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 Final Fantasy IV Advance.

Final Fantasy
In some releases of Final Fantasy there is a useful cheat or glitch that can be used on the equip weapon screen. It has been seen on the Anniversary Edition but as of yet has not been confirmed in older releases.

Uses
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 that you already have.
 * Duplicate weapons or armor from equipment already (or not) in your inventory (a side benefit of this is having virtually infinite gil early in the game from selling said duplicated equipment).

How it is done

 * 1) First go to the configurations menu and turn Cursor to Memory.
 * 2) Go to Equip on Warrior. Select the slot you want to select the equipment FROM.
 * 3) Place another unit (doesn't matter who) next to Warrior and select where the equipment will go TO.
 * 4) Return to Warrior. The cursor should be on the previously selected space.
 * 5) Press R/L and X at the same time in the direction of the receiving character.

In depth effects
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. Enables one to give Maximillian to a White Mage. 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.

Misc.
Important things to note:
 * 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 Armor"s 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.
 * Side effect:The music may stop playing if this is used.

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


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

Final Fantasy IV

 * Weapon bits do not have any effect (affects FF4A US and Jap 1.0 versions), which affects the following equipment


 * Asura's Rod (no Holy elemental)
 * Tiger Fangs (no Paralysis)
 * Dragon Claw (no Holy elemental, no dragon multiplier)
 * Loki's Lute (no multipliers applied)
 * Mist Whip (no Holy elemental, no paralysis)
 * Assassin Dagger (no Death)
 * Piggy's Stick (no Piggy)
 * Rising Sun (not a Wind elemental)
 * Requiem Harp (no drain effect)
 * Gigant Axe (no Poison)
 * Perseus Bow (not a Wind elemental)

The bug here is that all weapons beyond item #261 (0x105, Fiery Hammer) 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 Euro and Jap 1.1 versions.

Final Fantasy V
Several bugs affect weapons in this game. The following are all affected by the Equipment Bug.


 * 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 can ONLY be equipped with a single hand.
 * Icebrand is Magic Sword OK and Double Grip OK, 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 you use Double Grip or not.  In fact, since it will always do 1 damage, you could technically say it is also Back Row OK as well.
 * 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 Item Menu Description.