i have been tryin hard to beat dark shiva but shes too quick and does not let me have a turn to strike back. Even though i strike back she dodges it after which she always uses heavenly strike and diamond dust straight away.

I tried using zanmato with yojimbo but he only does wakizashi even though i paid him a million gil!!!

is there a way to beat her?

You cant use zanmato its a boss. Here's a tip though. Get Ifrit on the field immediately. I think he's weak against water not ice, so just pummel it with firaga and use firaga on yourself to heal. When your short on mp, use Meteor Strike and use Hellfire whenever possible

Also equip Flametongue to Tidus and any other fire based weps temporarily to inflict some big time damage. Have Lulu to cast Firaga and Rikku to mix fire based items to get massively strong stuff. Remember, spells and items cant miss

Hope it helped :-)

Um I have no clue who dark shiva is because the only times you fight aeons is optionally fighting the dead summoner's own aeons that look like yours...but shiva is a boss right? Not like an aeon you can retrieve... and if you havent beaten the last boss then dont read the next part.............................................. .................................................. .....................after defeating the last boss you have to fight the aeons you have yourself, but the optional ones like yojimbo anima and the magus sisters won't appear if you have not gotten them


Well I never had difficulty in any battle with shiva...double cast firaga with lulu? or put up nul frost with yuna...and shiva is quick, but her defense is very low so auron should be out there since he is stronger hehehe....

and I thought zanmato worked all the time. In gamefaqs that's what it said, but I'm not sure. According to the maker for yojimbo gamefaqs the % of zanmato working is through a set of rules. The amount of gil payed and if he dies or gets dismissed or kills the opposing enemies. Everytime you win a battle or pay certain gil amounts this thing I forgot the name of it will raise up to a certain point then releasing zanmato. It takes a load of gil though. 1 gil will raise it like no where...making him die or dismissing him lowers the thing and giving lots of gil does not neccesarily do anything at the moment unless you reach the peak of this thing...and I know personally because I payed him all my gil and he used his dog, but when I gaved him 10 gil he used his wakazashi thingy...it was very strange. Oh ya when he has his overdrive bar full this increases the % of zanmato, but if your lazy you can grand summon him because he doesn't have that many good things about him. So getting damaged to get his overdrive full would take awhile without him dying...and oh ya almost forgot this strategy go near a save crystal and just get all your aeons on overdrive lol. If you have yojimbo you must have bahamut. So even without the ultimate weapons you got valefor ifrit dunno why you fighting shiva...ixion and bahamut so thats 9999x4 but bahamut can break the limit and you got grand summom ready so if you are lucky and bahamut can survive the really big delay after overdrive from shiva's speed grand summon him especially if he can break the limit than that'll pretty much kill this dark shiva...I can't give specifics since I have no clue who dark shiva is and don't know if your at the end...

Neither of you seem to know what boss the topic poster is talking about. Dark Shiva is an uber boss in the International version of FFX that guards Macalania temple after you get the airship. It has 1 million HP, insane attack power and is incredibly fast. Contrary to what you might think (being based on Shiva), it is not weak to fire. Conventional strategies like powering up Aeon overdrives or doublecasting magic like you would against the story bosses isn't going to work.

The only real way to beat it is to level up your strength, defense and speed as high as possible, get the Celestial Weapons and customize armor with Auto-Phoenix abilities. After that, your characters will just revive whoever Dark Shiva kills automatically (she usually only attacks one at a time), allowing you to hack away at her until she's dead. The only problem will be when she uses Diamond Dusk since it hits all characters for 80,000 damage or so but you can just summon an aeon to take the damage for you. Just make sure your speed is high enough that you are able to get a few turns in before she uses it.

For more information, just look up one of the walk-throughs on www.gamefaq.com (the ones by split_infinity tend to be the best). They can probably explain things better than I can.

You cant use zanmato its a boss.

Not true, Zanmato will work on any enemy, boss or not. I used it to beat Aeon Jeht on my first play through, since I was having trouble beating him and completing the game. It's all down to chance, basically you just give him just about all your money and hope for the best. It's only worked once for me though. I read that giude on gamefaqs, I think that's what suggested the idea.

Use a CurseLax

So then there is no Dark Shiva in the North American version?

So then there is no Dark Shiva in the North American version?

No, we don't get Dark Aeons or Penance. That's only for the international version.

Once you beat the dark aeons and penance, you realise that the game would have been much more boring without them. It gives you a reason to try and max the sphere grid. Nemesis just doesnt cut it.

Once you beat the dark aeons and penance, you realise that the game would have been much more boring without them. It gives you a reason to try and max the sphere grid. Nemesis just doesnt cut it.

This sounds very true (as I can't really say it to be so). All I had to do to beat everything in the arena and Nemesis was max Agility and Attack for my party (Tidus, Wakka, and Rikku), and then Yuna's Agility. Aeons as meatshields, what a novel concept :(

I had maxed every stat apart from luck before I felt I stood a chance against Dark Bahamut. It kept killing me, so train and try again. Only just got lucky with those stats. I know now that I could have done it earlier but at the time I didnt realise.

Also, getting dark matter and brkdamgaelimit/ribbon weapons and accessories is really easy with Dark Yojimbo (when I say really easy I dont mean it, but its a hell of a lot easier than using the Monster Arena to get dark matter).

Hehe... every dark aeons i beat with Yojimbo ;P I have lack (my brother told that to me);P

It's only fun to do if you're a stat max junkie, which isn't my thing. You just pump up your party at the monster arena and go after the Dark Aeons. Also, although I find it a cheap shot, I used Zanmoto on Dark Valefor since he kept blocking the entrance to Besaid.

Are you sure you maxed out your party? auto-haste, cure etc. the whole shebang!?

Maxed every stat on every char apart from luck, which was about 100+ for 3 chars. Armours with ribbon, autohaste, autoprotect and autophoenix on 2 chars, the other didnt have ribbon yet but I was planning to put it on. I got bored of training and just went and killed them. And wakka didnt have his ultimate weapon because I hated blitzball, but i made him a breakdamagelimit weapon anyway.

This may sound weird but my 40 something Aunt told me that how many HPS your Aeons have before they turn evil is the same number they have when you fight them. Like if you haven't level your aeons up at all, they won't be hard to beat. Say Ifrit has 2,000 HPS, that's how many he'll have when you fight him.

Hehe... every dark aeons i beat with Yojimbo ;P I have lack (my brother told that to me);P

I bet Anima and The Magus Sisters would work well too.

This may sound weird but my 40 something Aunt told me that how many HPS your Aeons have before they turn evil is the same number they have when you fight them. Like if you haven't level your aeons up at all, they won't be hard to beat. Say Ifrit has 2,000 HPS, that's how many he'll have when you fight him.


Your aunt is so stupidly wrong its unbelievable. Every single dark aeon has over 800,000hp (thats just valefor, and all the others have over 1,000,000hp. Anima has 8,000,000hp) and you don't stand a chance unless you are levelled fairly high, extremely high for the later dark aeons. There is no turning evil, I think what you are talking about is in Sin when you have to summon each of your aeons one by one and defeat them. They are not dark aeons, if you don't have the international PAL version of FFX you wouldnt understand.



I bet Anima and The Magus Sisters would work well too.

No. The reason that Yojimbo works is because of Zanmato, and that alone. The other aeons and indeed Yojimbo are only good for sacrificial purposes when fighting dark aeons so that your whole party isnt wiped out without having auto-life on. If you are lucky enough to get Zanmato to work then good for you. Personally I couldn't and I preferred the fight anyway. Again, I assume you don't have the international version of FFX because you don't seem to understand what we are talking about.

Trick with Yojimbo is to build compatibility with him. Fight with weaker monsters, they have low Zanmato resistance. Each time Yojimbo performs Zanmato, your compatibility increases. Don't waste all yout money, it doens't matter if you paid him 1024 or 2000, it will count as you paid 1024. (multiplies of 2: 1, 2, 4, 8 ,16, 32, 64, 128... etc). If Yojimbo gets killed, or you pay him 0 gil, your compatibility will drop. If you build your compatibility with him, he will strart performing free attacks. Higher compatibility - higher chance to get Zanmato. It helps if his overdrive is full though...

Btw, Dark Shiva isn't weak against fire, and her attacks aren't ice based, so elemental tricks won't work. You'll have to train, get Auto-Phoenix, Auto-Life, and preferably - Ribbon...

Getting Zanmoto for bosses is really hard. If you're going to kill all Dark Aeons, you'd best start levelling up your stats. Evasion and Magic isn't important, and luck at 120 will do fine.

Dark Shiva will be v easy after you've levelled enough, but Bahamut and the 3 sisters (and of course Penance) are all trouble.

BTW, get the best weapons for everyone, and armour with auto-phoenix, auto-haste, auto-protect and the last doesn't really matter (maybe deathproof, to counter her instant death attack, but don't remember if it worked or not). Summon an aeon against their overdrives if you need to (she uses it only once or twice in the end I think). For an easy kill, Wakka's Attack reels, then give overdrive to Wakka (forgot what that ability is called), then do it again. Most of this stuff is obvious, and is the basic way of nailing some dark aeons and monster arena monsters.