Final Fantasy X actually has an equipment crafting system where you can spend items (mostly stolen or bribed by Rikku) to add abilities onto your gear. Each character can equip one weapon and one piece of armour and each of those can have up to 4 abilities on them. The abilities range from the mundane (do 3% more damage) to the absolutely incredible (break the damage cap so you can deal 99999 damage per hit instead of 9999). Of course the incredible stuff is really hard to come by, but with enough farming you can totally get it done.
Normally I'll craft some armour because there is no other way to get really good armour, but I don't think I've ever tried to craft a really good weapon. The reason for this is each character has an ultimate weapon that can be earned in the world by obtaining three items and combining them at a quest globe thing. These ultimate weapons come with 4 really good abilities on them and also let you ignore enemy armour. So while they may not be perfect, they're really strong and you don't need to worry about making enough money to bribe up a ton of crafting materials. The pieces for the ultimate weapons also tend to involve doing some side quests or mini games and we all know how much I love to do those, so I'm probably going to end up with the weapons anyway. Especially since there's an achievement for getting them all!
Anyway, yesterday I complained about the really powerful dark aeons that were added in this version of the game which keep showing up in random spots and ruining me. I looked up where they all were so I could avoid them going forward, which is fine. What isn't fine is that I didn't pick up a piece for Tidus' ultimate weapon when I first had the chance to pick it up. (You need to backtrack right after killing Yunalesca.) That shouldn't be a problem since I can just go back in and pick it up now. Except Dark Bahamut lives there. So I can't go get the piece to make Tidus' ultimate weapon until I'm strong enough to beat one of the hardest fights in the game. My whole plan this playthrough was to kill the hard stuff with Tidus! I'd sent him down the tree to get quick hit and he's the only character I have right now who could hit for more than 9999 damage if he had his ultimate weapon.
I've even done the hard part of getting his weapon! I got super lucky and beat the chocobo racing minigame! Now I just need to go pick something up off the ground. But I can't.
I was lamenting this fact on Facebook. What can I do now? I could power someone else up, someone who I could get their ultimate weapon. I already have Yuna's ultimate weapon, and I have all the pieces for Kimahri's. Realistically I think I could get them all right now except for Lulu's. (Dodging 200 lightning bolts... *shudder*) So I could do that. Also apparently Yojimbo's top attack will one shot the dark aeons. That seems cheesy and stupid, but if doing so lets me play the game the way I want to then it may be a reasonable thing to do. Last night while sleeping I came up with a third option... I could actually craft Tidus a weapon! It'd be worse since it wouldn't have the armour ignoring aspect but maybe I could choose 4 abilities that really make it close enough? It certainly seems like I should look up what it would take to do, anyway.
As an aside, it turns out the quick hit plan wasn't as good as it used to be. It turns out they nerfed it pretty badly in this version! The mana cost tripled (from 12 to 36) and it now has a base speed of 2 instead of 1. This means that in the old version you could use quick attack 3 times in the span of a normal attack. Now you can use it 1.5 times. That's a pretty big difference and maybe means building a caster with double cast and ultima is a fine plan. Or having Yuna murder things with a really twinked out Magus Sisters summon or something?
Anyway... What can I add on to a weapon that would be really, really good?
First Strike - go first in a fight
Deathstrike - insta kill any enemy that isn't immune
Strength +20% - 20% more damage
Strength +10% - 10% more damage
Strength +5% - 5% more damage
Evade & Counter - lets you dodge attacks and hit them back
One MP Cost - lets me actually use quick attack without running out of mana
Triple AP - tons of experience
Overdrive -> AP - Tons of experience
Triple Overdrive - TONS of experience
Break Damage Limit - do 99999 damage max instead of 9999
What would Tidus' ultimate weapon have on it? Break damage limit, triple overdrive, evade & counter, and magic counter. That actually doesn't seem like a terribly interesting list of abilities. Magic counter means you counter attack when they hit you with a spell so I guess this weapon means you just keep hurting the enemy on their turn if they try to hurt you. That could be really good. But many of the other ultimate weapons have double AP on them, which would let the user level up quicker instead of counterattacking which is probably good for everything until you're really super twinky.
So maybe it's actually for the best that I can't go get the item from under Dark Bahamut? The counter attack weapon feels really end game. I'm only at mid-end game... Maybe I should look into building the ultimate leveling weapon? I'd need break damage limit so that I can do good damage but beyond that using the 3 leveling abilities might be a really good idea. I think if I was going full on damage I'd probably want break damage limit, one MP cost, strength +20%, and evade & counter? I guess it probably depends on if I'm hitting the 99999 damage cap or not with max strength? If I am then strength +20% and strength +10% are bad. If I'm not then they're pretty good. Though One MP Cost could well be seen as '50% more damage' if it lets me use quick hit.
One crucial thing to point out is break damage limit costs 60 dark matter and this version of the game added ribbon back in for armour. It costs 99 dark matter and is something I really want on everyone's armour! How would I go about getting me some dark matter...
Turns out you get given 99 dark matter after catching 5 of every monster in the game. Beyond that you can get more rarely from blitzball tournaments, or as a rare drop from killing the challenge bosses in the arena, or as a drop from killing the dark aeons. So realistically I can make one weapon, or I can make one ribbon armour, but I can't do both until I'm strong enough to farm some of the bosses in the arena. It sure seems like a good weapon for Tidus would go a long way to making that happen though... But I shouldn't be planning on making a leveling weapon and a damage weapon since that amount of dark matter just isn't going to come up. His ultimate weapon is a fine damage weapon though... So leveling weapon it is!
What do I need to add on triple AP, triple overdrive, and overdrive-> AP? Triple AP takes 50 wings to discovery. Triple overdrive takes 30 winning formula. Overdrive -> AP takes 10 doors to tomorrow. Two of those seem to have no other good use, so that's fine. 30 wings to discovery are needed to add break HP limit to armour which seems like it's really important eventually, but right now no one is even close to that cap anyway.
Unfortunately it looks like while most of that stuff is trivial to get a starting number of, wings to discovery you can only get 30 from a quest. Getting the last 20 is hard. It's a drop from one of the challenge bosses I can't beat. Or you can bribe them from a monster in the world for an amount of money I can't possibly fathom at this point, but I can see farming it up if I really need to.
Well, the bottom line is it's going to take a bunch of work to build a really good weapon, but it seems feasible. Probably more feasible than killing Dark Bahamut, anyway, and I don't really want to give up on using Tidus, so it's what I've got to work with. The first step is going to be capturing at least 5 of every monster in the game to get my free dark matter. I was going to want to do that anyway, so no worries!
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