This blog is about Final Fantasy danjuro and the larva eater.
Final Fantasy 12 is a great game. It has beautiful graphics, a nicely laid out story, wonderful characters, and a general atmosphere that makes it easy to get warped into the game. Within my lifetime I have played a very large number of games. Some of them I have beaten, others I have just played and quit in the middle of them. Final Fantasy 12 is one of the games I enjoyed the most. Every game that I play my main goal is perfectionism, which some refer to as a “Perfect Game”. I will go into more detail about this in a future blog post.
The purpose of this specific post is to cover some information about one of the spawns in Final Fantasy 12 that goes by the name Larva Eater. Not only is he a random rare spawn, but he also carries one of the game’s best daggers…the Danjuro. Getting Larva Eater to appear in the first place is a task in and of itself..not to mention the fact of getting the Danjuro to drop which has a very low drop rate.
Larva Eater appears near the end of the game. There is a lot of talk among forums, walk-throughs, and rumors about different ways to make him respawn faster than the general method. Due to this controversy and conversation, there are many methods out there that have been developed..and very nearly all of them work to some degree.
The Danjuro is a special dagger in FF12 that only drops off of this boss, and initially only has around a 3% chance of dropping without a chain. I have been unable to confirm the exact drop rate percentage without a chain, but this is what I have generally heard across the board from all players. There is a technique that allows the drop rate to increase to a higher percentage. This is done via the chain system that the game has built in, when you kill the same “type” of enemy more than once, you begin building a chain. The higher that chain increases the better the drop rates you will receive while defeating future incarnations of that same enemy type.
Throughout all of the techniques I have located, there were a few that I tried and a few that I left alone. I have one special technique that is a combination of a few techniques that make getting him to spawn a lot easier than a lot of the other techniques that are discussed throughout the internet.
Before I go into detail about my technique..I wanted to cover some basic points about the other techniques that are discussed online. I have listed them below with a little detail on how the general concept goes to get him to spawn.
Background Information
The first thing you need to know before you can accomplish any techniques is some basic information about the boss and his location. He is located in the “Great Crystal” area near the end of the game. I am not going to into a lot of detail into how to find the great crystal because you can find that online readily available in google. The area you need to focus on for ALL of these techniques is Waystone XIV, Leo Gate STONE (not gate), and Leo Gate.
With these areas in mind and a general understanding of the great crystal, a lot of these techniques will be fairly simple.
Original Method
The original method is pretty easy, and definitely works 100% of the time. However it is extremely time consuming to get him to spawn. Not only is it time consuming for him to spawn, but it’s also very time consuming to get the drop. Much more so than some of the modified techniques that were developed later on by general players.
Basically, this is how this original Final Fantasy danjuro technique goes. You are supposed to kill a total of 255 enemies (I prefer to chain them to make sure that it registers). At 255, he almost always appears AT 255 for the first time. Sometimes it takes a little longer. If he is not there at 255, leave and fight a few more. The “best” way to do this is by fighting Necrophobes in the Leo Gate Stone and Leo Gate areas. After you fight and kill Larva Eater the first time then he is “unlocked”. Afterwards you have to fight somewhere between 30-255 of them for him to re-spawn. Generally I go back at 30, 50, 80, 120, 150, 180, 210, and 255. Generally he’ll show up somewhere in the 100 and something range, but at times it takes just 30 or 50.
This technique is VERY time consuming. I did this a long time. However due to the low spawn rate I was never able to get a Danjuro from him..even after defeating him nearly 20 times.
Mom Bomb Technique
This technique follows the same pattern as above to unlock him. Once unlocked he is at chain 1. So generally, people who use this technique find the bomb enemies that are nearby. They hit them and make them explode and kill each other (be careful they damage you as well). When this happens after about 30-255 of those kills he can re-spawn and you keep your chain. This effectively increases drop rate. This is a good technique. It works. However it is still too time consuming for my tastes.
Gargoyle Technique
Gargoyles are the same type of enemy as Larva Eater. This means if you chain them, you are building the same chain that is shared with Larva Eater. The Gargoyles are in the area near the ENTRANCE of the Great Crystal but it’s OUTSIDE of the Great Crystal itself. You can start fighting them to build the chain, and after yo have the chain you want you can head back towards the area with Larva Eater. With this technique, you can use the Mom Bomb technique. There are some changes in this story so it’s up to you to figure out which one works.
Some say you have to clear the Leo Gate Stone area of Necrophobes in order for this to work. However you have to kill them without breaking your chain. You can do so with Poison and Sleep on groups of them and kill them all like that. While you are clearing them out some say to let the Necrophobes divide 5 times..it glitches the game into marking more kills as you zone in/out. Might save you some time while working with the Mom Bomb Method.
My Method
My method relates to Final Fantasy danjuro. It is amodified version of an existing method. You can find the existing method here: http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Larva_Eater
If you follow that carefully, in related to Final Fantasy danjuro, it works. However, I have a modified version that made it even easier. First off, I headed to Leo Gate Stone and cleared out that entire area. MAKE SURE you let at least 5 of them divide. DO NOT leave that area while killing them and make sure your in Leo Gate Stone and not Leo Gate. Once you clear them out..get ready to start zoning. Zone into Waystone XIV and see if he’s there. If not then start going in/out of Waystone XIV. The good part is once you start zoning, you can hold down the down key. Meaning you can just hold it down or prop it on something. If you zone and he appears the fourth time you zone..and you zone 6 more times, he’ll still be there. You can use this to your advantage. Prop up your controller and let it go. Come back 5-10 minutes later and almost always he will show up by then.
It’ll be either he spawns, he spawns with Reavers, Reavers spawn alone, or nothing spawns. If nothing spawns, then keep zoning. If the Reavers spawn alone you can either ignore them and keep zoning, or zone away two times (go through Leo Gate Stone and into Leo Gate and back again) then continue zoning. The Reavers appearing alone won’t hurt anything however. If he appears with Reavers or alone then kill just him if possible (Larva Eater). Afterwards if you still need to fight him zone away two times (into Leo Gate) and head back and start zoning again.
There are a few things to keep in mind here. Once you have a chain with him DO NOT lose it. If there are Reavers you can try to vanish them if possible. Also you may want to equip stuff that gives you double experience, I was able to get to level 99 during my first attempts of just killing Necrophobes to 255 over and over again until he spawned each time. I did that until all of my characters were level 99.
Another thing to remember..I am not sure if you HAVE to do the Necrophobe divisions. I am also not sure if you have to clear out the Leo Gate Stone area first. Once their all dead in that area they never come back as long as you stick to the described method above. At the very least this makes it easier while your performing your zoning, because none of them are in the way. So I would recommend doing the Dividing no matter what just to be safe. I also recommend killing all in that zone because no matter what it will help a lot not to constantly get attacked by zoning. So whether these are required or not, they are recommended.
Theoretically (although I did not) you could combine this with the Gargoyle technique. You could start off by killing gargoyles up to a decent chain so you have a head start. Then you can go to the Leo Gate Stone and kill all there while letting them divide at least 5 times. It’s tricky to kill them all without accidentally breaking the chain. My recommendation is cast Sleep on them, and then Poison. If they actually die from poison it doesn’t break the chain. You can also experiment carefully with using some magic on them to start with to get them down some before finishing them off with poison. Try to keep them to sleep because if they all divide rapidly you can be stuck with 5-6 enemies and it can get very tricky.
never get him to drop it this way.
Conclusions
Those are the primary techniques for dealing with Final Fantasy danjuro. I know the technique I tried was a modified version of other techniques, but it was very effective. I chained him 30 times and accidentally killed a Reaver, but he was still re-spawning very quickly, so I ended up getting another 6 chains and broke it again accidentally. Afterward, I got a 25 chain and finally got the Danjuro.
Technically you can take all of these techniques and play around with them in different methods and come up with one that best suits you. Good luck with getting your Danjuro.
Other archived blog posts can be found here.
More about the game can be found here.