Can anyone check and see if the either of these items were secretly fixed in patch 1.7, the Attunement Sphere and Gallus' Encoded Journal are both undroppable quest items.

I've been waiting for these items to be fixed before continuing to play through their related quests and I'm really hoping they are fixed so I can keep playing my character.

You may want to read the http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1399754-looks-like-17-was-just-released/page__st__30 just a few threads below yours. It has a link in there to a list of bug fixes.