Help: How to power up?

I read some people have stats max at 255, and have crazy HP like 40K+. How do you do that?

I have finished 90% of the game, except challenging Sin or the side-quests, but I'm only at HP of about 4ooo~5000. Yes it is sufficient if not challenging toughies like monster arena or the weapons, yes you can follow what FAQ advised for Don Tonberry 99 AP, but my question is....how do you get the crazy stats without doing the extreme, border-line cheating Tonberry move? What's the "regular" way of achieve it? Do you just keep walking around and playing for another 200 hours? Do your super powered up characters completed the entire sphere grid?

How do you guys do it....

Yes, you have to have your characters activate every node in the sphere grid. And for those nodes that don't have spheres in them, that's where you make a new sphere to get your stats to 255.

Thanks for confirming my suspicion on what you need to do, which is basically cover the entire freaking grid. Could you advise how you go about achieving it? by walk around for another 200 hours? or use the Tonberry method?

Tonberry method defo works, but gets old and you have to be very good to reap the benefits.

I like fighting in the Omega ruins for experience to navigate the sphere grid. If you get double cash (I forget the exact ability name) from enemies, you can get 100,000 gil from the mimics, which is good when you want to bribe enemies for some of the rarer items for putting abilities on equipment, as some of the bribes are over a million gil.

Also, capturing monsters for the monster arena is a great way to fill out your sphere grid and unlock the great monster fights at the monster arena.

I maxed all my stats bar luck & magic (both deliberate avoidances, I didn't need magic maxed at all & Luck at 150 is sufficient). I never did the AP>Overdrive/Tonberry fix. I fought up & down Omega Dungeon serveral times (made me rich too), and to max the stats, fought at the Monster Arena to get the various Spheres needed. It was highly enjoyable.

I did it without bribing anything. The first time I used it (which was well into the game), I bribed a Dingo for about a million gil and it ran off. Of course, I promptly resetted and never bribed again.

YOu have to do the mosnter arena quests.

Otherwise you won't get any clear spheres and can't get max stats.

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Originally Posted by Old Manus

Tonberry method defo works, but gets old and you have to be very good to reap the benefits.

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Not really. All you need is a weapon with the Overdrive -> AP ability (and if you want to speed the process add Triple AP and Triple Overdrive) and a person who has low HP but has killed a lot of fiends. You can gain 99 S.Levels in around 30 seconds if done correctly. The only 'hard' part is acquiring the weapons.

Meh. I just don't have the patience.