FFX Masters Challenge Mod - Getting Yojimbo as Early as Possible, Part 1 - Cavern Random Encounters

This is a challenge run on a modded version of Final Fantasy X called Masters Challenge, made by Karifean. You can check the mod in detail here (currently playing on version 2.3): https://www.nexusmods.com/finalfantas... ================================================================================ The Monster Arena owner told you that you’re supposed to ignore the Cavern of the Stolen Fayth until later, right after beating Braska’s Final Aeon. But what if you just ignored that advice and went straight into the cave? How bad could it be? ================================================================================ This is something that’s been on my mind for a while now, so I made a short detour from my No Items Challenge run to try this out (not continuing that run with this save, of course). Disclaimer: Because I didn’t teach Yuna the Use command in my No Items run, I used FFXED (Save Editor) to give it to her. To compensate, I didn’t use her remaining 2 Sphere Lvls, since that’s how many Sphere Lvls are required to learn Use. I also had Auron and Lulu learn Threaten and Demi respectively later when I fight Yojimbo, since I hadn’t taught them those abilities either for that challenge. All enemies here start with Haste (I believe you can Dispel the Haste on all enemies here, but all of them are immune to Slow), and the majority of them are susceptible to Sleep. So the general strategy here is to use Rikku’s Hazardous Shell, Wakka’s Skull Reels, and Kimahri’s Bad Breath to inflict both Poison and Sleep. The Haste will make Poison tick faster, but using those Overdrives is not exactly free either, because some enemies like Valaha and Epaaj have high Poison resistance, so they’re still going to be alive after Sleep wears off. For the “big” enemies like Malboro, Ghost, Defender, and Tonberry, you’ll probably just want to Eject them, as I currently don’t have any good strategy to deal with them. I had an idea for dealing with Ghost by equipping Tidus with Poisonproof/Zombieproof armor and using Provoke on it. In theory, this should make him immortal and let the Ghost kill itself with its own magic, but in this session I failed to execute it because Tidus didn’t have enough turns to switch from his Deathproof armor to the Poisonproof/Zombieproof armor. Although I’m pretty sure this would 100% work, I’d probably need to Dispel its Haste so Tidus can get a turn or something. The easiest encounter here is the 3x Thorn. Since they only cast their magic on the character with the lowest HP, you can just cast Reflect on them and let the Thorns kill themselves. To defend against Pollen and Maddening Powder, you can simply equip Poisonproof on that character, and you’ve basically won the fight. You could also take advantage of Wakka’s Evade & Counter weapon here. I should’ve used it on Valaha because I believe you can evade its Gore attack as well, but it didn’t cross my mind at the time. Definitely don’t use Provoke like I did, I forgot that the Ruminant type enemies starting from Gagazet use Gore when Provoked. There’s still a lot that could be optimized here, I feel like, one of them being which Overdrive modes to use. I didn’t think much about it at the time, so I just used Victor, but there should be a better way to consistently farm Overdrive between battles. I was definitely a bit lucky that I encountered the 3x Thorn three times in this session, which probably made this a lot easier than it actually is.