Michael's Final Fantasy Tavern

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THE SPHERE GRID

FINAL FANTASY X employs a unique new system for advancing your
characters. When a character achieves new Sphere Levels, access the
Sphere Grid and move the character's markers across the nodes. Use
sphere of various types to raise a character's attributes and learn
new abilities. Any character can learn any ability and raise any
attribute. By acquiring enough spheres, you can eventually have a
party of characters who have every ability and maximized attributes.

SPHERE GRID BASICS

The Sphere Grid becomes accessible after Rikku explains how to use it in
a short tutorial. Each character who joins the party has a pre-designated
starting point on the grid. While each of the characters has his or her
own section, you can remove the locks between the different sections by
using the appropriate key sphere. Thus, character advancement is limitless.

While in the Sphere Grid, press SELECT button to zoom out from the current
character's position to see his or her relation to other characters. Press R2/RT
and L2/LT to change the viewing angle of the grid if you desire.

ABILITY POINTS AND SPHERE LEVELS

As the party defeats enemies, everyone involved in the battle receives Ability
Points, or AP. When enough AP is collected, the character achieves a Sphere
Level. This is why it is essential to switch every party member into a boss
fight for at least one turn, since so much AP is at stake.

Each Sphere Level enables a character to move one node forward on the Sphere
Grid, or up to four nodes backward if desired. Open the Sphere Grid and press
X/A. After selecting the Move command, the number of nodes you can move in
any direction is highlighted. Move to the desired position and press X/A
again, and then confirm that you would like to remain at the selected
position. You can change your mind and cancel out before deciding. Moving
forward is essential to activating new sphere nodes and gaining new abilities.

SPHERE NODES

After moving a character's marker to a new location on the Sphere Grid,
press X/A again. Select the Use command, and a window listing the available
spheres opens. Use the spheres that you've collected to activate nodes in
the vicinity. You can activate the node that the marker is positioned on or
an adjacent node.

COMBINING COMMAND AND AUTO-ABILITIES

Here are some examples of effective combinations of Command Abilities
and Auto-Abilities.
Auto-Ability: First Strike
Command Ability: Flee
If you want to get through an area in a hurry, have a character who's
learned Flee equip a weapon with First Strike. Even if the party is ambushed,
he'll always go first, so you can flee from battle immediately.

Auto-Ability: Counterattack or Evade & Counter
Command Ability: Provoke or Sentinel
Equip a hard-hitting character with a weapon that has Counterattack or
Evade & Counter. Then, make him Provoke an enemy into attacking him.
Sentinel can also work if enemies only use physical attacks. Try experimenting
with additional Auto-Abilities like Capture, Stonestrike, or Deathstrike, too.

Auto-Ability: One MP Cost, Magic Booster
Command Abilities: Double Cast, Ultima
With Magic Booster, each spell becomes 1.5 times more effective by consuming
twice as much MP. Combined with the ability One MP Cost, each spell only
costs 2 MP. This allows you to Doublecast your most powerful black magic
spells for only 4 MP total.

SPHERES

By opening trasure chests, defeating enemies and bribing monsters, you can acquire
spheres for use on the Sphere Grid. There are five types of spheres.

Red Spheres - The most common type, often won from common enemies. Power spheres enable you
to increase a character's HP, Strength, and Defense. Mana Spheres increase MP,
Magic, and Magic Defense. Speed Spheres increase Agility, Evasion, and Accuracy.
Ability Spheres teach the character to activate Luck nodes, but they are the
hardest red spheres to come by.

Yellow Sphere - The rarest type of spheres, these enable one character to acquire abilities
already acquired by another character. Characters can learn special abilities,
skills, white magic, and black magic spells that have already been learned
by others.

Black Spheres - These could be considered the most important spheres to acquire, because
they remove locks that block progress on the Sphere Grid. The appropriate
level key sphere is required to open a particular lock. The higher the level,
the harder the key sphere is to come by. All of the characters will eventually
run into Lv. 3 and Lv. 4 Locks in their area of the Sphere Grid.

Purple Spheres - These Spheres enable you to turn an empty node into an attribute increase of
some sort. The increase is higher than the typical attribute node. For example,
if you use an MP Sphere to fill an empty node, the node will increase a
characters MP by 40 points rather than the usual 20. You shoudl consider
using the MP and HP spheres on magic users like Yuna and Lulu to compensate for
their grids and to make spell casting easier. Consider using the Luck Spheres
on Rikku, so that her Steal and Mug abilities are improved. Also, try to use
them whenever two or more characters are near eachother, so that more than
one character can immediately benefit from the new node.

Blue Spheres - These enable you to move a character's marker to another point on the Sphere
Grid, even if the character does not have any Sphere Levels to expend. A Return
Sphere lets the character return to any node that they have previously activated.
A Friend Sphere lets a character move to any other character's location on the
grid, and a Teleport Sphere lets a character move to any node acivated by
any other character.