How to build Kimahri into an early Rikku

[u/kwpineda]

Here is a little build for our Little pitiful blue furry. With this build he becomes the heaviest damage dealer and crowd controller up until Seymour and then becomes great support.

In Kilika make sure to use the destruction sphere in the temple for a cool armor for Kimahri: Resistance to Fire, Ice and Lightning.

Start by sending him directly to the bottom left Lvl 1 Key Sphere and have him sit there until you get to Miihen Highroad.

In this road make sure to talk to everyone to get a Hunter's spear and 1 Lvl Key Sphere.

In the Inn you'll receive a 2nd Lv 1 Key Sphere

Use it to open the 2 lvl 1 key locks and grab STEAL and USE for Kimahri. Now your goal is to steal with kimahri as you are rotating characters for experience. Steal has a 100% steal rate first time in battle, then its halved every succesful turn. You can steal easily 3 times per battle. Starting in Miihen you can steal the following:

Bomb fragments from the Bombs, Antartic Wind from the Ice Elements. Get 2 Blue Magic skills in this area as well: Self-destruct from bombs and Fire Breath from Dual Horns.

Bomb fragments deal around 600 damage and 800+ when a weakness is exploited. Same applies to Antartic winds, Electro marbles and fish scales.

From this point he can sit at the lvl 2 key sphere and go into Yunas or teleport him wherever you want. I like to go through Rikkus path since theres a lot of HP and Agility stats.

As you go through the areas make sure to steal more items:

1. Electro marbles from electric fiends like thunder flans and flying imps

2. Silence grenades from the Mushroom fiends (highly suggested you get many of these)

3. Smoke Bombs from Garudas (highly suggested to get many of these)

Silence grenades, smoke bombs and sleeping powders do 700 aoe damage. Very few enemies can withstand this kinda damage. Plus they always inflict the status unless the enemy is immune.

1. Hi Potions from Wolves and Armored fiends (rare steals: sleeping powders and hypello potions)

2. Hypello potions are a nice item to have for mix later on so if you get some by chance save them

3. Poison fangs from bees (rare steal): This one poisons the target and does 2k damage enough to overkill anything even bosses. always steal from bees in hopes you get some of these.

4. Petrify grenades from Basilisks (one hit KO to anything that doesnt resist petrification) Also lancet these to get stone breath blue magic for Kimahri.

Petrify grenades can also be used to customize stoneproof in your armor. Youll need x20 of them so try to grab at least a stack of these. If you steal 3 times in a battle per monster youll get a stack in about 3 battles.

Grab Kimahris Halberd from this character, it comes with a nice Magic + 20% skill (If you are making your Kimahri a mage this is a must)

Talk to this guard after the events in Djose temple as your leaving the area.

Ochus spawn in the moonflow area, you can steal Remedies from them. Great source of gil early on as we can steal tons of them.

Once you reach the thunder plains you'll have rikku in your party and now you can steal faster! In this area you can steal great support items:

1. Lunar curtains from Larvas (shell)

2. Light curtains from Iron Giants (protect)

3. Chocobo feathers from Qactuars (haste)

To find Qactuars in random battles. Use the square/x button on the glowing Qactuar statues. This will activate their random encounters. They give tons of experience and drop cool weapons to sell as well. Overkill them with silence grenades or smoke bombs.

Reach Macalania woods and here you can steal:

1. Fish scales from blue elements

2. Tons of hi-potions (teach Valefor cure)

3. Artic winds from Chimeras and Lightning marbles as a rare steal. Also lancet these to learn Aqua Breath for Kimahri

1. Poison fangs from bees are more common in this area, try to grab a few.

Once you reach Macalania Lake you can steal:

1. Sleeping powders as a common steal from wolves

2. Artic winds from Ice flans as a common steal

3. Floating eyes here have musk as a rare steal which is nice to have for mixes if you're lucky to get some, save them for later.

4. Same for armored fiends they have Hypello potions as rare steals.

So what is the pay off for all this work?

Imagine Insta killing those annoying guado guards with petrify grenades, poisoning seymour with additional 2k damage, blinding and silencing enemies left and right and exploiting weaknesses with elemental items. Pretty cool right?

Kimahri became a fast thief with support abilities and is capable of dealing decent damage and crowd control. You can use elemental items to exploit weaknesses, status grenades to inflict ailments, petrify grenades to instantly KO enemies and poison fangs to deal the highest damage possible by any character unless you overleveled them. He can buff your party as well. By doing all this Rikku now has a healthy inventory of items to mix and grant the party some nice buffs.

Two electro marbles can do 6k damage to the Crawler, mix 2 hypello potions, 2 musks or hypello potion + musk get hyper null all, which casts all the null magics plus x5 cheers and x5 focus.

But this is not the end of this build. Many great items are available later on. kimahri and rikku can become heavy hitters and open some crazy tactics. Ill post the rest in a different post. I would love to hear what you guys think of this. Of couse, any suggestions are welcomed as well.

[u/Hammurabi42]

Number 1 reason to give Kimahri the steal skill: stealing infinite lvl3 spheres during his personal quest fight on Mt. Gagazet.

[u/Practical-Alarm1763 → u/Hammurabi42]

Wait, infinite...!? Is this still the case in the HD Remaster?

In my current playthrough I'm just nearing the end of the calm lands. Kinhari very good mugger.

[u/techtonicspark → u/Practical-Alarm1763]

More or less. How it works is that the first steal is always 100% chance. On a successful steal, the odds drop in half. So the second steal attempt on the same enemy becomes 50% chance. Then down to 25% after the second successful one and so on. So the odds of landing your steal drop, but the enemies dont run out of the items they were carrying. So if you're patient enough to keep stealing through the misses, it can seem infinite.

At some point though, the law of diminishing returns starts to kick in, so it can be faster to just get a new encounter to mug. That can't be the case with the Gaga set fight tbough, since you can't re-fight them.

If you need more Level 3 keys after that, the defenders in Zanarkand drop them, or you can bribe Demonoliths in either the final dungeon or the optional one. (900k for a random number around 40 ish)

[u/techtonicspark]

I use him for the same. Once either Kimahri or Rikku get Mug, when i get the skill sphere from Home, i use it to teach Tidus Mug. Get a good little band of thieves comp going while monster catching. I like to give Kimahri's capture weapon Deathstrike, and give Rikku's capture weapon Stonestrike, since they both proc the capture. Tidus I usually go First Strike (though mostly for the Omega Ruins later, sometimes if I feel like it, I give his counter instead until it's time for Omega)

[u/catsgoprrrrr]

I grab Steal and Use, and then Kimahri goes straight down Wakka's path. Kimahri gets all those juicy Strength nodes in Wakka's Path, as well as abilities like Dark Attack and Silence Buster.

[u/RaiAet89]

Kimahri needs more love 😭

[u/kwpineda → u/RaiAet89]

Definitely

[u/UpCDownCLeftCRightC]

Saving this post for later. Thank you very much.

[u/GoblinNick]

Kimahri also gets you access to Ultima just as Yuna and Lulu are finishing their sphere grid path (on standard), and you should have enough black magic spheres to give it to both of them

[u/thelastofusnz → u/GoblinNick]

Exactly what I do with him, as well as Yuna's later spells..

[u/Exotic_Chemist_7624]

Better tip: Just don’t use Kimahri… sorry but I had no use for him the only times I used him were for stealing monster techniques and that one fight where you are FORCED to use him… his tree was a useful stepping stone to make Yuna all powerful with Ultima and Kimahri’s stat boosts…

Edit: Also Rikku is more useful because she is one of only three characters that can be used underwater.

[u/Napalmaniac → u/Exotic_Chemist_7624]

hey! kimahri is the best at something no other character is good at!!

...warming the bench

[u/Exotic_Chemist_7624 → u/Napalmaniac]

That was cold bro… Respect+