Okay, Here it is. No promises on the length of this, but I'll put stuff up here from time to time as it comes to me. Other than that, you all know how it works. Standard faq's page. More or less.

[  Sphere Grid  ]	[  Blitzball  ]	[  Ultimate Weapons  ]
[  Getting Anima   ]

      This is one of my favorite changes in Final Fantasy X, but it can also be confusing. So, I'm including a short rundown on what it is and how to work it.
      Doing away from standard 'level ups', square has replaced it with sphere levels (s.lvl). In the main menu, you will see a option 'Sphere Grid'. Selecting this will take you to the sphere grid. Each character occupies one spot (or node) on the grid. They can activate the node they are on, or the nodes connected to the node they are on. Once a node is activated, they power up your characters, giving them more strength, more magic, more speed, more abilities, etc. Don't worry about getting spheres to activate the nodes. You get them from every battle, so you will most likely not be in short supply. This is, in short, how you 'level up.'
      There are also advanced spheres that you will find throughout the game. These are used to fill empty nodes with a useful kind. The HP sphere, for example, change an empty node into a HP +300 node. You'll note that the standard HP node on the Sphere Grid is a HP +200 node. This means that the HP Sphere, like all the other special spheres that replace empty nodes, will give you the maximum stat increase available. So, make use of them.
      Beware, however, that most special spheres can be used in customizing equipment, giving pretty good effects. The teleport sphere, for example, gives a piece of armor the ability to dodge a physical attack, and strike back (very useful when given to auron, especially when fighting bombs. Stupid things). Use them wisely, as I beleive they are in limited supply. If they're not, then it's difficult to obtain more.

      You're only required to play Blitzball once, but you have an option to play it again later for some fairly decent prizes. So, I'm putting a little tutorial here too.

      Anyway, Blitzball basically works like a graphically enhanced cardgame with motion. What happens is, basically, one person will get the ball, and at one time or another, he will be put against a player on the opposite team. Depending on which action you choose, various stats come into play.

      For example, let's say you have the ball, and there is one person on defense (simply put, someone who is close enough to interfer with your action). Let's say you want to pass. Your PA (passing accuracy) stat is what determines if it will go through. If the ball reaches the other person with at least 1 point (the PA deceases as it travels through water), than they pass is successful. However, your opponent tries to block the pass, using a stat of their own (B something. can't remember at the moment). When you pass, their stat is automatically subtracted from the PA. If their stat is heigher than you PA, then they intercepted the pass.

      The same is true for all the other various actions. I don't think they need to be explained in detail. Whenever an action is selected, though, the game automatically displays all the people whos stats will effect the action. All you basically need to do is look at the highlighted numbers in the upper right hand corner and make sure yours is higher.

    As you can expect, the ultimate weapons are back, and with a vengence. I'm not sure what happened with FFIX, but I, for one, missed these things. Though, in FFX, you have to work quite a bit harder to actually make these things any good. You need four items to make an Ultimate Weapon.

• First is the Celestial Mirror. This will allow you to open the chests that contain the various ultimate weapons. To get this, you need to go to the calm lands (after you get the airship), and rent a chocobo. Then ride it back to the enterence to the Macalania forest, though do NOT enter the forest. Instead, head east a bit and you will find a chocobo feather on the ground. Examine it while on the chocobo and you will be taken to a little ledge that will, if you follow the path, will take you to a temple. Once you reach the temple, go around it to the left and examine the sphere on the ground. Then head around to the right side of the temple and talk to the chocobo there to start the race. It's easy as heck, so don't worry about whether or not you'll win.
      The race will get you the cloudy mirror, and that won't cut it. We need to charge it with more magical energy, or whatever. So, to do that, we need to head to macalania forest. Enter the forest (from the calm lands), and you will eventually run into a wife and her son, who tell you that the husband was supposed to meet them there, but probably forgot. So, go find him. He can be found by backtracking two screens, then heading north. Talk to him and he goes off to his family. Go back to where the mother and son was, and you'll see the mother and husband, but, as they tell you, the son has run off. To find him, run up the magical path to your left (next to the nearby save point), and follow it until you run into him. Then the parents will come and get him back. How nice. Now, continue up the path where the son was standing, and examine the plant thing. It will charge the cloudy mirror and change it into the Celestial Mirror. Yay.

• Second is the actual weapon itself. They are scattered around the world, so here are the locations.
  • Tidus:  His can be found in the calm lands. Talk to the chocobo guy, and ask him about training chocobo's. He'll have some courses for you to go through. Beat the first one, and you'll have access to the next. Beat that one, you'll have access to another, and so on, up to the fourth course - an actual chobobo race with him. Beat him, then head to the northwest corner of the calm lands. There is a path going steeply down (it's kinda hard to see, so if you can't find it, start from the top left corner , follow the north wall of the cliff, and walk east). Go down there, and examine the object that can best be described as a 'thing', and you'll recieve his ultimate weapon - Caladbolg.

  • Yuna:  Her ultimate weapon can be found in the calm lands, at the monster arena, after you capture one of every kind of monster from the calm lands. Not that hard. Wait until after you have the airship to get her ultimate weapon - Nirvana.

  • Auron:  His ultimate weapon takes longer than the other to obtain, though it's very easy. In the area directly north of the calm lands, head down the ravine (under the second bridge), and take the right path. You'll eventually come to a place where a rusty sword has been placed in the ground. Take it, and head to mushroom rock road. Remember back when you had to report to the command center, and you werent' allowed to head a certain direction? Go back there, and take that path. You'll come to a statue of a man (the guy who started the crusaders - forgot his name) standing over a slain behemoth. Place the sword in the ground before the statue, and another 'thing' will appear. Examine it, and you'll get Aurons weapon - Masamune.

  • Wakka:  By far the easiest to obtain. Simply talk to the woman behind the counter of the bar at Luca, and she'll give it to you. It may be dependant on your number of blitzball wins, but I'm not sure. I think I had around 40 when I got his weapon - World Champion.

  • Lulu:  In the airship, choose to enter a password and enter [trying to find the pw again.], to get the location for Baaj temple. Once there, you'll have to beat the fiend that attacked Tidus at the beginning of the game with Wakka, Tidus, and Rikku. Once you've done that, head to the opposite side of the room from the door, and there is a (very well hidden) chest, containing Lulu's ultimate weapon - Onion Knight.

  • Rikku:  The second easiest to obtain. Again choose to enter a password at the airship screen, and enter "GODHAND." This will give you access to a ruin (forgot the name). Go there, and you'll find a chest. This will contain Rikku's weapon - Godhand.

  • Kimahri:  The most annoying weapon to obtain, it can be found at the Thunder Plains. It will help tremendously if you have a weapon or armor with the 'No encounters' ability. Anyway, activate three Cactuar statues by praying to them (pressing square). Note that you can only activate a statue that has pyreflies or whatever flying around it. I'm not sure what activates this, but as soon as I find out I'll let you know. Anyway, once you do that, a cactuar spirit will appear and lead you to a specific tower. Either follow it, or go to the first area in the thunder plains and head to the broken tower on the right hand side of the screen and pray to it. You'll get Kimahri's ultimate weapon - Spirit Lance.
  When you first get it, it will have one ability, No AP(prevents you from gaining ap after a battle), and three empty slots. That's just no good, so we'll have to fix that.

• The third thing we need is the particular characters Crest. The crests are very easy to get, and don't increase the weapon's power very much, though they are needed to attain the full power of the weapons. Anyway, their locations are:
  • Tidus: In the Yevon Dome, where you fought Yunalesca. You may need to go up and down the stairs a few times, but it will be against the wall. It is slightly camouflaged, so look carefully.

  • Yuna: In Besaid island. Just follow the shoreline from the docks toward the area where you came from in the early part of the game, and you'll find it.

  • Wakka: In Luca, in the Aurochs locker room. You cannot get this until you gain control of the airship.

  • Auron: It's in the Mi'ihen highroad. Can't tell you exactly where, but you most likely won't need me to. Once you go there, just rent a chocobo and walk along the road and open all the chests you see.

  • Kimahri: In Mt. Gagazet, in the area where you fought Seymour, there are several pillars on the path. Search the area between the first two pillars on the left hand side, and that's where his crest is.

  • Rikku: I believe I found it in a little area by 'searching' on the airship. If not, then it's in the desert where 'The Home' is. Or was. Whatever.

  • Lulu: A chest in the farplanes (accesed through Guadosolom). You can't get it on your first visit to the farplane.

  ---

  Getting Anima

  To get Anima, you have to do two things. Well, it actually works out to around 9 things, but it's only 2 essentially. The first is get all the treasures from the different temples, using the destruction spheres. The second is to wait until you have access to the air ship, then search for the Baaj Ruins(13, 60). There you will run into that fiend that attacked you when you first came to Spira (you'll have to fight him with Tidus, Wakka, and Rikku, so be prepared).

  First, the walkthrough for beating the monster. He uses a lot of stone attacks, so you will need stone ward or stone proof on all three characters. I already have them, but if you don't, buy a lot of soft's and customize some armor. After that, he should be a piece of cake. If he isn't, just build up your peoples' overdrive bars, and then use them on him when you enter the battle. Piece of cake. I don't have his stats right now, but I'll add them later.

  The walkthrough for the temples can be found here, one of my affiliates. The link is toward the bottom, under "Sub-Quests." If you are having troubles with a specific temple, email me here and I'll get back to you as quickly as I can, which, I promise, will be faster than I update this site lately.

  I would have my own walkthrough, but it's been a while since I've done it. I'd pretty much be copying it anyway, so I just quoted it. I'll either play through the other temples tommorow, or do the same for the others, and replace it with my own walkthrough's when I have time(during spring break).