When Final Mix was released years ago, it came with it a couple of new additions not in the classic. Almost all of the Heartless got a makeover in terms of coloring, a couple of cutscenes were added in to help bolster other sides of the story, and more synthesis items were added to help with the grind ability of the game.
In order to have it make video game logic as to why the new craftables weren’t in the previous version, new Heartless were added. These new creatures in looks alone were just facelifts of beings we had already faced time and time again. In movement and battle though? That’s a very different story.
Today! We’ll be going over all of the Final Mix exclusive Heartless and how to beat each for their precious precious items, I went though a full synthesis run not long ago and found some good tips and tricks for all of these. As most of these are variants of other things, I’m going to put the closest thing to look for so that you know when you hit a special case.
Gigant Shadow – Shadow variant / Wonderland
Did you enter the Bizarre Room and keep finding nothing but Shadows? Great! You’re going to encounter the Gigant Shadow! You’ll know when you’ve found it because it’s 3-4 times bigger than the normal shadow and they’re one purpose in life is to hurt Sora!
In order to spawn these Gigant Shadows, you’ll enter the Bizarre Room and fight 3 waves of nothing but normal Shadows. If anything else appears, even if it’s normal for that area at that time, you’ll have to zone out and zone back. Once you have done so, you’ll notice that quite a few Gigant Shadows will spawn. The name of the game at this point is simple: RUN. As long as those big kin don’t touch you, they don’t despawn. As long as you keep running away and they do not hit Sora, you can feel free to dwindle them down to nothing.
There are a couple of approaches you can take to this fight.
1. Keep. Moving! Their target is you. So as long as you keep moving you’re good! The Gigant shadows will not chase after or really even try to attack Donald or Goofy. Once you get all of the shadows in a group, cast Stop! Go ham for a couple of seconds and run away again. I’d also recommend having a keyblade that powers magic (I used Lady Luck because I didn’t have the Ultimate Keyblade yet) to extend out your stop a little further. From there, rinse and repeat until they’re dead!
2. Dumbo! You can’t be hit while riding Dumbo, so have all the Cheers in the world equipped and use the Splash ability to your hearts content! Even though it’s technically Dumbo doing the damage, it counts as Sora so it would hit the killing blow as normal!
Once all 7 disappear, the last will drop the orbs and items that you’ve earned. The more you down and don’t hit you, the better your overall reward will be!
Stealth Soldier – Soldier variant / Hollow Bastion
Now this invisible little troublemaker may look like the Soldier, but you won’t see it until you dwindle it down to almost no health left. It can appear in multiple parts of Hallow Bastion, I’ve encountered it personally in both rooms you right Riku. Now, on top of this lil guy being invisible, he’s also fast as hell. There is a very easy strategy though!
Stop. It’s as simple as that spell. You’ll see the attacks it does because it’ll leave behind a blue aura. You can also spam the Lock On button to find it. Once you have it? Cast! From there, go crazy! Do enough damage while it’s stopped and you’ll have your victory.
Disclaimer with this one! You are on a time limit. This Heartless will disappear if you take too long! As it’ll typically spawn in the middle of pretty massive groups of well defended mobs, prioritizing it may be a good move to get those sweet sweet loots.
Black Ballade – Nocturne variant / Deep Jungle
The Black Ballade seems simple in theory, but can be a pain if you struggle with follow-the-cup based games. The premise is simple. You go into the area, you see the Heartless just chillin above it’s rock. Once you step closer, it’ll spawn 4 like little heartless to confuse you. They’ll all fly around and you have to hit the correct one. Find it? You’re rewarded with orbs and maybe the item! Miss it? ZAP! Lightning Bolt to the face. Here’s what I learned in my full synthesis play through with this lil zappy kin.
Take your time and pause throughout. Especially in the earlier versions, you can try to keep track of it by continuously pausing and unpausing to slow it down a tad. This may or may not work for everyone based on low levels of flashing with the screen, but it’s one method I have used before.
If you have a way to do a time lapse on a phone or such, you can try that too. The biggest thing is pausing in between the movement cycles so that you can not have the time wasted.
Don’t get discouraged! Yeah, missing three times in a row sucks, but the zaps done hurt too bad and you can heal as well. You have the ability to try again and keep going.
Lock on does NOT work to keep track of it. When the four copies spawn, they are not targetable. I’m sure it was found that this made everything a little too easy and was taken out.
Sniper Wild – Bouncy Wild variant / Traverse Town
Out of all of the variants, I think this one is my least favorite. If you ever spawn in the 2nd District in Traverse Town and don’t see any Heartless, but see this little thing bouncing around? Be prepared to be sneaky in a game that has no sneak mechanics at all.
Here’s the gist for this fight: It cannot see you. If it sees you it will multiply indefinitely until you die or zone out. Ever seen Disney’s version of Hercules? Remember the Hydra fight? For those who don’t know, you take off one head, two grow in it’s place. In this scenario – you take down one Sniper Wild, it spawns two. And so on and so forth. Be prepared to cast Aero and run away once you get caught.
The biggest tip I can give: PATIENCE! And the Stop spell. The Sniper Wild will only drop the loot you’re after once all three rounds are killed. So if you rush into round 3 thinking the 3 you already killed didn’t drop anything so let’s go, you’re going to ruin your chances to get it at all. Eventually, the bouncing will separate one and take that out. Then the last. I, also, will NEVER take one down near their spawn point. Reason being if they see you it’s over right? If they see you when they spawn in, same deal. Always wait for them to bounce away a bit.
Final tip! After the first three rounds, the whole thing kind of resets and you’re back to the round with 1 again. Why is this important to know? Well, between the rounds the whole movement style changes. From little skips to get around with big hops in between, the Sniperwilds start taking bigger leaps with even more massive jumps. They also become much more perceptive to where you are. Meaning they can jump, see you by the hotel doors, not land by you, and call reinforcements.
Pot Scorpion – Pot Spider variant / Agrabah
I have a love/hate relationship with this Heartless. On one hand, conceptually, it’s super easy! On the other hand, the AI on it is semi-unpredictable at best and annoying because you can’t force the AI’s hand like you can in so many others on this list. The Pot is completely invulnerable to attacks when it’s upright, but it’s ceramic underbelly it’s weak spot! Here’s the biggest learns I can teach!
Now there is a easy way to have this fight be almost lazy. If you’ve already done all the work to get the highest form of Aero – Aeroga – Then all you have to do is cast that on yourself! It will work as a guard in order to flip this scorpion on it’s back so you can get at it’s belly. I did find no other form of Aero will work though, it has to be the fully evolved one!
It was not uncommon for this to take 3 rounds of flipping this ceramic bug. Sometimes, it was 4, depending on where the Scorpion landed once flipped or how long it decided to stay down. The Scorpion also seems to have different phases that have very different approaches and time frames.
Phase 1 will typically last for the first 1/2 to 2/3 of it’s life. The Scorpion will run around the area spewing poison around in little orbs that will stick around for a few minutes. After doing this typically at least 3 times it will turn towards you, jab out it’s front pincers, then charge at you. If you’re defended with Aeroga/Guard, it will knock over and you go attack!
Phase 2 starts with the Scorpion dipping it’s tail in the poison inside the pot and then going to the center to explode the poison upwards. Directly after it does this, it will charge at you with the tail. There isn’t a major show for this that gives you a full second buffer like the Phase 1 charge, but if you know that once the poison ends to get ready to defend you should be just fine.
Grand Ghost – Search Ghost variant / Monstro
The Grand Ghost is a very curious fight, but arguably the most simple of all the variants once you understand what’s going on here. The Grand Ghost can only be hurt by healing. Honestly, I never experimented with casting the Cure family, I went straight to items. I did find, however, that one particular item gives you the item drop every time you use it, not just upon killing the Heartless. That item is Elixir.
Yes, I know, Elixirs can be super precious. But if you’re going for full synthesis, this is necessary! I mean you could go for longer time frames using lesser items, or you could use the ones you have and get more later!
Chimaera – Unique/Halloween Town
This.. thing? It’s hard to describe what the Chimaera looks like to be honest. IT looks like if someone spoke to Jack about what a Chimaera was in Ancient Greece and he went full “I can do this!” like he did in the movie on it. Here is the quick of what I’ve learned on this one!
When a Chimaera is going to spawn, you will have a very specific pattern of Wight Knights before hand. Round 1 is one, round 2 is threee, and round 3 is six. After that, wait about 1 or two seconds and you’ll hear a light scraping sound. Jump! Because the Chimaera is going to attack with an AoE. Now this doesn’t hurt too much, but it’s a completely OP move to look at it after and be like ‘Ha, you missed!’
Now that the Chimaera has spawned, it’s going to do some light attacks, big jumps, and it’s going to attempt to find the nearest rock. Why a rock? I haven’t the foggiest idea, but it loves rocks and it will jump up there and spawn Gargoyles against you. You don’t need to focus on them at all, just go after the Chimaera.
Quick note! While yes, you want to focus every bit of attack on the Chimaera, it’s very easy to get targeted on another Heartless. Auto Target doesn’t work between the two repeating phases of the Chimaera, it will lose the focus. I hadn’t had one despawn on me yet, but that doesn’t mean it’s not possible! Just keep going and attack like crazy!
Jet Balloon – Aquatank variant / Neverland
For being such a big fishy balloon, this Heartless is a big scardy cat! At the very sight of you, it will fly away and it flys FAST. As it appears over the sea, it is VERY possible to lose your loot if you kill it from far away! Here are my learns!
Do NOT cast magic on this fish from afar! The only spell I would say is a maybe to cast on it is Stop but even then it can make things messy. It gets felled and you’re not there to grab the loot and it’s gone, which is annoying. What I will typically do when I’m grinding this is give the absolute worst weapons to Donald and Goofy and set their fight patterns to be very passive. That way, you lower the chances of it being killed by anyone other than you.
To start, stay on the deck, don’t fly up! There’s a good chance the fishie will trap itself in a corner of the deck if you play it fast and smart. Once it sees you, it will fly away. From here, don’t fly just yet, because it will typically fly back to see if you’re still there. Once it does, lock on and fly around it so it will fly away. A lot of times when it does, it will fly directly into a corner and you can just go ham without fear.
But what if it doesn’t trap itself? Well, you can still take it down, but if you don’t wanna become super poor you will need Aeroga on you! Reason being the Jet Balloon will start firing Screwdriver like Heartless at you. Every time it hits not only does it damage, it will take away Munny if you are not careful! Now yes, you can knock them back for some extra Tech Points, but that’s a pretty decent risk with how heavily this gets fired at you.
Always approach from above or below the Balloon, that way the missiles have a lesser chance of actually hitting you. Attack as much as you can and be prepared to lower your altitude at a milliseconds notice. Once you kill this balloon you’re going to want to sink and FAST. Do it right, do it fast, and you will have your items!
Neoshadow – Unique/End of the World
Anyone who has played through more of the Kingdom Hearts worlds will know the Neoshadow. While many of the moves are similar to the normal shadow, it’s also very unique in some of it’s moves. Now the Neoshadow is a pretty simple battle, here’s what I found!
There are about 4 main phases of the Neoshadow fight that look different but have very similar responses. That response is normally attack to be honest and transparent.
Phase 1 has 10 or so Neoshadows spawn and start to attack you. They do so in varies ways from spinning in the air and charging at you to sinking into the ground like a normal shadow and striking. Just attack any of the forms you see and keep going that way.
Phase 2 is once you get the 10 or so down to 4 or 5, all of the Neoshadow will sink into the ground and you’ll see a bunch of black blotches on the ground. From there the Heartless will jump back up spinning in a flurry of claws and then will sink back in again. Again, just keep attacking, just wait a second for them to come out of the ground and then swing.
Phase 3 is once there are two left. One of them will sink into the ground and grab at your ankles. The other will use the grabbing of the ankles to their advantage and attack you while you’re grabbed. Keep with the attacking, just jump when you see the shadow under you and you won’t get grabbed.
Phase 4 is the most important. You’ll have 1 Neoshadow left alive, but it will pull a bunch half up from the darkness. Attack the ones half up FIRST. If you leave them be, they could respawn and you could go to any of the above phases again and again and again until you get all 10 down.
Pink Agaricus – Mushroom variant / Deep Jungle
This mushroom is the absolute bane of my existence in this grind and was the only one I had to go back to multiple times because the timing is so very precise and annoying. While this Heartless does spawn in two different worlds the one in Atlantica you won’t be able to hit enough to get the goal, so don’t worry about that one at all.
The concept is simple, find the three small mushrooms, cast Stop, big mushroom appears, cast stop of it, hit it a bunch, get stuff. Simple, right? NO! If you are a 100% completionist to the point of being a masochist, you will be stuck on this baby for FOREVER. If you’re just looking for the synthesis items and don’t care about the accessory that is such a minor anything that it’s basically a middle finger at all the work you did? Then you’re in luck! Because that’s so much simpler.
Okay, here’s the scene: You’ve already cast Stop on the three smaller mushrooms, you’re standing in front of the big mushroom and it’s dancing it’s little mushroom butt off cause that’s what it does. What is needed to get the chance of getting the item? You have to hit it at LEAST 40 times, and when I say you, I mean if any of your party even looks at this thing sideways you may lose moves! So this is Sora only. Luckily, the party won’t see this as a hostile thing like normal mushrooms, so as long as you don’t directly say kill, they won’t even try.
Here is what you need to successfully get over 40:
- Aero on yourself
- Ragnarok as an ability
- A Keyblade with magic boost (I used Lady Luck)
- Mana Gift as a Goofy Ability
Here’s the gist of what you’ll need to do once that mushroom has spawned in this exact order:
- Target the head (head a body are separate targets)
- Cast Aero on Sora
- Cast Stop on Mushroom
- Ragnarok!
- On the second bit where you have the lasers forming, time it so you get the maximum lasers (typically about a second or when the orb is biggest)
- While the lasers are bouncing, do a couple of aerial swings
- Once able, rinse and repeat from step 4.
Goofy will give you mana when you’re running low and once the Stop wears off, the mushroom will bounce all over from all the hits. There are times where I’ve gotten up to almost 70 and didn’t get a single synthesis item, and there are times I got to 51 and got 2 drops. It’s a heavy heavy game of chance with this mushroom.
