Maxing sphere grid + Monster Arena Spectacular!

[Rowan]

This will be story spoiler free.

This guide here is my authentic interpretation of how to get your characters end game buff styles and in what order you should go about completing the challenges that come along with it. I am writing this for all of you out there playing FFX currently, but I am doing it mostly for our American brethren who would not have had much need to do this in their non-international versions of the game. You see, you can be cheap and use Zanmato to deal with your Dark Aeon foes, but that is considered cheap and a waste of what the game offers you. Also, for those of you going for a platinum, this is necessary. Ill tell you why soon.

You have an airship and now you can travel the world map. Its time to hunt monsters from all around the world. Catching monsters has amazing perks. Catching all monsters in an area (besaid for example) will reward you with 99 of a rare item as well as unlocking a super boss created from all the monsters caught from said area. Catching 5 of each kind of set of species will award you with more items, but most importantly, unlock Species Conquest bosses created from combing all these monsters from the same species. Catching 10 of all monsters in the game will unlock one nasty MF and allow you to purchase clear nodes to empty nodes on your sphere grid allowing you to replace them with +4 strength, +4 agility etc. How do you come across all these awesome strength and agility spheres you might ask? By killing these SuperSuper bosses created from the species you collect. Paying a small fee to fight and kill them for the reward and usually rare items sounds awesome right? Well first you gotta be strong enough to do this and im telling you, its no easy feat. It really does depend on which monster you fight, but here is how to get strong enough before you end up clearing your sphere grid anyway

There is an amazing ability you can customize on weapons for your characters. It is known as 'OVERDRIVE>AP'. This particular ability when being equipped on a character will stop your overdrive gauge from filling up, but instead give you as much AP extra at the end of battle. If your overdrive is set to 'stoic' then the amount of extra AP you recieve is based totally on how much damage you are taking during the battle (since thats how stoic mode works). Now, if you can also customize Triple AP and Triple overdrive on this same weapon, can you calculate the amount of AP you get? Ill let you know, its a LOT. But how would you go about getting hit with enough damage to fill up that overdrive gauge? Don Tonberry.

You can unlock him at the monster arena by catching all fiends in the Cavern of the Stolen Fayth. Don Tonberry is the perfect superboss to farm AP because he will counter all of your attacks with a nasty move called "Karma". The damage of karma is relative to how many fiends you've killed in the game and the damage you do to Don Tonberry X100. Its a lot of damage. So here is what your setup should look like"

Tidus - Overdrive mode Stoic
- OVERDRIVE>AP
- Triple AP (or Double Ap)
- Triple Overdrive (optional, but for best results)

any other 2 characters with the same equipment setup but have their overdrive modes set to Comrade (fills up when allies take damage)
Have tidus take a swing at Don Tonberry and watch him get obliterated by Karma. Then revive him with a phoenix down and repeat this process. Keep doing this until tonberry gets close to you, then flee the battle. You should be able to get 4 hits in before having to flee and with this equipment, you should gain easily anywhere between 30 - 60 sphere levels in 5 minutes. (Just a little bit of info, AP required to level up caps at 22000.)

You can safely keep doing this until you max out the sphere grid for your characters. Getting these abilities on your weapons is a challenge in itself. It will require certain items. But I can garantee that it involves you catching a LOT of fiends. I am farming the One eye boss (species conquest by catching all one eyes flying enemies) at the moment for the weapons with triple AP drops.

Items needed for;
OVERDRIVE>AP - "Door To tomorrow" (complete 6 areas in monster arena and get given x99)
Double AP - "Megalixer" (Can get as many as 20 by bribing Varuna 1,150,000 Gil
Triple AP - "Wings to Discovery" - Lol, good luck. 30 from remiem temple by opening 3 chests during the chocobo race, 4 by bribing marlboro 550,000Gil
Triple Overdrive - "Underdogs Secret" 99 from Rin once you obtain all al bhed primers. 3 are permantely missable at Al Bhed HOME and 1 perma in Bevelle.

Anything else you'd like to know just ask. Anything anyone would like to contribute, please do.

[Alpha]

Can confirm.

In fact it works so well, you've only told half the story. What's the name of the thing to fight to get 40 of any power/speed/magic/ability spheres? It's one of those yeti things with for arms. You gonna need lots of them all at the same time.

Also as an aside, you not only need to capture 10 of everything for Nemesis to become available, but to beat everything else in the arena, too.

[Rowan]

Can confirm.

In fact it works so well, you've only told half the story. What's the name of the thing to fight to get 40 of any power/speed/magic/ability spheres? It's one of those yeti things with for arms. You gonna need lots of them all at the same time.

I did not know that. Thats awesome. So you just distil for the spheres you need? Its Kottos by the way and he only has 44,000hp. Thats awesome.


Ill add something else here. The superboss Juggernaught (5 of every dragon type fiend will unlock him) is the superboss that drops strength spheres. He also has 1,140,000hp and high magic + defence. If you are planning on maxing out stats and farming these superbosses, it only makes sense to max out your strength first. unfortunately maxing the sphere grid (Pre-superboss farm) for any character will have you end up with only 140 attack, which would inflict as much as 30,000 only on Juggernaught. What you need to do is to train yuna up beacuse every sphere she activates boosts all the stats of her aoens. Every +1 strength to yuna will add as much as +4 strength to an aoen. So a +4 strength to yuna will give an aeon +16 strength. Have yuna go to a spot on the sphere grid where there is a lot of strength +4's and repeat the method of AP farm that I mentined above. You will need to make your aoens strong (in particularly, Anima) to even make a dint in this Juggernaught. After spamming the ulti's of all your Aoens (remember, certain celestial weapons break damage/hp limit for certain aeons) you should be able to finish it off. The only sad thing is that you will have to repeat this process until you can get a characters attack (Tidus for example) high enough to do 99,999 with quick hit. Then you wont need to use Aeons anymore to kill anything. I recomend after maxing out strength, you go straight for agility spheres from Fafnir (i think).