Yeah I collected all the monsters first, and then kept trying to beat all monsters until I ran into wall.
Then used the tricks Xuxon mentioned (I didn't have all those abilities, so it was a bit slower, but not too much) and then use the sphere distillers on Kottos to get spheres.
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http://i498.photobucket.com/albums/rr345/Rakaputra/pjbasis.png
SuperNiceDog - 1, pjbasis - 0