Categories: Final Fantasy Tactics
These are the Top 10 abilities in Final Fantasy Tactics – The Ivalice Chronicles to unlock early! Getting these abilities first will make your playthrough a breeze!
If you’ve ever played Final Fantasy Tactics, then you know the early game can be absolutely brutal. Your characters are under-leveled at this point in the game, your equipment is likely trash, and one bad turn can wipe out your entire party, resulting in a permanent death or at the least restarting combat. But here’s the thing: if you know which skills to unlock first, you can get a huge advantage right at the start of the game, making everything easier moving forward.
So Today we’re counting down the Top 10 Best Starting Skills in Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles, ranked from useful early-game crutches all the way to abilities so strong they stay relevant forever. And trust me, some of these will completely change how you approach your first dozen battles in FFT.
Related Guides:
- Updated FFT Jobs Tier List
- Best FFT Builds Explained
- Best Beginner Builds for FFT
- Top 10 Beginner Tips
- Best Special Characters Ranked!
Best Starting Abilities Ranked – Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles
Here are the top 10 abilities to learn at the start of Final Fantasy Tactics Remaster, considering Action, Reaction, Support, and Movement abilities, ranked by overall utility and impact:
- Auto-Potion – best survival skill in FFT, automatically consumes potions when taking damage
- JP Boost – nearly doubles job growth and JP gains
- Potion / Phoenix Down – heal or revive allies
- Magick Boost – improves Magic Attack damage greatly
- Fire, Blizzard, and Thunder – huge AOE damage dealers for early game
- Move +2 – greatly extends movement for your units
- Steal Heart – charm enemies to take them out of combat
- Focus – easy ability to farm JP early in the game
- Throw Stone – basic ranged attack to finish off enemies and build JP
- Counter Tackle – automatic damage dealing counter
10 – Counter Tackle
- Type: Reaction Ability
- JP Cost: 180
- Description: Upon receiving a physical attack from an adjacent unit, counterattacks with an ability equivalent to Rush.
Starting at number 10, we have the simple, yet effective Counter Tackle ability. Counter Tackle is the very first reaction ability you’ll get on the Squire job, and in those opening missions it’s basically free damage for you and your group. Any time an enemy hits you in melee, you’ll have a chance to hit them right back. Early on, that little bit of chip damage is huge. So while you take damage, you also dish it out at the same time. Every hit makes a difference in Final Fantasy Tactics.
Just pair Counter Tackle with a movement-boosting accessory like Movement Boots early on, and suddenly your Squire can always reach someone on turn one. And when you combine Counter Tackle with Throw Stone, you’ve always got consistent ways to deal damage every single round which is exactly what you need to survive those early levels in this challenging game.
9 – Throw Stone (Squire)
- Type: Action Ability
- JP Cost: 90
- Description: Lobs a tone at a distance unit, and has a chance of knocking it back. The damage dealt varies greatly.
Speaking of, Number 9 on this list is the Throw Stone ability. This one might not look great on paper, but it’s absolutely essential in the early game for several reasons.
First, remember that in Final Fantasy Tactics you only gain EXP and JP when you actually take an action during combat. Waiting does nothing for you in terms of leveling up your character and jobs progression. Throw Stone is literally the only ranged option you’ll have for your Squires to make sure they are dealing damage even if they aren’t in melee range. This is good.
Plus, if you have multiple melee jobs on your team, enemies can often get surrounded, leaving your Squire with nothing better to do. And if you’ve got a low health enemy trying to hide or escape? Throw Stone can be a quick finisher move to take them out.
Of course Throw Stone isn’t amazing for damage, and that’s fine. You can pepper enemies from a distance, knock them off ledges, or even tag your own teammates just to generate points. Later on, once you unlock Monk’s Aurablast, Throw Stone gets completely outclassed, but until then? It’s a great option.
8 – Focus (Squire)
- Type: Action Ability
- JP Cost: 300
- Description: Increases one’s own physical attack power for the duration of battle.
Number 8 on our list is the Focus ability from the Squire. Now, if Throw Stone is about always having an action, Focus is about always getting value.
This ability boosts your Physical Attack Power by one every time you cast it, but even better: you can cast it on yourself at any time. That means you can spend early battles just stacking power while grinding Job Points to unlock better abilities for your team.
The best grind spot by far in the early game comes right at the start in Mandalia Plains: simply surround a final enemy unit and then spam Focus over and over. It’s not flashy, but it’s one of the fastest ways to push through the early levels to get the jobs and abilities you actually want.
So for ultra fast progression, Focus is incredibly efficient, especially combined with some of the later skills on this list still coming up.
7 – Steal Heart (Thief)
- Type: Action Ability
- JP Cost: 150
- Description: Captures the target’s heart, enthralling them. Inflicts Charmed on a distant foe. Applies Charmed.
Number 7 is Steal Heart from the Thief. The Thief doesn’t exactly have the strongest toolkit early on in Final Fantasy Tactics, but Steal Heart can be insanely useful in the right circumstances.
This ability lets you charm an enemy unit, turning them against their own team. Even if the hit rate looks low, the payoff is ridiculous here. Land this on a Knight or another big damage dealer, and you can swing the entire tide of battle in your favor on turn one.
It’s also ranged, which makes it one of the best offensive tools for the Thief while you’re grinding out their levels. Few abilities in the early game offer this kind of instant crowd control, and when it lands, it feels amazing. Definitely worth checking out and rolling the dice to see if you get lucky.
6 – Move +2 (Thief)
- Type: Movement Ability
- JP Cost: 560
- Description: Increases movement by 2, allowing the unit to move a greater distance.
Speaking of the Thief, you’ll also want to work towards gaining their amazing movement ability, Move +2. And while it’s a big JP investment, it’s worth every point.
Movement is everything in Final Fantasy Tactics. Being able to reach high ground, close gaps, or position for area-of-effect spells can literally decide the match in your favor.
Now, the only real “upgrade” over Move +2 is Teleport from the Time Mage—and that costs a whopping 3000 JP. Which means for most of the game, Move +2 is the gold standard for movement. You can slap this on pretty much any unit and keep it there permanently.
Of course, before you even get to the Thief job upgrade you should grab Move+1 which is available on the Squire. Make sure you put this on every character as well initially as it’s a fairly cheap upgrade to get early on and does make your team significantly more powerful for just this one ability.
5 – Fire, Blizzard, and Thunder (Black Mage)
- Type: Action Ability
- JP Cost: 50
- Description: –
Coming in at number 5, we have the elemental magic damage spells Fire, Blizzard and Thunder from the Black Mage.
These abilities are all about raw damage and are your bread-and-butter nukes in the early game. Even at level one, these abilities hit incredibly hard, can one-shot some enemies, and the area-of-effect means you can punish groups of enemies standing too close together as well.
The trick here is to unlock all three, since different enemies have different resistances and weaknesses in Final Fantasy Tactics. Fire is pretty reliable early, and you’ll want to skip the third-tier versions of these spells since they’re not worth the JP. Instead, push toward the big prize: Flare, which is a single-target, non-elemental nuke that hits like a truck.
Just don’t forget: spells in FFT have friendly fire. Always check the turn order to make sure your allies move out of the blast zone before you drop a Fireball on their heads. But with careful timing, positioning and turn management these elemental abilities are an absolute game changer.
4 – Magick Boost (Black Mage)
- Type: Support Abilities
- JP Cost: 400
- Description: Increases the unit’s magickal attack power.
Coming in at number 4 we have Magick Boost. If Black Mages weren’t strong enough already, Magick Boost turns them into early-game killing machines.
This ability increases your MA by a full 33%. That’s basically like strapping a rocket launcher onto a class that’s already throwing out explosives.
The best strategy here is to grind with JP Boost during random battles, then swap to Magick Boost as your main Black Mage passive for the more challenging story missions. That way, when it really counts, you can annihilate enemies with spells that scale far beyond what most jobs can handle at that point in the game.
3 – Potion / Phoenix Down (Chemist)
- Type: Action Ability
- JP Cost: 30 / 90
- Description: –
Coming in number 3 we have the item abilities from the Chemist and specifically Potion and Phoenix Down.
Okay, yes, I’m cheating here by putting two abilities in the same rank—but let’s be real: Potion and Phoenix Down are the hands down best survival skills in the early game by far. Without them, those first chapters can feel impossible. With them, you suddenly have a reliable way to heal and revive across your entire squad.
The best part? You don’t need to keep everyone as Chemists. Just dip into the class long enough to unlock these abilities via Items, then carry them into your next job as secondaries. Every unit in your army should know Potion and Phoenix Down. They’re the ultimate insurance policy.
#2 – JP Boost (Squire)
- Type: Support Abilities
- JP Cost: 250
- Description: Increases the amount of JP and Job EXP earned in battle.
Coming in at number 2 on our list is JP Boost from the Squire.
Now JP Boost is incredibly important when it comes to grinding out your characters and Job Points. In fact, I would say it’s the single most important ability in the game for long-term growth. That is of course if you want to do things more quickly and efficiently.
That’s because JP Boost dramatically increases how much Job Points you earn for every combat action, nearly doubling your JP earned, and letting you power-level through jobs at warp speed.
This is how you unlock the good stuff in FFT early on without wasting hours slogging through the bad ones. Want to get Ninja? You’re going to have to suffer through Archer, Thief, and Geomancer along the way. But with JP Boost, that suffering is cut way down. This is one of the smartest early investments you can make—and it pays off all game long.
1 – Auto-Potion (Chemist)
- Type: Reaction Ability
- JP Cost: 400
- Description: Upon receiving damage, uses a potion from the inventory to restore one’s own HP. Prioritizes the use of potions of lower potency.
But that brings us to what I think is the best ability across the board in Final Fantasy Tactics and that is Auto-Potion from the Chemist.
Auto-Potion is without a doubt in my mind, the king of early-game survival and late-game dominance. This is basically god-mode healing for all characters on your team. It works against any attack, physical, ranged, spell, whatever, and it triggers automatically to heal you based on the potions available in your inventory. No more wasting turns healing, because again, it’s automatic.
Now here’s another trick that will help you use this ability even further into the story: Auto-Potion always uses the lowest-grade potion in your inventory. So once you hit Chapter 2, sell all your regular Potions and only carry Hi-Potions. Suddenly every time you take damage, you’re healing for 70 HP instead of just 30, which is often more than the enemy even dealt in the first place.
That means that as you progress through the game, your units can focus entirely on offense, and your fragile spellcasters can even survive hits that would normally one-shot them. Sure, melee units might eventually prefer Counter or First Strike, but Auto-Potion remains one of the most consistently powerful reaction abilities in the game. And with gil becoming plentiful as you progress, keeping stocked up on plenty of strong healing potions is never a problem at all.
Best Starting Abilities Frequently Asked Questions
What are the best starting abilities to learn in Final Fantasy Tactics Remaster?
Some of the top abilities to learn first include Auto-Potion for increased survival and JP Boost to progress jobs faster.
Which abilities should I unlock first?
JP Boost is relatively cheap at only 250 JP, so that should be unlocked first. Keep in mind it’s best to use JP Boost when grinding only, as you can replace it with more effective abilities for challenging story missions.
Which Starting Abilities are still good in the late game?
Auto-Potion is the best starting ability to use in the late game for FFT due to the fact that it can use more powerful potions for even greater healing as you progress through the story.
More Final Fantasy Tactics – The Ivalice Chronicles
Check out these guides to help you get started!
More Final Fantasy Tactics – The Ivalice Chronicles
Check out these guides to help you get started!
