day and in that time I usually fight 3-5 of them. There have been three times now where I've actually fought two pinkpuff battles in a row. So why no tail? I sure as heck have beaten more than 64 pinkpuff groups. I know statistics don't really work out so that you're guarenteed one after 64 battles, but then again, when I first started looking for the things I counted my battles. I found a PP group exactly 64 battles in, then another at 32, and again at 128. So maybe those numbers actually are accurate for the game. But whether they are or not, 1/64 doesn't seem to me like it should be taking this long.

I don't know. Maybe someone with a better grasp on math can explain this to me. I don't know how I passed my stats course, but I definitely didn't deserve to. The only thing I remember is "null hypothesis."

It's the same as getting one of the rare summons or a rare item.

I'm sure you fought way more that 64 groups of impish creatures and probably never got Imp, right?

Think about all of the time you spent trying to get the extra summons then think about how less frequent encounters with Pink Puffs are and you'll start to fathom the rareness of the Pink Tail.

I still don't get how I easily meet the puffs if the chance of fighting them=the chance of getting the tail.

But crap, you just made me thing about how many days I spent fighting skeletons looking for those Zeus gloves and never finding them. And now I think I'm going to cry.

I want to try to get a pink tail by loading one of my saved states. Where is it precisely that you meet them? Screenshot anyone?

The room where you meet them is the same room where you get an Elixer from a chest on the right side. I believe the room itself is on the left, but the chest is on the right side of the room. Shortly after you go down the set of stairs you can see Ragnarok from.

Alright, let's see. 1/64 chance...that's .015625. So a 1.5625% chance you'll encounter Pink Puffs. That's when you do encounter an enemy in that room, there's a 1.6% chance it'll be Pink Puffs. Then, there's a 1.5625% chance that it'll drop a Pink Tail. So altogether, that's... A 00.0244140625% chance that a random battle will be with Pink Puffs that'll drop a Pink Tail. Roughly, one in every four thousand random battles in that room. I'm sure there are more equations on the probability of encountering a random battle per step you take, but I won't get into that.

Let's say you fight three batches of Pink Puffs a day. That's still less than a five percent chance of winning the Pink Tail. So to have a decent probability, you'd have to fight for at least two or three weeks, every day.

So there you have it. Fight four thousand and ninety-six battles in that room, and you have a good chance of getting it. Enjoy.

Oh oh oh!
The legendary pink tail!!
Great!
Take this too.

hehe. Yep, I got it. And I was honestly going to give up for good if I hadn't gotten it by the time I finished the novel. I gave the armor to Edge, so I can actually put him in the front without him getting flattened by three attacks. Clock- 81:something. levels 72-78.

The lesson: never give up. Even when you realize that what you're doing is pointless and you're the biggest loser in the world.

Hooray!!!

Oh, and Sasquatch, your chances are better than that because each Pink Puff has a 1/64 chance of dropping a tail, and you fight Pink Puffs in groups of five.

Ah. Thought it was per battle, not per puff. Well that just screws up all my math. Damn you, you shouldn't have pointed that out.

Oh, thank you. ^_^

I'm sure this is an easy answer, but what are alarms?

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Originally Posted by karatehero

I'm sure this is an easy answer, but what are alarms?

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Alarms are items that you can get Edge to steal from the Alert monsters, but only in the FFIV (hardtype) version.

...and using them guarantees a battle with the rarest enemy in the current area.
Pink Puffs are pretty rare. :D

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Originally Posted by Peter_18

...and using them guarantees a battle with the rarest enemy in the current area.
Pink Puffs are pretty rare. :D

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So if by using alarms, you have a 100% chance of encountering Pink Puffs, that means that you have a five in sixty-four chance to get a Pink Tail. That's roughly a 7.81% each battle. Not exactly easy, but much less time-consuming than a .12% chance of finding Pink Puffs and getting a Pink Tail.

Sorry, what is the VI hardtype version? I have the original 2 for SNES and I have IV and ChronoTrigger for PS. Is that it?

Why can´t you just use Load State after using one Alarm and keep Loading until you actually win the Tail?
It seems rather easy to me.

Wait. When you meet one, is it a 1/64 chance you'll get a Pink Tail, or is there a 1/64 chance that the item they leave behind, if any, will be a Pink Tail? Because if that's the case, you'd also have to factor in the chances of them leaving something behind.

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Originally Posted by Sasquatch

Wait. When you meet one, is it a 1/64 chance you'll get a Pink Tail, or is there a 1/64 chance that the item they leave behind, if any, will be a Pink Tail? Because if that's the case, you'd also have to factor in the chances of them leaving something behind.

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It's both. Each Pink Puff (groups of five) has a 1/64 chance of dropping a Pink Tail. If it doesn't drop that, it may drop some crap like Megalixer, Elixer, or Dry Ether-or nothing at all.

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Originally Posted by karatehero

Sorry, what is the VI hardtype version? I have the original 2 for SNES and I have IV and ChronoTrigger for PS. Is that it?

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Yes, the one that was re-released on the Playstation is the hard-type version.

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Originally Posted by abrojtm

It's both. Each Pink Puff (groups of five) has a 1/64 chance of dropping a Pink Tail. If it doesn't drop that, it may drop some crap like Megalixer, Elixer, or Dry Ether-or nothing at all.

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1. What the hell is Dry Ether?

2. So there's a 1/64 chance of whatever they drop being a Pink Puff? Then you'd also have to factor in the chances of them dropping things. And what if more than one Pink Puff in the group of five drops something? Do you get two things, or three or four or five? Could you get four Elixers and a Pink Tail? Or would the Pink Tail override the other dropped items? Or vice versa -- would any other item override the Pink Tail?

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Originally Posted by Sasquatch

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Originally Posted by abrojtm

It's both. Each Pink Puff (groups of five) has a 1/64 chance of dropping a Pink Tail. If it doesn't drop that, it may drop some crap like Megalixer, Elixer, or Dry Ether-or nothing at all.

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1. What the hell is Dry Ether?

2. So there's a 1/64 chance of whatever they drop being a Pink Puff? Then you'd also have to factor in the chances of them dropping things. And what if more than one Pink Puff in the group of five drops something? Do you get two things, or three or four or five? Could you get four Elixers and a Pink Tail? Or would the Pink Tail override the other dropped items? Or vice versa -- would any other item override the Pink Tail?

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1. Like an Ether but a lot more MP.

2. Each Pink Puff has a 1/2 chance of dropping a Dry Ether, a 5/16 chance of dropping an Elixer, an 11/64 chance of dropping a Hellwind Star (Throwing item), and a 1/64 chance of dropping a Pink Tail. Those are the chances of getting a dropped item from a Pink Puff. Therefore, theoretically you could win 5 Pink Tails in one battle.