In your travels around the world of Spira, you may come across chests you
can't open, and mysterious mandalas on walls. These chests and mandalas house
your characters' ultimate weapons, and require a charged magic mirror to
access.
To start, head to the Calm Lands and obtain a chocobo from the stationary (ie,
not moving) chocobo rider there. Ride to the south plateau near where you came
in from Macalania Woods, and on the east side you should see a broken bridge
and a chocobo feather on the ground. Press [x] near the chocobo feather, and
your chocobo will fly to the plateau below it. Continue east to the Remiem
Temple. Examine the sphere on the left side of the temple, then talk to the
chocobo on the right to race the second chocobo on the left. If you make it
to the center of the circular track quickly enough, you'll be rewarded with
the Cloudy Mirror.
Side note: if you keep racing here, you can acquire other fine and rare
items, depending on how many treasure chests you were able to reach while
still winning the race. These prizes are:
0 Treasure Chests: Potion
1 Treasure Chest : Elixir
2 Treasure Chests: Mega Elixir
3 Treasure Chests: Wings to Discovery x30 (!!)
4 Treasure Chests: Pendulum x30
5 Treasure Chests: Three Stars x60
You can find a translated map of the Remiem chocobo racing track at my site
at http://home.san.rr.com/circe/ultimania_remiem.html. Do NOT touch any poles
while racing, or you'll end up with a lousy potion instead of the abovelisted
rare prizes. (Touching poles will not prevent you from getting the Cloudy
Mirror, however.) I'm pretty sure the prizes are one-time-only deals, so
don't kill yourself trying to obtain Wings to Discovery over and over.
To de-fog and charge your newly acquired magic mirror, talk to the mother and
son at the entrance of Macalania Woods. Find the father at the campsite,
speak to him, and he'll run off to be reunited with his family. Go back to the
entrance and speak with the mother and father again, and keep talking to them
until they mention their missing son. This may take 3 or 4 tries. After they
mention their son, head up the sparkly path to their left into the trees. Bear
north at the first fork, where the son should allow you passage if you talked
to his parents enough times. Show the Cloudy Mirror to the large ambrosia
salad-looking plant, who'll turn it into the Celestial Mirror. If there's a
woman blocking the path instead of the son, either a) you're not far enough
in the game yet, or b) you didn't talk to the parents enough times. With the
Celestial Mirror, you can now open chests and detonate the mandalas
protecting your ultimate weapons.
-- IV. Unsealing the Ultimate Weapons --
You'll notice that your ultimate weapons aren't all they're cracked up to be
at first. In fact, you can't remodel them, and they prevent you from gaining
AP! Their powers are sealed, so you'll need to unseal them to take advantage
of their full potentional.
Each weapon has 2 power-ups, a Crest and a Sigil. After collecting each power-
up, return to the plant in Macalania Woods to unseal your weapons. Without
unsealing your weapons at all, they will only bear the [No AP] auto-ability.
After unsealing them with the Crest, they will bear [No AP] and [Double
Overdrive]. And finally, after unsealing them with the Sigil, they'll have all
of the bells and whistles they rightfully should have. Also, you cannot unseal
your weapons with the Sigil before you've unsealed them with the Crest. If you
have both in your inventory, you still need to talk to the plant twice - once
to unseal the weapon with the Crest, and once again to unseal it with the Sigil.
To get the [Break Damage Limit] effect for your Aeons, you only need to power
up your weapons with the Crest, not the Sigil, and they don't have to be
equipped - you simply have to have the weapons in your inventory.
-- V. Ultimate Weapons --
- A. Tidus' Caladbolg -
Weapon location: Northwest corner of the Calm Lands, behind a mandala at the
bottom of a very narrow hidden trail. Win all four chocobo races, and the
person blocking the pathway will be gone. You _must_ have the Celestial Mirror
in your inventory to get the weapon, otherwise the guard will not move.
(There's no point in going down the trail without the mirror anyway.) If you
won all of the races pre-mirror, and come back after obtaining it, simply win
all of the races again and immediately go to the path the guard was blocking.
Sun Crest location: Yevon Dome, in a treasure chest in the same area where you
fought Yunalesca. You may have to go up and down the stairs once or twice to
get the chest to appear. It's on the left side of the screen, and blends in
with the wall.
Sun Sigil location: After you can control the airship, it's a prize for
winning the fourth chocobo race against the other chocobo rider with a time of
better than 0:0:0. I have no advice on how to do this, other than use the other
rider as a shield if possible, use the D-pad and not the analogue control
stick, and grab balloons like mad. You need between 12 - 15 for a time of
0:0:0. In the Japanese FFX, there was a cheat that made the birds pass right
through you, and therefore this process very simple, but it seems to have been
taken out of the North American - and presumably PAL - release. So the moral of
this story is, practice practice practice, learn Japanese and import the game
so that you can cheat, or check out Morelock's Sidequests FAQ for an in-depth
strategy of how to win this race.
Difficulty to Obtain: Medium difficulty, but not especially time-consuming.
Most people would argue that the hardest part are the last two chocobo races.
Abilities: [Break Damage Limit] + [Triple Overdrive] + [Evade & Counter] +
[Magic Counter]
Special Effects: Does more damage when Tidus' HP is full, no effect on Aeons.
Name origin: The Caladbolg is a sword of Irish and Celtic myth that was so
strong, it once cut a hill in half. Caladbolg can also be a generic name for
any kind of death-dealing sword. In the Japanese version of Final Fantasy X,
Tidus' ultimate weapon was called the Ultima Weapon, which starting with FFVI,
there's been either a boss, or a weapon for the main character named this, or
both, and the weapon has always done damage dependant on HP. In the English
FFVI, it was translated as Atma. Caladbolg almost makes more sense, in a way,
because it's not the typical white, pink, and purple gradiented design of the
Ultima Weapon - it's blue and gold.
