Equipment bugs

The equipment bugs are a series of bugs found in various games in the series, most notably in the original Final Fantasy and in the Advance version of Final Fantasy IV.

Final Fantasy
Final Fantasy has been released for numerous platforms, and different glitches relating to equipment exist across the versions.

Special abilities of weapons bug
In the Nintendo Entertainment System version some weapons have special abilities, which will have no effect. The following list entails what each weapon was originally intended to do, but does not do due to this bug:
 * Were Sword - Does not inflict more damage on Were-creatures.
 * Rune Sword - Does not inflict more damage on magic-using or supernatural creatures.
 * Dragon Sword - Does not inflict more damage on Dragon and dragon-kin creatures.
 * Coral Sword - Does not inflict more damage on sea creatures.
 * Giant Sword - Does not inflict more damage on Giants/Ogres or their kin.
 * Flame Sword - Does not inflict more damage on Fire-weak, undead, or regenerative creatures.
 * Ice Sword - Does not inflict more damage on Ice-weak creatures.
 * Sun Sword - Does not inflict more damage on undead creatures.
 * Light Axe - Does not inflict more damage on undead creatures.
 * Xcaliber - Does not inflict more damage on every creature-type and elemental weakness.

Equipping bug
Some releases have a useful cheat or glitch that can be used on the equip weapon screen. It has been seen on the Final Fantasy 20th Anniversary edition, but as of yet has not been confirmed in older releases.

Because of the function of this cheat, it has many uses beyond the obvious:
 * Equip units with weapons/armor they would not normally use.
 * Generate new weapons/armor from armor/weapons the player already has.
 * Duplicate weapons or armor from equipment already (or not) in the player's inventory (a side benefit is having infinite gil early in the game from selling said duplicated equipment).

How it is done:
 * 1) Player enters the configurations menu and turns cursor to Memory.
 * 2) Player goes to Equip on Warrior and selects the slot they want to select the equipment from.
 * 3) Player places another unit next to Warrior and selects where the equipment will go to.
 * 4) Player returns to Warrior; the cursor should be on the previously selected space.
 * 5) Player presses R/L and X at the same time in the direction of the receiving character.


 * Weapon to weapon: Enables weak units to wield Warrior's weapon set. This enables one to give Barbarian Sword to a White Mage.
 * Armor to armor: Enables weak units to equip heavy armor.
 * Armor to wrong armor: Enables one to put stronger armor on the "wrong" body part, such as Maximillian on a White Mage's head.
 * Weapon to armor: Enables one to spawn and equip an armor without actually having said armor in one's inventory. Give White Mage Knight's Armor from Warrior's standard Hammer.
 * Armor to weapon: Enables one to spawn a weapon from an armor in one's inventory; give Barbarian Sword to White Mage spawned from Steel Gloves.


 * Equipping non-shield armor as a shield may result in the game freezing if it is used to guard. This results from the armor's lack of a sprite.
 * Easy gil can be acquired by buying the Hammer and then spawning Knight Armors at the beginning of the game.
 * Each weapon has a coinciding armor. One weapon will always spawn the same armor and in turn that armor will spawn that weapon.
 * Because there are more armor pieces than weapons, some pieces spawn unique knives. In all cases, these are called Knife, have unique stats and lack a sprite, perhaps making them claws.
 * As a side effect, the music may stop playing if this glitch is exploited.

The Dawn of Souls version for Game Boy Advance has the same glitch, but it only leads to a graphical glitch without any effects.

Final Fantasy II
A couple of weapons in the original NES version are affected by this bug.


 * Healing Staff - Deals the most damage to undead enemies, but will still heal them even with the damage.
 * Ripper - Originally meant to do 20 higher damage per hit, but does not.

Final Fantasy III
These bugs only affect the NES version of the game.


 * Several weapons do not grant boosts to elemental magic when equipped. These weapons are the Fire Rod, Ice Rod, Light Rod, and Elder Staff.
 * If a player equips a shield in their right hand and a weapon in their left hand, the weapon's elemental property is ignored completely.

Final Fantasy IV
Weapon bits do not have any effect (affects FF4A US and Japanese 1.0 versions), which affects the following equipment:


 * Asura's Rod (no Holy elemental)
 * Tiger Fangs (no Paralyze status infliction)
 * Dragon Claws (no Holy elemental, no dragon multiplier)
 * Loki's Lute (no multipliers applied)
 * Mist Whip (no Holy elemental, no paralysis status infliction)
 * Assassin's Dagger (no KO status infliction)
 * Piggy's Stick (no Pig status infliction)
 * Rising Sun (not a Throw elemental)
 * Gigant Axe (no Poison status infliction)
 * Perseus Bow (not a Throw elemental)

The bug here is that all weapons beyond item #261 (0x105, Flare Sledgehammer), or effectively weapons starting from item #288 (0x120, Nirvana) are considered "armor". Elemental attack properties on those weapons will be considered elemental resistances, elemental status attacks will be considered as status resistances, and racial multipliers will be considered as racial resistances.

This bug was fixed in the European and Japanese 1.1 versions.

The weapon Avenger is notably bugged in the SNES version, with various different effects.

Final Fantasy IV: The After Years
The Final Fantasy IV: The Complete Collection version of the game has a bug where the weapons obtained from the treasure chests that appear after defeating the bosses in the final chapter appear in the player's inventory, but do not become selectable in the character's equipment menu. It is unknown what triggers the bug, but resetting the game fixes it.

One useful tactic in the original Final Fantasy IV was to rob characters' equipment before they leave the party to keep their items. The trick can also be used in The After Years, and by unequipping Cecil's hands the player can obtain the Kingsword, which isn't useful to have and only clutters the player's inventory, but is not available any other way.

In a battle with Kain?, there's a point where Kain does critical damage and the battle ends temporarily. After this part the Hooded Man can use Jump and suddenly has the Dragoon Lance weapon equipped. In this battle the Hooded Man can equip the Kingsword if the player took it off Cecil earlier, which appears to be a bug, as the Hooded Man can't normally equip it, and neither can Holy Dragoon Kain. The Kingsword stays on him if equipped in battle, but it's weaker than the Dragoon Lance.

This trick is useful also in Golbez's flashbacks, in which he has equipped the Ebony Blade. Removing the Ebony Blade from his hand will allow him to maintain it in the inventory for the rest of the game, or maybe equip it (it's a weak sword, but it gives boost to Intelligence and Spirit).

Final Fantasy V
Several bugs affect weapons in this game.


 * Staff can be doubled-gripped (no indication of this in the item menu description).
 * Man-Eater is a essentially a spear and receives the Jumping damage bonus, even though there is no "Jump to double attack power" in the item menu description.
 * Magic Bow's item menu description indicates "Double Grip Only," when in fact it can only be equipped with a single hand.
 * Icebrand works with Spellblade and Double Grip, even though it is not indicated on the item menu description.
 * Excalipoor is Double Grip OK even though it is not indicated on the item menu description. However, Excalipoor will only do 1 damage whether one uses Double Grip or not. Since it will always do 1 damage, one could say it is Back Row OK as well.
 * Using Goblin Punch with the Excalipoor equipped will deal massive damage instead of 1 damage when using the attack.
 * Rune Bell is not Back Row OK, contrary to its item menu description.
 * Gaia Hammer is Back Row OK, even though it is not indicated on the menu description.
 * In the iOS version if the player dual-wields the Dancing Dagger with another weapon and has the Dancing Dagger attack first and it uses Jitterbug that kills the enemy, the attack from the other weapon will bring the vanished enemy back on the screen. The enemy counts as defeated, and will never attack. The battle is won after killing all other enemies.

Weapon behavior bug
Some weapons do not behave like they are suppose to. When using Locke's Mug command, many weapons lose their functionality. Similarly, when the relic Master's Scroll is equipped, some weapons ignore its damage penalty. The relic Genji Glove also doesn't work as intended if only one weapon is equipped. Also, the "Optimize" command doesn't always pick optimal equipment.

Another minor bug is when the Genji Glove is equipped, with Drainer on the left hand and Assassin on the right (so Drainer attacks first), the player loses the hit points from the Drainer instead of gaining them.

Healing Rod targeting bug
The Healing Rod's aiming byte is set up that it will target the player's characters by default. This results in two bugs: the first being when selecting the Attack command, the Healing Rod will still aim at the enemy as if it was a normal weapon. The second, if the player decides to throw the Healing Rod, the game will target the thrower by default. It doesn't read the aiming byte for Attack, but it will read it for Throw. This is especially bad since when attacking with the Attack command, Healing Rod will restores the target's HP upon being hit, while it will inflict damage when thrown. Part of this bug was fixed in the GBA version; the cursor will target the enemy when attempting to throw the Healing Rod.

Shield bug
The "shield bug" involves the Force Shield and the Cursed Shield. Normally, when equipped, these shields either grant a positive status effect (Shell in the Force Shield's case) or inflict a variety of negative status effects (in the Cursed Shield's case). However, when equipped in the middle of battle, instead of applying the statuses the shields are supposed to, they instead provide immunity to them.

For example, if the Force Shield were to be equipped in the middle of a fight, instead of the user getting the Shell status, they would be immune to it. The only status the Cursed Shield does not grant immunity to in this way is the Condemned status, while protecting from Sap, Confuse, Silence, and Sleep, making this the only way in which the Cursed Shield can be beneficial to the user.

There is a bugfix patch that players can use to fix the "shield bug" in the SNES version.

Equip anything bug
There's a bug exclusive to the Japanese version where one can equip any item to any equipment slot for any character. It involves the Optimize option in the item menu. This bug was fixed before the US release by making the 256th item slot inaccessible.

To use it, one must sell off all items that the specific character can possibly equip (weapons, shields, helmets, or armor pieces), and put the item one wants to equip in the last slot, the 256th slot. Pressing Optimize will equip the item in the 256th slot on the character.

One of the most noticeable things that happens is that some stats will increase by great amounts depending on what the player equips. For instance, equipping Edgar's Tool, the Drill, as a helmet, will give the character 255 Defense and 255 Magic Defense, making every physical attack and magical attack, except those that ignore Magic Defense, deal 1 point of damage to said character. If non-weapon items are equipped as weapons, and the character attacks physically with said items during battle, it will cause a variety of graphical glitches, attempting to reference animations that don't exist.

Perhaps as a nod towards this glitch, the Drill, along with the Chainsaw and Auto Crossbow, appear as equippable pieces of armor in Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy.

Final Fantasy Mystic Quest
The resistance glitch occurs when the armor on guest characters grant resistances, but they don't actually take effect. This occurs when the guest character leaves Benjamin, and their elemental/status protections will stay there. When a new guest character fills in the second slot, the elemental/status protections from the previous guest character will take the place instead of the current guest character's elemental/status protection. The new guest character's protections will not show up. The only way to fix this is to save and reset the game.

For example, when Kaeli is in the party, she is strong against Petrify; when she leaves Benjamin, her Petrify resistance will still be present under the status screen. When Tristam joins Benjamin, the protection status from Kaeli will be on Tristam and he will be strong against Petrify. He isn't supposed to be since he has no armor that provides protection against it. If one saves the game and resets it, Kaeli's protections will be gone and Tristam's protections will be there instead.

Final Fantasy Adventure
The earliest the player can bug equipment is when they can find the first upgrades in Wendel, the Iron Helmet. When the textbox appears, the player should press the start button to open the main menu, and move the Iron Helmet to the slot next to it, close the main menu, save, and Soft reset. When the game loads up, the player should press the start button after the textbox and equip the Iron Helmet which the DP will go up to 17 instead of 9.

Final Fantasy Legend III
During the battle that starts the game, Sharon has not yet joined the party, and Myron is in her usual slot. As a result, he is not treated as a Guest (fifth-slot) party member and his Battle Axe can be unequipped and given to another party member. When he rejoins as a Guest he will have a fresh Battle Axe, so his combat abilities will not suffer.