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Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age - Bazaar Guide and Loot not to sell

by RPG Site Staff on 12 July, 2017

If you ask us, it isn't really a true, proper RPG without some good old loot to grind, find and utilize. Final Fantasy XII is definitely a full-on RPG, and that's shown in its wonderfully tactical gameplay and in its deep character progression - but also, of course, in its hefty amounts of loot that is then used in the in-game crafting system at the bazaar. 

FF12 can actually be rather brutal about all this, with many rare items vital to crafting new gear to make some of the jobs/classes and job combinations viable for late-game bosses showing up only a handful of times. We're here to help explain things.

How the Bazaar and Loot work in Final Fantasy XII

In order to be able to craft items in the bazaar, you need to sell combinations of loot items to any store. When enough requisite items are sold for a certain recipe, that new bazaar item will become available to purchase, again, at any store. Where you sell loot does not matter at all.

For example, if you sell 2x Dark Stone, a Tanned Hide, and 2x Wolf Pelt to any store, you will be able to purchase 'Assorted Leathers' from the bazaar, which give you Leather Breastplate and Leather Headgear. Most bazaar items can only be purchased once, although some important bazaar items are repeatable.

The key points to remember about bazaar items are:

  1. When loot is sold, the game will remember how many of each item have been sold at any point of the game to any store. You do not have to sell recipe loot at the same time to unlock a bazaar item.
  2. When a bazaar item is purchased at the Bazaar, the ingredients used for that recipe drop to zero. Even if you sold 99 Wolf Pelts, after buying 'Assorted Leathers', the number of Wolf Pelts in 'bazaar memory' is now zero. This is useful to know when a loot item is used for two different recipes.
  3. Wolf Pelts are also used in the recipe 'Unassuming Surcoat', which requires 2x Wolf Pelts and 1x Earth Stone. Here's where the bazaar mechanics can actually work in the player's favor. If you sell 2x Wolf Pelts, 2x Dark Stones, 1x Tanned Hide, and 1x Earth Stone, both the 'Assorted Leathers' and 'Unassuming Surcoat' become available. You notice you only had to sell 2x Wolf Pelts as they counted for both recipes.
  4. If a bazaar item is repeatable, selling multiples of the required loot all at once will not allow you to purchase multiples of the resultant bazaar item. For example, Gemsteels are a critical bazaar item which is actually resold back to the bazaar in order to create two late-game weapons. Gemsteels have the recipe <2x Damascus Steel | 2x Hell-Gate's Flame | Scarletite>. You need more than one, but you cannot just sell <6x Damacus Steel | 6x Hell-Gate's Flame | 3x Scarletite> and get three Gemsteels. Instead, you have to sell <2x Damascus Steel | 2x Hell-Gate's Flame | Scarletite>, buy one Gemsteel, sell another <2x Damascus Steel | 2x Hell-Gate's Flame | Scarletite>, buy another Gemsteel, etc.
  5. Nothing in the bazaar is missable.

This can all lead to headaches and panics: what can you sell? What can't you? When you're desperate to buy some curative items or a new weapon, what's safe to trade in towards them without damaging your chances later in the game? Well - we've got a few little rules here that'll make your life a little easier, at least.

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FF12 The Zodiac Age: Discerning Loot to Keep and Loot to Sell for Gil

Here's the good news: there is one little, simple trick in FF12 that'll keep your head above water in the item-selling stakes. It's super simple: don't sell anything beyond ten units of any given piece of loot.

The reason for this is simple enough - none of the crafting recipes for anything rare require more than this, and many of the game's rarest items will never crop up enough times to hit that magic double-digit count in your inventory. If you hold on to the first ten you get of every item and sell everything beyond that, you'll never be in danger of running out of the loot you need when crafting. 

That's a simple enough solution, right? Well - if that's not enough for you, there are some items you can definitely sell and some items you should definitely keep...

Loot items you can freely sell

You can sell these freely - they're not used in any Bazaar recipes:

  • Pebble
  • Holy Stone
  • Storm Stone
  • Turtle Shell
  • Earth Magicite
  • Holy Magicite
  • Common Fish - From the fishing minigame
  • Delicious Fish - From the fishing minigame
  • Nebra Succulent - From the fishing minigame
  • Empty Bottle

Loot items not to sell - keep these

First of all, never sell Teleport Stones. These are not used in crafting.

These items of loot should be held onto as a priority, as they're rare and are used in crafting, or are more common but are used in multiple crafting recipes. If you sell too many of these items at once, don't worry, you won't lock yourself out of any recipes but you can make things harder for yourself.

In short, these items are used in repeatable recipes (like in point 4 above), so selling too many at once will be inefficient. It's best to only sell exactly what you need for these repeatable recipes and not in bulk.

  • Arcana
  • High Arcana
  • Bat Wing
  • Damascus Steel
  • Dark Crystal
  • Demon's Sigh
  • Eye of the Hawk
  • Feystone
  • Grimoire Aidhed
  • Grimoire Togail
  • Hell-Gate's Flame
  • Rainbow Egg
  • Scarletite
  • Serpent Eye
  • Snake Skin
  • Soul Powder
  • Soul of Thamasa
  • Wargod's Band
  • Quest items like the Dewdrop Pebble, Great Serpentskin, Jaya Stick, Semclam Shell, Small Package, Nebralim and Valeblossom Dew - use these for their intended quest purposes, which will give you greater rewards.

Anything not listed here is used in non-repeatable recipes and can be sold at will.