Please, elaborate on that... For those who don't know it's good to share such ideas. I don't think that a spoiler section is necessary since it's not a stroy related thing. Plus as we said, we are free to talk and play!
Well I'll try to keep it simple and if it needs further explanation like actual equipment set-ups then I'll help further or look for some guides I've used for more info.
But basically, there are equipments in the game that can permanently boost your stats higher than if you normally just levelled up - these are called stat-boosting equipment. If you take a look at your stats for your characters, you'll have 4 stats at the top - Speed, Strength, Magic and Spirit. These are what you need to focus on - forget about the ones below (i.e. Attack, Defense etc). Any equipment that increases your current Spd, Str, Mag or Spr (i.e. numbers that turn green) are stat-boosting equipment. With an equipment on that increases any one of these stats, at level up your character will gain an invisible fraction of a stat. Over the course of a few levels, these fractions add up to a whole stat point and get permanently added to your stats. By equipping stat-boosting equipment during level up, you will be able to achieve incredibly high stats.
For the record, Spirit will only max out at 50 and is the easiest to max, so once you've maxed it, you need to then replace the equipment you were using to boost it with something that will add to another stat instead of leaving it on.
The only way to achieve the actual highest max stats is by playing a LV1 game and waiting until you get to end-game to then go stat-boosting with the correct equipment. However, doing it from any point in time will still yield excellent stat gains ... Well, ideally you would want to start stat-boosting around the LV30s. By doing this, when it comes to the superbosses during end-game, you'll have an easier time.
And of course, if playing more casually through the story anyway, you should still make a concious effort to equip stat-boosting equipment during your game so that you at least do achieve some permanent stat gains that will help you become even stronger than normal through the story.
Believe me, the PAL version is really that slow! Auto-haste is a must in this case! I've played the NTSC version twice and I enjoyed it more! But I didn't have access to it this time...
Nope, I'm not referring to the actual game speed. Talking about the battle system itself. I played the US version and this still yields the same results because of the way the battle system works in FFIX.
I'm talking about what Haste's purpose actually is in an ATB-based RPG. FFIX's ATB system doesn't actually work like a normal ATB system does, i.e. like in FF7 and 8.
What you will find in FFIX is that no matter how fast your ATB bar rises, turns actually play out in ROUNDS. That is, even if all 4 of your party started with full ATB at battle start and then attacked, by the time the last character finishes his/her attack, the enemy will then go next. No matter what. Even if you are on Haste.
Think about how Haste works in FF7. You can Haste someone and he will have such an increase that he will be able to attack faster than the enemy - getting in multiple turns before they can make a move much of the time. Haste someone in FFIX and they will always only be able to attack once by the time the enemy gets its turn.
The enemy has an invisible ATB bar itself, which always increases during party members' attacks, so once the party has finished making moves, the enemy will get his go. The only way to delay the enemy's ATB bar is by setting the battle speed to Wait and then during your character's animation, open a window with another character (e.g. open the Magic window, or just click Attack and leave the cursor up), then cancel when the animation is over, and repeat with another character. It only serves to stop the enemy's ATB bar from rising during character animations, however, meaning it won't get its turn in right after one character has finished his animation, leaving you time to try and get someone else's in.
It's a little tough to explain, but basically, it means that turns instead play out in rounds - party goes, then enemy goes, then party goes, then enemy goes. No matter if you have Haste on, it won't change the rounds, and won't mean that a Haste-Zidane will get more than 1 move in before the enemy does.
So in that sense, yes, Haste is useless.
What Haste IS useful for is determining how quickly Regen happens on your characters. The Spirit stat also greatly determines this (which is one major reason for boosting Spirit, and is already the most important (and easiest) stat to boost), but this is where Auto-Haste makes its innings.
By equipping Auto-Haste and Auto-Regen, you are almost invincible. Essentially, you will recover any lost HP almost to max with these two abilities equipped during attack animations. However, if using Wait and opening windows to delay enemy ATB bars, this also stops Regen from happening, so not selecting anything during animations is key to recovering HP massively in this regard. During longer animations from enemies or perhaps using eidolons, for example, you'll likely just recover back to full HP every time, and really just stay very overpowered.
These tips allow you to trounce the superbosses, and indeed everything from Disc 3 onwards, since most characters will have been able to get Auto-Haste and Auto-Regen at that point.
But when it comes to actually using Auto-Haste on its own - no, it is worthless and those 9 or 10 ability points really need to go on other things. It will not increase the amount of turns you get, so its only major use is for Regen.
