Final Fantasy X/Kimahri

Background
Kimahri is a large, blue member of the proud Ronso tribe that dwell on Mt. Gagazet. He brought Yuna to Besaid 10 years ago at Auron's request (due to his promise to Braska), where he has stayed with her ever since. Kimahri speaks very little, although when he does his statements are often wise. Kimahri is actually quite small for a Ronso, and is often seen a loggerheads with two larger warriors of the tribe, Yenke and Biran, who broke both Kimahri's horn and his pride when he was younger. Now Kimahri is both a guardian and loyal friend of Yuna, and is often portrayed as being proud and heroic throughout the pilgrimage.

Basic Fighting Style
In battle, Kimahri could be called either 'a-jack-of-all-trades' or 'a useless blue bag' depending on how you manipulate his unique sphere grid position. Although no fault of Kimahri's, he starts at a very unfortunate place on the sphere grid, able only to learn lancet, scan and a balance of attributes as Ultima is tantalisingly locked away by a bunch of lvl. 4 key spheres. Kimahri will quickly activate all the available nodes (perhaps around the time of Mi'ihen highroad), and unlike the other characters has no natural path to progress down. However you may notice Kimahri's position is near the start of most of the character's paths, locked out by only a lvl. 1 (or perhaps 2) key sphere. As these are obtained early in the game, Kimahri will be able to follow one other characters route, and essentially become a clone of that character. Of course, Kimahri is unlikely to equally match that character as his levels are first put towards conquering his initial area of the grid, so is often quite a way behind the 'cloned' character's position on the grid.

It is very easy to follow either Tidus, Rikku, Lulu or Wakka around the grid, with Yuna and Auron's routes being quite a bit further out of reach. Therefore you should decide which character to follow:


 * Tidus — Having another character that can cast haste and slow can be very useful, especially if Tidus is KOd, and this route may also help improve Kimahri's somewhat lacking strength.
 * Rikku — Probably the best route to choose, as Rikku is a good all-round character, but mainly because it will help you get steal a lot earlier (and also have two thieves later on).
 * Lulu — An extra black mage may be handy in elemental based areas, but as Kimahri will be so far behind Lulu he is likely to lack both the attributes and spells to be deployed as effectively.
 * Wakka — A good route to take if you want to bolster Kimahri's strength, as well as teaching a couple of extra abilities, although his accuracy is not likely to match that of Wakka's.
 * Yuna — It is a good idea if you take him through here when Yuna gets taken away from the party at one point in the game, but any other time you wont really need another healer. Kimahri cannot summon, though.
 * Auron — This might have been a good grid to follow if it wasn't so hard to get to, as the serious strength upgrades would help Kimahri, as well as complimenting his natural piercing ability. To reach this you would need some key spheres and you would also need to cover some area of Tidus or Wakka's grid first. Kimahri has quite a few things in common with Auron, like suitably high HP and strength so if you are stuck for a way to take him this would be a good place to do so.

Potentially, Kimahri's position on the sphere grid would make him a lot easier to follow all the other charcter's paths if you decided to take on the monster arena and/or dark aeons. In reality however, Kimahri's overdrive becomes rather useless at this stage, and his Celestial weapon is probably the most difficult to fully power up.

Notable Skills
Kimahri only has two skills in his area of the sphere grid, which are:


 * Lancet — Drains a small amount of HP from the enemy and transfers it to the user. Only Kimahri can potentially learn new overdrive skills from this (see below).
 * Scan — Displays statistical and tactical information on the target. Although often the sensor ability is enough, the extra information from scan can be entertaining (try it on party members) and occasionally useful, but mostly not enough to merit using a turn on.

Overdrives
Kimahri's overdrives are akin to Blue Magic from other installments of Final Fantasy, in that they are enemy skills that are learnt from the enemies in some way and can then be used against enemies like a normal skill. To learn an overdrive you must use lancet on an appropriate enemy (see table below), which will instantaneously learn the skill if not already learnt, and fill Kimahri's overdrive bar. After this these skills are activated as normal overdrives i.e. only when the overdrive bar is full from enduring enemy attacks (or however your chosen overdrive mode fills the bar). NB Multiple skills can be learnt from Biran and Yenke in your battle with them, just keep using lancet on them until you have learnt all the skills (you will only learn one each time).

Celestial Weapon
Kimahri's Celestial weapon is the Spirit Lance, and is powered up by the Saturn Crest, then the Saturn Sigil. Obtaining the weapon will require the Celestial Mirror, as will powering it up.

Obtaining the Weapon
Go to the thunder plains and locate all 3 glowing Cactuar stones, praying at them using the psx: S button. After you have prayed at all 3, follow the Cactuar ghost to the abandoned tower that Maechen talked to you about (in the southern part, on the right hand side), and pray at it again using the psx: S button to obtain the lance.

Saturn Crest
On Mt. Gagazet, the chest is hidden between some pillars on the left shortly after the second boss battle here ( the one ending in 'Flux') before entering the mountain.

Saturn Sigil
Possibly the most difficult sigil to obtain in the game, you must return to the entrance of Macalania Woods after obtaining the airship and speak to the bird-headed musician to start a mini-game. You must collect all the blue butterflies while avoiding the red ones before the time runs out. Every red butterfly you touch starts an encounter, eating away your time.

Final Outcome
When you power up the Celestial Weapon to the very limit the outcome will be:
 * Weapon Effects:
 * Break Damage Limit
 * Triple Overdrive
 * Double AP
 * Evade + Counter
 * The higher percentage of HP Kimahri has, the higher the damage.
 * Ixion's damage can exceed 9999 limit.