Maxing Every Blitzball Player (FFX)

[Theologamer]

So I have two goals here.
A) to get EVERY player to level 99 (Free Agents included), and
B) to get EVERY Technique for EVERY player. (Excluding those impossible)

*Wakka and Tidus are the only players unable to learn Techniques by being signed to other teams. So I should have them active at all times (moreoever, Wakka cannot level unless on the Aurochs.
*Anti-Drain seems to be impossible to acquire on Wakka and Tidus. Everyone else can learn it while on other teams.
*Durren: must be finished before he disappears, and kept on my bench thereafter.
*Obviously Jecht Shot 1&2 and Aurochs Spirit can only be learned by Tidus and Wakka respectively.

So my general "plan of action" here is to:
1) Wait until I can sign Durren as a player, because my Gil funds for all of this will be at their theoretical highest at this point, and I cannot progress further in the story either, because Durren will disappear.
2) Sign as many Free Agents as i can right away, for 1 game. Do this for all available free agents: this will put all of the players into "circulation" so they can be picked up by other teams. I am not completely sure this step is necessary.
3) Begin playing games with Tidus/Wakka, focus on acquiring as many Techniques as possible.
4) Reset League/Tournaments for Technique prizes, and win for those.


Who should I be using my Technique and Tech Find prizes on? Tidus and Wakka? Durren? Does it matter?
Where will my strategy "bottle neck"? in other words, am i setting myself up for difficult-to-learn techniques later, with everyone at level 99 making it harder? what techniques should I prioritize due to their difficulty?

[Shawarma Chavez]

I am pretty sure you may be one of the few people in existence to even consider such questions, much less possess the social ability to ask them in such a scientific way. As a person who won the original blitzball championship and had a perfect seaon in game, I wish you good luck you insane semi-human creature you.

[Samadhi]

Wakka cant be played as a blitzball player outside the storyline, so no banana for you.

Unfortunately its extremely easy to never lose a game in blitzball, there are players that if you sign, should enable you to win every game.
Brother, Eigaar, Berrik, Ropp, Linna, Naida.

The only problem you will run into is learning the shot techniques, especially when your defenders are strong and the opposing strikers are weak.
You may want to have a couple of unlevelled ballers on your bench for these occasions.

For the record I've won the original tournament and every game since, with only 1 goal scored against me.

[pre-eminence]

Автор сообщения: Samaister

Wakka cant be played as a blitzball player outside the storyline, so no banana for you.

Unfortunately its extremely easy to never lose a game in blitzball, there are players that if you sign, should enable you to win every game.
Brother, Eigaar, Berrik, Ropp, Linna, Naida.

The only problem you will run into is learning the shot techniques, especially when your defenders are strong and the opposing strikers are weak.
You may want to have a couple of unlevelled ballers on your bench for these occasions.

For the record I've won the original tournament and every game since, with only 1 goal scored against me.

Also for the record, you are wrong. Wakka can be gotten again later in the game.

[Samadhi]

Автор сообщения: pre-eminence

Автор сообщения: Samaister

Wakka cant be played as a blitzball player outside the storyline, so no banana for you.

Unfortunately its extremely easy to never lose a game in blitzball, there are players that if you sign, should enable you to win every game.
Brother, Eigaar, Berrik, Ropp, Linna, Naida.

The only problem you will run into is learning the shot techniques, especially when your defenders are strong and the opposing strikers are weak.
You may want to have a couple of unlevelled ballers on your bench for these occasions.

For the record I've won the original tournament and every game since, with only 1 goal scored against me.

Also for the record, you are wrong. Wakka can be gotten again later in the game.

You are absolutely right, i was looking through a narrow lens assuming he meant from the start of blitzball being available.

[Theologamer]

Автор сообщения: Shawarma Chavez

I am pretty sure you may be one of the few people in existence to even consider such questions, much less possess the social ability to ask them in such a scientific way. As a person who won the original blitzball championship and had a perfect seaon in game, I wish you good luck you insane semi-human creature you.

Haha, I appreciate the support.
I'm well aware of the task's relative insanity.

"Perfecting" the numbered Final Fantasy games is a slow-going, long-term hobby of mine. I'm 287 Hours into FFIII, slowly maxing out the 255 kills necessary for every monster.

Figuring out how to earn 255 Kills on missable monsters while simultaneously keeping player levels low enough to max HP later with Black Belt.. That was a fun eureka moment.

[Misty_Kathrine]

This topic is a few months old but as someone who played some 2000 games of Blitzball through may various playthroughs including attempts to at getting a perfect game save (including maxing out all Blitzball play techs); I feel that I am qualified to answer.

In around 2000 games of Blitzball I have never been able to successful tech copy Anti-Drain which makes me conclude that it's not possible to actually learn without hacking. So don't worry about getting it on Tidus and Wakka; a perfect game would be having Anti-Drain on all of the other 58 players.

Answers to your specific questions:

1. As Durren is unrecruitable after you fight Sin you need to have him on your roster before then. The catch of course is that in order to get a perfect game you will need to unlock his tech slots with Tech Find prizes and no player in the game needs more tech finds to open all slots than Durren. As anti-drain is nigh impossible to learn by yourself; you will first want to recruit Durren and unlock his tech slots, especially the one for anti-drain, with Tech Finds and then release him and have another team sign him and learn the techs for you. As Durren is one of the best goalies in the game at lower levels it's actually very beneficial to recruit him as soon as you can and use him as your goalie until you have unlocked all of his tech slots.

2.it's not necessary to do this step. The computer is able to sign anyone who is a free agent (except Wakka) any time a player's contract is up. The other teams will eventually pick up all of the players at some point or another so don't worry about this.

3.You definitely want to keep Tidus and Wakka up in levels since if they fall behind it's harder to get them back up. Also because it's fairly late in the game before you can actually recruit Wakka for your Blitzball team; I actually recommend that you only play enough Blitzball up to that point to earn attack reels. If you are playing on any version of the game that features the dark aeons; you will also want to recruit Linna when you meet her in Macalania Temple as well as going back to Besaid to get Vilucha after you cross the Moonflow; since those two players cannot be recruited after reaching the calm lands without defeating a dark aeon. You also want to pick up Durren (see above).

4. Every time you finish a league make sure you quit Blitzball and save your game. The prizes for the next league will not be set until actually going to play Blitzball; so if you save your game first you can reset the game to generate new prizes. This is most useful to get the prize "Tech Find" to appear in the top scorer spot If a prize is awarded to the top scorer it's possible to get multiple copies of that prize for each player on your team that is tied for first place with the most points. If you set up your team right and track your points carefully it's possible to win 8 copies of a single prize in a league; though more practically you will get 6 or 7.

It's not necessary to use Tech Finds on Tidus or Wakka and few other players such as Datto as all of the techniques they can possible learn will be unlocked after learning all of their key techniques. Tech finds should be used on any player you have learned all of the key techniques for but still have slots to unlock or players whom you are confident will not learn that tech without a tech find.

There isn't any real "bottle necks" per se other than Wakka's overdrive and sigil prizes and the unique tech prizes for Tidus and Wakka; these prizes can mess up the randomness a bit when resetting the game to generate new prizes. Other than that only other issue you will run into is if you decided you wanted to fight Sin long before you were done with you Tech Find grind. On high levels, Durren is pretty much the worst player in the game; so if you have a lot of tech finding still to do you will slow yourself down since you will be filling up one of your roster slots with a player who cannot compete for top scorer or help your team in any meaningful way.

Now to the meat of it. The biggest part of this is winning enough Tech Find prizes to unlock the techniques of every player in the game. This is done easiest by taking advantage of Tech Find appearing as a top scorer prize. Anytime you complete the tenth game of a Blitzball league; make sure you quit blitzball to save your game. Doing so allows you to reset the game to get different prizes if Tech Find doesn't appear as a top scorer in league. Getting Tech Finds this way allows you to get 7 for every 10 games of Blitzball you play instead of 1 for 2 or 3 games of Blitzball like you would from tournaments; if a tournament appears with Tech Find as a prize, go ahead and play for it. Sometimes you will need many resets before getting the Tech Find to actually appear as top scorer in league so if it appears in the tournament without resetting it's worth grabbing it.

The strategy you will use throughout the game is playing with a team that consists of 7 forwards and a goalie. The plan is to try and get all 7 of your scoring players to the same number of points and tie for first; usually you will need 10-12 points per player depending on many points some of the computer players are making. Start by trying to get everyone to 10 points and if you get everyone to 10 add another point to everyone and so on; the point is to keep your players at the same number of points so that when you win the 10th game you get 7 times the top scorer prize. After you play the 9th game; make sure you write down the scores of your players and then save your game before playing the 10th one. If done correctly you will be able to use tech find 7 times.

So when you begin the Tech Find grind your team will be relatively low level and, as per above should have the following players on it: Tidus, Wakka, Durren, Vilucha, and Linna. I would pick up Wedge and Shaami to add to that and then fill the 8th slot with another player who can score points; try and grab Abus, Bickson, or Brother if possible since they are much better on the lower levels making it easier for them to compete for top scorer and unlock their techs now than it is later. Since you don't have any actual defenders you will want to put Shaami and Wedge in these roles since; at the lower levels their attack rises fairly quickly and will be able to play defense well enough but still be able to score you some points. Generally you will probably have Linna and Tidus taking turns at the Midfield position and Wakka, Vilucha, and whomever the last player is taking turns at the forward spot.

When you get into the mid 30s it will start becoming hard to score points with Wedge; at this point I usually put Linna into the defender spot and then pick up another scoring player. For this reason I actually recommend making Wedge your first target for Tech Finds; since his ability score points has definitive expiration date. Other players I recommend trying to grind out early are Abus, Bickson, and Brother; while not as drastic as Wedge, they too are much more capable of scoring points on the lower levels than the higher ones so get them teched up while you can. Durren should be your next priority. At the low levels Durren is one of the best goalies in the game and still remains good enough until level 60ish; at which point you should have had plenty of time to have unlocked all of his techs plus a few other players. Once you have unlocked all of Durren's techs you want to drop him so that the computer can pick him up and teach him all of those techs you unlocked (especially anti-drain); also make sure you do not fight Sin until you have pretty much done with Blitzball and can safely add Durren back to your roster.

Once the league gets to level 99 you strategy for goalies will be a little bit different. Best option is to tag team between Keepa and Nizarut. At level 99 Keepa has a massive 99 SHT (best in game) and a respectable 39 CA whereas Nizarut has an excellent 60 CA and 50 SHT. This means that it will now be possible to have Nizarut and Keepa take turns at playing goalie while the other one plays forward to compete for top scorer. This actually makes it possible to get top scorer times 8 (keep in mind that means scoring 10-12 more points total in the league). More practically this is the best time to Tech Find grind all of those players were are never able to play as forwards and still get your 7 times top scorer. Most of these players will be defenders and feel free to put them on defense when they are on your team; if for some reason you haven't unlocked Durren's tech's yet; this is a good time to do that as well (make sure computer teaches him anti-drain!).

Since you are not playing with actual defenders I recommend having tackle techniques on everyone since you will need your forwards doing their best to get the ball so you can maximize your time scoring points. For players in the forward and midfield positions I recommend Wither Tackle techniques since this can cut the opposing midfielders END and PA; making it easier to take the ball from them on subsequent possessions. For players in the defender positions I recommend having Venom Tackle techniques since venom prevents the player form using shot techniques which will reduce the ability of their forwards being able to make points against you.

People to use as defenders:

Lvl 1-35 Wedge / Shaami
Lvl 35-70 Linna / Shaami / Larbeight
Lvl 70-99 Linna / Kiyuri / Mifurey / Larbeight

Recommended tech set ups:

Forwards:

1: Sphere Shot / Jecht Shot (Tidus) / Nap Shot 3 (high levels when SHT is already high)
2: Wither Tackle / Wither Tackle 2 / Wither Tackle 3
3: Golden Arm
4: Tackle Slip / Tackle Slip 2
5: Anti-Venom / Anti-Venom 2 / Pile Wither / Brawler

Midfield:

1: Sphere Shot / Jecht Shot (Tidus) / Nap Shot 3 (high levels when SHT is already high)
2: Wither Tackle / Wither Tackle 2 / Wither Tackle 3
3: Golden Arm
4: Tackle Slip / Tackle Slip 2
5: Passing Tech (Nap variety is best) / Anti-Venom / Anti-Venom 2 / Pile Wither

Defender:

1: Sphere Shot / Nap Shot (high levels when SHT is already high)
2: Venom Tackle / Venom Tackle 2 / Venom Tackle 3
3: Golden Arm
4: Tackle Slip / Tackle Slip 2
5: Brawler / Elite Defense / Pile Venom

Goalie:

1: Super Goalie
2: Grip Gloves
3: Anti-Nap / Anti-Nap 2
4: Anti-Wither / Anti-Wither 2
5: Anti-Venom / Anti-Venom 2

Only other advice I have to give is to not let any of your players greatly outlevel your others. Computer teams adjust the levels of their players frequently. If the average level of your players is significantly higher than any of their players; that player will get lots of free levels; this can cause you lots of problems if you allow of your players to greatly outlevel the rest of your team since it will take your team average higher which can pit your weaker players against opponents that are higher than them.

Anyway that's pretty much it. Good luck!

[Theologamer]

Thank you for your reply! I took a break from this for the time being, but as you probably agree, goals like this are long-term projects with plenty of hiatus. But having the method worked out ensures that whenever i pick it up again, there will be no screw-ups ha.

Автор сообщения: Arctic_Slicer

...Anti-Drain which makes me conclude that it's not possible to actually learn without hacking.

Thanks for weighing in! good to hear.

Автор сообщения: Arctic_Slicer

1. ... 2. ... 3. ...

So then it would make the most sense to put off blitzball (even for attack reels, i can get by without it really) until I can sign Wakka. Then, Compose my Team like this:

LF: Wakka
RF: Vilucha, Linna
MF: Tidus, Brother
LD: Shaami
RD: Wedge (Linna at 30+)
G: Duren

Use a team with those members until I can Tech-Find all important techniques for the following characters in this order:

1) Wedge
2~4) Abus, Bickson, and Brother
5) Duren
6~7) Vilucha, and Linna (?)

Автор сообщения: Arctic_Slicer

It's not necessary to use Tech Finds on Tidus or Wakka and few other players such as Datto as all of the techniques they can possible learn will be unlocked after learning all of their key techniques.

That is fantastic to hear. Is there any particular resource you used to know which players/techniques must be gotten using Tech-Find? or did you just reverse-engineer lists of available techs?


So the strategy is as follows:

First, recruit Linna, Vilucha, and Durren as available.
Second, play leagues/tournments for Tech-Finds, prioritzing the above characters
Third, once Durren has earned all his Tech-Finds, release him and ensure he learns Anti-Drain
Fourth, re-hire Durren before defeating Sin
Fifth, Defeat Sin as normal, the rest can be done leisurely as long as Durren's Contract never is allowed to end.

Am I understanding this correctly?
The primary concern is getting Durren's Anti-Drain before Sin, and keeping his contract forever. And second concern is attempting to keep your team's level low with no large disparity.

Also, is Gil ever a concern keeping Durren/Vilcuha/Linna hired that early in the game?

[⛧ Hellhound Bitch ⛧]

You should immediately be going for Nimrook[Al bhed Psyches] as your goalie, he is the best goalie in game hands down. But if you are only looking to circulate the free agents, that could propose a problem. You may want to consider having a set team[2-3 default players] with free agents tacked. In addition to Tidus and Wakka, I would choose Nimrook.

[Misty_Kathrine]

Yep that's pretty much it. Keeping levels low helps a bit but if you are scoring points you will be leveling up; so get what you can for Wedge, Abus, Bickson,and Brother while you can. Keeping levels balanced is much more important. Durren will probably fall behind since the goalie always does; and that's fine since you are going to be having the AI teach him most of his techs anyway.

Linna and Vilucha, are usually the last people I Tech Find grind on since they are both great scorers and will be on the team regardless. I just get them enough Tech Finds for them to have skills like Sphere Shot, Golden Arm, Wither Tackle 3, and Tackle Slip 2. I pretty much only work on their Tech Finds at the very end after everyone else because for the most part it's not practical to do theirs until after you defeat the Dark Aeons because you will want the AI to teach them techniques such as Anti-Drain and it will hard to re-recruit them until you can beat the Dark Aeons. So I always do them last.

But yeah, you actually don't need Attack Reels early, and can wait it out if you want. I always get it early since it's usually already available by the time I can start playing Blitzball and playing just enough Blitzball to get it; doesn't set Wakka far enough back that it's impossible for him to catch up. Also prizes like Wakka's overdrives, his sigil and unique techniques like Jecht Shot 2 and Aurocks spirit can make it harder Tech Find to actually appear since the appearance of those prizes affects how the random number generator works when generating the Blitzball prizes which can sometimes force you to win those prizes as they become available.

Gil can be a problem, yes, and you might have to spend some time grinding some gil. Fortunately grinding gil is fairly easy. Early on you can grind on the machina in Luca during the Blitzball tournament for their 100% drop rate of hi-potions/x-potions and sell those to O'aka for some easy early money. So long as you don't go towards the boat on dock 4 you keep walking between docks 2-4 and have a 100% encounter rate for the machina hunters. This is a good way to get you enough early money to play the first couple of leagues and tournaments to get attack reels (if you want) without having to worry about running out.

After you have Attack Reels, unless you really need an early teleport sphere or something, you wont really want to play too much Blitzball until you get Durren in the Calm Lands, at which point gil grinding is fairly easy. In the gorge where you recruit Durren, there is a 100% chance to encounter Epaaj which can drop SOS weapons which sell quite well, they can also drop Tetra armors which likewise can be sold for decent money after customizing another ability on to it.

Since you only have to not fight Sin for this challenge; there really isn't any reason you couldn't farm mimics in the Omega Ruins with a Gillionare weapon equipped, or using a number of other late game money making tricks. So long as you don't fight Sin you can do pretty much anything else in the game you want.

Автор сообщения: Sniper Wolf

You should immediately be going for Nimrook[Al bhed Psyches] as your goalie, he is the best goalie in game hands down. But if you are only looking to circulate the free agents, that could propose a problem. You may want to consider having a set team[2-3 default players] with free agents tacked. In addition to Tidus and Wakka, I would choose Nimrook.

Sniper Wolf: Nimrook, is a great goalie but not really someone will want on their team when attempting this challenge. This challenge requires maximizing the number of people tied for top scorer to win the maximum number of Tech Finds in the shortest amount of time possible. Since Nimrook is essentially useless outside of the goalie box and Durren is fine throughout most of the early levels and he will need the most grinding of anyone, it's actually best to just use Durren as the goalie since you don't want to waste a slot of the roster for a second goalie, since that will prevent you being able to earn as many Tech Finds.