FFXII: some tips if fighting the TZA Archeoavises too early

For some reason, the developers decided these enemies should be even nastier surprises than everything else in the Zertinan Caverns from #FFXII.

Since this early, as soon as you're tasked to go past Giza Plains, you're still weak and lacking in resources no matter how strong you are, it can be a very challenging fight, or if playing casually, potentially impossible until very late.

That being said, there are some ways which can make the battle manageable, from what I tested:

Moving two zones out and back in allow you to reroll these enemies' levels until you get them to a desired point, lowest level being 59 according to the wiki.

As previously said, normal progression may make this fight impossible, so powerleveling is advised. If going too weak, both you will be tickling these bullet sponges, and they will be tickling your characters' bones per bite.

Also about progression, do the mandatory events of Jahara, so you get a guest that has Bubble, which doubles the target's HP. The guest, also having fewer abilities, ends up being more mobile, meaning you can use him as party leader to abuse area transitions (and their auto-saves).

The Archeoavises are also susceptible to Confuse and Blind. The guest spamming Shades of Black will sooner or later trigger blinding spells (as well as doing good damage in-between), or you could have a bow, gun or grenade user equip blinding ammo. The main attacker could use Karkata if you were able to steal from the Trial Mode Flowering Cactoid (rarest steal), the weapon confusing on strike, along with the Hermes Sandals (Bazaar item at this point) for Auto-Haste, to quickly confuse and dish out a lot of damage at the same time.

Further about area transitions, set the battle mode to wait and slowest and lure them to fight by the area's exit, specially useful if they start casting Curse or Dispelga. Curse because one of the debuffs it adds is Disease, which the Serum items are for, but are rare at this point. Dispelga on the other hand, would be because the Archeoavis will be busy casting it while the Karkata attacker goes crazy, and if they dispel you, or the buffs wear off, you can leave the area to recharge and rebuff, while also creating a checkpoint due to auto-save. And if a character gets Disease from Curse, reloading the auto-save if you haven't changed areas since getting debuffed also helps - and enemies don't recover health by moving a single area away (just 2+) or reloading auto-saves where they are accounted for.

Last but not least, and a bit of a general tip, have your healer be a kleptomaniac instead of attacking when not healing or buffing, as the healer doesn't do much damage anyways and you can find the Thief's Cuffs in a nearby area. Vaan or Balthier also have innate Steal, so if you have them as healers, you don't need to waste a second job.

All in all, after the initial scare, it was a fun challenge. =D