Dark Yojimbo - Need Help/Strat

[Cor-kins]

Hey, 

I have just Dark Yojimbo left on my kill list before i'm pretty much done with the game. As far as I know there is 2 Strats; 

1) Max Stats and fight him straight up (Takes up to an hour)  

  - I can't do this due to filling my sphere grid up with random nodes. 

2) Zanmato his arse 5 times in a row.   

  - I can't even begin to explain how hard it will be to get 5 Zanmato's off in a row without failing. 

 

My "Friendship" with Yojimbo is still very high, to a point where 1 in every 2 he will cast a Zanmato, but often he will come in and use the standard attack for free and "use" up a turn. The best i've got to is to Battle 4 and I always fail to get Zanmato the 2 chances I get.

 

Do any of you have any suggestions/Strats that I could use in order to actually beat him? I do have 3 Armors with the following; 

Ribbon - Auto Phoenix - Auto Haste - Empty

 

**Edit** - My Current Strat has been to Yuna Grand Summon, and then for the other battles have my other members use Entrust on her so that she can keep her Grand Summon up and then hope the luck of the dice works. 

 

Thanks!

 

Edited December 4, 2017 by Cor-kins

[BeautifulTorment]

This was my post on another thread from a long time ago;

 

Posted May 7, 2014 · 

Zanmato the first one because the following strategy won't work as well in that fight since he gets a pre-emptive strike.

 

For the next four, you'll want 3 damage dealers to be maxed out and yuna to have at least her speed filled. Start the match with your 3 damage dealers and cast aim 5 times (otherwise you won't be able to hit him as your luck is probably way too low), as well as a hastega. From this point forward you just need to keep a careful watch of the turn order. Keep attacking Yojimbo until your last turn before Yojimbo has a turn. Swap that character for Yuna and summon an Aeon. The Aeon will get 1 attack and will be instantly killed by Yojimbo's move, but your party survives. Cast hastega again so Yuna will have a chance to swap out for your third attacker. Keep attacking until the turn right before Yojimbo's attack. Swap for Yuna and summon another Aeon. Repeat this process until Yojimbo is dead, and be careful of his full overdrive (Zanmato). You handle his Zanmato the same way; summon an Aeon with Yuna.

 

You CAN save between battles to heal up your party, but reloading said save will result in you having to start over.

 

That pretty much covers it.

[Cor-kins]

18 minutes ago, BeautifulTorment said:

This was my post on another thread from a long time ago;

 

Posted May 7, 2014 · 

Zanmato the first one because the following strategy won't work as well in that fight since he gets a pre-emptive strike.

 

For the next four, you'll want 3 damage dealers to be maxed out and yuna to have at least her speed filled. Start the match with your 3 damage dealers and cast aim 5 times (otherwise you won't be able to hit him as your luck is probably way too low), as well as a hastega. From this point forward you just need to keep a careful watch of the turn order. Keep attacking Yojimbo until your last turn before Yojimbo has a turn. Swap that character for Yuna and summon an Aeon. The Aeon will get 1 attack and will be instantly killed by Yojimbo's move, but your party survives. Cast hastega again so Yuna will have a chance to swap out for your third attacker. Keep attacking until the turn right before Yojimbo's attack. Swap for Yuna and summon another Aeon. Repeat this process until Yojimbo is dead, and be careful of his full overdrive (Zanmato). You handle his Zanmato the same way; summon an Aeon with Yuna.

 

You CAN save between battles to heal up your party, but reloading said save will result in you having to start over.

 

That pretty much covers it.

 

With this strat, did your characters have close to max stats? (255's?), because if I try to go toe to toe with Yojimbob he always seems to get another turn when he kills my Summon that is tanking his hit. I have Auto Haste on Yuna Wakka and Tidus my damage dealers so I can go with just 5 x Aim's but it seems like going toe to toe always ends up going bad, my characters are also sitting at 9999 Health. 

[Dr_Mayus]

For me I just had a shit ton of money from grinding out the Sphere grid so I just spent a ton and got lucky that Zanmato worked every time  It is cheap (well actually expensive) but I didn't care by the end of this game.

[Cor-kins]

1 minute ago, Dr_Mayus said:

For me I just had a shit ton of money from grinding out the Sphere grid so I just spent a ton and got lucky that Zanmato worked every time  It is cheap (well actually expensive) but I didn't care by the end of this game.

 

I think i've put in close to 5Mil just on Zanmato's alone and not let him die or anything and I am nowhere near close to having him 100% Zanmato 5 times :/ 

[Dr_Mayus]

It doesn't work every time but I got really lucky on one run

[Baker]

Back on PS2, 1.3 million gil was the lucky number for me. He used zanmato 100% of the time on every enemy. Don't know if it's still the same, but it's more fun maxing out your stats and beating everyone legit anyway.

[BeautifulTorment]

My stats were max for most things except luck. You have to fill the sphere grid anyway so your stats should be high enough at that point.

[MMDE]

 

[metdevil678]

I never had Yojimbo at the time when I did the Dark Aeons. I just completed the Sphere Grids of all characters and nailed him with Quick Hit. That way, I could farm him for Armour.

[Cor-kins]

1 minute ago, metdevil678 said:

I never had Yojimbo at the time when I did the Dark Aeons. I just completed the Sphere Grids of all characters and nailed him with Quick Hit. That way, I could farm him for Armour.

 

Completing the sphere grid with whatever or with the try hard maxing of 255 starts for Str etc...? It's too late for me to go back and do this as I've completed the grid and most stats are at 175ish. 

[metdevil678]

7 minutes ago, Cor-kins said:

 

Completing the sphere grid with whatever or with the try hard maxing of 255 starts for Str etc...? It's too late for me to go back and do this as I've completed the grid and most stats are at 175ish. 

255 on everything, except luck at 140.

With your stats at ~175, your only option is to get lucky with Zanmato, really.

I never saw the point in not going for 255 stats. You're either wasting time farming for spheres or wasting time farming for Gil.

 

It's not too late to go back and level up your Luck and Strength (the bare minimum for Penance). The guy at the Monster Arena sells Clear Spheres.

Edited December 4, 2017 by metdevil678

[ExHaseo]

I had major issues with Dark Yojimbo as well. I tried a lot of different strategies, including the ones above, and ended up having to just keep retrying until I got lucky and was able to Zanmato 4 of them. I was able to kill the last one, barely, but the easiest option really is just to keep trying until you get lucky.

[TheFalseDeity]

Dont know if i already had 255 STR at the time but i can note how i beat em if youre still stuck and need something else to try...

 

Copy paste time :0

 

Wakka on top with Stoic overdrive set, Rikku on bottom with Comrade overdrive set, whoever you want on middle with whichever of those 2 overdrive set.

Never attack with anything other than Attack Reels, have your 3rd member exist solely to gather overdrive and entrust it to Wakka, have Rikku put Hyper Mighty G on the party everytime at least 2 members have lost Auto Life, manually cast Auto Life on Rikku if she loses it because she is the key to survival.

You can have party member 3 and Rikku manually casting auto life as someone dies if you wish to help ensure survival but shouldnt be necessary for the most part. With the above DY's overdrive shouldnt ever fill but if it does you can try shielding with an Aeon right before his turn because Zanmato gets rid of Auto Life.

[Cor-kins]

1 minute ago, TheFalseDeity said:

Dont know if i already had 255 STR at the time but i can note how i beat em if youre still stuck and need something else to try...

 

Copy paste time :0

 

Wakka on top with Stoic overdrive set, Rikku on bottom with Comrade overdrive set, whoever you want on middle with whichever of those 2 overdrive set.

Never attack with anything other than Attack Reels, have your 3rd member exist solely to gather overdrive and entrust it to Wakka, have Rikku put Hyper Mighty G on the party everytime at least 2 members have lost Auto Life, manually cast Auto Life on Rikku if she loses it because she is the key to survival.

You can have party member 3 and Rikku manually casting auto life as someone dies if you wish to help ensure survival but shouldnt be necessary for the most part. With the above DY's overdrive shouldnt ever fill but if it does you can try shielding with an Aeon right before his turn because Zanmato gets rid of Auto Life.

 

I figured I would try this also and it's got a point where even if I have all 3 members with Auto-Life on them, when he decides to AoE me to death, I come back to life and he immediately does it again, I figured it might be down to just plain bad luck but this guys is awful. 

[TheLakota]

255 str, attack reels with Wakka using equipment utilizing auto haste/auto phoenix. To make things even easier, set to overdrive to comrade so that when allies fall your overdrive gauge instantly fills.

 

This is the absolute best way to kill Dark Yojimbo and farm dark matter (just don't kill the final form).

 

(Or maybe it's stoic -- I'm not sure as it's been around 1.5 years since I last completed a FFX run).

Edited December 4, 2017 by TheLakota

[MMDE]

5 minutes ago, Cor-kins said:

 

I figured I would try this also and it's got a point where even if I have all 3 members with Auto-Life on them, when he decides to AoE me to death, I come back to life and he immediately does it again, I figured it might be down to just plain bad luck but this guys is awful. 

 

I actually did cover how to beat Dark Yojimbo with very little effort in the post I linked to. o.o Auto-life seems reasonable to have as well, to reduce chance of bad luck.

Edited December 4, 2017 by MMDE

[TheFalseDeity]

7 minutes ago, Cor-kins said:

 

I figured I would try this also and it's got a point where even if I have all 3 members with Auto-Life on them, when he decides to AoE me to death, I come back to life and he immediately does it again, I figured it might be down to just plain bad luck but this guys is awful. 

You said your stats are 175sh yeah? Agility included? It caps at 170 as far as use is concerned and couped with auto haste he shouldnt be getting a turn until youve had one also which is to say until youve cast auto life again. Might take the few minutes to raise it if its sub 170...if its not then...unsure im afraid. He got a Zanmato in once hence my discovering it negates Auto Life but that was the only issue with him for me.

[Otonio_Bruno]

Not trying to be an ass, but sometimes it really pays to have OCD in cases like this. I simply erased any attribute node that had less than 4+/300HP/40MP using clear nodes, farmed the hell outta of monsters that dropped those attributes spheres, got all stats to 255 except agility (caps at 170, more than that is virtually useless), while accuracy and evade at base stats (no nodes). So basically I have a team full of 255+, 99999HP, 999MP and I pretty much steamrolled Dark Yojimbo with just quick hits, hell I probably killed around 500 or more DY just farming for master spheres (dat x99 master spheres save), that at some point I didn't even look at the screen anymore while fighting him, just kept pressing X to spam quick hits and occasionally checked if he dropped any master sphere.

 

Yes, I know this post won't solve TC problem, but I gotta say that investing the time to farm properly for stats in this game still beats the sheer annoyance of relying in Yojimbo to Zanmato everything for you.

[metdevil678]

15 hours ago, Otonio_Bruno said:

Not trying to be an ass, but sometimes it really pays to have OCD in cases like this. I simply erased any attribute node that had less than 4+/300HP/40MP using clear nodes, farmed the hell outta of monsters that dropped those attributes spheres, got all stats to 255 except agility (caps at 170, more than that is virtually useless), while accuracy and evade at base stats (no nodes). So basically I have a team full of 255+, 99999HP, 999MP and I pretty much steamrolled Dark Yojimbo with just quick hits, hell I probably killed around 500 or more DY just farming for master spheres (dat x99 master spheres save), that at some point I didn't even look at the screen anymore while fighting him, just kept pressing X to spam quick hits and occasionally checked if he dropped any master sphere.

 

Yes, I know this post won't solve TC problem, but I gotta say that investing the time to farm properly for stats in this game still beats the sheer annoyance of relying in Yojimbo to Zanmato everything for you.

This is what I did too. But what's the point in Master Spheres once you've gone through the grid once? I farmed Yojimbo for his armour, one set with Ribbon and three empty slots, and one set with Ribbon, BHPL, and two empty slots. By the time I had all 14 pieces, I had 99 Master Spheres and got enough Dark Matter to make a set of weapons with BDL as well.

 

Was still probably faster than hoping for a perfect 5/5 Zanmato run and farming the gil to pay for it.

[Otonio_Bruno]

52 minutes ago, metdevil678 said:

This is what I did too. But what's the point in Master Spheres once you've gone through the grid once? I farmed Yojimbo for his armour, one set with Ribbon and three empty slots, and one set with Ribbon, BHPL, and two empty slots. By the time I had all 14 pieces, I had 99 Master Spheres and got enough Dark Matter to make a set of weapons with BDL as well.

 

Was still probably faster than hoping for a perfect 5/5 Zanmato run and farming the gil to pay for it.

 

There was no point really, just that I had in mind to get a perfect inventory save with all items at x99 and naturally Master Sphere was one of them. But yeah, DY is a good way to farm for armors with Ribbon set, save a lot of dark matter farming but I already had those by the point I farmed him so I just sold those anyway to make cash for expensive bribery item such as special or black magic spheres.

[Zolkovo]

On 04/12/2017 at 1:39 AM, Cor-kins said:

Hey, 

I have just Dark Yojimbo left on my kill list before i'm pretty much done with the game. As far as I know there is 2 Strats; 

1) Max Stats and fight him straight up (Takes up to an hour)  

  - I can't do this due to filling my sphere grid up with random nodes. 

2) Zanmato his arse 5 times in a row.   

  - I can't even begin to explain how hard it will be to get 5 Zanmato's off in a row without failing. 

 

My "Friendship" with Yojimbo is still very high, to a point where 1 in every 2 he will cast a Zanmato, but often he will come in and use the standard attack for free and "use" up a turn. The best i've got to is to Battle 4 and I always fail to get Zanmato the 2 chances I get.

 

Do any of you have any suggestions/Strats that I could use in order to actually beat him? I do have 3 Armors with the following; 

Ribbon - Auto Phoenix - Auto Haste - Empty

 

**Edit** - My Current Strat has been to Yuna Grand Summon, and then for the other battles have my other members use Entrust on her so that she can keep her Grand Summon up and then hope the luck of the dice works. 

 

Thanks!

 

Not sure if OP has managed to achieve this already, but looking at his profile he's yet to defeat penance so I'll assume some advice is still welcome. As a few users have already suggested, I would highly recommend focusing on maxing the sphere grid, at the very least for Wakka & Rikku. His Attack Reels Overdrive is insanely overpowered, doing around 1.2m damage. My front-line has always been Tidus, Rikku & Wakka and I honestly find all the other characters useless with the exception of Lulu in early game for her elemental advantage and Yuna for her summons but only as sacrificial lambs and

Spoiler

certain story segments.

 

Maxing those three should be relatively breezy (for a JRPG at least), provided you've unlocked the relevant Monster Arena creations. Farming there is pretty quick work for both SP (Don Tonberry trick) as well as stat spheres (various monster creations) and you can honestly semi-afk it with a TV show or movie in the background. Make sure to set your cursor to Memory in the options so you essentially just spam for quick hits.

 

You want agility levels of around 170, and at least 125 luck (luck spheres has always been a bitch to farm but I did so with the Greater Sphere monster), and the rest of the stats barring accuracy/evasion at 255 or at least very close to it. As long as your accuracy + luck equates to ~255 you'll be golden. Same applies to evasion. Also it's pointless to bother with HP beyond 9999 and MP beyond 999 as BHPL and BMPL are useless, especially as you've already got Auto-phoenix coupled with Auto-haste and Ribbon.

 

As for the fights itself, feel free to use Zanmato for the first encounter. Make sure someone has first strike equipped since if memory recalls the first fight is always an ambush. Switch them out for Yuna and immediately grand summon for an increased chance at Zanmato. For the remaining fights, use a frontline of Tidus, Rikku & Wakka with their celestial weapons fully upgraded and auto-haste as a bare minimum. Needless to say, you want to start the fights with full overdrive gauges (I can't remember if you can still get random encounters between fights). Set everyone's overdrive mode to comrade for the boss fights. If memory serves, Dark Yojimbo has aorund 1.6m hp so right off the bat Wakka can take a huge 1.2m off that. Make sure to line up all the 2s. If you're having trouble, for the 3rd slot you can let the timer run to 0 and it'll automatically land on 2. The remaining 400k or so can be easily taken care of with 5 quick hits from Rikku/Tidus. Rinse repeat for the last 3 fights, and if things get a little hairy such as messing up Wakka's overdrive, you can always sacrifice an aeon but depending on Yuna's stats it may be difficult to allow her to actually get a turn later on compared to your beefed up front-line. I would recommend auto-life instead if you suspect a Wakizashi coming up, and this method should leave you defeating DY long before his overdrive gauge fills so no need to worry about his Zanmato cancelling the auto-life. Rikku's overdrive mix Ultra NulAll can come in handy (max stat boosts to entire party). You're better of entrusting Tidus' gauge to Wakka if required.

 

Anyway hope that helps, feel free to ask me if you have any questions about this. I think I have around 1000+ hours clocked on this from the PS2 era! Still bugs me that the only thing missing from that perfect save is Anti-Drain on Tidus

Edited December 17, 2017 by Zolkovo
Spoiler

[metdevil678]

On ‎17‎/‎12‎/‎2017 at 7:35 PM, Zolkovo said:

If you're having trouble, for the 3rd slot you can let the timer run to 0 and it'll automatically land on 2.

I never knew you could do that, thanks.

[Milktastrophe]

For those wondering the odds of getting 5 Zanmatos in a row, I think it's pretty easy. I had max affection with Yojimbo, grand summoned each time by transferring overdrive with entrust, and paid 262,144 each time, and got 5 in a row on the 6th try.

 

Try 1: 0 zanmatos
Try 2: 3 zanmatos
Try 3: 2 zanmatos
Try 4: 0 zanmatos
Try 5: 1 zanmatos
Try 6: 5 zanmatos

 

I'm guessing it's way faster to just do this, then you can fill the sphere grid with garbage magic defense nodes (because One Eye is crazy easy to kill and drops so much cash you never need to farm for Gil), rather than trying to get the proper stat spheres from the other monsters who are way harder to kill.

[mecharobot]

I'm trying Zanmato method, while also building up some agility at the arena. According to my calculations, at max affinity there is about 1/8 chance for 5 Zanmato's at max affinity (which takes about 32 Zanmatos total to achieve and never letting Yojimbo die/dismiss or perfom the dog attack), in Grand Summon and paying that 263k gil. Obviously also having picked the "strongest of fiends" option when getting him initially. However my attempt failed, because D-Yojimbo is still too fast to give me time to entrust Yuna with Overdrives, though it might be a good idea to max Yojimbo's bar for one normal summoning as well to reduce risk. However this could be offset be creating everyone except Auron a trash weapon with First Strike and maybe Initiave so he doesn't do another ambush (maybe).

Edited July 10, 2018 by mecharobot