Is it even possible to beat the Original Monsters in the Arena area? This is the second time I’ve played the game, and I’ve decided “fuck Sin”. That’s easy enough to beat, I want to beat those stupid monsters at the Arena!
Keeping that in mind, I have been playing exclusively in the Omega ruins for the past 2 days, working hard to build my characters. For example, Auron has been through his grid, Tidus’s grid, Wakka’s grid, half of Yuna’s grid, and is starting on Rikku’s. I’m keeping everybody pretty much even as for as experience goes—IOW, everybody has moved far beyond their grid. I have the ultimate weapons. My Aeons are extremely strong.
AND I STILL CAN"T WIN!
What do I have to do?!
If you want to keep leveling, you could try using the Don Tonberry trick. This other file, also from GameFAQs gives strategies for each of the Monster Arena battles.
ahem
Are you really sure you want to go to the trouble? I mean, I said the same thing during my second time through FFX–I even beat a few of the bastards. But ultimately, you get absolutely nothing for beating any of them, other than a nice warm feeling. I’m normally an obsessive RPG completist, but I just couldn’t bring myself to go do the insane amount of building needed to beat the stronger monsters, when there’s no reward at all for doing so. YMMV, of course.
Well, that’s all you get if you beat Sin a second time. The nice warm feeling of completing the game. But Ialready know how the game ends, so that’s not even very appealing. I feel like this is personal…
Could be worse, at least you’re not trying to fight the Dark Eons in the PAL version.
Hummmm, lets fight dark Yojimbo… [Yojimbo] bang, 99999 damage Yuna dead, [Tidus] plink 20000 damage, [Yojimbo] bang, 99999 damage Tidus dead…
And don’t talk to me about the amount of money I’ve wasted on Zanmato
It is possible to beat the original creations in the monster arena, but not until you can walk all over the species and area creations without getting hurt.
Did you notice that they drop attribute spheres that turn an empty node into the best kind of attribute plus (stat +4, MP +40, HP +300)? Did you also notice that the monster arena guy sells clear spheres that erase whatever’s in a node and make it empty?
You’re going to need to use this method to bump all your attributes up to 255, and get your HP above 9999, and your MP above 999. Then you’ll have a chance.
btw, you’ll run out of normal spheres so fast it’ll make your head spin. If you use one of the distiller items on Kottos (the four-armed gorilla guy), he’ll drop 40 spheres of the appropriate type. Kottos is tough–even if your evade is 255, he won’t miss–so you might want to use aeons until your defense is high enough that you can just shrug off his attacks.
Don’t worry too much about money. The weapons you get from beating the bosses will take care of you in that regard.
Once you’ve maxed out your characters, you’ll be ready to take on the original creations. Actually, you’ll probably have beat some of them by now. The Earth Eater and Catastrophe are both relatively wimpy, and have decent rewards. Some of the others will require a good strategy, and there are a couple (the last few) that require some luck.
I would like to get the PAL version and play around with the dark aeons, but as I understand, they can be a little frustrating.
They? Which they are you referring to? All the monsters in the arena or just the area conquests?
It’s been a while, but I think it’s mostly the species conquests. Although to get anything related to luck, you need to kill the Earth Eater. Maxing out your luck can take a while.
It’s been a while since I played FFX, so I can’t remember the creature’s name… but I remember one of it’s abilities was called “Convergence”, and would deal a butt-load of damage to each party member. (Is this Catastrophe?) I was able to beat the monster before maxing out my characters… but it took a bit of patience.
I cast doom (or whatever the name is) on it, and kept casting auto-life on a character, to survive 255 rounds (about 2 hours I think).
Since then, I have maxed out Tidus, and I agree the original creations are a lot easier now.
LilShieste