Anyone ever find the pink tail in Final fantasy II?

[smokehouse]

I was thinking about this one the other day. For any Final Fantasy II lover this is an easy question, for the rest it’s something that sounds made up. In FFII there’s a small room in the last stage (B5 on the moon’s core) that allows you to have a very random fight (1 in 64) with an enemy called “Pink Puff”. During this fight they enemy says something to the effect of “let’s dance” and the music changes. During this time your characters go on autopilot and fight for themselves. It’s not a particularly hard fight but it’s the end that counts. If you lucky enough they’ll give you the rare item “pink” which is actually the pink tail (again, 1 in 64) required by the hermit on the lone island back on the planet. Give him this tail and he gives you Adamant, something you’ll later turn into Adamant armor, the best in the game.

I tried and tried to get this item. I actually had many Pink Puff fights but never got the tail. After days of trying I finally gave up. Has any FFII nut out there actually got this item without cheating? If so tell us about it.

[DDCecil]

Yes, twice (Only once on US FFII - took an hour or two, and on the Super Famicom version of FF4 - 2nd battle!). Not really a story to go along with it, you just have to be extremely lucky!

[Avatard]

Wow, I've never heard of that. Oh man, now I've gotta play it again. Maybe I'll try on the PSX version.

[Leroy]

Never. I tried for hours and hours back in the day.

[smokehouse]

It was frustrating as hell. I called the Nintendo Power hotline (it was only a long distance call back then, no per minuet charges) and asked them if it was real. He told me only a few team members had ever got it. What a pain! I finally cheated on the PS1 title and got it in my item menu just to see what it looked like.

Some other super rare items were the enemy summon items you’d get. It was an item that you’d give to Rydia so she could summon new monsters. There were Bomb, Imp, Cockatrice and Mage. All required you fight these enemies and every rare once in a while they’d give up this item. The only one I ever got was Imp.

[MattyXB]

Same here as I played it last time. I missed only some Rare items like: Pink Tail, Bomb & Mage. I get too only Imp for summon for Rydia. This was to hard to get.

[-hellvin-]

A little while ago, I was going to undertake this seemingly impossible task but there's only one problem....I had NO idea what room you were supposed to fight in to find this thing so it was kind of a worthless effort. Does anyone have a screenshot or something showing which room it's in? I'd do it if I ever got another copy of the game....my old one busted on me. I love the game to death and would like to finally accomplish getting the adamant armor.

[Blitzwing256]

funny enough I called the np councelers about the call spells and the pink tail, and the guy told me they didn't exist .

guy was an idiot.

heres an "Easy" way to get the adamant armour.
this only works in ff4, not ff2us as the items needed were dummied out)

once you have edge, go into the babel tower and get in a fight with an enemy called alert DON'T attack it.
kill any enemies that are with it.
kill off cecil kain/fusuya/yang etc etc
leave just edge rydia and rosa alive
have rosa and rydia cast slow on the alert, and repeatedly cast haste on edge (eventualy kill off rosa and rydia as well)
now have edge constantly steal from the alert
you'll be able to steal an item called "Alert" from it.
I'd recomend stealing about 500+ (one of two enemies that can drop it..and the other is a 1 shot treasure chest monster)

after you have 500 or so of them revive everyone and kill the alert as normal.

play through the rest of the game till you get to lunar subertance 4-5
there is a small room with a single chest in it.
on the far lower right.
go into this room
now normally theres only two tiles that you can fight the puffs on. but all that work picking up alerts earlier will pay off here. simply use an alert
the alert item will summon the "rare" set of monsters in that particular room. and this room it happens to be the pink puff!

so just keep fighting till they drop the pink tail.
i've been told that the faster you beat them the more chance they'll drop the tail..but I doubt that being true. they do drop some nice items though (elixers ether2s) so you won't be wasting your time, you also get good exp and gold.

a few notes, never ever ever try to get more then one tail.
if you do and your items become "sorted" and you try to trade the tail in, you'll lose ALL YOUR TAILS. so get them one at a time.
(if you earn 2 tails at once, they'll each be a differnt item in your iventory and it will be ok)
and for refrence the adamant armour is insanely strong and everyone in your current party can wear it (give the first to rydia)

heres a pic of the cave entrance on lunar 5:

http://www.green-ranger.com/lj/ff4.jpg
these are the two spots where you can encounter the puffs
(usefull if you are playing ff2 us that doesn't have alerts available)
http://www.green-ranger.com/lj/ff42.jpg
keep in mind you'll be "berserked" when the fight starts (sometimes it takes a round or two, and sometimes you can avoid thier berserk)

also you have to beat them fast, or they'll end the battle and you'll get squat. the music also changes throughout the battle, its possible though unlking this determins the items they drop, but no proof has been made to that end.


anyways, good luck on trying to get the tail.
before you get 5, you'll proably max out your gold and experience in the process...quite a long undertaking.

[smokehouse]

Awesome Blitzwing256! Great tutorial! Does the “Alert” trick work on the PS1 version? If so I may have to try that out some time!

[Blitzwing256]

sure does.

it "works" in ff2us if you use a cheat to get the alert (dummy) item. works in ff4 easy as well.

on a side note, you can't get "coctrice" in ff2us either for some reason they dummied it out but you can definatly get bomb and imp.

imp is dropped by imps and trickers, imp captains and dark imps don't drop it (any storyline based enemies don't ever drop items and both of them are in story fights)

bomb can be obtained from the later bomb enemies as well (regular bombs are story enemies as well)
mage is from mages only.

[qbertandernie]

*sighs*

you guys...forever chasing tail...

[MattyXB]

When I remember it right, you can't use Dummy Items in Final Fantasy II (US). I have cheated much with Action Replay Codes in the past to get the complete Item List. And Dummy's are always not usable when I not wrong.

And Mage exist too a Summon Magic for Rydia, because you can cheat it with Action Raplay too.

Here the Action Replay Codes for some Rare Items:
First Item Place
7E144101 & 7E1440E7 = 1. Item Imp
7E144301 & 7E1442E8 = 2. Item Bomb
7E144501 & 7E1444EA = 3. Item Mage
7E144701 & 7E1446F9 = 4. Item Pink

When you want more from these items change the 01 from the first code into any number up to 63 (99x).
When you want the item at a different place, you must always change the 41 and 40 at the same time.

Note: You will lose the old item, which was on this spot before. So make sure its not an important Item, or change it first into a common or no item.

[Leroy]

Nice. I was planning on playing the PS1 version soon and now this is good informations. Thanks!!

[DDCecil]

Also, don't forget about FF4's greatest hidden secret: The hidden items. There are a few more (do a google search for Zach Keene's "Everything you know about FF4 is Wrong"), but these are the ones I personally found:

http://www.webspawner.com/users/ddcecil/other.html

(The bottom shot is where to find the rare monsters like Tarantla and others)

[Blitzwing256]

the rare monsters I knew about..
those hidden treasures are pretty fascinaing, when I come home from work, it looks like i'll be doing a lttle scavenger hunt ;-)

I particularly like the hidden rod in the final palace ;-)

[-hellvin-]

Awesome Blitz, thanks for the screenshots. That is actually the room I wandered in and I never even encountered a Pink Puff! So are those areas you circled apparently an easier place to encounter the pink puff? Is that a confirmed thing or just something you noticed?

[Blitzwing256]

its only those two spots, but its still a 1/64 chance in those two squares (which is why its so ungodly hard to find normally)

and yup thats been confirmed that its just those two squares.
i've spent hours apoun hours running back in forth in that room and fought the puffs only on those two squares.

[CGPLAYZ]

I was thinking about this one the other day. For any Final Fantasy II lover this is an easy question, for the rest it’s something that sounds made up. In FFII there’s a small room in the last stage (B5 on the moon’s core) that allows you to have a very random fight (1 in 64) with an enemy called “Pink Puff”. During this fight they enemy says something to the effect of “let’s dance” and the music changes. During this time your characters go on autopilot and fight for themselves. It’s not a particularly hard fight but it’s the end that counts. If you lucky enough they’ll give you the rare item “pink” which is actually the pink tail (again, 1 in 64) required by the hermit on the lone island back on the planet. Give him this tail and he gives you Adamant, something you’ll later turn into Adamant armor, the best in the game.

I tried and tried to get this item. I actually had many Pink Puff fights but never got the tail. After days of trying I finally gave up. Has any FFII nut out there actually got this item without cheating? If so tell us about it.

Finally got the pink tail. Using SNES9X emulator, in the room spoken of in the lunar layer. Used the frame skip at highest rate. After about 40 battles with pink puffs, one was dropped. Nothing special done, just fight as many as it takes until one is randomly dropped.

[goldenband]

I think the super-rare item drops in FF4/FF2US permanently damaged my attitude towards RPGs. There's something just so gross, for want of a better word, about expecting people to fight the same battle over and over again for a tiny chance at getting a "special" item. It lays bare the RPG-as-Skinner-box, all of us just rats pushing a lever to get a payout.

[kupomogli]

I've gotten it once. The armor isn't worth the trouble honestly. It's the best armor in the game, but the reduction in damage between that and the crystal armor is fairly insignificant.

There's also some zeus gauntlets that I've only got through game genie, but apparently they're an incredibly rare drop from any skeleton in the game.

[Tanooki]

On SNES back in the 90s I know I took down the game around 7 times, and 2 of those I got it, and just the first one is when I really went for it. I don't remember how many fights, but I know I probably put an hour towards it, and as stated, it's not worthy of bothering with at all. The boost won't save you, it's minimal. I've always under level finished this game compared to what guides and people would say you should be against Zeromus/Zemus at the end. I tended to like to run through much of the dungeons and find save spots and just hunker down on/around them and raise levels as it was faster than the overworld. Usually in the game I'd stick near it, but made the choice to do the leveling over in that pink puff area and it eventually popped up. It wasn't so much of a harassment or annoyance as most things would be like that as I was just XP collecting to raise levels. But given the large walk/flight back, the added chit chat and things to get the mineral and that into armor is just a waste of time. Given the rarity it should have had some special abilities and some pretty much higher DEF rating and it didn't so I never actively tried for it again.

[Edmond Dantes]

I think the super-rare item drops in FF4/FF2US permanently damaged my attitude towards RPGs. There's something just so gross, for want of a better word, about expecting people to fight the same battle over and over again for a tiny chance at getting a "special" item. It lays bare the RPG-as-Skinner-box, all of us just rats pushing a lever to get a payout.

..... "RPG-as-Skinner-box"? What's a skinner box?

I kind of agree though, and its worse with modern RPGs so I usually avoid them.

What I prefer honestly is games like Bard's Tale or Might and Magic where all the purchasable weapons are usually basic equipment but you find good stuff as part of the journey. It makes you feel good about even having something as simple as a Broad Sword +1 and feels like what would happen in a fantasy novel (I don't remember Frodo Baggins buying a set of Barrow Daggers from a shop for 500 gil apiece, do you?)

[goldenband]

..... "RPG-as-Skinner-box"? What's a skinner box?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber

Basically, it's a box designed to elicit repetitive behavior from animals, e.g. via a lever that an animal inside the box presses for a reward.

[celerystalker]

Not sure a behavioral theorist like BF Skinner is really applicable here... couldn't we work Vygotsky and Jung in as well?

Joking aside, my brother got the tail back in the day without much trouble. Must've been lucky.

Now, a discussion of Skinner's theoretical raising of a child in a box in order to purely express its behavioral nature absent of nurtured influence applied to the likes of, say, Wonder Project J or Princess Maker might be poignant.