easy lvl up

[rubah]

If you boost your stats you won't need any stat+xx% abilities, and you can fill your ability slots with much more useful ones.

There are 5 Bonus abilities (HP, Str, Vit, Mag, and Spr), and you can only equip 4 of those at a time. Leveling to 100 with 4 of those equipped won't max the stat out, but it will make it alot easier. Str is the easiest stat to max (except for HP). If you want to max Vit and Spr without wasting an ability slot, then you're going to have to make Ups.

Eh? Ups are a terrible way to max out stats, because of the price, as you mentioned. Devouring is far more efficient... The only Ups I've ever used are defence (as a side product of devouring adamantoises), speed, and luck.

I agree completely about the stat +%%s though... auto-[protect, shell, haste] and, depending on what you're fighting, mug, initiative, or something else are much more useful.

To me neither Ups nor Devouring are good ways of increasing your stats. Ups, like you said, are incredibly expensive. Devouring would only be useful if you used it to Devour the fixed encounters below the DSRC. Other than that you have to run around for awhile waiting to encounter a certain enemy. Neither of those are really my thing. I raise my stats by leveling up. After that I might make a couple Vit Ups from Adamantines, but that's it.

Actually, you can devour a lot more often than you'd think-- t-rexaurs are a common encounter on the ICtH, or you can go to the training center in balamb. And I always seem to run into more malboros on the island closest to heaven than anything else xD

The only really difficult one is ruby dragons for hp+. Not only are they a rare encounter (aside from the ones in front of bahamut) but they're hard to get down to a small enough HP without killing them to be useful Adamantines are also pretty hard, just because they take forever to find. I don't usually ever fight much around esthar, so I can't say for behemoths