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I stumbled on this not too long ago, however a few sources on the internet quote a similare trick so I guess it's nothing new. But I'd like to share it regardless - I can gain 20+ sphere levels in a single 5-10 minute battle with practically no effort.

First, some preparations. You'll have to customize weapons with the Overdrive -> AP ability. 2x or 3x AP and 2x or 3x overdrive are also good - IMO, you should always carry around a weapon dedicated to gaining massive AP anyway. The Overdrive -> AP ability requires Doors to Tomorrow, I believe, which you can easily gain a lot of by unlocking a certain boss in the arena.

You also need plenty of phoenix downs. About 40 or so should be good enough but by that point you should be able to afford 99 without breaking a sweat so... hey... why not.

Finally, set everyone's overdrive mode to Stoic. Everyone starts off with it.

In the arena, fight King Cactuar. He's an Area Conquest from Bikanel Island, I think (I could be wrong...) This guy will do one of three things in battle: 10,000 needles, 99,999 needles, and after two or three dozen turns, run away. He also counters every attack with 10,000 needles. What you want to do is let him hit you with 99,999 needles. Just defend every turn and use phoenix downs on the dead as needed. Don't attack - 10,000 needles isn't good enough (unless you have enough time to revive the character before KC's turn.) Keep suffering through the 99,999 needles onslaught until it runs away.

Wham. 200,000-500,000 AP. All that damage-turned-overdrive-turned-AP should give your characters between 10-15 levels. More if you have 2x/3x overdrive/AP. Note that the sphere level caps at 99, so use your levels as you get them. You'll probably run out of sphere halfway through if you're at level 99 anyhow so you'll have to go hunting stuff outside the arena.

Really great once you start fighting arena bosses. Most of them are insane.

I've also heard this being done with Don Tonberry but it's not as effective. I never tried it out though. Also, make sure you keep your characters alive otherwise KC will run away and the dead characters won't gain AP.

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"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
and the likelyhood of him sharing."

I've actually heard that Don Tonberry is MORE effective. I reached 99 sphere levels very quickly thanks to that sad excuse for a tough fight.

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Oh sure, I don't have to get kicked in the junk to activate it, but I like it anyway. -- Thief commenting on the difference between Throw and Blue Magic.

That sounds really good. I never played FFX for long enough to discover anything like that. I'll give that a go if I load up my save... ever. You're right the later enemies are rock solid - especially the underwater guy if you don't use Rikku or Tidus .

I did however find a place to auto-level, so I might as well post it. In Bevelle, when you are meant to

Possible spoilers: highlight to view

run along the road and fight Seymour to help Kimahri,

you can run to the bottom left of the screen and Tidus begins running on the spot (also getting battles). The best outcome is 4000 AP, and that's in just three hits (one turn) from your party; easy to turbo. The downside is you can't do this with Kimahri.

That's the best AP gainer I found, but yours takes the prize.

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Scepticism, that dry rot of the intellect, had not left one entire idea in his mind.

Me on the Starcraft.

I've been messing with Overdrive -> AP a bit before thinking of using Stoic and King Cactuar's 99,999 needles to my advantage. I came up with a few other tricks. I suppose I'll make mention of them, though they're not as effective.

You can easily boost the amount of AP everyone gains by giving them the Victor OD mode. After battle everyone'll gain a bit more AP. If you don't mind sacrificing your OD gauge for a bit, you should leave that setting on during normal play-through to level up faster.

The first trick I came across was with the Ally OD mode (the one that charges every turn.) Just kill everything but one fiend, haste/hastega your party, and slow the remaining enemy. Then skip everyone's turns repeatedly. Easiest to pull off against weak Besaid enemies, and you can use a turbo controller for this. Just walk away and let your AP increase. You don't gain a lot every turn though, so it's a slow process that's hardly any useful without a turbo controller.

The OD mode where your gauge increases when an ally takes damage is also a good substitute to use with King Cactuar. I found I got less AP that way though, maybe it just ran away earlier.

One thing I haven't tried yet but that could probably work is customizing a weapon to have Overdrive -> AP and Break Damage Limit, and having party members attack each other under the same conditions as King Cactuar. But I don't think your OD gauge rises if damage doesn't come from enemies, so it probably won't work. Still, I can easily hit some of my characters for nearly 99,999 with Auron... it'd be cool.

Another minor thing I haven't tried but that should work is using Entrust. I don't know how much AP a full OD bar is worth but every little bit helps.

So far the King Cactuar tactics works best (though I plan on trying the Don Tonberry one tonight) but the Ally OD mode can be done with a turbo controller, meaning you don't have to sit through an hour of fighting to get 99 sphere levels...

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"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
and the likelyhood of him sharing."

Sorry for the double post.

I experimented a bit last night and I wasn't too impressed with Don Tonberry. Having him counterattack with Karma every attack is really great because you don't have to wait for its turn and karma can do up to 99,999 per hip. IF you character fights a lot. Even my tidus only took 60,000 and he's my best character. My Lulu would take less than 10,000 per hit. And then after 3-4 turns he stops countering and becomes ridiculously easy to beat.

I got 250,000 AP. That's with double AP, mind. Pretty good.

After giving Lulu Triple Overdrive and fighting King Cactuar for ~15 minutes, I ended up with a whopping 1.5 million AP and 65 sphere levels. I practically spent more time moving around on the sphere grid than I did fighting KC. And that's WITHOUT an AP-boosting equipment (only Tidus has one - Double AP - at the moment.)

Until your guys can be hit for 50,000+ by Don Tonberry and can attack often enough to take a good dozen hits before DT stops countering (assuming it doesn't die first,) KC is the way to go, hands down. 4.5 levels per minute is great. After that, DT should give more AP because it consistently hits you with very damaging attacks. Either way, once you have triple OD and AP, you can hit 99 levels in less than a dozen minutes, if even that.

Oh yeah. You can use a turbo controller with either of them. Just get auto-phoenix. KC runs so you can just keep skipping turns with triangle. DT dies, so you can use X for him. But since you need to go through the menu at the arena to fight again, there's little point in it. Actually, KC doesn't seem to run away until you damage it, so you can turbo your way through the fight, come back in about 15 minutes, and use Flee or hit it and wait for it to run. Either way you have 99 levels at the end of the fight so you still have to stop and spend them before you can continue.

It takes a long time to spend 99 sphere levels.

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"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
and the likelyhood of him sharing."

The problem I found with doing these power-levelling techniques is actually getting enough Spheres to use on the board! I found myself fighting the Besaid dogs for a long while just using Power/Speed/Mana Distil on them. So with that in mind, you're looking at a far greater amount of time to master the Sphere Grid. Maybe even triple the time spent on KC.

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Scepticism, that dry rot of the intellect, had not left one entire idea in his mind.

Me on the Starcraft.

Yeah, you quickly run out of spheres. Mainly power spheres, in my case. Usually when that happens, I just go hunting monsters for the arena (along with a handy little supply of distillers.) But it's pretty annoying regardless - I wish you could buy spheres.

After all, 4 types of spheres, 99 of each at most, and 99 levels with 3 characters - even with the occasional empty slot in the grid, that means you're almost certainly going to run out of one type of sphere.

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"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
and the likelyhood of him sharing."

Quote (Silverlance @ 5th April 2007 14:30)

Yeah, you quickly run out of spheres. Mainly power spheres, in my case. Usually when that happens, I just go hunting monsters for the arena (along with a handy little supply of distillers.) But it's pretty annoying regardless - I wish you could buy spheres.

After all, 4 types of spheres, 99 of each at most, and 99 levels with 3 characters - even with the occasional empty slot in the grid, that means you're almost certainly going to run out of one type of sphere.

The easiest way to get spheres back is to fight Kottos and use a distiller. If you manage an overkill, you'll get 40 of whichever kind of sphere you were after.

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Veni, vidi, dormivi.

Quote

The easiest way to get spheres back is to fight Kottos and use a distiller. If you manage an overkill, you'll get 40 of whichever kind of sphere you were after.

Thank you.
I've just tried that and it worked great, that's one step closer to me becoming strong enough to beat Penance.

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In the end, it boils down to two simple choices. Either you do or you don't.

Where has CoN been for the past 6 years? Those tricks to get massive amounts of AP and spheres are as old as the game!

Moderator Edit

Gee, thanks for your contribution. How silly of us not to have made sure that all of our members played FFX the moment it came out.

Next time you feel like posting just to criticize people for needing gameplay help, kick yourself instead.

This post has been edited by karasuman on 8th April 2007 15:23

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I know I've been Final Fantasy XII too long - just the other day I referred to a region with no cell service as a Jagd!

SL, I notice you talking about customizing your weapons. There's really no need, Ultima Buster gives out the best weapon to use for any overdrive -> AP trick as a rare drop. It gets Triple Overdrive, Triple AP, and OD -> AP. Hopefully you get it for the right character though.

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My soul is bound to the Mistress of the Afterlife, and my fealty is to her always. So let's just hope she doesn't use it as one of her ten daily meals.