Final Fantasy VIII Disc 1

Welcome to Balam

Intro

The game opens in the infirmary of Balam Garden. Balam is the continent it’s on, and all Garden’s a named after their continent. The doctor comes in and asks you name your character. This walk through will assume you took the defaults, it’s all easier that way. :) Then she goes to call your instructor. Here Squall sees a girl in blue and green. At this point, you don’t know much about her, but she’ll be important later on. She leaves, and in walks Quistis, who evidently is hanging out in the lobby, as she is there in a matter of seconds. You guys talk and walk and then get to the classroom. She talks and then Squall stands up.

Sit back down again right away.
You can login to your terminal by turning it on.
Select “Tutorial” from the terminal menu and you can obtain the and Guardian Force. These are the primary lightning and ice elemental summons respectively.
Look at the garden festival thing to learn about “Wimbly Donner.” I don’t know why; I thought it was funny. :D
Quit the tutorial (or if this is your first time playing, go ahead and play it.)
Go talk to Quistis.

In spite of the fact that is sounds like you only have a few moments to do anything here, you can take all the time you want exploring Garden. Leave the classroom and head toward the elevator (that’s down for your first timers, or FTs.) You will run into Selphie (literally) and she’ll ask you to show her around the place. If you say yes you can get a little tour of the garden directory later. Head right and talk to the guy standing in the hallway. He’ll give you some cards. If you decide to play the , you’ll want to Remember this guy. See the Cards Section for more information on what you can do now.

Magic Refinement Unlocked

Once learns , Triple Triad cards switch from being a mini-game scoring system into full on item factories. and can then turn some of those items into very useful early magic:

Magic	Refine
20x Tornado	from	1x Abyss Worm Card
20x Thundaga	from	1x Blitz Card
50x Water	from	1x Fastitocalon Card*
20x Blizzara	from	1x Glacial Eye Card

* Can also use 4x Fastitocalon-F cards.

Get in the elevator go down to the first floor. Exit the elevator and come down the stairs. If you agreed to show Selphie around, Squall will take you to the directory and tell you some stuff about the different places in the Garden.

There is a save poing near the front directory. When the game shows you one of these, it’s usually for a reason. I like to save now so that I don’t have to deal with the entire New Game sequence if my party gets KO’d.

Optional: Occult Fan Volume I

Look at the directory and select “Library.” You are going here to get a magazine. Jutting out from the far wall, are two bookcases. You need to go to the second one, the one that is farthest right. (Note, this is not the book case jutting out from the same wall as the information desk.) This bookcase is divided into 4 parts. Go to the one closest to the isle and hunt around on it. Eventually you should find the magazine. Read it. Wasn’t that bizarre? Ha ha. Boy did we have fun! (You will need to know about the thing later to unlock an optional - but very powerful - .) There’s an Esuna Magic draw point in the Library, next to the guy who can’t remember what book his instructor wanted him to check out. If you can’t find it, talk to everyone. It’s a screen “up” from where you got the magazine. If you see a message about not being able to Draw, make sure you have junctioned a and set the “draw” ability. If that doesn’t mean anything to you, you’ll learn how to do it soon enough.

Quistis is waiting out side, but you can buff up Squall here before going to meet her. Should you?

Low-Level Route

Under-Leveling for Fun and Profit

For those of you who like being rediculously over-leveled, or who are replaying the game and struggled even though you leveled your characters early in the game before, it’s important to understand that the balance between your characters and the enemies is tied to your level. If you can get powerful magic to junction, then having low-level characters tips the balance in your favor. So rather than doing the normal old school RPG grind, there’s a different strategy to employ:

Part 1: Cards Before Kills

When uses the to turn an enemy into a card, your gain Ability Points, but your characters don’t earn XP. That means your can learn powerful skills while your level stays low. can then use to turn those cards into various items. As your learn magic refinement abilities, you can turn those items into powerful magic for your characters.

Part 2: Cards Without Battles

I should explain that the Card Mini-game in FF8 is completely overpowered (OP). You can win cards, refine items from the cards, and then refine magic from those items. If you get good at the , you can end up with extremely high-level magic without having to spend time drawing it from enemies.

Part 3: Stat-Maxing

Eventually your can learn abilities that will provide one or more permanent stat increases with each level. When you get to that point, switch to grinding and watch your characters become totally OP.

That’s the quick and dirty explanation. If you’re intrigued, see the Level-Up Strategy section of the walkthrough for more details. It’s at least a fun alternative to what you’d expect. If you opt to try this strategy, skip the optional places to level up below and flee from battles until you get to a place called Dollet. Feel free to draw magic from random encounters along the way. You’ll at least want Squall to have plenty of Blizzard magic for the Ifrit fight.

If you’re not interested in the low-level strategy, you can get Squall a bit stronger by fighting enemies in the arena.

IMPORTANT:

Carding enemies is a little different from winning cards in Triple Triad. When uses the Card command in battle, the enemy usually turns into its own card, but some enemies can rarely (6.25% chance) turn into something much more interesting. On later pages, this will usually be a small drop-down near the top of the section. Here, I want you to know why the box exists before I start throwing tiny reference tables at you like confetti.

Cardable Enemies in This Section

Enemy	Location	Common Card	Rare Card
Bite Bug	Balam area	Bug-Bite Card	Elvoret Card
Bomb	Fire Cave	Bomb Card	Krysta Card
Buel	Fire Cave	Buel Card	Krysta Card
Caterchipillar	Forest near Balam	Caterchipillar Card	Trauma Card
Fastitocalon-F	Beach near Balam	Fastitocalon-F Card	Fastitocalon Card
Glacial Eye	Balam area	Glacial Eye Card	Jumbo Cactuar Card
Grat	Balamb Garden Training Center	Grat Card	Shumi Tribe Card
Red Bat	Fire Cave	Red Bat Card	X-ATM092 Card

From the Junction menu, Junction both and to Squall. Set your Ability Junction to Draw, Item, and .
From the menu, set to learn and to learn Card.
From the Config menu, change the cursor to Memory (trust me, you want this). If you know the battle system already, set the battle speed to fast, too.
Head to the training center (see the display if you need), and enter it via the LEFT door. If you go through the other one, you might find a T-Rexaur. If so, I recommend running at your current level. See the “GF Ability Precidence” below.
When you encounter Grats, be sure to call and let him kill them all off. After you have killed off 5, both should have learned . If you need to heal up, just head to your dormetory (remember the directory?) and ‘talk’ to your bed and select “rest up”. You can also save just outside your bedroom.
Continue killing grats as long as you want. At some point when there’s only one Grat around, you draw-cast sleep on him. While he’s asleep, you can draw Sleep and Silence without getting walloped.

Here is the order I like these to learn their abilities:

Start by having Quez learn Card, , , , and . Refer to the GF Abilities section to see the full list in order.
Start by having learn , , , , , and . Refer to the GF Abilities section to see the full list in order.

If you do this “level up early” arc, you should likely have a bunch of Grat cards, and likely even a few Shumi Tribe cards. See the Triple Triad Section of the walkthrough to learn how to turn those cards into OP magic.

Leaving Balam

When you’re ready, head down several screens from the Balam Directory to the front gate to meet with Quistis. On the way, you’ll pass a screen with a fountain on either side. The little swirly thing on the left is a draw point. Feel free to draw there, provided you’ve junctioned a so you can actually draw. You’ll meet up with Quistis and you can let her give you a brief tutorial. Be sure you understand the - it’s vital to your survival.

Traditionally, you will junction to Squall and to Quistis at this time. However, if you have acquired high-level magic already, feel free to experiment with assigning magic to different slots - most magic has a specific junction where it’s most effective.

If they don’t already have these abilities, set to learn , and to learn Card. When you have acquired enough AP (Ability Points) they will learn the skill. I suggest ensuring Squall is able to us Draw, Magic, and Item (if you’re playing the low-level route) or (if you aren’t). Quistis should be able to use Draw, Magic, and .

Set your battle speed to Fast, otherwise you’ll spend a LOT of time waiting on animations.

Be sure to run around the area just outside Balam until you run across a Glacial Eye enemy. Draw both Cure and Blizzard magic from them for both Squall and Quistis. If your HP gets low, just have Squall draw-cast. If you have leveled up your and you can them, you can occasionally turn a Glacial Eye into a Jumbo Cactuar Card, which is an over-powered card this early in the game.

If you run across a Bite Bug enemy around here, you can get draw Scan and Fire magic from them.

If you walk through the forrest you might run across a Caterchipiller. If it’s a high enough level (meaning your level is high enough) you can draw slow from them, but they’ll also slow you so be cautious.

Optional: Upgraded Weapons

If you’ve taught the skill and have played the a bit, you might have sufficient equipment to level up your weapons now. To buy a new weapon, you must visit a and trade gil plus certain items learned from recipes in magazines. In the town of Balam (not the Garden you just came from), you can upgrade Squall’s into a . See the Weapons section for more information.

Optional: Magics

If you head West toward the train’s tunnel heading under the ocean, the entrance has an Esuana draw point. You can draw by examining (talking to) it. Along the way, try to find a bite bug and a glacial eye and draw to both Quistis and Squall for all of the magic they have, but follow the advice below to try not to level up too much. I typically don’t bother drawing Fire of Blizzard, though, as you can get them from the Refine abilities pretty easily.

When you are walking through the forest, you’ll likely run across a Caterchipiller. Occasionally these will into a Trauma Card. Once you get skill (requires reach level 10), you can turn each of these cards into 30 (there are other cards to give you this too, but this one also has card values of 4,5,6 and 8, so it’s slightly more useful. Don’t go out of your way looking for it, though.

Of and Items: After , have work on her skill. After gets Card and , go for and the Summon Mag +x% skills if you want to try to beat the spider thing at Dollet tower. More on that later. When your hit points are getting low, have Squall use the Cure that he drew from the Glacial Eye. Keep any eye on the number of cards you have. When you get close to 100 of any card, them into their respecitive item. FYI, 5 Fastitocalion-Fs can into a , which you can into the Water magic. That’s a decient one this early in the game. While we’re on the subject, two of the crystals give you 100 Magic. You’ll eventually have six characters you’ll want to give decent magic to, but you can swap between them if you’d like.

Achieving high-level SeeDs

There are some things you’ll want to know about pretty early on in this process. You’ll be trying to get your character to a high , and your STARTING level is determined by your score on the Exam - including both the Fire Cave and the Dollet Mission. Scores are broken into 5 categories, each with a maximum score of 100 points:

Judgement: Defeat Ifrit with the smallest amount of time possible on the clock. This includes the time it take to choose his name, btw, so be aware of how much time is left on the clock when you defeat him, then wait about that long while on the the “Nameing Ifrit” screen.) In other words, choose 10 minutes, and finish naming him with as few seconds as possible.
Attack: While in Dollet, be sure to defeat at least 75 enemies. No - carding them doesn’t count. See the Low-Level Route note on that page.
Spirit: While in Dollet, you will have to fight the X-ATM092 enemy at least once. If you’re planning on running away, read the strategy guide so you don’t get sucked into unnecessary battles as every time you flee you’ll lost 50 points.
Conduct: When you get the order to Flee in Dollet, take it seriously. Getting to the beach with 25 minutes left will earn you 80 points. Every minute under that drops your score by up to 10 minutes each
Attitude:
- Follow Seifer’s order to check outside the vessel
- Don’t head to the communications tower until Seifer tells you to
- Don’t jump off any cliffs to take short cuts
- Don’t use the cafe to escape from the X-ATM092
- Be sure to save the dog while fleeing from X-ATM092
- Don’t talk to people! Beginning when you change your clothes after the fire cave, DO NOT talk to ANYONE you don’t have to. No one in Garden, no one in Balam City, no one in Dollet (except one time you’ll have to talk to Seifer in the Main Square), don’t talk to Biggs after defeating him. When you get to the fountain in Dollet, don’t try to leave the area - just be patient.

There’s also a 6th category - the Bonus. If you can manage to defeat the X-ATM092 while in Dollet, you’ll receive a 100 point bonus. It’s not an easy task, and it requires careful planning.

If you’re following the Low-Level Route, your max stating will probably be 9. If you power-level earlier, you can possibly get 10 by defeating X-ATM092.

Fire Cave

Boss Fight Prep

Boss Fight: Ifrit

Steal	n/a
Weak / Absorbs	Weak to Ice and Water; absorbs Fire.
Reward	20 AP, the , and Ifrit Card.
Drops	3–6
Strategy	Have Squall use Blizzard and Quistis summon . Finish naming him with the timer as close to 0:00 as you can stand for the best Judgement score.

This is actually pretty easy. Just tell the guys up front you are ready and select a time limit. I chose 10 min on characters that had only fought about 10 battles and still got through in this within the time limit. Here’s the secret. Quickly kill anything that is not Ifrit. Don’t use and don’t draw from enemies. When you get to Ifrit, just use magic attacks of blizzard for Squall and for Quistis on him until he dies. Note the amount of time left on the clock when Ifrit tells you that he’ll join you. Once you get to the screen where you can choose his name, wait that long. Really. It will ensure you get the highest possible value for “Judement” later on when your is assigned.

So Congratulations; you have earned another .

If you want to play the brute force way, now is an acceptable time to practice junctioning Elemental Attacks. Have Quistis junction and junction Blizzard to attack. Go find a bomb. Don’t worry about the other stuff. After she hits once (provided she doesn’t kill them in one blow) have Squall Card them. You can end up with a good supply of Bomb cards when you leave the cave, and can get decent magic from these.

You can get some Krysta cards from bombs, and those are really helpful for winning card battles. When you are ready to head back to the Garden, be sure to head to the road (nothing will attack you there) and un-junction everything from Quistis. You’ll want along for the ride later. If you transferred any magic to Quistis that you want Squall to have access to during his test, be sure to transfer it back.

On Cards: Note: Save before doing this! If you haven’t already been playing the much, you have a chance here to get pretty good at the . You’ll likely have lots of Fastitocalon-F and/or Bomb cards which you can burn learning the game. I usualy head to the town of Balam at this point (west of Balam Garden; check your map with the Select button). There are two major schools of thought on this one, and I’ve taken both sides in the past. Basically, one says you should get as many cards as you possibly can as quickly as you can. The other says you should plan your card acquisition more carefully. If you want to go the “slow and steady” path, don’t go for the “all” rule below. Since you can easily LOOSE cards, I like to play the fast path. If you want to go the “get a bunch fast” route, then… Keep Card Talking to the Queen of Cards (from the town entrance, head down one screen and left one screen) until she offers to play a game with you for “all” cards. Go ahead and use 5 Fastitocalon cards. It doesn’t matter if you lose - all that matters is the all rule spreads.

Next, head to Zell’s house (from the queen, head right one screen and go in the lower hut on the way out of town) and play against his little brother (if he’s there, he’ll be in the far right room). You should be able to beat him and get some decent cards. I usually throw one bad card into the middle, and then play my best cards around that. You can return to Garden and play against other opponents. There’s a LOT more information in the Card Section, so please be sure to check it out!

Optional: Fish Fight

If you have the Card and abilities, you can learn Water magic from Fastitocalion-Fs. You also get 3 AP each for the Fastitocalon-Fs, and they come 2 in a group. Just try not to one-shot them:

Strategy 1: Have Quistis use on the Fastitocalon F’s once. (Make sure she goes first. If you have Squall do anything to the Fish (including trying to card them), they might ‘jump up’ which is bad, as will then kill them, making this whole exercise for naught.) will start out doin around 154+ damage (if you don’t defeat them too often, she won’t kill them off), then they will pop up. Use card on them. If you don’t succeed with card, you can have Quistis attack the enemies once or twice - but DON’T kill them. You are only doing this because the enemies are more suseptable to carding as they loose hit points. You can also use the opportunity to have Quistis draw sleep from them. Remember, you can use the exchange magic command in the magic menu to transfer magic she draws to Squall.

Stragegy 2: Did you get a bunch of stuff while playing the ? Then you can also do this with just Squall. If you’ve got an upgraded weapon, junction Squall for Attack and just hit the fish once, then card them.