Final Fantasy VIII Disc 1

The SeeD Exam

Back to Garden

Low-Level Route

If you’re trying to keep levels low, wait until after the Dollet mission before doing any optional grinding. You’ll be able to teach the Card and skills without leveling up your characters, then you can come back to garden and grind while . You can skip the optional training center steps below and use this Garden calm-before-the-mission to stock up on the cards listed below which you’ll soon be able to refine into useful magic.

When you get back from the Fire Cave, you’ll have some free time before you change into your uniform. If you’ve been leveling up, feel free to hit up the training center again, if you’d like. You can teach some abilities. If you run across a shop in the Training Center, don’t spend all your money - you’ll want to save some for after the mission.

Be sure to check out the Card Section if you want to ridiculously over-power your character before taking on any hard enemies. Now that you have the Ifrit Card, you should be able to start winning here. With enough practice (save first!), adding the Quistis Card and the MiniMog Card should make you more or less unstoppable in this area. Good cards to pick up:

Quistis Card
MiniMog Card
5x Blitz ( into 20x Thundaga)
5x Abyss Worm ( into 20x Tornado)
5x Fastitocalon ( into 20x Water)
5x Snow Lion ( into 20x Blizzaga)
15x Hexdragon ( 3x into 20x Firaga)

When you are ready to move on, head for the Dormitory. Go into your room and get changed, examine the bed a second time to rest. When you leave, you will automatically go to the directory area.

SeeD Test

Read this whole section before starting. It will save you some grief. Oh, and be sure to read the instructions carefully to defeat the X-ATM092 a few times as well, since it’s kinda tricky.

Balam

When you get to the directory, you will be assigned a group consisting of Zell and Seifer. Eventually, you will be allowed to leave. You’ll get into a car and have to drive to Balam town. This is easy. Just follow the road. When you get there, you’ll follow your teammates over to a boat and get in. Listen to the directions from Xu (pronounced ‘Zoo’), then go up top when Seifer instructs you.

Dollet

Cardable Enemies in Dollet

Enemy	Location	Common Card	Rare Card
Anacondaur	Dollet	Anacondaur Card	Mobile Type 8 Card
Geezard	Dollet	Geezard Card

Prep and Start:

Low-Level Route

If you are trying to keep your levels as low as possible, you’ll want to junction and to Seifer (Not - I like to keep her low-level to make easier later), then KO Zell and Squall off as soon as possible. Just have Seifer attack them until they’re KO’d. This will ensure they don’t level up, but Seifer is free to kill off the 75 enemies required to get a good “Attack” score for your exam. In the mean time, he can also get the Card and skills. Transfer whatever magic makes sense to Seifer.

These are the skills your need learn, in order of importance:

: Card, , ,
: , , ,
: , (if reaches level 10), , , , , , , , (if reaches level 10) Note: You’ll need and , but comes with those pre-learned. You’ll need , but should learn that so doesn’t need to

I have Seifer run back and forth on the brige to hit the 75 number and learn (you can’t use it on humans), then junction and have him run around on the stairs card-modding monsters to get the skill. It shouldn’t take long, since she should have earned 20 AP in the Fire Cave.

Cool CG sceens follow, and you end up on the beach. If you’re not doing the low-level route, open the menu and junction to Seifer and to Zell. stays with Squall. If you use the Magic menu option, you can transfer all magic from Quistis to Zell, which is helpful since he probably doesn’t have any yet. Follow Seifer’s request to “Scout the area for enemies.” Just go up past the fountian and take the upper right road. You’ll get “ambushed” by more bad guys. At this point you should have taken out 6 mandatory enemies. Only 69 to go for a perfect score.

You’ll follow them and beat up bad guys. If you’re going for a perfect score, just walk back and forth across the bridge until you’ve killed your required 75 enemies. Be sure to give Seifer enough HP that you don’t get killed off.

After taking out the requisite number of enemies, head left to the end of the bridge. Don’t talk to the wounded guys you meet there. Seifer will talk about getting the killing blow. From there, you’ll go up the path where the wounded soldiers are. Next, go up one more screen.

Low-Level Route

On that second screen is where you should unjunction any from Seifer; transfer to Squall and to Zell. If you gave Seifer magic, you can transfer it to other characters, or just leave it and it’ll go to another character you’re about to meet. Use a on any KO’d characters and then heal them up with Cure magic.

When you get to the top, Selphie will find you.

Selphie will join your party and demand you help her find Seifer. She will get any of the Magic that Seifer still had equipped, but NOT the . If you’ve been playing the and you have stuff you can refine magic from, this is the PERFECT time to do so. Make sure you junction to Selphie. Finally, make sure all three characters have junctioned the GF Ability and Draw abilities. For the upcoming battle, I like to give Squall and Selphie Magic and Zell Item as the final ability.

Head into the building and save at the save point on the right. If you care to draw it, the draw point on the left is a Blind. Head up the elevator thing and watch another really cool CG. Come to think of it, I restored and watched this CG quite a few times. It’s just too much.

Siren and Esuna

Boss Fight Prep

Boss Fight: Biggs and Wedge

Steal	n/a; is not available yet.
Weak / Absorbs	Biggs is weak to Thunder; Wedge has no notable elemental weakness.
Reward	8 AP,
Drops	2
Strategy	Draw Esuna from Biggs and Cure from Wedge, then defeat either one to bring in Elvoret.

When the cut scene is over, you’ll get into a fight with Biggs (the guy in Red). My strategy is to have every focus on drawing Esuna from Biggs until one is full. Then I have that character focus on beating up Wedge while the other two keep trying to Draw Esuna. Once Wedge is down, focus on attacking Biggs. You can always have Squall draw-cast Cure from Biggs to heal up Selphie as her HP drops. I don’t bother ensuring everyone has 100 Esuna, fwiw. Random Side Note: Enjoy the company of these two bozos; you’ll be seeing a bit of them throughout the game.

Boss Fight: Elvoret

Steal	n/a; is not available yet.
Weak / Absorbs	No notable elemental weakness; it absorbs nothing.
Reward	10 AP, plus the if you draw it.
Drops	2 , 2 , or 3
Strategy	Draw first and Double second. Heal through Storm Breath, then finish it with attacks or .

After you ‘defeat’ them, they’ll get blown off the tower by Elvoret. DRAW BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING ELSE! Once you’ve secured this , I’d say have people try to draw Double. That’s a useful Magic to have in the next big battle. I usually do the same strategy as Esuna above - have everyone draw Double, and use Squall to heal up Selphie when she gets low on HP. Once Squall has 100 Double, I just wail on him. If any of your characters are taking too much damage from every attack, you can have them use their instead of drawing or attacking.

You’ll get and other cool stuff. Then you are informed you have to run back down to the beach in 30 minutes.

This is where any prep work you’ve done before will come in handy. You can get a massive bonus if you manage to defeat the upcoming X-ATM092 enemy. Head down the elevator when you get the chance and configure your characters before you save.

Optimizing GF Distribution with Siren

Group 1: Ifrit, Siren

Group 2: Quetz

Group 3: Shiva

Strategy: Starts building Siren's magic/refine kit while keeping the first three characters covered.

Ability Priority: L Mag-RF, ST Med-RF, Tool-RF, Mag+20%, Mag+40%, Mag Bonus. Full list.

Pause at the bottom of the elevator - you have a choice to make here.

Low-Level Route

If you’ve been following the low-level route, you have two options. If you’re looking to maximize your , see the Avoiding X-ATM092 section below.

On the other hand, if you’re not worried about the , players following the low-level route could benefit from farming AP during these encounters with X-ATM092. However, if you want a higher score so you start with a higher , try to get to the bottom as quick as you can. Farming AP without defeating X-ATM092 will mean you start as a Level 8 instead of a Level 9 - assuming you score perfect in all other categories.

Boss Fight Prep

JUNCTION ALL TO SQUALL, SET THEM TO LEARN A SKILL. If you don’t have , restore from your last save and do it again so you get her (yes - that is the jaded voice of experience.) Also, make sure he’s got Magic and GF Ability set. No characters will get experience here anyway, so you don’t really care if the others get KO’d. Set to learn .

I would suggest the following:

Junction and/or if you have them
should have , so junction Thundaga (or your most powerful lightning magic) to Squall’s Elemental Attack. Then maximize stats in the following order:
Strength
HP
Vitality
Spirit
Magic

With this setup, even an under-leveled Squall should be able to do enough damage. By playing around a bit with his HP Junction, I was able to get him in the Yellow before even starting a battle, which allowed him to do massive amounts of damage with a Renzokuken.

Once that’s finished, Save (Yes, really; this section is tricky), then head outside.

Boss Fight: X-ATM092

Steal	n/a; is not available yet.
Weak / Absorbs	Weak to Lightning.
Reward	50 AP each time you fully knock it down and flee; destroying it also earns 100 points.
Drops	A random GF ability item when destroyed.
Strategy	Junction your best Thunder magic to . Knock it down twice, then flee; avoid extra encounters unless you deliberately want the AP.

The First Battle

This part is kinda tricky, so it’s good to read the secion in advance. When you leave the tower, you’ll face an X-ATM092, which should have between 5000 and 6000 hit points. It’s a strong enemy, but VERY vulnerable to lightning.

To begin, have Squall cast Scan on it to determine how many hit point it thing has. This is your toggle number. If you have Squall junctioned with Thundaga on elemental attack and Tornado on strength, and can use Renzokuken, hopefully you can do that much damage in one or two attacks. If not, see if can. If neither of them can and it takes more then two hits to get to that number, don’t bother trying to beat him.

Attack until he falls down
Keep attacking until he gets back up
Attack until he falls down again
Flee
You should receive 50 AP; Set any that learned an ability to learn a new one. The game may not tell you what abilities were learned.

If you can take him out before he starts repairing, you may get stuck. Have someone do a normal attack to trigger the Repairing dialog and Run away while that’s happening. I don’t recommend spending your 30 minutes with other characters attacking or especially calling other .

You have to fight it at least once on the way back to the beach. You can either choose to avoid it otherwise, or to fight and escape for lots of AP. Avoiding will give you a higher , but fighting will give your MASSIVE amounts of AP without leveling your characters up - which is pretty tedious to do otherwise - especially if you’re going the low-level route.

Avoiding X-ATM092

If you’re trying to avoid him, the important things are:

When it first starts following you, press down and run to the next screen.
On that screen (where Selphie jumpped off the cliff), press left and run as soon as the screen loads.
On the following screen, hold your ‘walk’ button (PS: Triangle) so you don’t stumble - which would cause an encounter.
On the next screen, hold down and run all the way down the stairs.
When you’re running across the bridge, it will jump over you. Keep running right for a second or so after it jumps you, then run left. You’ll see it jump over you again, but it’s mostly off the top of the screen. As soon as that happens, run right as quick as you can, and you’ll avoid it.
On the fountain screen be sure to ‘talk’ to the dog so he runs away.
On the remaining screens, continue running down toward the beach until the cut scene begins.

If you’re fast enough, you’ll avoid any encounters. If you can’t get past the pub without being attacked, you can duck inside to wait and prevent the encounter. Yes, you’ll lose 20 points, but if you fought it had to flee because you failed to defeat it you’d lose 50 points - not to mention the time penalty from the fight.

But what if I want the AP?

After fleeing from the first battle, you can encounter this enemy several more times on the way down to the beach. If you’re able to do enough damage quickly, you can Farm AP here pretty conveniently. Be careful not to do TOO much damage, or you’ll kill him off.

Make your way back to the beach, but go slow and let it catch up to you on each screen. You can rack up the AP here - it’s 50 points for each time you do this. You can get into fights with him and earn 50 AP multiple times. Follow the same, “Knock him down twice then flee” advice. Note that you can fight him more than once in several of these places, but you can only enter the Menu screen when you first appear on the stairs screens. It’s weird. BTW: The game may not tell you your learned anything. You’ll have to go into the menu and check each time. Don’t waste these points by having your learn 10 or 30 point skills. (Exception: you need the skill for .) Following this pattern, I netted 500 AP for each in under 30 minutes. You won’t get an opportunity like that again until you’re near the end game.

I was able when I got to the bottom to junction 10 new skills among my characters.

As mentioned above, when you run past the dog by the fountain, be sure to “talk” to him so he can run away if you haven’t already killed the X-ATM092. NOTE: Be sure to have between 8:00 and 10:00 left when you pass the fountain. It’s crucial in case you get stuck on the ‘can’t escape’ screen. This leads me to another note. I don’t know if this is a bug or a feature, but occasionally I was able to exit when Zell or Selphie is talking about how “it repairs itself.” It wasn’t consistent, but let me know if you can master this skill.

Assuming you haven’t already defeated it before, once you fight it near Squad C’s postion (under the walkway) just run to the beach out of there. If you couldn’t take it out, your consolation prize is being able to watch the cool CG as Quistis busts out the big guns.

Back to the Party

After defeating the enemy at Dollet, you go back to Balam city where your good buddy Seifer steals your car. Go straight back to Balam Garden. Don’t forget - you don’t want to talk to anyone or escape from battles along the way. Leave the city and follow the road to avoid random encounters.

When you get back to Balam Garden go watch the higher-ups gloat around the directory and then head right and try to walk past Seifer. After the evil faculty member interrupts headmaster Cid, head back to the elevator and go to the 2nd floor hallway just outside the classroom. Just hang out and don’t talk to people.

After what seems like more then a normal amount of time, you’ll be invited to talk to the headmaster. After you get your evaluation, be sure to talk to Headmaster Cid in order to get your battle meter. You’ll be returned to the hallway. Talk to the people there if you want, then go toward the classroom where you got and .

When you next have control of Squall, I recommend getting your up (see the SeeD Tests section). I take enough tests to get him up to his max level. If you’re playing the low-level route, that may not be very high. After this, Selphie will hang out while you change clothes (does he at least close the door…?) then you’ll go to the dance. I know, you have the option not to change, but you can’t leave. It’s weird. Sign up for her little gig if you want (and haven’t already), then dance with Rinoa. (Where did the drink go? Shutup! Oh. Sorry.) More cool CG here. I wish I could pick up skills IRL as fast as he does in-game.)

In the Secret, in the Quiet Place

Eventually Quistis will give you your ‘final assignment’ from her. Go back to your room and change clothes, then meet her in the hallway in front of the ‘secret area’ or training area. Be sure to switch the junction from Selphie back to Quistis here, then head for the ‘secret area.’ It’s actually not any big secret. Remember the center screen in the training area? It’s just to the left of the save point there.

Go ahead and save your game here (but not over your last save if you want to watch the Rinoa dance scene CG again) then head out along the plank there. Through the conversation scene, you’ll be staring at Garden. Any ideas what the geometry of this place is? ;) While we’re on the subject, look at Quistis’ hair in this scene. How DOES she do that little flippy thing in the back? Boy, talk about defying physics. When Quistis is done yacking, go back over the plank and save your game again. Contemplate the answer to the question: Why does this game make you want to SLAP the main character?! You can fight monsters with just Quistis here, if you’d like, but don’t get too close to the exit doors until you are ready to leave for the night.

When you do, you’ll hear someone yelling for help. Then you see that girl in blue and green who refers in this scene to Quistis as “Quisty???” If you’ve played the game before, you may know what is going on, otherwise, I won’t spoil the big surprise for you. (I mean, more than I already do due to the nature of walkthroughs.)

Boss Fight Prep

Boss Fight: Granaldo and Raldos

Steal	8 from each enemy
Weak / Absorbs	Granaldo is weak to Wind; no notable absorbs.
Reward	5 AP
Drops	16 total
Strategy	Draw Sleep, Blind, and Shell from Granaldo; draw Fire, Thunder, and Protect from the Raldos. Sleeping Granaldo makes the fight much quieter.

So you have to beat up a Granaldo and some Raldos. Where do they get these names, anyway? Depending on what levels your characters are at, you can get different spells from him. It’s not worth it to waste too much time leveling up your characters before hand, though. If you want, you can fill up Squall and Quistis with Blind, Protect and Shell here, then just kill them and be done with it. One shot with did the trick for me.

After you have killed them, note how well you are treated for saving someone’s life! Now THAT’s gratitude for ya! If you really want to do more fighting, go back in and beat things up. Otherwise, leave the training center and go to bed. You can’t get anywhere else (in fact in my game even the directory stops working here). Along the way Zell will tell you you have your own room, and it’s time for sleepy music. You are awakened by Selphie - who was basically in the room while you were changing earlier - pounding on your door and yelling to you.