Dissidia: Final Fantasy - JP Version
                                            ability sort bug exploitation guide
                                                                   by fallacies
                                                       version o.2 (o3\Io\2oo9)

[C]                                                           Table of Contents

                                          C            Table of Contents

                                          O            About this Guide

                                          I            Overview

                                          II           The Ability Menu

                                          III          How do I use the Bug?

                                          IV           Mastery of Successions

[O]                                                            About this Guide

      o3/o9/2oo9 - ver. o.I - Ist draft
      o3/Io/2oo9 - ver. o.2 - Initial Publication Draft for GameFAQs.

This is a quick and simple guide for the Ability Sort Bug in the Japanese
version of Dissidia: Final Fantasy. It assumes that the player has some 
knowledge of Japanese -- specifically, familiarity with the game terminology.
Included Japanese text content is best viewed in Shift-JIS encoding with a

This version of the guide does not include methods for obtaining specific 
succession abilities using sort. If requested, I will attempt to provide this
information in the future. In the meantime, try and play around with the sort 
option. You might find what you're looking for. 

This guide can be freely redistributed as long as its contents aren't modified. 
Please credit Fallacies for authorship.

Any questions, suggestions, clarification requests, information additions, or 
corrections may be submitted to:


Please head the subject with [DFF].

[I]                                                                    Overview

A basic explanation of the Ability Sort Bug was first posted to a Chinese web-
community for Japanese Dissidia sometime in January 2009. 

In brief, there is a bug in the algorithm used by the game to implement the 
"sort by" option in the Ability Menu. As a consequence, if any of the non-
Default sort orders are selected, succession Brave Attack Abilities that can
normally not be directly equipped may appear in the list of equippable 
abilities. For Gabranth, even the HP Attack Menu is influenced.

To give a plain-language example of this phenomenon:

Cloud has an airborne Brave Attack called Slash-Blow. Once Slash-Blow is 
mastered, he gains a succession/followup attack for it called Omnislash Ver.5
(the version of Omnislash used in Advent Children), which causes HP damage.

The fully mastered Slash-Blow requires 15 CP to equip, and having it equipped
is a prerequisite to equipping Omnislash Ver.5, which requires another 20 CP 
on mastery. Thus, under normal circumstances, Cloud must allot a minimum of 35
CP just to have Ver.5 in his movelist.

When the Ability Sort Bug is exploited, the Omnislash Ver.5 can be equipped
without any prerequisite. In combat, pressing the keys for whatever Brave
Attack slot you put it into produces the normal Slash-Blow attack, which may
be followed up by the Omnislash Ver.5 by pressing the Square button once the
Slash-Blow has landed as usual. Effectively, you're equipping *both* 
Slash-Blow and Omnislash Ver.5 for only 20 CP.

Characters with more than one form can exploit the sort bug to access Attack
Abilities that are non-native to whatever form they happen to be in. Cecil's 
Dark Knight form can thus equip attacks normally usable only in Paladin form
and vice versa; Gabranth's EX-Mode HP Attacks may be used in normal mode, and
his EX-Charge ability may be accessed in EX-Mode (not that this is extremely

Shortly following the discovery of the bug, the majority of the Dissidia 
communities in Japan unsurprisingly decided to ban its use in semi-formal 
tournaments. It is now primarily used in informal matches to conserve CP 
allotment -- making space for more action abilities and critical-augmentation 
abilities. There is another use, described in section [IV] below.

[II]                                                           The Ability Menu

Making use of the bug is easier if the player has some familiarity with the
ability menu. A basic menu translation is given below:

      Ã‚ÂUÃ…Â’Ã¢Â€ÂšÃ†Â’AÃ†Â’rÃ†Â’Ã…Â Ã†Â’eÃ†Â’B
      Attack Abilities Menu

          Brave Attacks Menu

          HP Attacks Menu

      Ã…Â ÃƒÂ®Ã¢Â€Â“{Ã†Â’AÃ†Â’rÃ†Â’Ã…Â Ã†Â’eÃ†Â’B
      Basic Abilities Menu

          Action Abilities Menu

          Support Abilities Menu

          Extra Abilities Menu

      Reset Abilities to Default

      Unequip All Abilities

      Ã‚ÂÃ…Â Ã…Â½Ã‚ÂÃ†Â’Ã…Â Ã†Â’XÃ†Â’g
      List of Currently Accessible Abilities

Of specific relevence to this guide is the Ability Sort Menu, which is 
accessible by pressing the Triangle Button in the List of Currently Accessible
Abilities, the Action Abilities Menu, the Support Abilities Menu, or the Extra
Abilities Menu. The Sort effect determines the order in which abilities are 
listed throughout the entire Ability Menu -- that is, even outside of whatever
menu you used Sort in.

A translation of the Ability Sort Menu is given below:

      Default Sort Order
          Resets the sort order to the game default. This is the sort order 
          automatically in effect whenever you enter the Ability Menu.

      Sort by Highest to Lowest AP Accumulated
          Lists first the abilities for which the character has accumulated the
          highest amount of AP for.

      Sort by Lowest to Highest AP Accumulated
          Lists first the abilities for which the character has accumulated the
          lowest amount of AP for.

      Sort by Currently Equipped
          Lists first the abilities the character presently has equipped.

Note that a character can have up to three different builds, indicated above 
the Ability Menu options as Set A, Set B, and Set C. You can switch between 
them freely by pressing the select button within most parts of the Character 
Customize Menu. This feature is extremely useful for experimentation.

[III]                                                     How do I use the Bug?

The simple answer is that if you change the sort order in the Ability Sort 
Menu, the attacks listed in either the Brave or HP Attacks Menu change, 
occasionally resulting in the appearance of abilities that are typically 
unequippable. The only sort option that has no chance of triggering the bug is

The complex answer is that the list of abilities produced after a sort differs 
according to which sort option you use; and that the sort turnout is determined
by what abilities are equipped and the amount of AP the character has 
accumulated for everything so far unlocked. No-prerequisite successions are 
only equippable from the category of their parent -- meaning that because 
Slash-Blow is an airborne Brave Attack, Omnislash Ver.5 may only be equipped 
as an airborne Brave Attack. 

For a very rough sense of what attacks are rendered equippable by the bug, 
refer to the top of the List of Currently Accessible Abilities after executing
a sort. Note also that when a character has an extremely large number of 
succession attacks, a fraction of these never appear on sort regardless of what
you do.

Sort by Currently Equipped is in theory the most easily exploitable sort 
option, as the turnout has a very high chance of being whatever attacks you 
presently have equipped. To give an example, if Cloud equips Slash-Blow and 
Omnislash Ver.5, subsequently applying this sort almost *guarantees* the 
presence of the no-prerequisite Ver.5 in turnout. 

Sort results for the two AP-based sort orders can potentially change *every 
time the character gains AP* -- thus, Cloud might be able to equip the 
Omnislash Ver.5 without prerequisite before a given match, but disequipping and
attempting to reequip using the same exact sort option after gaining some AP 
may result in the Ver.5 disappearing from the no-prerequisite ability list.

AP-based sorts stabilize after all abilities accessible by the character have 
been learned and mastered. Note that this does not mean that the Ability Sort 
Bug is rendered unusable -- rather, it makes the sort turnout *more reliable*, 
in the sense that gaining more AP no longer causes the generated list of 
abilities to wildly fluctuate. On the downside, certain succession attacks 
vanish permanently from the sort results.

The Ability Sort Bug does not influence characters with only one form and no 
succession attacks.

[IV]                                                     Mastery of Successions

There are a number of more obvious ways to exploit the bug, but here I'll be
describing a use that benefits characters that haven't mastered all abilities
yet -- a method of greatly accelerating the mastery of non-Basic Abilities.

The Chaos fight is divided into three stages, and the reward for passing each
stage is calculated as if it were a single match. This means that if you beat 
Chaos twice and lose the third match, you are rewarded all of the battle-rise
and AP that you won in the first two matches. If you've bought all of the 
AP Calendar Icon items in the PP Catalog, on Special Day and the days with the
AP Icon, fulfillment of the AP Chance condition given at the bottom right of
the screen at the beginning of the fight rewards you with 6 AP per match --
a total of 18 AP if you beat Chaos three times. 

After unlocking the option to fight Chaos in Quick Battle (beat the game once
and purchase it from the PP Catalog), equip the Diamond series items (+100% 
AP) and the independent accessory Maneki Neko (+100% AP) on a character that 
you want to master attack abilities. Equip as few basic abilities as possible,
and then proceed to fight Level 1 Chaos.

If you fulfill the AP Chance condition now, you gain 300% of your normal AP --
meaning that three AP Chance fulfillments versus Chaos gives you 54 AP instead
of 18.

Any attack ability may be equipped a maximum of three times. If equipped once,
successful completion of a Chaos fight accumulates 54 AP to the attack's 
mastery bar. If equipped twice, 108 AP accumulated per fight. If equipped three
times, 162 AP is accumulated per fight.

Under normal circumstances, using this method to master succession/followup
attacks consumes a huge amount of CP -- for example, it takes an allocation of
165 CP to equip the unmastered Omnislash Ver.5 three times (including the cost
of equipping Slash-Blow). Using the sort bug exploit, however, equipment of the
Ver.5 costs only 120 CP; and after 2 fights with level 1 Chaos, the ability is
completely mastered.