Final Fantasy VIII

Optional GFs

These notes the that are not acquired as part of the simplest story route, plus the oddballs that do not behave like normal junctioned .

Odin (Disc 2)

Welcome to the Centra Ruins. You remember the Centra, right? They got caught up in Sepharoth’s plan to… No, wait. That was the Cetra. Anyway, you can get a really weird here. To get to the Centra Ruins, where you can get and , start out at Shumi Village. (Don’t forget my favorite magic you can get here!) Keep the small globe map up for this. Go north. When you come to the centra land mass, follow it around to the right (counter clockwise). After a while you will be on the north side of a tiny strip of land connecting the two pieces of centra. From here head due north and you should be able to go up onto the land. When you get on to the land, turn your vessle to face east. You should see something big. Go there. Prepair your guys, then save your game right outside the ruins. To prep your guys, make sure they are almost totally dead, and that you have turned on. If you don’t have this could be tricky, but it’s still do able, just RUN from any battle you get into! See the timer at the top left? You have to beat before it runs out. You can’t really do it if you are getting sucked into battles every 30 seconds. So, set the guys and head in. You did remember they should be close to dead, right? Renzokuken can make this a very quick battle, and this enemy is the only one in the game that won’t hit you back.

Go forward, through the gateway that says “My Blue Heaven,” around the fountain and up the stairs (there’s a drain draw point hidden just behind the fountain, btw).
At the platform in the stairs, go right.
At the top of the stairs, head forward and go into the temple.
Once there, take either little stairway to the top of the block in the middle of the screen.
When the block stops moving, you will be presented with a choice of two ladders.
Take the left one for now.
The right one just leads to a platform where you can draw Aero. Pretty boring, eh? But if you take that route, it will steal 90 seconds minimum off your overall time left.
At the top of this ladder is another one. Just examine the wall in front of you at the top.
When you get to the top of the ladder, head through the doorway and flip the big switch in the center of the room.
Get back on the ladder and go back down to the bottom.
Now the little area between the ladders has a blue light on it.
Press the light and a magical stairway appears on the far right of the screen; go up it.
When you get to the top, you should see a ladder on the left; go up that.
When you characters have finished wasting your valuable time jumping slowly across to the ledge, remove the left eye from the statue (remember that’s HIS left, not YOURS).
Jump back across and go down the little ladder.
Now go up the stair way on the right.
At the top of the stairs you have two options, go right or go up. If you go right, there is a draw point for pain. If you don’t have it full on all your guys already, go ahead and draw. That one is worth it.
Now go up the ladder on the dome.
Go examine the statue.
Select: Put the left eye in.
Then select: Leave it as is.
You will be given the password. WRITE THIS DOWN! (It was 4-3-6-7-4 once for me.)
Examine the statue again and remove both it’s eyes.
Now go back down the dome ladder, and descend the stair case until you come to the room with the other statue (where your character’s jumped slowly across to the little ledge).
Go up the little ladder to that statue and put both his eyes in.
You will be prompted to enter the code. Press the right and left arrow keys to enter the number you got at the top. The leftmost digit in the code should be at the top of the collumn.
When you have finished, press the button that you press to exit a menu.

You should be granted access to the chamber of . Make sure someone can , then head inside. When I finally got in to see him, I had 15:00 left on my timer. It was enough time to beat him, but only because I had awesome limit breaks for Squall, Zell and Quistis. Well, that may be a slight exageration. I think I beat him in 3:08 seconds. Oh yeah, you did remember to keep your guys almost dead here, right? Don’t worry about healing, as won’t attack you. Go through the open chamber door, steal () a , and just wail on him until he is dead. You will receive a , Odin’s Card and 20AP. It may sound a little anti-climactic, but it’s acctually kinda cool. What really happens is that will now randomly show up and vanquish your opponents. It’s pretty cool I think. Now leave the ruins SAVE YOUR GAME and come back, if you think you can get too. (See below.)

Tonberry (Disc 2)

WARNING: DIFFICULT! Possibly long, too. This section took me 1.75 hours. Head to the centra ruins (see ‘ for directions). SAVE YOUR GAME BEFORE ENTERING THE RUINS. Wander around killing . These guys will counter with Everybody’s Grudge, which does massive damage to anyone that has killed a bunch of enemies (i.e., Squall gets hit with 9999 dmg every time.) However, they don’t seem to counter attack if you’re hiting them with a limit break. I like to use Squall and Irvine near death for these battles, and one other character will full health - just to prep for the final encounter. After defeating 18+ of these guys, decides to come out and protect his subjects. EEP! If you can beat him, you deserve this ! You can’t steel anything. Invincible moon (Rinoa and Angelo) is very cool. BTW: You can draw life from him, if you need to.

My strategy on this one is to get Squall REALLY powerfull while staying at a low level (think high-level magic junctions), then attempt it. seems less likly to attack you unless you have first attacked him, so I only attack using limit breaks. This takes a bit of patience, but it can be done, and it decereases the time you spend fighting quite a bit. If you don’t prepare well, this can be one of the hardest to get. His skill makes it worth it to get early on, though, if you can.

So let’s prepare well, shall we? To help defeat tonberrys, I make sure two of my characters are close to death all the time. It means I use a fair bit of life magic or , but it also means I can use their limit breaks. Tonberrys (even !) are weak to the Vit 0 stat - so hit them with a Meltdown spell and you’ll do 25%-33% more damage with each attack. If you junction Flare to your Str, you can kill off after two or three Limit Breaks. If you don’t have Meltdown, Quistis can use Bad Breath on them, which also makes it quite a bit easier.

To help defeat , be sure you have at least one character that has full HP. He uses something called “Junk” that can kill off your guys with surprising speed (800+ damage each). If you keep the other two near death, though, you can make use of limit breaks. Again Meltdown is your friend. Using the above info, I pretty easily defeated him with Squall (30), Zell (10), and Irvine (13). You probably don’t even need Squall at that high a level, but I like having him somewhat buff by this point (using the and Vit/Str/Mag/ abilities junctioned.)

MiniMog (Disc 2)

If you play the PocketStation game (and rescue ) you can get “Mog’s Amulet” which should allow your to learn how to summon Mog to come in battle. All he does is give you back a few hit points, so in my opinion it’s not really worth it, though I acknowledge that some people also like to play for the “cute” factor.

Chocobo (Disc 2)

This is the only summoned by using an Item. Use “Gysahl Greens” (during a battle, obviously) to summon . This only works after you have succeeded in obtaining a , though. If you are playing the PC game, you can make this attack more powerfull by playing the PocketStation adventure that ships with the game. (Anyone know how to make it more powerful on the PS?!?)

Gilgamesh (Disc 3)

If you get (see above) then when you defeat Seifer at the end of Disc 3 you’ll get a neat surprise. Now when comes, all you have to do is choose an attack. Make sure you don’t use “Excalipur” (does not damage) , unless you are trying to run away from your enemies so as to avoid gaining experience and leveling up. (Yes there are reasons to keep your character’s at low levels. Determining why is left as an excersise for the reader).

Doomtrain (Disc 3+)

can only be called once you have the ‘ that you get from Tears’ Point. Once you get to Esthar, you should see it on your main map. Go there and pick it up from the ground around the statues. In order to call , you need to use that ring when you have the proper elements. The elements are the ones listed in the 3 other magazenes. You need at least 6 , and .

When you have those, use the ring from the item menu. from Elastoids, from Malboro cards, and use ability (Learn to unlock this on) to get from Remedies. NOTE: It looks like you can do this on Disc 4, too. Tears’ Point is accessable from the world map. Also of interest, if you happen to get a Soloman’s Ring before you get to Tears’ Point (cough cheater cough) you can call as soon as you get it. You can draw Life and Reflect while at Tears’ Point.

Cactuar (Disc 3)

This may be one of the best to have junctioned at any given time. comes knowing bonus abilities for HP, Str, Vit, Mag and Spr. Junction him with and you can REALLY get a high-power character while leveling up. Combine that with the command, and you can get seriously powerful guys. Every time my cactuar-junctioned character levels up, he or she gets and extra point in str, vit, mag, and spr. That’s pretty powerful! You can only get on Cactuar Island. To get to Cactuar Island, you must get the Rangnarok (on disc 3). The first thing you must do (I’m not kidding) is JUNCTION ITEMS TO EVERY MEMBER OF THE GROUP!.

When attacks, he can occasionally use something called the attact of A THOUSAND CLUBS!!!! No WAIT, that’s Kodachi from Ranma 1/2. Sorry. He actually uses something called the attach of 10,000 needles, which is (of course) an order of magnitude worse. When you first get the Ragnarok, head south and a little west to get to a little island with desert on it. A BIG cactus will show up occasionally. When it does, run toward it begin the attack. When you start the battle, try to keep your characters alive. Use (you do have item-junction, RIGHT?!?) to keep your party ‘In the Yellow’ so that they can use their Limit Breaks. When you beat him, be sure to junction him quickly so that you can use his skills! BTW: You can some from him.

Bahamut (Disc 3)

To get you need the Rangnarok (in other words, you must be on at least Disc 3.) Be sure you save before attempting this battle. Head to the island research center. Head to the Southwest corner of the square version of the world map. Just Northeast of the far Southwest corner, you’ll see a floating platform. Land the Ragnorok there. You must HAVE ZELL IN YOUR PARTY WHEN YOU LAND; be sure not to have FIRE or THUNDER juctioned to attack on any characters! Also, be sure your guys are at Max HP, or can absorb Fire attacks. >.< When you have finished listening to Zell’s speach, head into the facility.

First up, a little prep. You’ll want to be able to and LV-Down here, if possible. Also, you’ll want to be able to card, if you don’t want to get lots of XP out of this. There is a machine on the right side of the screen which you will be walking toward… ONLY move when the BLUE LIGHT IS OFF and the dancing squares are invisible! If you move while it’s running you WILL have to fight a TON of enemies. Walking only when it is ‘resting,’ you must make your way to the front right of the machine. I found to be almost a necesity. Also, there’s an enemy here with Full-Life to draw. I like to transfer OUT all my Full-Life so I can stock up here, since it’s a hard one to get otherwise. If you have LV-Up and LV-Down available, you can LV-Up a Red Dragon and learn both Flare and Meteor from it. (Or if your guys are high enough levels already.) If you want to do that, transfer those magic to another character. Finally, I’d be sure to have Pain Status-Atk for as many characters as possible. can hit for serious damage, and he’s surprisingly vulnerable to Darkness. Also, you may want to check that your are set to learn things that will require 60+ AP.

Right. So, after a brief bit of conversation you may begain walking around. Head right until it says, “You have percieved the resonance.” Next head right and then forward (if you are blocked by a vine, you’ll have to come toward the bottom of the screen before you can go all the way right; once you’ve gone around the longest vine, you can head toward the device). There is a panel you’ll see on the machine - be sure to be healed up all the way before you get there.

Once there it will ask you three questions which you will have to choose the answers to based on a menu that pops up. For the first question you have only one choice (“It’s not our will to fight”). The next question should be answered with ‘Never’. The third answer is the mostly hidden last response ( .) Choosing that will cause you to fight . Finish him off to aquire him. I mugged a Hyper-Wrist off him. Once you have him, be sure to see what cool stuff you can get using his “Forbidden-Magic Refine” skill. You can turn an into Ultima, for example. Once you aquire , you have to “change regions” before you come back and go for the . I recommend going back to the Rangnorok and then having your guys walk around the ship for a few seconds. This seems to reset it. When you have walked around, return to try for the Ultima Weapon (if you dare!) See below, but be sure to junction your new magic if you drew any.

Eden (Disc 3)

When you get the Rangnarok, you can try for . It’s tough, but you have to persever. To obtain this , head to the bottom left corner of the square map and look for a little Island looking thing. It’s just barely north-east of the main south-west corner. When you land, you will have to Obtain (see above) and leave the island. After leaving the Island walk around somewhere else (even abord the Rangnarok seems to work) then return. Upon entering the complex this time you will be able to save your game at a save point nearby.

Do so, then cross the makeshift bridge and descend into the abyss (The stick didn’t work for me - I had to use the left directional arrow.) Draw Dispel if you want, then talk to Quistis/Zell/whoever to begin examination of the nearby terminal. Let it explain what is going on and the trapdoor in the floor will be opened up. When it’s opened, head down and examine the nearby terminal. The way this puzzle works is that you have to expend just enough energy (steam) to get through the floors so that you can still have some energy to open the door at the bottom. Here are the levels you have to set in order (ignore the numbers on the walls):

At the main level, it will automatically choose 4 for you. Go down to level 2.
At level 2 select that you want to use 2 pressure units. Go down to level 3.
At level 3 select that you want to use 2 pressure units. Go down to level 4.
At level 4 select that you want to use 1 pressure units. Go down to level 5.
At level 5 select that you want to use 1 pressure units. Go down to level 6 (It’s an elevator; stand on the pad).

It looks like nothing happens, but there is actually an elevator you have to take to get to level 6. Once there, let Zell bang around on the machine then go through the big door that opens up to access the lower levels. If you can equip “Encounter None” I strongly recommend you do. At the top of the staircase is also a Save Point. It’s probably a good idea to use it. Go down, but remember that at least every other stairway or platform has an encounter you cannot escape from. Here is your friend (or nemesis, if you’re trying not to level up). Also, when you are fighting certain enemies, here’s a strategy you might like:

If you junction LV-Down and Card, it’s possible to draw any magic you want, then drop the level and/or card them. This should help make sure you don’t get too much XP and level way up before the eye opening battle way down below. Also, if you’re on an emulator, you can save state before each battle, if you’d like. Equip to see the Ultima and other draw points along the way.
The first set of stairs has a bunch of Tri Face enemies. Junction Sleep to ST Attack and both Pain and Confuse to ST Def. If you are too high a level, the Tri Face enemies will use poison gas which causes confusion. If you’re trying not to level up, have one character level them down while another uses , then card them after three or four rounds.
The next set of stairs (after switching screens) will have a Grendal and an Imp. Use the same strategy as above, but be aware the imp may cast Berserk, so have remedies handy to cure that.
On the next set of stairs you’ll start to encounter Behemoth. There are two strategies. The first is to do something similar to the above, and hope he stays asleep while you and attack/ until he’s at level 1. Then switch to card and attack/. You wouldn’t believe how many HP these guys have. The second strategy is to junction “Pain” to your attack to do two things. First, it casts silence to keep him from using flare or meteor on you. Second, it causes poison that will do much more damage then most attacks could! Oh yeah, and blind keeps him from being able to attack you normally. I think you see where this is heading.
The next set of stairs will drive Red Dragon encounters. For these guys, junction 100 Water to your Elem-Atk. Want to make sure all your guys have Meteor? You’ve got several red dragons in a row. Just LV-Up (if needed), then draw meteor, and then LV-Down - you can get all your characters filled up on Meteor pretty quickly. Just remember to transfer it to someone else before hand. e.g., If I’m playing Squall, Zell, and Quistis, I’ll transfer all their Meteor to Rinoa, Selphie, and Irvine. Then I can draw up 100 Meteor on my party and have a LOT of spare magic to go around - and it’s the really powerful magic when it comes to junctioning!
The final set of stairs comes with pairs of Iron Giant enemies. These have Haste magic, and like all the above can be put to sleep pretty easily. The regular strategy of (if needed), draw, , , Attack, Card seems to work well. Alternately, a Status-Atk Pain junction will make it blind rendering its Great Sword attack useless. Don’t junction Bio to Elem-Atk, though. If it’s blind, you can just attack them until they die, or get far enough down that you can card them. They can be “Degenerated,” by the way. Merry Christmas. ;) If you use LV-Down, you can do it like 5 times on these guys. That also reduces the amount of XP you get from fighting them, FWIW. It goes from hundres to, like, 4.
After the screen with all the Iron Giant enemies, make sure you have enabled and SAVE at the save point here before doing anything!

Fighting for Eden

I really hope you saved 10 pressure by following the instructions above. Very few things are as irritating in this game as getting all the way here only to realize you DIDN’T leave enough steam pressure to open this last door. Then you have to go all the way back up through that mess and try all the levers, and then come all the way back down to see if it worked! Anyway, you saved at the hidden save point, right? You’ll get 100 AP for this battle, so don’t waste it. Set your guys to learn stuff you care about. Be sure you have the ability to cast aura on Squall, and be sure you can draw ! Make sure you are well equiped (this guy is TOUGH!)

He does have ultima you can draw, but he’s going to attack with super powerful magic, so drawing might be tough. Junction Quake to everyone’s Elemental Defense! Junction to whoever has the highest speed, or at least make sure speed is high for whoever has it. You want to be able to the 3 Stars, if possible. Also, be sure folks can cast magic, draw (at least one - you WANT the , and others may want Ultima magic), and use items to . Don’t be afraid to use your most powerful here! This is arguably one of the two hardest battles in the game, so those were given to you “for such a time as this.” Also, you may want to set your battle speed down quite a bit. Do you have any stones / spells? Those render you invincible for a short time. Use the hidden save point to switch in your lowest level characters. The power of his attacks correlate to the average of your characters levels. I like to go in with low level Selphie, low-level Irvine, and Squall. Make sure you have plenty of available. If Squall doesn’t have the Lionheart weapon, use Aura on Irvine (limit breaks galore!) and have him use his limit break with .

After you pull the lever you will fight the Ultima Weapon. First things first; draw . is easily the best . Next, a from him. Third, case Meltdown (you NEED VIT 0 here!) After that, wail on him. Can you say Aura? I knew you could! If you happen to have Squall land a Lionheart, it’s essentially all over. As far as I can tell, the whole reason they made you fight so many battles you couldn’t run from on the way down was to level your characters all up at least 20 levels. Shrewd, eh? But the catch is that high-level characters must fight high-level enemies. This guy level is directly related to your characters. Kill this dude and get back up to the top (thank your lucky stars for here; Does anyone else miss the days of “warp” spells?)

Why Eden?

OK. I’ve had some emails complaining that I don’t really explain why anyone would want this . Basically, he kicks serious posterier. He can break the 9999 limit , and you can “boost” him up to 250, easily the highest of any . For example, when fighting Chimeras, even low-level characters can land in excess of 17,000 pts of damage using this guy. So to sum it up: He rocks!