History ThatOneSidequest / FinalFantasy

* Getting the InfinityPlusOneSword requires [[GuideDangIt a guide]], as the player needs to leave four treasure chests alone without being given a hint as to which ones those are. The other way to obtain it is a [[LuckBasedMission 1/1000 random treasure chest drop]], with that chest being in one of the hardest areas in the game, and also happens to have a requirement of having 10 of 12 summons (not counting Zodiark, who is in this area) of the entire game.

** You want Lulu's ultimate weapon (which is redundant for a mage anyway)? Have fun ''dodging 200 lightning bolts in one sitting.'' This requires very careful timing and a single error means all your hard work is for nothing. You also have to keep count yourself, which is pure sadism: the chest with the Sigil spawns at the Travel Agency if you succeed, so you have to leave the area to check for it, but that resets your score. (The remaster thankfully made dodging 200 bolts an Achievement, so you have that as an indicator of when you're done.) Tip: You can pause the game without affecting the counter. Do it in batches of 10 or so with pauses to rest; then it's just tedious instead of ulcer-inducing. There's also a sequence (glitch? exploit?) in one section of the Thunder Plains which makes it far easier. There's a little crater right next to one of the lightning towers. If you walk from the tower and press X as soon as you touch the edge of the crater, you automatically dodge a bolt even if there was no indication one was coming. Then walk back to the tower and repeat. Watch out, though. If you don't have EncounterRepellant, you may screw up the timing due to a surprise fight.

* Pink Tail, which can be traded for an ore needed to get the best armor in the game. It's randomly dropped by Pink Puffs/Flan Princesses, which only appear in a ''single'' room in the final dungeon, and have only a 1-in-64 chance of appearing in a random battle. Stocking up on Sirens, consumable items which force a random encounter, will help, since using them in the room will always bring out Pink Puffs, but Sirens can only be acquired en masse [[GuideDangIt by stealing from specific enemies]] in a [[PermanentlyMissableContent one-time-only dungeon]]. And even then, the Pink Tail itself is a 1-in-64 chance drop... if it drops an item at all, which is a 1-in-20 chance. There are players who have fought hundreds of battles against the Pink Puffs without receiving a single Pink Tail. Hunting for Flan Princesses can be mitigated via the quickave glitch in the American/Australian Advance version, which always starts from the rarest encounter after reloading a save.

* Pink Tail, an ore needed to get the best armor in the game. It's randomly dropped by Pink Puffs/Flan Princesses, which only appear in a ''single'' room in the final dungeon, and have only a 1-in-64 chance of appearing in a random battle. Stocking up on Sirens, consumable items which force a random encounter, will help, since using them in the room will always bring out Pink Puffs, but Sirens can only be acquired en masse [[GuideDangIt by stealing from specific enemies]] in a [[PermanentlyMissableContent one-time-only dungeon]]. And even then, the Pink Tail itself is a 1-in-64 chance drop... if it drops an item at all, which is a 1-in-20 chance. There are players who have fought hundreds of battles against the Pink Puffs without receiving a single Pink Tail. Hunting for Flan Princesses can be mitigated via the quickave glitch in the American/Australian Advance version, which always starts from the rarest encounter after reloading a save.

** Twintania, the third-last boss of the entire game, has two separate 'versions' -- one where he's charging his ultimate attack Gigaflare, and one where he isn't. The former has a one-shot rare steal, and the other has a one-shot rare drop. So even if the player manages to pull off the rare steal, they still need to survive Gigaflare ''and'' get that lucky drop.

* Hunt 18: Adding Insult to Injury. A somewhat late game hunt, it involves going to the Nabreus Deadlands, specifically the Overlooking Eternity area, and fighting Roblon, a Augmented Automaton type enemy. What makes this Hunt to frustrating is a combination of the area, getting to it, and even trying to fight it; the Nabreus Deadlands are confusing to navigate on a first attempt, and the zone you need to go is only accessible through a hidden pathway the game doesn't make clear exists, all the while fighting undead that while not very strong, can inflict debuffs like Blindness constantly. Worse, is that the area you find the Hunt is is filled with undead, who spawn constantly up to, and around the Mark's location. So trying to fight the Mark becomes a frustrating game of clearing the undead as best as you can so they don't cast Reflect on the Mark, as it is only weak to Water damage, which is the overall weakest elemental spell due to only one low level spell available to use. Even worse though is that if you happen to accept the Mark, then try to do the sidequest in the area involving the three medallions, the Mark essentially "overrides" the zone because it shars the same location with said sidequest, meaning you need to beat the Mark before you can progress.

** And then there's his elemental dances, which are unlocked by having Mog fight in battles with specific backgrounds. In itself easy enough, except for Water Rondo. There's only one time when the player is fighting with a water background, and that was when going through the Serpent Trench. And that location is no longer available in the World of Ruin, meaning that any player that may not have known this or didn't get Mog into their party until they were in the World of Ruin, are being taunted by that empty space in his Dance list. The GBA port and later versions add a single extra opportunity to get the Water Rondo in the World of Ruin: the fight with [[BonusBoss Leviathan]], which is itself fairly obscure, and once it's defeated, it's gone for good.

* The Deep Sea Research Facility. The initial challenge of defeating two Ruby Dragons and then Bahamut in a sequence is not particularly challenging, if the player knows what they are doing and solve the puzzle quickly. The second challenge of reaching the BonusBoss at the bottom of the dungeon is significantly harder and can be a nightmare to the unprepared, since it involves a resource-management puzzle to even reach the lowest level and the boss. Better to have saved at the beginning, lest everything be wasted. And the puzzle has two solutions, with the easier resulting in the player wading through unavoidable monster encounters after another. And just to add insult to injury, the save point at the bottom is ''hidden''. Make sure to junction Move-Find.

* European players and those that got the [[UpdatedRerelease HD Remaster]] got heavily penalized for not getting the crests in locations as they were available, as backtracking to them often found the path blocked by a [[BonusBoss Dark Aeon]]. These things are incredibly difficult bosses, with most of them not being able to be defeated by a party unless they have almost cleared the entire Sphere Grid. And this didn't just apply to places with crests, but just finding all of the Jecht Spheres that unlock Auron's [[LimitBreak Overdrives]]. One is in Besaid, where this version had Dark Valefor in front of it.

* Phase 2 of the Hennes Mines, the game's most difficult BonusDungeon. It's an hour-long journey through a narrow and confusing dungeon infested with GoddamnedBats, who can stump players that weren't expecting level 60+ enemies. There are no save points, and the end of the mines contains Zodiark, one of the game's three most difficult [[BonusBoss optional bosses]]. The reward is getting Zodiark as a summon, but since the character summoning him requires to be under a certain, dangerous status to use the ultimate attack, Zodiark is AwesomeButImpractical.

* The Monster Professor fragment, which requires the player to have fought and defeated ''every single enemy'' in the game, not counting DLC enemies. There are dozens of [[UndergroundMonkey Underground Monkeys]] in this game, many of which are incredibly unlikely to show up without having the Battlemania fragment skill turned on. This includes the fight against [[BonusBoss Raspatil]], who is a rare spawn in only one, optional location, the battles using the Paradox Scopes, that like to turn out to be much harder than one might believe, and the Archylte Steppe, which has four weather patterns that each have their own share of unique monsters to spawn. Fortunately, the weather pattern can easily be controlled by the player. The worst comes in the form of the battle against the Proto Fal'Cie Adam, whose third form can easily be never met by choosing the right Live Trigger answer, and one area in [[TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon Academia AF 500]], which has one spot that has ''two'' unique monster spawns. If the player gets one spawn, they need to ''close the gate'' and re-tread the entire area to get back to that spot, and hope the other monster spawns.

* ''The Last One Standing'' is a sidequest that the player can grab on a new game, but that cannot be completed until New Game Plus. It requires the player to defeat ''every'' Last One enemy, which are super-powered, magenta [[PaletteSwap palette swaps]] of their enemy type, that appear when the player has defeated a lot of a specific monster type, except for the [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Last One]]. This includes [[BossInMookClothing Chocobo Eaters]] and [[BossInMookClothing Earth Eaters]]. There is a slight help in the form of the BonusDungeon, which is a 33-Floor dungeon filled with majority of the Last Ones and [[BonusBoss Ereshkigal]], who has to be defeated for this sidequest, too. The player can easily use this to fight most Last Ones in one spot or even skip the floors with Last Ones already defeated, [[GuideDangIt as long as the player knows which floor contains which Last One]]. The reason this sidequest cannot be finished on New Game is because the final area of the game contains three unique monsters, and a PaletteSwap of a monster that has no Last One. The unique monsters must have their Last Ones appear 'the old fashioned way', which takes quite some time due to different spawn rates. However, the final area has no time limit.
* The sidequest involving fighting [[BonusBoss Aeronite]]. This boss can spawn in certain areas of the Dead Dunes, depending on the clock's time, and is incredibly difficult. It has a somewhat convoluted stagger condition, and can be separated into three phases. Even with good garbs and schemata setup, this boss can easily take a long time to defeat because of its massive amount of HP, and it has the annoying aspect of ''escaping the battle'' after 3 minutes, unless the player has managed to stagger it. And if that wasn't bad enough, getting to the NPC that gives the sidequest is its own problem. He's located in a specific area of the ruins in the Dead Dunes, and the player needs to find [[GuideDangIt the specific way]] through the ruins to get to him. The only upside is, if the player has managed to defeat Aeronite before talking to this NPC, the player already has the item drop the NPC is looking for and the quest can be finished immediately.

* DS version has Treasure Hunter augment, which doubles the drop of items from enemies, so it is handy to get it for reasons stated above. However it is obtained by completely revealing each and every dungeon map. So have fun completing maps in dungeons like Eidolon's Cave and Sylph Cave with its damage floor and especially the latter's overuse of hidden paths. Not to mention there are few dungeons like Tower of Zot [[OneTimeDungeon you can't go back to]], essentially voiding the chance of getting this augment for said run if you didn't complete their maps then and there.

* Excalibur II. It requires a ''ridiculous'' speed run of the game, and it's found in the final dungeon, after majority of sidequests have become unavailable. And if the player has completed the game fast enough ''to'' reach it, they likely didn't experience much of the game. The PAL version was an incredibly bad offender of this, as the game played slower, but the timer was still going at a normal pace, so that in effect the time limit became even shorter.

* Pink Tail, an ore needed to get the best armor in the game. It's randomly dropped by Pink Puffs/Flan Princesses, which only appear in a ''single'' room in the final dungeon, and have only a 1-in-64 chance of appearing in a random battle. Stocking up on Sirens, consumable items which force a random encounter, will help, since using them in the room will always bring out Pink Puffs, but Sirens can only be acquired en masse [[GuideDangIt by stealing from specific enemies]] in a [[PermanentlyMissableContent one-time-only dungeon]]. And even then, the Pink Tail itself is a 1-in-64 chance drop... if it drops an item at all, which is a 1-in-20 chance. There are players who have fought hundreds of battles against the Pink Puffs without receiving a single Pink Tail.