How do the 9999 and 99999 limits work?

[Peter_20]

I always assumed that your chars for some reason stopped increasing their HP at 9999 - and when I recently watched an FF10 movie most chars had capped at 9999 alright, but some chars had reached 99999 as well.

Do you have to "unlock" this 9999 cap?

[Tavrobel]

Break HP Limit ability, armors only.

The ability is synthesized using Wings to Discovery, a drop from the Shinryu Monster Arena Original Creation, 1 for kill, 2 for Overkill. Alternatively, you also receive 30 from completing Remiem Temple Chocobo race under certain conditions (once only), and you can Bribe them from Marlboro 540k for 3-5, or Greater Marlboro 1.28 million for anywhere from 6-10, 8 being the average. I assume you're using NTSC, not PAL.

A 3Os version of this armor with BHPL is often dropped from the higher Original Creations, most namely of them, Nemesis, and Omega Weapon of the Omega Ruins. I've heard that it is possible to drop 4Os, but I have never actually seen it myself. Simply buy a Tetra Armor from Wantz in South Macalania, and make the armor yourself if you want all four slots for customization. They are fairly cheap.

To break Weapon Damage Limit, you need the Break Damage Limit, which is synthesized from 60 Dark Matter, a drop from all of the original Creations as a Rare drop, ranging from 12.5% to 25%.

All damage and HP for characters is capped at 99999.

[Crossblades]

To break Weapon Damage Limit, you need the Break Damage Limit, which is synthesized from 60 Dark Matter, a drop from all of the original Creations as a Rare drop, ranging from 12.5% to 25%.

The Celestial Weapons also come equipped with this ability if I'm not mistaken

[Tavrobel]

To break Weapon Damage Limit, you need the Break Damage Limit, which is synthesized from 60 Dark Matter, a drop from all of the original Creations as a Rare drop, ranging from 12.5% to 25%.

The Celestial Weapons also come equipped with this ability if I'm not mistaken

Those too, but I didn't feel the need to note it, since it would be made obvious after getting Yuna's Nirvana.

[Vermachtnis]

To break Weapon Damage Limit, you need the Break Damage Limit, which is synthesized from 60 Dark Matter, a drop from all of the original Creations as a Rare drop, ranging from 12.5% to 25%.

The Celestial Weapons also come equipped with this ability if I'm not mistaken

Yes, but you have to power them up first. Even Lightning Dodge is easier than collecting 60 Dark Matter.

[ReloadPsi]

And over time you'll discover that Break HP Limit is actually not very useful at all: Any attacks that go over the 9999 cap will usually still kill you if you get your HP to about 30,000 and your other defensive stats insanely high. Auto-Phoenix is considerably more useful than BHPL, but make sure you've got the right status defenses to make sure it can still be activated. Questing 60 Dark Matters for BDL is one thing... questing 99 Dark Matters for Ribbon is truly frickin' shudderworthy.

[Captain Maxx Power]

During the course of my eventual defeating of Penance I actually found it very easy to gain Ribbon for each of my characters, primarily due to the large amounts of arena monsters I had to kill to increase my stats. As a bit of a side note if you are currently at 9999 HP and keep gaining HP (not possible on the standard grid IIRC) from nodes then once you do get BHPL your HP will be set to the value it is at with those added nodes. Whether or not you can reach 99999 HP or not is how you decide to customise your grid. A route some people take is to max out Luck over Evasion and Accuracy, since Luck directly affects both of these stats. Having a Luck of 255 would mean every attack would hit automatically, and an evasion of 25 would be needed to avoid every attack that isn't auto-hit (Tav probably knows the number, so don't take it as read that 25 is the value since I'm not 100% on that). It may also be worthwhile leaving Magic at a lower value, simply because once you have BDL and 255 Strength physical attacks outclass every magical attack, and the only monster Physical Immune is Jumbo Flan.