Any experts on the monster arena unlockables? I'm worried about wasting items via getting 99 of them from the arena and voiding the unused ones.

[kats89]

I'm wanting to make the most of the items I unlock via capturing enough monsters without doubling up and wasting things and was just wondering if anyone had good advice on this? For example: megaphoenix is relatively hard to get so I don't particularly want to waste megaphoneix's by getting 99 and putting my other unused ones to waste- (having to work so much harder to be able to unlock the auto-phoenix for another character from essentially wasting some of the items). I'm not too fussed about wasting the cheap items that cause poison but for the rarer ones it's frustrating to see wastage that could have been avoided with good timing or forethought.

[SenMithrarin85]

No item that you need a lot of is really hard to get. Mega Phoenix's are mainly used by players to customise auto-phoenix on armour. This only takes 20 at a time I think. You can bribe them easily from the condor enemies Bikanel desert (not sure of its name).

Chocobo wings can be brided from machea's in the omega dungeon.

I used 2 types of armour for my 3 main characters. Armour 1 had Auto Protect, Auto Phoenix, Auto Haste and Ribbon (the 2 and 3rd copies had stoneproof instead of ribbon since getting dark matter is really tedious)

Armour 2 was the same but I replaced ribbon/stoneproof with defence+20

Auto Protect needs about 80 light curtains which can be won from a monster arena enemy called fafnir

Bribing is expensive though. But you can defeat mimic enemies in the omega dungeon for about 100,000 gil (if you hit them with a gillionaire weapon such as rikku's godhand (fully powered up))

[benTong8]

When you get rewards from the old man, you get them 1 at a time, until you talk to him again. So that's one way to avoid going over the total quantity.

For me, I just plotted out the armors I need for all my characters, made them as materials became available. You really only need some certain armors all through out the game. Only thing I watched out for is Dark Matter for Ribbon (I farmed 99 of it first before I unlocked Ultima Buster) and the rest can really be easily farmed as you get stronger.

Staple in armors:
Auto-Haste - Chocobo Wing x80 = Unlock Cactuar King x99
Auto-Protect - Light Curtain x70 = Unlock Juggernaut x99
Auto-Potion - Stamina Tablet x4 = Unlock One-Eye x60
Auto-Phoenix - Mega-Phoenix x20 = Unlock Pteryx x99
Ribbon - Dark Matter x99 = Unlock Ultima Buster x99
Defense +20% - Blessed Gem x4 = No Unlock Reward

That's all you really need (unless I forgot something). Also, when grinding stuff to fill your sphere grid, you'll end up becoming filthy rich already whether you like it or not, so bribing to get the other materials won't be a problem already.

[kats89]

Thanks muchly. :) Yeah I'm mainly into Ribbon, Auto-protect and auto-phoenix for the armour.
I'm also going to be customising some of the tanked up extra AP weapons (Triple Overdrive, Overdrive - AP, and Triple AP) and probably cheating a little by getting the evil eye-esque creation to drop them so that making them is a little easier. But just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing out by quickly trying to unlock this. Thanks

[ElectricDoodie]

Depends, usualy there is nothing too special about these Items you get from the Arena, except for Dark Matters and maybe Blessed Gems, everything else can easily be bribed and even the Dark Matters for Ribbon aren't that "special", since you can just farm Dark Yojimbo for it.

If you can't afford the Money right now, here are a few ways to earn if quite fast, so you can just go and bribe everything you ever want:

Capture all Monster on Besaid Island and get 99 Stamina Tonic as reward, these Stamina Tonics can be used to Customize a armor with +30% HP (1 Stamina Tonic needed), if you go to Killika you can buy Tetra Armors for ~2,5k, add some HP+30% to these and sell them for ~30k.

Mimics in the Omega Ruins with the Ability Gillionaire are giving 100k Gil each (Rikkus Godhand has this ability), if your team is strong enough for these encounters.

If your team is strong enough for the Monster Arena special creations, One-Eye and Kottos would be the best option (Selling One Eye Drops and Kottos for Healing Springs to customize SOS-Regen on these Tetra Armors mentioned earlier), you can easily earn up to 3~6m/h this way.

Hope this helps

[Hinnyuu]

Dark Matter is the only thing you should be worried about, as everything else is trivial to get (mostly through Bribe). Not that you really NEED Ribbon in all your armors anyway, Stoneproof is usually entirely sufficient for the relevant fights.