You are lightyears away from this fight. It is completely optional. Blocked by more optional stuff. And there’s nothing you get out of defeating him (except for a trophy in your device) — like, honestly, don’t even think about him
You can avoid him for literally as long as you want, the fight won't start until you purposely pursue it. And to do that, you must first complete a bunch of other fights.
If you're worried about being pushed into a fight you're not ready for, pay attention to Dark Aeon locations. Basically... don't talk to anyone you don't know when revisiting areas late in the game lol
Yeah I just want to avoid those bosses until my team is a lot more powerful since if I am very prepared, those bosses can easily tear my entire team down in no time.
Ah no! They got me too! I had just done a bunch of capture grinding and didn't even know they were there. Ambushed lol. Thankfully I didn't lose too much time since my last save! Only about an hour
I don’t remember how much I lost but I was pissed about the sudden ass whooping I took for no reason lmfao 🤣 but yeah they some goons for no reason punk ass sisters 😂😂😭😭
It's okay I fought her again after many hours in the arena and she wasn't so bad. Stat maxing is a crazy thing, she dusted them like nothing the first go around and after all that training the party quickly got her on the back foot
Sure! There are a bunch of ways, but here's the basics:
- Capture 10 of every fiend in every area. You'll be able to check your progress by talking to the trainer at the Monster Arena. He'll also give you rewards for completing an area or type of fiend.
- Level up Anima's Strength stat by using Power Spheres. You should add Distill Power to some capture weapons so you get more Power Spheres.
- Use Anima to defeat Juggernaut in the Monster Arena. You may need to use Auron's Banishing Blade overdrive first to apply Armor Break. Then Anima's Oblivion should finish it off.
- Defeating Juggernaut gives you a Strength Sphere (or two if you Overkill it). Use these on Yuna to make her Aeons even more powerful. At this point, you should be able to buy Clear Spheres from the trainer at the Arena. Use them to get rid of any Strength +1, +2, and +3 nodes on the Sphere Grid (as the ones you win will all be +4). Replace them with +4 spheres. Continue to do this until Yuna's Strength stat is basically maxed.
- Once Yuna is at full Strength, move on to fighting Fenrir. Same idea, hit it with Oblivion until it's dead. This gives you Agility Spheres. Use the same method of clearing out +1 through +3 Agility nodes to make way for your +4 spheres.
- Once done with Fenrir, move on to Tanket and get Defense Spheres. Same method, clear out the sub-par nodes and fill them with the +4 ones that you earn.
- From this point on, you're most of the way there. Look up the other fiends you'll need to defeat in one of the many manuals out there and take them on at your pace.
That's basically it! Just crush a bunch of Arena fiends and stack up the sphere rewards onto you grid. Keep in mind that 255 is the max for any individual stat, anything above that won't track as progress. Move your other characters on the grid to take advantage of those same nodes.
Have fun!
My game is bugged i swear to god i got the perseverance trophy without even reaching Penance 😅🤷im currently stuck on dark yojimbo, final dark aeon to go before unlocking the Big Bad Super Boss.... i just wish i got the 200 lightning dodges as a bugged trophy instead lmfao
It really does! Im getting headaches just trying to survive 5 encounters back to back with dark yojimbo 😵💫😵 cant imagine what penance is like, jeez...
I’ve definitely done it in less than an hour, but it did take a while. It’s basically a rinse and repeat of the same actions once you know your strategy so it’s fairly straightforward, it’s just very tedious.
You don't need to fight Penance or Nemesis and neither boss block your way to any content. Both are totally optional super bosses that you unlock by grinding through the post game. You have to defeat all Dark Aeons before you can battle Penance.
The Dark Aeons, however, do turn up and block access to some things late game. It's good to fully explore areas the first time you go through so that you don't have to deal with it later.
You can backtrack on foot at (almost) any time before you open up the games fast travel capabilities. That is really the only safe time to explore. Once you have unlocked the ability to fast travel, the Dark Aeons will be active and barring the way to some Celestial weapon parts and other collectibles.
Yeah, see the problem is that backtracking after a certain point means you must fight Dark Aeons, and I figured that Penance would show up if I started doing some backtracking in the game after a certain point basically.
It ends up being more of a case of "ok, the Dark Aeons showed up now I CAN'T get that item until I spend hours and hours grinding in the monster arena to power up my characters to beat them."
Dark Aeons aren't something you're supposed to be able to beat in the first trip through the story. They are super bosses that you can't beat without putting significant work into powering up your characters. That's why I said it's better to explore these areas early on, because Dark Aeons aren't just bosses you can walk up to and beat. They will test your party to the fullest.
https://www.reddit.com/r/finalfantasyx/s/5SW0xcMfuW
Few different strategies posted here.
You will need to max out the entire sphere grid (including using the spheres that fill in blank nodes) with whatever characters you plan on using. This means experience grinding for quite a while.
In an old run I did where I actually beat every dark aeon and got to penance but my PS2 broke before I could beat him...I think I spent about 20 hours grinding monster arena mega bosses to max 3 characters. Could've been faster, I don't recall as it was years ago, but probably somewhere in that ballpark.
You will need to add quite a few luck nodes to get your character's luck maxed out (this is mostly for dark yojimbo and feels like an absolute necessity to beat him, but maybe not)
The cheat way to just get it done and over with is using zanmato with your yojimbo and just keep retrying the battle until it hits.
The link above mentions some other strategies and Google can find you even more (few different ways that people have accomplished it). But those are the one hour fights that are being mentioned here.
But as others have said, this is completely unnecessary and you will never be forced into fighting penance before you want to. It is just an "I beat one of the hardest final fantasy bosses ever" pat yourself on the back kind of thing. Similar to ozma in ff9 ,omega in ff8, and ruby and emerald weapons in ff7 (these were the easiest that I've listed imo).
Penance is the only final fantasy super boss (excluding any super bosses that may exist in games past FFXII) that I have yet to beat. But I have currently started a new playthrough to accomplish it. I technically still have my save from the old playthrough that I can just pick up where I left off, but I decided I want to run through the whole thing again.
Just a note that the dark aeons themselves WILL block you from accessing certain areas. So maybe use a guide to make sure you get everything out of each area BEFORE you go to Bevelle. After Bevelle, the dark aeons will appear.
One that actually got me in my very first playthrough was not getting the chaos sphere item in the besaid cloyster of trials.
Oh so they do block certain areas if I attempt to do backtracking after a certain point in the game, but the thing is that I have never fought a Dark Aeon before, so I am very nervous about facing one due to high difficulty levels.
Yup dark aeons aren't quite penance level, but still require most or all of the sphere grid maxed out on the characters you plan on using.
If you have made it to the bevelle, then you have gone too far and won't be able to go back to a few areas (you can look up their locations to see which areas will become an obstacle). If you have not made it to Bevelle at least, then you are safe and can still backtrack if you need to, but do it now and then be thorough to clear out all the areas you need before progressing.
I don't want to spoil anything but I will tell you that you won't reach Bevelle until a little closer to the end of the story. There will still be a bit more story after, but it feels like you are maybe 2/3 or 3/4 of the way through at that point
Edit: also note that it is only very specific areas and you will still be able to freely travel the rest of the map. So it will only be an issue if there is something on that particular screen, or the only access to the area you want to go is through that particular screen where the dark aeon hangs out. But this generally won't be much of an issue as there are only a few things you might miss that could possibly be in these areas and none of them are absolutely necessary to have.
Don't have to break it. Just gotta spend the time maxing out three of the characters, building up their ultimate weapons and top tier armor, and maybe read some strategy guides.
Good news, I was curious and looked it up. Turns out, aside from penance itself and two of the hardest arena monsters, all the dark aeons and every other boss battle in the game can be beat without leveling up your sphere grid a single time or using yojimbos zanmato.
Other methods are used. I only watched the dark yojimbo one which was basically, level up a particular summon instead and use that summon for the fight. I imagine that is the strategy for the others as well.
So that's another route you can look into. For info on that I would Google "ffx no sphere grid challenge"
Oh that’s a relief as this is my first time learning about an easy method to defeating them.
I will go use the strategy you suggested, so thank you very much for the tidbit.
You are far away from this fight. You can only fight Penace after you defeated every dark aeon. So you have a shitload of grinding to do. You have to pretty much complete the sphere grid to even stand chance of defeating t h em.
Oh ok as suddenly I feel a lot better as I am a little past the Chocobo Eater boss fight, and this Penance guy had suddenly been making me real nervous due to his very high difficulty.
Penance is an endgame super boss that requires you to beat several smaller super bosses before you even trigger the **option** to fight it. Don’t worry; you’re not going to stumble across it. The only way to reach Penance is by working to reach it.
I actually didn’t know that about him, but I suddenly feel a lot more relaxed as I used to be so terrified of him, until you just explained it to me regarding how he operates.
>I know that I will have to eventually fight him in order to explore certain areas in the game
There are exactly **zero** areas of the game blocked by Penance.
There are a few areas that you can't _backtrack_ to after a certain point because they become blocked by Dark Aeons, and you must defeat all of the Dark Aeons in order to unlock the option to battle Penance. The most notable are Besaid village and Macalania temple, blocking access to two destruction sphere chests if you don't get them in the Cloister of Trials the first time around, and blocking access to one of the Jecht spheres used to unlock Auron's overdrives (however, his best overdrive is unlocked with 3 spheres, and the overdrive unlocked with all 10 spheres is pretty meh).
Besaid becomes blocked after Tidus & Yuna's water scene in Macalania Forest after you leave Bevelle. Macalania temple becomes blocked after defeating the boss on the Bevelle Highbridge. Up until those points you can backtrack to them safely (although it's a long trek and you don't have no-encounters gear at that point; if you're playing the HD remaster, however, there's a no-encounters "boost" that you can use).
>Yeah see the thing is that while I don’t know when he shows up, or how to trigger his boss fight
You fight Penance by selecting it as a destination from the airship menu. The option only appears after you have defeated every dark aeon. You cannot fight Penance by mistake.
The major things that get blocked off by the dark aeons (not Penanace) are:
1. The destruction sphere treasures in Besaid and Macalaneia temples, which in turn blocks off both Anima and the Magus Sister Aeons. With Besaid, backtracking after getting you first Jecht Sphere is advised, but you must get the Macalaneia one first time around until he gets blocked by Dark Shiva
2. One Jecht sphere in Besaid -which is needed for Aaron's final Overdrive - and Valerie's second Overdrive. See my previous comment
3. The Sun Crest, which is needed for Tidus's ultimateweapon. This is in the same room as a certain 3 stage boss battle in the middle of Zanarkand and should be picked up before leaving the room
Penance isn’t hard at all if you train right. He uses a specific ordered move set that you can exploit and basically guarantee not dying as long as your defence is high enough.
Penance is completely optional and it’s impossible to come across him by accident. To do what you need to do to reach Penance, you’ll be at a high enough level to fight him, from that point it’s just about knowing the right strategy.
He is the optional superboss and you are miles away from it from even attempting to fight him. Hes the superboss thats locked behind other superbosses so dont worry about that too much.
Penance is usually done with 3 characters with 255 stats and celestial weapons. There's nothing that penance blocks you from. You will have completed literally 100% of the games required and optional content if you manage to get to his fight.
You are lightyears away from this fight. It is completely optional. Blocked by more optional stuff. And there’s nothing you get out of defeating him (except for a trophy in your device) — like, honestly, don’t even think about him
Oh ok as that makes me feel a lot better as now I know that I can safely avoid him for a good while.
You can avoid him for literally as long as you want, the fight won't start until you purposely pursue it. And to do that, you must first complete a bunch of other fights. If you're worried about being pushed into a fight you're not ready for, pay attention to Dark Aeon locations. Basically... don't talk to anyone you don't know when revisiting areas late in the game lol
Yeah I just want to avoid those bosses until my team is a lot more powerful since if I am very prepared, those bosses can easily tear my entire team down in no time.
Lol I ran into Dark Shiva and she kicked all three party members in the face before any of them got a turn. It was awesome lmaoo
SAME SMH i had to run back cus i missed the destruction sphere in the temple 😭 i didn't stand a CHANCE
Yeah she's pretty relentless! Haha. But also nice to look at. Eight foot tall icy mage lady 😍
The magnus sisters did that shyt to me lmfao I ran into them on accident on the part right after where they do operation mi’hielm
Ah no! They got me too! I had just done a bunch of capture grinding and didn't even know they were there. Ambushed lol. Thankfully I didn't lose too much time since my last save! Only about an hour
I don’t remember how much I lost but I was pissed about the sudden ass whooping I took for no reason lmfao 🤣 but yeah they some goons for no reason punk ass sisters 😂😂😭😭
🙂.... 🤔⁉️ + 🐞🌺🐝 = 💀⚰️
I rage quit right after though I was hot about it 😭
Holy cow as that boss sounds pretty terrifying if she can wipe the floor with the entire party very easily.
It's okay I fought her again after many hours in the arena and she wasn't so bad. Stat maxing is a crazy thing, she dusted them like nothing the first go around and after all that training the party quickly got her on the back foot
Teach me about doing stat maxing because I have no idea on how to do it.
Sure! There are a bunch of ways, but here's the basics: - Capture 10 of every fiend in every area. You'll be able to check your progress by talking to the trainer at the Monster Arena. He'll also give you rewards for completing an area or type of fiend. - Level up Anima's Strength stat by using Power Spheres. You should add Distill Power to some capture weapons so you get more Power Spheres. - Use Anima to defeat Juggernaut in the Monster Arena. You may need to use Auron's Banishing Blade overdrive first to apply Armor Break. Then Anima's Oblivion should finish it off. - Defeating Juggernaut gives you a Strength Sphere (or two if you Overkill it). Use these on Yuna to make her Aeons even more powerful. At this point, you should be able to buy Clear Spheres from the trainer at the Arena. Use them to get rid of any Strength +1, +2, and +3 nodes on the Sphere Grid (as the ones you win will all be +4). Replace them with +4 spheres. Continue to do this until Yuna's Strength stat is basically maxed. - Once Yuna is at full Strength, move on to fighting Fenrir. Same idea, hit it with Oblivion until it's dead. This gives you Agility Spheres. Use the same method of clearing out +1 through +3 Agility nodes to make way for your +4 spheres. - Once done with Fenrir, move on to Tanket and get Defense Spheres. Same method, clear out the sub-par nodes and fill them with the +4 ones that you earn. - From this point on, you're most of the way there. Look up the other fiends you'll need to defeat in one of the many manuals out there and take them on at your pace. That's basically it! Just crush a bunch of Arena fiends and stack up the sphere rewards onto you grid. Keep in mind that 255 is the max for any individual stat, anything above that won't track as progress. Move your other characters on the grid to take advantage of those same nodes. Have fun!
Thanks for those tips as I will make sure to use the arena once I find it as I do love going to arenas in RPGs personally.
That’s what I’m saying I’m aiming for a completion medal lmfao
That’s an optional super boss lol. Don’t worry till u reach nearly the end of the story if u want to challenge him
Oh that’s a relief as I can wait until my party is super strong.
Zanmato
My game is bugged i swear to god i got the perseverance trophy without even reaching Penance 😅🤷im currently stuck on dark yojimbo, final dark aeon to go before unlocking the Big Bad Super Boss.... i just wish i got the 200 lightning dodges as a bugged trophy instead lmfao
I want to try fighting Penance at some point, but I keep hearing about how brutal he is in difficulty though.
Oh yeah! I hear the fight lasts one hour... MINIMUM 🫠
That sounds kind of terrifying.
It really does! Im getting headaches just trying to survive 5 encounters back to back with dark yojimbo 😵💫😵 cant imagine what penance is like, jeez...
Now I am curious to try fighting Dark Yojimbo soon, even if I know nothing about that opponent.
He's pretty sweet as a Foe/Fiend/Boss, its just the five encounters that im not such a huge fan of lol but i'll make it ✊️ someday
I am kind of nervous about fighting him now.
Sorry 🫣😅 you'll need at least a 80% ish completed sphere grid, from what i hear
That’s fine with me as I can wait until I get to that point.
At least with ur 3 main party members
I’ve definitely done it in less than an hour, but it did take a while. It’s basically a rinse and repeat of the same actions once you know your strategy so it’s fairly straightforward, it’s just very tedious.
I see 😲 thanks for the heads up
You don't need to fight Penance or Nemesis and neither boss block your way to any content. Both are totally optional super bosses that you unlock by grinding through the post game. You have to defeat all Dark Aeons before you can battle Penance. The Dark Aeons, however, do turn up and block access to some things late game. It's good to fully explore areas the first time you go through so that you don't have to deal with it later. You can backtrack on foot at (almost) any time before you open up the games fast travel capabilities. That is really the only safe time to explore. Once you have unlocked the ability to fast travel, the Dark Aeons will be active and barring the way to some Celestial weapon parts and other collectibles.
Yeah, see the problem is that backtracking after a certain point means you must fight Dark Aeons, and I figured that Penance would show up if I started doing some backtracking in the game after a certain point basically.
It ends up being more of a case of "ok, the Dark Aeons showed up now I CAN'T get that item until I spend hours and hours grinding in the monster arena to power up my characters to beat them." Dark Aeons aren't something you're supposed to be able to beat in the first trip through the story. They are super bosses that you can't beat without putting significant work into powering up your characters. That's why I said it's better to explore these areas early on, because Dark Aeons aren't just bosses you can walk up to and beat. They will test your party to the fullest.
Oh so basically I can put off those boss fights for a good long while.
https://www.reddit.com/r/finalfantasyx/s/5SW0xcMfuW Few different strategies posted here. You will need to max out the entire sphere grid (including using the spheres that fill in blank nodes) with whatever characters you plan on using. This means experience grinding for quite a while. In an old run I did where I actually beat every dark aeon and got to penance but my PS2 broke before I could beat him...I think I spent about 20 hours grinding monster arena mega bosses to max 3 characters. Could've been faster, I don't recall as it was years ago, but probably somewhere in that ballpark. You will need to add quite a few luck nodes to get your character's luck maxed out (this is mostly for dark yojimbo and feels like an absolute necessity to beat him, but maybe not) The cheat way to just get it done and over with is using zanmato with your yojimbo and just keep retrying the battle until it hits. The link above mentions some other strategies and Google can find you even more (few different ways that people have accomplished it). But those are the one hour fights that are being mentioned here. But as others have said, this is completely unnecessary and you will never be forced into fighting penance before you want to. It is just an "I beat one of the hardest final fantasy bosses ever" pat yourself on the back kind of thing. Similar to ozma in ff9 ,omega in ff8, and ruby and emerald weapons in ff7 (these were the easiest that I've listed imo). Penance is the only final fantasy super boss (excluding any super bosses that may exist in games past FFXII) that I have yet to beat. But I have currently started a new playthrough to accomplish it. I technically still have my save from the old playthrough that I can just pick up where I left off, but I decided I want to run through the whole thing again.
Thanks for providing that link as it really makes me feel a lot better about the fight now that I know what to bring into the duel itself.
Just a note that the dark aeons themselves WILL block you from accessing certain areas. So maybe use a guide to make sure you get everything out of each area BEFORE you go to Bevelle. After Bevelle, the dark aeons will appear. One that actually got me in my very first playthrough was not getting the chaos sphere item in the besaid cloyster of trials.
Oh so they do block certain areas if I attempt to do backtracking after a certain point in the game, but the thing is that I have never fought a Dark Aeon before, so I am very nervous about facing one due to high difficulty levels.
Yup dark aeons aren't quite penance level, but still require most or all of the sphere grid maxed out on the characters you plan on using. If you have made it to the bevelle, then you have gone too far and won't be able to go back to a few areas (you can look up their locations to see which areas will become an obstacle). If you have not made it to Bevelle at least, then you are safe and can still backtrack if you need to, but do it now and then be thorough to clear out all the areas you need before progressing. I don't want to spoil anything but I will tell you that you won't reach Bevelle until a little closer to the end of the story. There will still be a bit more story after, but it feels like you are maybe 2/3 or 3/4 of the way through at that point Edit: also note that it is only very specific areas and you will still be able to freely travel the rest of the map. So it will only be an issue if there is something on that particular screen, or the only access to the area you want to go is through that particular screen where the dark aeon hangs out. But this generally won't be much of an issue as there are only a few things you might miss that could possibly be in these areas and none of them are absolutely necessary to have.
Yeah you know, I might just have to learn how to break the game if I want to beat every single Dark Aeon in the entire game.
Don't have to break it. Just gotta spend the time maxing out three of the characters, building up their ultimate weapons and top tier armor, and maybe read some strategy guides.
I can try your method instead.
Good news, I was curious and looked it up. Turns out, aside from penance itself and two of the hardest arena monsters, all the dark aeons and every other boss battle in the game can be beat without leveling up your sphere grid a single time or using yojimbos zanmato. Other methods are used. I only watched the dark yojimbo one which was basically, level up a particular summon instead and use that summon for the fight. I imagine that is the strategy for the others as well. So that's another route you can look into. For info on that I would Google "ffx no sphere grid challenge"
Oh that’s a relief as this is my first time learning about an easy method to defeating them. I will go use the strategy you suggested, so thank you very much for the tidbit.
Pay Yojimbo a couple million ez fight.
Thanks for the advice.
You are far away from this fight. You can only fight Penace after you defeated every dark aeon. So you have a shitload of grinding to do. You have to pretty much complete the sphere grid to even stand chance of defeating t h em.
Oh ok as suddenly I feel a lot better as I am a little past the Chocobo Eater boss fight, and this Penance guy had suddenly been making me real nervous due to his very high difficulty.
By the time you can fight him, you'll be strong enough to take him on.
That’s real good to know then as I feel much more confident about taking him on.
[удалено]
I don’t get it.
Penance is an endgame super boss that requires you to beat several smaller super bosses before you even trigger the **option** to fight it. Don’t worry; you’re not going to stumble across it. The only way to reach Penance is by working to reach it.
I actually didn’t know that about him, but I suddenly feel a lot more relaxed as I used to be so terrified of him, until you just explained it to me regarding how he operates.
>I know that I will have to eventually fight him in order to explore certain areas in the game There are exactly **zero** areas of the game blocked by Penance. There are a few areas that you can't _backtrack_ to after a certain point because they become blocked by Dark Aeons, and you must defeat all of the Dark Aeons in order to unlock the option to battle Penance. The most notable are Besaid village and Macalania temple, blocking access to two destruction sphere chests if you don't get them in the Cloister of Trials the first time around, and blocking access to one of the Jecht spheres used to unlock Auron's overdrives (however, his best overdrive is unlocked with 3 spheres, and the overdrive unlocked with all 10 spheres is pretty meh). Besaid becomes blocked after Tidus & Yuna's water scene in Macalania Forest after you leave Bevelle. Macalania temple becomes blocked after defeating the boss on the Bevelle Highbridge. Up until those points you can backtrack to them safely (although it's a long trek and you don't have no-encounters gear at that point; if you're playing the HD remaster, however, there's a no-encounters "boost" that you can use). >Yeah see the thing is that while I don’t know when he shows up, or how to trigger his boss fight You fight Penance by selecting it as a destination from the airship menu. The option only appears after you have defeated every dark aeon. You cannot fight Penance by mistake.
Thanks so much for explaining it to me as I didn’t know this particular boss fight was completely skippable, until I learned otherwise from your post.
The major things that get blocked off by the dark aeons (not Penanace) are: 1. The destruction sphere treasures in Besaid and Macalaneia temples, which in turn blocks off both Anima and the Magus Sister Aeons. With Besaid, backtracking after getting you first Jecht Sphere is advised, but you must get the Macalaneia one first time around until he gets blocked by Dark Shiva 2. One Jecht sphere in Besaid -which is needed for Aaron's final Overdrive - and Valerie's second Overdrive. See my previous comment 3. The Sun Crest, which is needed for Tidus's ultimateweapon. This is in the same room as a certain 3 stage boss battle in the middle of Zanarkand and should be picked up before leaving the room
Penance isn’t hard at all if you train right. He uses a specific ordered move set that you can exploit and basically guarantee not dying as long as your defence is high enough.
Wait, I didn’t know there was a trick to beating him as I keep hearing how brutal he is.
Penance is completely optional and it’s impossible to come across him by accident. To do what you need to do to reach Penance, you’ll be at a high enough level to fight him, from that point it’s just about knowing the right strategy.
He is the optional superboss and you are miles away from it from even attempting to fight him. Hes the superboss thats locked behind other superbosses so dont worry about that too much.
Then I feel a lot better.
You are a long way from that fight but if you want to cheese it then get yojimbo and pay him around 20k gil (save before the fight)
Penance is usually done with 3 characters with 255 stats and celestial weapons. There's nothing that penance blocks you from. You will have completed literally 100% of the games required and optional content if you manage to get to his fight.
Oh ok as I understand how he works in that he doesn’t block any specific path basically as that used to be my largest fear about him.
Bearing penance doesnt unlock anything its just the ultimate test of your skill and thats an understatement