You can initiate an unlimited number of encounters against Elnoyle enemies in Esthar, which is an extremely efficient method of amassing Energy Crystals. These crystals are important for:

• Remodelling Quistis’ best weapon, Save the Queen.
• Remodelling Rinoa’s best weapon, Shooting Star.
• Refining into Ultima magic using Forbid Mag-RF.
• Refining into Pulse Ammo using Ammo-RF.

In other words, you will need to stack up a fair number of Energy Crystals during a typical playthrough.

Initiating the Fight

You can initiate battles against an Elnoyle very easily, but you can only do it at a specific point in the game. You can do this when Esthar is overrun with monsters following the Lunar Cry happening at the Lunar Base.

Travel to Area 14 in Esthar and look for a soldier wearing black leaning up against the railing of the walkway. You can use the Esthar map on the Esthar Walkthrough page to help you find the soldier.

Energy Crystals

You cannot win Energy Crystals unless the Elnoyle is level 40 or higher, but this shouldn’t be a problem, as your characters should all already be level 40 or more. To confirm the enemy’s level, take all three of your character’s levels and divide it by 3 to come up with the average, and just make sure it’s higher than 40.

Remove the Mug command, as you need to avoid stealing from the Elnoyle to have it drop Energy Crystals. You have a high chance of obtaining 2, a rare chance of obtaining 3, and an even rarer chance of obtaining 4.

Battle Tips

1. Elnoyle is susceptible to the Death status effect, so junction 100 Death magic to ST-Atk-J, and this will have a chance to instantly kill it with a regular attack.
2. Use Blind and Poison (or junction these spells to ST-Atk-J) to reduce Elnoyle’s chance to hit with regular physical attacks. This is especially helpful because Elnoyle will counterattack your party members regularly.