Treasure Chest System — Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age eGuide

Treasure chests have a different appearance depending on the region you are in. Treasure chests actually look more like treasure pots or treasure vases, in most locations. In some places, they even look like treasure crystals. You’ll know for sure because a contextual “!” hint appears within a few steps of chests.

Here’s how the treasure system works: whenever you enter a zone, each treasure location has a chance to produce a treasure chest. This percentage is listed in tables throughout the guide.

If a chest “spawns” on zone entry, there’s a chance the treasure chest will simply be filled with gil, the currency in Ivalice. The tables list the gil percentage, too. If the chest contains gil, the range is from 1 to the maximum listed in this guide’s tables.

If a chest spawns, and it isn't filled with gil, then it'll contain either sellable loot, an item, a piece of equipment, or (most exciting) a new technick ability or magick spell. When a chest contains something like this, you'll obtain one of two possible rewards upon opening the chest.

The Zodiac Age Treasure Update

Perhaps the biggest change from the original FFXII to this version (and definitely the friendliest change) is a reshuffling of treasure locations and results across the entire game. All locations now have much more treasure to find (some locations have more than double the old amount of treasure chests). Treasure also tends to be more generous (for one thing, gambits are no longer in chests at all—now there’s much more “real” treasure). And, most importantly, treasure now re-spawns by moving only one zone away—if you move past a dotted boundary and see a brief black loading/autosave screen, then return, you’ve “zoned” and reshuffled the treasure chests. In the original game, you had to move three zones away, and you didn’t have 2x or 4x Speed Mode Multiplier to speed the hike up, either.

In some locations, you may find a zone boundary where there are several potential treasure chest spawns on both sides of the zone—there is nothing stopping you from just crossing back and forth if you want, collecting and re-collecting the respawning treasure chests!