How to Get Aranea Permanently
- See also: Guides
Introduction
Note that is a glitch, it might be fixed in the future.
WARNING!!! Use at your own risk. I have only tested this Chapter 8 and 9 and postgame Chapter 15. The only negative side effect I've found is that you can't trigger Tour quests at camps while she's in your party. You also can't fish. See below for how to remove her.
I spent a lot of hours idling with Aranea during Chapter 7, thinking our time together was limited and trying to have Promptos capture some good moments. Turns out she'll randomly rejoin your party for fights in later chapters, and you can glitch her to not leave.
She never downs, can link strike, can revive your other party members, participates in camps and photos, Sawashiro Miyuki. She can't level, can't change gear, can't be targeted by items, has no chocobo, doesn't ride inside vehicles, blocks Tour quests, may lurk in some scenes, doesn't help the already bad party AI, makes the Carbuncle buff harder to get.
Steps
- Camp at Cotisse Haven north of Hammerhead. You may know this as an Angelus farming spot. Wait till midnight and save. You can pick up a nighttime bounty (Raindrops in the Night) to fast forward to night right away. Fast traveling to Galdin and back will burn the rest of the hours.
- After around midnight, the spawn tables change. The usual dropship will stop appearing and Giants will start appearing. Head North towards the wall with the red fence. Wander till you trigger a Giant spawn. If nothing is showing up, you can try the beast whistle, it seems to queue a spawn at the next spawn location you come across. If you get Imperials, you can despawn the drops by fast traveling to your car, then back to camp.
- As soon as you agro the Giant, Aranea should be on her way. Run outside the combat radius, bring up the map, and Return to rest point. Do not wait for any signs of her or it'll be too late, unless you want to test if she's spawning at all and reload to actually get her.
- Open the camp menu *before* her descent animation plays and she joins the party. If you wait too long, the UI will be locked and you won't be able to get the menu, you'll have to reload and try again.
- With the menu open, look around, confirm her dropship is there, and watch her jump down. After she lands but before she leaves the party, Camp.
- In the morning, everything will seem as usual. Reload the auto-save from the camping.
How to Remove Aranea
Removing Aranea: She will leave your party when it resets at certain story events or quests. If you're in the postgame, the only known ways to remove her are by repeating the final battles and reloading your new clear file or one time with the diner part of the mountain hunt pre-quest. You can repeat the steps to recruit her again after she leaves.
I've confirmed that you can also remove her by going to Pitioss, though I'm still horrible at landing there.