Note that master spheres can only be dropped from these endgame bosses, and they cannot be obtained any other way. You cannot bribe or steal these from anywhere. Technically Master Spheres aren’t even supposed to be farmable, because all the bosses that drop Master Spheres are meant to be one-time fights. And being as amazing as they are, it’s understandable that Master Spheres are easily the rarest item in the game. You get x10 by unlocking Nemesis at the monster arena, although this is a one-time thing. For farming, each Dark Aeon has about a 12% chance to drop x1 Master Sphere upon defeat. Plus the endgame ultra-boss Penance drops between 1-3 of these spheres when defeated – and Penance’s arms also drop Master Spheres, which offers another method for farming (albeit tougher). Here’s a full list of which bosses drop these spheres:
Dark Valefor Dark Ifrit Dark Ixion Dark Shiva Dark Bahamut Dark Yojimbo Dark Anima Dark Cindy Dark Sandy Dark Mindy Penance
Since these are all one-time battles, you technically shouldn’t be able to get unlimited drops… but let’s look into some methods you can use to farm more.
Master Sphere Farming Tips
Most Dark Aeons can only be fought once. However, Dark Yojimbo has a setup that can be taken advantage of for infinite farming: Since you need to defeat him a total of 5 times to actually clear him from the game, you can simply defeat him 4 times and then leave & reenter the area to reset the encounters. Using Yojimbo as farming fodder, you could potentially get as many Master Spheres as you want – provided you can reliably take him down. Another farming method is that you can fight Penance and just take out the arms. The left & right arms will drop x1 Master Sphere as a rare drop (about ~10% chance) and these arms will respawn repeatedly. So as long as you don’t fully defeat Penance, you can farm the arms to get x99 Master Spheres – then defeat Penance to end the fight and walk away with your spoils. And like mentioned before, when you unlock Nemesis you do get x10 Master Spheres as a one-time reward. But it’s not repeatable. Nemesis is unlocked by capturing 10 of every fiend on Spira, as well as defeating all the other Monster Arena Original Creations. Dark Yojimbo becomes available to fight after the events at the Zanarkand Ruins. Penance becomes available to fight after you defeat all the Dark Aeons. You should notice Penance as a new location you can select to land & start the fight.
What Are Master Spheres Used For?
Master Spheres are an ultra-rare type of sphere that can activate any node on the Sphere Grid. Ability, Spell, or stat – it doesn’t matter. A Master Sphere can activate all of it, much like a master key. Activating nodes is all this sphere can do, but that’s pretty amazing by itself. But if you really wanted to use it elsewhere, you can toss in Master Spheres with Rikku’s Overdrive to make some pretty interesting mixes, such as: Trio of 9999 (Blessed Gem + Master Sphere): All allies deal 9999 damage for the duration of battle. Super Mighty G (Chocobo Feather + Master Sphere): Casts Protect, Shell, Haste, and Regen on the party. Final Phoenix (Phoenix Down + Master Sphere): Revives all KO’d party members to full HP.
Are Master Spheres Worth Farming?
Yes. They are super useful. However, since there’s only one or two decent ways to farm them (which involves reliably being able to defeat some of the game’s superbosses), your mileage may vary on how useful these spheres would be – since you’ll need to have your party already pretty powered-up to even attempt to farm these endgame bosses. Still, if you’re out to max your stats then you might find it much less tedious to farm Dark Yojimbo for Master Spheres than some of the other, more annoying fiends for individual spheres.
