How to use abilities

[Taryn]

OK, I know you can equip abilities to characters through the Ability screen based on what items they have equipped at the time. But how do I USE these abilities? I get all kinds of cool abilities like "Steal Gil" and can't find them in the menus anywhere! (except to equip them...I can't find them like in the battle menus) Occasionally I've found them in menus, like Vivi's Slow, but most of them don't seem to be usable...are they automatic or something?

 

[Big Casino]

Look at the weapon while its equipped on your character in the menu itl have a number on it. This number represents how much ap is needed before the ability is learnt, you get ap from defeating monsters. You need to learn the ability first then equip it through the ability option in the main menu.

 

[Bambi]

Moved to Help Booth

 

[Sora_lion_heart]

stuff

you have to keep the item on long enough to learn the spell. Just having te item isn't enough you need AP to learn it. So if it isn't learned or epuip then no ability.

 

[Davey Gaga]

I can understand your confusion - once upon a time, I had the same issue.

Anyway, simply, you learn abilities by equipping weapons, armour, hats, gloves and accessories. Once you have enough AP, you'll master a certain ability - this means that you can safely remove the corresponding piece of equipment and still be able to utilise the ability.

As for using them, there are two types of abilities. Let's take Garnet as an example - her first set of abilities is her magic and summoning. She can use Fire, Blizzara, Thundaga, Bahamut, Shiva, et cetera. In her second set, she can learn Auto-Potion, Chemist, Level Up, Ability Up, Loudmouth, et cetera.

The first set of abilities are selectable in the battle (and, depending, the field) menu. The second set are passive and take effect immediately as a battle begins, so long as you have equipped that ability by designating "magic stones" to it - that's the little white jewel that appears when you select an ability.

 

[Busta]

Also, once you get the equipment needed to learn abilities, it probably isn't a bad idea to just go to a fairly tolerable part of the world map and fight enemies just to gain Ability points towards your equipped abilities. This may seem tedious and boring at first, but it will knock off some of the easy small AP abilities you may want to get out of the way first. This is what I did towards the end of the game around the Black Mage Village when I had a crap-load of abilities left to learn.