As some of you may know, Dark Shiva is the first Dark Aeon accessible in the internation/remaster versions of the game. She specifically can be encountered directly after That Scene in Macalania Woods after leaving Bevelle. Instead of turning right to go to the Calm Lands, one can turn left and go straight to Macalania Temple, where Dark Shiva is waiting. Defeating her at this point in the game is another matter entirely.
We need:
The stats to win
The customized gear to win
The items for mixing Hyper Mighty G
What this actually looks like in practice is more like:
Obtaining Jecht Shot at the first chance
Winning against the Goers for the Strength Sphere
Farming Blitzball for an unhealthy amount of teleport/return/lvl 1 key sphere as well as ~5 underdog’s secrets (Attack Reels too of course)
Using some of those Spheres to get Tidus, Wakka, Rikku all First Strike weapons
Note: We do NOT farm for dark matters for break damage limit because that’s a minimum 600 game farm and I loved myself enough to use a better strat that took far less games than that, even though I love blitzball.
Dodging 50 lightning bolts to get 3 strength spheres (this was actually one of the hardest parts of the challenge because doing 50 dodges while also having random encounters sucks unbelievably)
Farming Light Curtains from Iron Giants in Thunder Plains (Hyper Mighty G ingredient)
Overkilling Seymour for Special Spheres so Tidus and Wakka can steal (helps on Bikanel later)
Steal farming Cactuars on Bikanel for Chocobo Feathers for SOS Haste (NOT Chococo Wings. This was another case of finding a workaround to a grind that would have been too much to endure)
Steal farming from Sand Worms on Bikanel for Shadow Gems (surprise tool that enables our SOS Haste strat)
Farming Highbridge for sphere levels until team Tidus, Wakka, Rikku are fully maxed (I did this by finding podcasts to focus on and distracting my brain from the farm)
Obtaining enough Mega Phoenixes as a byproduct of the Highbridge farm for 3x Auto-Phoenix
And probably a few other steps that I’ve forgotten
By the end of it (my file reads 271 hours), our setup looks like this, and we’re ready to defeat a dark aeon at the earliest possible point in FFX: