Conquering the Sphere Grid. - Page 2

January 7, 2008, 12:19 AM

I've found an amazing guide at GameFAQ's and I think I'm going to employ her techniques when I attempt to conquer the whole grid. However, there seems to be a lot of going around in circles - to get these items, in order to beat this boss, you'll need these items - which you can only obtain by beating THAT boss. However, to beat THAT boss, you'll need to beat THIS boss and customise your weapons with THESE items. You see my point.

It's quite a read.

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10.0 A BEGINNER's GUIDE TO STAT MAXING

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Say what now? WTF is stat maxing? Simply put, it's getting all of your
character's stats (Str, Mag, Def, etc.) up to the maximum of 255. Who would do
such a thing? Well, it's pretty much a necessity for fighting things like some
Dark Aeons, the evil Penance, and Nemesis. So, how does one go about stat
maxing? Well, with the help of the fabulous Chris Hackney AKA Masamune3, I've
started stat maxing in my own game, so I thought I'd share my methods with
you.

I know you said I could copy your guide verbatim, Chris, but I think you
phrased a few things oddly. So, I will take all your hard work, re-write it,
slap my own name on it, and thank your mother for the rabbits

Just kidding,
much thanks to you, Chris, you're a lifesaver.

Let's start. To get your stats up to 255, you need a few things:

1) An easy way of getting your characters a lot of sphere levels fast. They'll
need to cover pretty much the whole grid each, to get there.

2) A lot of Stat Creation Spheres (eg. Strength Sphere, Magic Sphere), to
fill in the empty nodes. Without them, covering the whole grid with one
character will give them stats similar to: 19400 HP, 1260 MP, 187 Str, 150
Def, 142 Mag, 124 MDef, 174 Agl, 18 Luck, 124 Eva, and 70 Acc. (Plus their
starting stats.) This is what the sphere grid holds. Obviously those stats
aren't anywhere near 255 each, so we'll have to fill the empty nodes with
lots of stat creation spheres to make up the difference.

That's basically it. Fill the gaps, then run your characters over the whole
grid. It sounds simple, eh? Let's go through, really slowly, how to do this.

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Preparation
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First, you need to get to know the Monster Arena. You'll need to unlock a lot
of the bosses - namely, Juggernaut, Tanket, Jumbo Flan, One-Eye, Fenrir,
Hornet, Pteryx, Earth Eater, and Greater Sphere. For the requirements of each
of these bosses, check the Monster Arena section of the guide.

These bosses are what give you the stat creation spheres. You prolly won't be
able to kill them just yet (with the exception of maybe One-Eye, the pansy),
but unlock them for now. That's the easy bit out of the way (but it can be
frustrating, if one particular enemy decides to elude you *cough Floating
Death cough*.)

Now for some training. We need to get you tough enough to fight these bosses.
Yuna is the most important one to train here, first, as her aeons can wipe out
pretty much everything. Where do you go for serious training, first? Omega
Ruins. This place can be daunting, so if you can't tackle it just yet, other
good levelling up places are the Zanarkand Ruins, Inside Sin, or the Gagazet
Cave. Travel around a lot, and level Yuna up. WHen she gets to the end of her
own section of the sphere grid, use a Teleport Sphere to send her to the start
of Auron's grid and get her levelling up there. Auron has a lot of Str nodes
in his section of the grid, and for every Str point Yuna gets, her aeons get
quite a few. You can simply use aeons to fight all these battles for you, to
level Yuna up, if you wish.

When Yuna gets to around 50 Str, her aeons (especially Anima, Yojimbo, and the
Magus Sisters) will start hitting 255 Str. Maximum. Perfect. Time for the
serious stuff!

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Setting Up For The Infamous AP Trick
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Now, we're going to get ourselves some weapons that can get us a lot of AP
fast. By combining a few rare and obscure weapon abilities, we can get
ourselves a LOT of AP. There's three abilities we need:

1) Triple AP.
Of course, this gets you three times the AP from the battle, therefore
three times the sphere levels. This is hard to customize, but the good
thing is, with your ass-kicking aeons you can easily defeat One-Eye with
his wimpy 150,000 HP. One-Eye often drops weapons with Triple AP already
customized, so just beat his ass a few times until you get a few for your
favorite characters. You'll need weapons with Triple AP and two slots free,
for the other two abilities we need. If you get weapons with Triple AP and
one slot free, or any armour, just sell them.

2) Overdrive -> AP.
This is an interesting one, and one I'd never actually heard of until I
started writing up abilities for this guide. What does it do? Well, instead
of charging your Overdrive bar following your set Overdrive mode (eg.
charging when you take damage), the game converts the charge to AP instead.
So, if your mode is Stoic, and you get hit, the bar stays the same, but you
get more AP at the end of the battle! Plus, you'll get this AP even if you
flee! Coupled with Triple AP, we've got the makings now...

Customize this onto your Triple AP weapon with 10x Door to Tomorrow. If you
unlock Catastrophe in the Monster Arena, you'll get 99 of these, enough for
everyone's weapons.

3) Triple Overdrive
Normally, this ability charges your Overdrive bar three times faster than
normal. A good ability, no matter what you put it with. But with our
weapons here, seeing as we're converting Overdrive charge to AP.... we get
three times the AP we would get using Overdrive -> AP. Plus, we've got
Triple AP as well.... is all this sounding like a LOT of AP, or what? You
can customize Triple Overdrive onto your weapon using 30x Winning Formula.
Unlock Neslug for 99 of these, enough for three weapons. For the other
four, you'll have to do things the hard way and bribe some Sand Worms for
around 600,000 gil, for around ten of the suckers. Expensive, but much
easier than the alternative of beating Ultima Buster.

*Side note* - Use One-Eye as a way of making gil for this. Fight him
constantly (8000 gil cost), and sell the profits (9000-60000 gil reward).

So now (a zillion hours later), you have (hopefully) a full set of seven
kick-ass weapons for your characters, each with the abilities Triple AP,
Overdrive -> AP, and Triple Overdrive. With these, the more you charge your
Overdrive, the more (lots LOTS more) AP you get. We're gonna use this to our
advantage.

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Gimme Those Sphere Levels!
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Now we're ready to get 99 Sphere Levels in one battle. You can do this for
three characters at a time, and it goes something like this. Unlock Don
Tonberry, buy 99x Phoenix Downs, set your selected characters' Overdrive modes
to Comrade. We're gonna get hit with a shitload of damage here, and turn it
all into AP.

To make this trick work best, you could also get some kick-ass armour with
Auto-Phoenix on it. But really, it's not necessary, we can do fine without it.
And in terms of armour, the more damage we get with the Comrade mode, the
better because our Overdrive bars will charge faster, so take off that Defense
+10%/+20% armour, please.

Now, get yourself into a fight with Don Tonberry, and attack. Every time you
attack, he will counter with Karma - an attack with strength directly
propertional to the amount of enemies that character has killed in the game.
You've killed a lot, you'll get hurt a lot. Of course, when Karma hits, that
character will most likely die, and the other two characters' Overdrive bars
(that are getting converted to AP) will go through the roof due to Comrade.
Revive the character with a Phoenix Down, rinse lather repeat. Soon, he'll get
close enough to stab you for 9999 damage. Just let him do this, while you keep
reviving people.

When you run out of Phoenix Downs, if you haven't already killed Don Tonberry,
Flee the battle. You keep all AP you get from the fight in terms of Overdrive
-> AP.

I tested this out, and used ten Phoenix Downs. My characters each got in the
hundreds of thousands of AP. Use all 99 Phoenix Downs, and you will most
definitely get 99 Sphere Levels.

Was that worth it, or what?

Now, what to do with all these sphere levels...

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Getting Stat Creation Spheres
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The tedious part. This uses the base stats I listed earlier, that your
characters would have if they travelled over the entire Sphere Grid. We need
to get enough stat creation spheres to make up the difference between those
stats and 255.... ergo, we'll need....

255 - 187 Str == 68 Str points
255 - 150 Def == 105 Def points
255 - 142 Mag == 113 Mag points
255 - 124 MDef = 131 MDef points
255 - 174 Agl == 81 Agl points
255 - 18 Luck == 237 Luck points (impossible, and we don't need them anyways)
255 - 124 Eva == 131 Eva points
255 - 70 Acc === 185 Acc points.

That's what we need to get 255. Seeing as each stat creation sphere we use
gives us +4 of that stat, we'll need...

68/4 == 17 Strength Spheres
105/4 = 27 Defence Spheres
113/4 = 29 Magic Spheres
131/4 = 33 Magic Defense Spheres
81/4 == 21 Agility Spheres
237/4 (luck is unnecessary, so we'll leave that out)
131/4 = 33 Evasion Spheres
185/4 = 47 Accuracy Spheres.

Okay. That's what we need. How do we get it?

We fight the Monster Arena bosses I asked you to unlock, as part of the
preparation process. Oh boy.

- Juggernaut (drops Strength Spheres)
- Tanket (drops Defence Spheres)
- Jumbo Flan (drops Magic Spheres)
- One-Eye (drops Magic Defence Spheres)
- Fenrir (drops Agility Spheres)
- Hornet (drops Accuracy Spheres)
- Pteryx (drops Evasion Spheres)

If you want to max Luck the best you can (utterly boring and ultimately
pointless), you'll also be fighting:

- Earth Eater (drops Fortune Spheres)
- Greater Sphere (drops Luck Spheres)

Each boss will drop one sphere per battle, or two if you overkill it. Fight
the amount of times to get the required spheres. Now, take one character, and
start moving them around the grid, filling in all the gaps with stat creation
spheres, starting with Str. Max Str will make it much easier to fight hard to
get the other spheres, so do that first. Plot one person around the grid
(covering parts they might have already covered, to get to the empty nodes)
until they've used all the stat creation spheres, activated them all, and got
max stats.

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Help, I Ran Out of an Activation Sphere!
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Activation Sphere meaning, Power/Mana/Speed Sphere. This will happen a LOT,
running out of them. Good thing is, there's a method to combat this. Simply
unlock Kottos in the Monster Arena, and use a Distiller of the sphere you
need, on him (or use Distil <sphere name here> ability, if playing PAL). Now
overkill him, and you'll get 40 of the sphere you need. Easy, eh?

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Now What?
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Once you've got one character maxed out like this, use the AP Trick (fighting
Don Tonberry with the kick-ass weapons, 99x Phoenix Down, and Comrade) to get
enough sphere levels for your other six characters. Transfer them (using a
Teleport/Friend Sphere) to either end of the first character's path, then send
them through the newly-filled grid. At the end, you should have seven
characters that have traversed the whole sphere grid, and each should have
max stats of 9999 HP, 999 MP, and 255 for all stats (except Luck.)

Congrats, you just achieved yourself uberness!

What to do with uberness? Well, normal fiends are now a snap, including bosses
like the big final boss. Monster Arena bosses will taste your uberness and die
screaming. Dark Aeons are the challenges you have left, if you're playing PAL
as I am.

See the Dark Aeons section, including the boss of them all, Penance.

January 7, 2008, 1:30 AM

Iv gotten everyone but Lulu all way round, double/triple AP on weapons works nicely.

Auron wakka & Yuna are well into their second trips around the board, now I have more sphere moves than I have spheres to fill the empty nodes

I spend most of my time in the battle arena farming dark matters and various stat spheres that keeps me busy for a while and also gives a fair amount of AP

*edit* missed that enormous post, but I guess that was it in a nutshell xD

January 7, 2008, 2:31 AM

Everyone but Lulu? Why?! Lulu is the best character in the game!

5 out of 6 beaten games, she was in the party the entire game. That's how awesome Lulu is.

January 7, 2008, 2:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Reality.Fantasy

Everyone but Lulu? Why?! Lulu is the best character in the game!

5 out of 6 beaten games, she was in the party the entire game. That's how awesome Lulu is.

This might just slow me down, but I use every party member in every battle so that they all level out equally and at the same pace, too. I don't understand why people single out three party members, for this game, particularly.

January 7, 2008, 2:38 AM

Oh yeah, I always tried to use everyone equally, except maybe Kimahri. The first few plays through, I hardly used him because I just didn't like him, but the last few plays I've actually used him. I generally like sticking to Tidus - Yuna - Lulu - Rikku, though.

January 7, 2008, 7:06 AM

Go to the place where you can fight Omega. You'll get like 3 sphere levels per battle.

January 7, 2008, 11:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Riku

This might just slow me down, but I use every party member in every battle so that they all level out equally and at the same pace, too. I don't understand why people single out three party members, for this game, particularly.

Well I try to do that aswel, but I just got most of my usage out of Yuna Wakka & Auron - all the others have gone round the grid once but because Im having a shortage of spheres when I DO get them I use them on my main 3 because its taking forever getting one or two at a time in the monster arena

Quote:

Originally Posted by Reality.Fantasy

Everyone but Lulu? Why?! Lulu is the best character in the game!

5 out of 6 beaten games, she was in the party the entire game. That's how awesome Lulu is.

Because I had a mare trying to get her sigil. She was the only one who wasn't doing break damage and it annoyed me so much that I just gave up on her til I eventually got it
And her over drive is pants xD

January 9, 2008, 7:32 AM

I found levelling up in this game surprisingly easy. I didn't complete the entire grid but I'm almost there with each character. I'm not a completionist though and I'm almost out of Level 3 key spheres. I know where to get some but that doesn't make me wanna get em as I have the good abilities available like doublecast, copycat, ultima, full life etc.

Double Life + One MP cost = Love