FINAL FANTASY VIII POWER UP GUIDE Version: 4.4 Written by: Aya Brea i_love_aya@hotmail.com Gosh, there're way too many FAQs on this game already why am I writing this one you ask? Well, mine's totally different. I will show you how to SERIOUSLY power up your characters and believe me, it works! If you're the type who's obsessed with insanely high stats so you can laugh at the boss' Ultima spell as it's only doing ~200 to every member in your party, then this guide is for you! BTW, this is written based on the US version of the game. Some features may differ from the Japanese version (such as button configuration for example) or the European (PAL) version of the game. My ICQ is working fine now, thanks to whoever fixed it up for me. :) Before you decide to post me an e-mail, do not bring up these: * Please don't send in that trick where you refine Mesmerize Blades into Mega Potions, I've heard them a million times (without exaggeration.) It's not even all that effective compared to the infinite credit trick, but if you wanna try it out, give it a go. * I'm sick of the Island Closest to Hell Draw Points thing. You know, this may indeed sound a bit rude to tell you what stuff not to send in, but you'll understand if you've written a guide for a major game like FFVIII. I can be completely overwhelmed by the shear amount of mail I get everyday and it's surprising how many of those are about the same thing. * Anything in ALL CAPS will be ignored. * Anything about Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, Lunar and Grandia will also be ignored. * Please don't send into any more clarifications on the X-ATM092 trick. I've devoted enough time on that section already and I guess most gamers will get the idea. Sorry, didn't want to be rude. * And please before you send me a question, read through the "Frequently Asked Questions" section. I've put up that section for a REASON you know! This is my third overall FAQ. I'm feeling really bad since I still haven't finished my Star Ocean 2 FAQ, I must sincerely apologize for SO2 fans but I'll try to finish it some day. :-) CONTENTS - Revision - Credits - Black list! - About me - Introduction - Final Fantasy VIII - Frequently Asked Questions - Objective - Why bother? - Where do I start? - Critical Guardian Forces - Preparing for the big thing - Some notes - Bonus Rosetta Stone - Training - Squall - Quistis - Other characters - Two characters at once! - Want even higher stats? - Steal/Find Sources - Make Sources - Eating enemies - My stats - Some tips and tricks - Character overviews - Squall Leonhart - Quistis Trepe - Zell Dincht - Rinoa Heartilly - Selphie Tilmitt - Irvine Kinneas - Seifer Almasy - Edea Kramer - Step-by-step power-up walkthrough - DISC 1 - It begins - Lava bath anyone? - Dollet me - Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir? - Whoohoo, our first mission! - I know where it's at - Owls + Trains = Timber resistance group - Things to do #1 - I know where it's at part 2 - Gardening Galbadian style - I choo choo choose Deling City - The known Tomb of the Unknown King - Things to do #2 - Sorceresscide - DISC 2 - Win a hill - Is cheapness contagious? - Haha, missed me by a mile... NOT! - We're the train-stealers - Is that a rocket in your pants or are you just happy to see me? - The hanging garden of Balamb - Do you like fish? - Top of the Pops - Things to do #3 - New GFs - Chicobo Card - Shumi Tribe - CC Quest - Lotsa AP - Other - Silence of the (Ba)lamb - My heart will go on - Boom boom boom boom, the Garden goes boom - DISC 3 - Taxicab Confessions V: A witch's secret - To be scorched, or not to be scorched - Seedy... I mean SeeD ship - Salt Lake City? Yup, I've been there - And then a hero comes along.. - Scarred for life - Things to do #4 - Gateway to the moon - The box in the sky - Vixen or tramp? - Eyes on me - 2gether - POWER UP EXTRA - Acquiring Cactuar - Acquiring Bahamut - Complete your collection... nearly! - Mmmmmm, Rosetta Stones.... *Drool* - Whoa! Careful with that... what do you call that thing anyway? - Abra Kadabra - Basic Junctions - Elemental Junctions - Status Junctions - The limiting factor. - DISC 3 (continued) - Say you'll be there - Mission impossible - Sacrifice - DISC 4 - Which is the witchiest? - Other optional stuff - GF customization - Cheap Omega tricks - Miscellaneous REVISION ======== V1.0 11/Oct/1999 - Started this project V1.5 15/Oct/1999 - Completed the main section - Completed all character overviews except Irvine's - Miscellaneous section now up V2.0 24/Oct/1999 - Found a new Dollet mission strategy since I had to re-restart the game - Worked on the walkthrough - Added lotsa minor stuff V2.1 26/Oct/1999 - Celebrate since I've just accomplished my mission of NOT gaining a single level all the way through the game! So Selphie and Quistis' sections has updates on stats and some strange findings! - Found a free Rosetta Stone (YAY!) so updated my powering up strategies. Check out some new sections under "Preparing for the big thing" and "Training"! - Corrected some of the "Oops", "Why did I do that?" and "What was I thinking?!" type errors. - Added the GF Profile sections (What do you think?) - Continued with the walkthrough - Filled in the missing Angelo Search data thanks to some nice readers. - Got the Devour list!!! - Invisible Moon is actually Invincible Moon! - Some more information on the X-ATM092 in the walkthrough section - Added an interesting note on Irvine's Limit Break - Changed format (~~~~~~~~~~~'s) - More tips - More miscellaneous stuff and fixed the Julia one. - Oh yeah, don't forget Selphie's song under Miscellaneous! - Other minor stuff V2.2 30/Oct/1999 - Added a trick on how to dispose of unwanted spells! Under the "Some tips and tricks" section - Added an unlimited money trick, whoohoo! Look for it in the "Make Sources" section under "Want even higher stats?" plus more explanations. - Put some comments on Devour - Two more notes on the mysterious X-ATM092 in the walkthrough. One at how to get pass the previously unpassable path in the chase while the other is a look how the 50AP can be gained. - Added lots of notes to Quistis' Blue Magic, also Ray-Bomb's description is filled! - Added a note to Squall's Renzokuken finishers and modified some of his finisher's descriptions - Got Squall and Zell's MAX stats gained through "training" - Got the FULL list of items that can be turned into Sources, as well as another list. - Added the requirements for requiring GF Tonberry and believe me, the other FAQs have gotten it wrong! - Fixed some errors here and there - Continued with the walkthrough, although it's still a long way to completion V2.3 03/Nov/1999 - Added a lot of new explanations to the Devour command - Added some notes to Rinoa's Angel Wing Limit Break - Found another way to NOT gain any EXP from a fight thanks to a reader, and it has something to do with "stones" - Done the walkthrough 'til right after Laguna's second scenario - More stuff here and there V2.4 05/Nov/1999 - Wrote about another 5 pages worth of walkthrough - Wrote a bit more on Wishing Star since I saw it again - Fixed errors V2.5 06/Nov/1999 - How dumb can I get? I used the WRONG line breakers! Fixed it now. - Finished the walkthrough for disc 1 - A bit more on Rinoa's Angel Wing and Wishing Star - Couple of more notes - Added the reference for Biggs and Wedge. (Sometimes the most obvious things in life are the hardest to remember.) V2.6 10/Nov/1999 - Gave the shops a run for their money with the Black List section (the only thing sweeter than revenge is a sweet revenge, even though it's not mine. Oh well...) - A lot more new stuff in the walkthrough ('til just after the Missile Base mission.) - Found out what could be stolen from Seifer at the end of disc 1 - A note about gravity - I have a terrible memory so I forgot the rest (if any) V2.7 14/Nov/1999 - Continued the walkthrough and listed all the relevant mini-quests - Added alternate Diablos strategy - More stuff about Biggs and Wedge, as well as lotsa weird stuff found by FeralNoa - Added a note to Squall's Lion Heart finisher - Added the AP trick with X-ATM092 - Rinoa and Irvine's max stats - Some other stuff and I cannot remember V2.8 26/Nov/1999 - Filled in the Frequently Asked Questions section and moved it up to the top... - Added more references - Added more miscellaneous stuff - Added more ways of getting spells early in the walkthrough, under "Things to do #2" and "The known Tomb of the Unknown King" - A note about Squall's Renzokuken finisher on how to get Lion Heart more often - Fixed up some mistakes and my French - A note on Vitality Zero under tips - Completed disc 2's walkthrough - A note to Zell's Duel finishers (no, you can do more than just the pre-requisite moves!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) V2.9 30/Nov/1999 - 5 more chapters in the walkthrough with somewhat cheesy titles - More tips and stuff - More questions are in - Added Another Gamer's Angel Wing strategy V3.0 07/Dec/1999 - Ho ho ho, so many people sent in their great stuff so it's time for a major(ish) update - Added Seifer and Edea to the character list, along with Seifer's level 100 stats! - Added an alternate alternate strategy in the Ruby Dragon fight in Laguna's fourth scenario - Added an extra subsection in "Things to do #3" in disc 2, involving Cactuars and AP - Added Irvine's/Seifer's/Edea's Limit Break descriptions - More questions - More tips - Added Selphie's easy Slot Limit Break trick under her character section - Added the trick to get some Pulse Ammo in disc 2! Chech out the section "Top of the Pops" - Added the trick to get Pandemona's card early, in the section "Silence of the (Ba)lamb" - Added the "My stats" section - Corrected lotsa typos, especially the terrible mistake on the path to acquire Odin - Completed the walkthrough all the way to the power up point! V4.0 22/Dec/1999 - Added more questions - Added another chain combo to Zell's section - Added Edea's level 100 stats - Added "Zantetsuken Reverse" to Seifer's section - Added an explanation of how to get Ward in the fourth Laguna scenario - Finally completed the whole thing, I'm so proud of myself! Lots of tips and optional stuff are in under the massive Power Up Extra section. - Added some stuff to the tips - Added numerous Rosetta Stone tricks, god I love them! :) - Fixed various typos and mistakes - Even more on Rinoa's Angel Wing! - Obtained vague descrptions of Selphie's Catastrophe and Percent V4.1 03/Jan/2000 - Corrected the whole Squall Limit ender thing!!! - Added more tips - Added a trick on getting Lion Heart in disc 1 (or 2) and it's in the walkthrough, under "Things to do #1" - Another question - Added a miscellaneous thing - A LOT of stuff here and there, some corrections but it's hard for me to remember every single thing - More about the GF combinations and Queen of Cards in disc 4 - ANOTHER Rosetta Stone trick... will these never end?! V4.2 20/Jan/2000 - Fixed up a lot of errors - Added an extra power up mission involving Seifer in Dollet - Added a few tips, mainly on cards - Question - Miscellaneous stuff - Lil' adjustments here and there and there and ooh, missed a spot - Still working on a super-cheap "Defeat Omega in under 5 rounds trick" but it's not in yet. V4.3 30/Jan/2000 - Those "cheap" Omega tricks are now in, read it at your own risk - A new trick on stealing and not mugging - More info on Angelo Search, how you can see it more often - More spell stuff about Angel Wing - Full description about Selphie's secret Slot spells are in - A tidbit on Quistis' Bad Breath - A tidbit on FFVI - A "fun" tidbit on Odin... - Fixed up some requirements for acquiring GF Tonberry - Here and there, the usual V4.4 16/Feb/2000 - A card trick during the Desert Prison part of the game is in. Chance to collect Rosetta Stones early! - More notes on GF Phoenix - A note on Odin and the (dis)advantages of getting him later - A note on Devouring and possible side effects - A miscellaneous thing added - Some corrections CREDITS ======= * Happy Matt because he was the first person who told me about this idea of powering up your characters. (Yup, he has to come before Squaresoft and that..) If I had to write down every single thing that he helped me on, it would take up this whole page! So let's just say thanks for all the tips, strategies and for being my friend. And enjoy your games! :-) * Squaresoft/Square EA for developing this well polished phenomenon and porting it over to the US shores so promptly. (Using the term loosely.) * Cephiroth for the X-ATM092 strategy on his guide and some other stuff. * Scott Ong for his long and detailed walkthroughs that I had to refer to during the boring bits of the game (like Ultimecia's Castle.) * GameFaqs for giving me a place to put this FAQ and being such an exciting site. * FeralNoa for the Devour list as well as many other stuff. And thanks for writing to me via e-mail everyday. :-) * Allan Mills for the corrections and info on Angelo * Ed Asano (aka Qualera) for the info on Angelo, corrections on Julia and the encouragement. Oh and a whole lot of other stuff... :) * Adrian Dutkiewicz for the Gil trick and some other notes * Tam Tran for the Gil trick * Linda Villanueva for the way to get pass the bit in the X-ATM092 chase where the ground shakes * John Calvin for discarding unwanted magic trick * Joe Pirozzo for data on Devour * Eekeric@aol.com for the Demi/Devour strategy * Weilun for corrections and the detailed explanation of devour * jay sar for the information on Break * EdwChang@aol.com for more information on Zell and Rinoa's Limit Breaks * Duncan Day-Myron for the Rosetta Stone trick #2 * DarkHoly17@aol.com for the info on mugging Seifer. * Ken Ho for the alternate Diablos strategy. * Mokona (Souma) for the ways of getting good spells early * Vincent Merken for correcting my French :) * Flanker358@aol.com for pointing out the reference of the Brothers GF and telling me a decent way of using the Excalipur in FFV. * EDIelectric@aol.com for the locations of 2 Sources. * Another Gamer for the alternate Angel Wing strategy * Christian Groff (aka COSMIC KNIGHT) for the advice on using items to learn GF abilities * Voltroneo@Hotmail.com for fighting Cactuars in disc 2 and getting Meltdown early * Colin Pentney (aka Salivator) for Seifer's level 100 stats and "Taming the Ruby Dragon" trick * Matt for Selphie's Slots trick * David Seo for the trick on getting Pandemona's card early * Ronny Boen for the trick on getting Pulse Ammo in disc 2 * Jonathan Ng for corrections on the Revive command and Full-Life. * Zachary Lim for the trick on getting the last Rosetta Stone. * -Skrybe- for the Angel Wing and Slot lists, as well as Seifer's Limit Breaks. * Iaian Ross for the use of Zombie, clarifications on Squall's Limit enders and more. Thanks "Citan" :) * TunzVic@aol.com for the query on Odin. * XP39C@aol.com for getting the Lion Heart in disc 1 trick. * nofear33" for some tips * Treylane47@aol.com for corrections and the "Steal" tip * Kaze Yagami who was the one who started the whole Legend of Armageddon Fist! *Bow* * Stephanus Rudiyanto Natari for info on GF Phoenix * Macaw for the Devour side effect and Malboro reference. And thanks for comforting me during the times when I was heartbroken. * Everyone else for their support! BLACK LIST! =========== Why did I start this new section? The answer is simple, I simply saw that another popular FAQ from GameFaqs was printed out and actually made for sale in my local game store! Even though that FAQ wasn't mine, I still felt that was a low and sinful act, ripping off the original author and potential customers alike. - The Gamesman (Wellington central, New Zealand) These guys have actually printed out Cephiroth's FFVIII walkthrough and put them on the counter for sale! To all people who are reading this and lives in Wellington, AVOID THAT SHOP!!! (There are plenty game stores in that area.) As for the Gamesman workers, you've already lost a customer PERMANENTLY and will loose many more as long as people are reading this, so stop selling them! Why am I doing this even though it's not mine you ask? Well, I think FAQ authors should be respected a bit more because I'm sure everyone of us who submitted stuff to GameFaqs has worked hard on their FAQ or review or whatever, and it's just not damn fair that someone can just walk along and take advantage of it. For your readers out there, DO NOT buy a ripped off FAQ because one of these days you might feel like a master of a certain game and then it's your turn to write an FAQ to share your wisdom, and do you want someone to take advantage of that? That's it for now, but if your shop sells game guide made for non- commercial purposes, your names can magically appear on this list so watch out! ABOUT ME ======== Now comes my favourite section of this FAQ. I live in New Zealand and I'm doing a Commerce degree at the university. And for the millionth time, I am a guy so don't come to me calling me a "girlfriend" or something, ok? (You may call me "Trepe Groupie #4") University work had been really stressful for me so I like a good RPG to fall back on in the weekends. FFVIII gets the job done nicely but can get a bit repetitive at times, especially later in the game. The end of year exams are coming up soon so hopefully I'll get this FAQ finished just in time so it can see the light of the day. Huh? RPGs I'm planning to play during the holidays? It's probably Xenogears, FFA (for collection purposed only though) and maybe Suikoden 2 if they hurry it along a little. And finally (if you've been reading my other FAQs you'll know this) my ICQ # is 15185682 and you can come along and chat to me sometime. Please come and chat with me because I'm usually as bored as hell when I'm online, I'm keen to make new friends (that's what the ICQ is for r..right?) Or you may want to e-mail me with the address listed up the top or way down the bottom. INTRODUCTION ============ Hello all and welcome to my latest project, Final Fantasy FFVIII Power-up FAQ. I must admit, the name's kinda dumb but it's always the contents that are important so hopefully you won't be disappointed. In this guide, I will give a (hopefully) detailed description of the procedure used to power up every single (permanent of course) member of your team with surprising results (ie, 255 Strength with ONLY 100 Meteors junctioned to Strength.) Also, I will throw in an "special walkthrough" that will detail a step-by-step procedure of how to successfully get through the first 2 and half discs while coping with one of the many temptations the game has on you to do one of the no- nos. And finally, everybody who has read my previous FAQs knows that I love evaluating characters and their skills so I might as well throw that in as well. Happy fantasies! It is assumed that you (the reader) know all the basic control of the game. It is also an advantage to have played through the game once before reading (and following) my guide, especially the walkthrough, as certain places may require perfect precision to succeed without major mistakes. I recommend that you play through the game "normally" first, then try out my instructions after you've completed the game and want some more. If you're struggling, read another walkthrough at GameFaqs, ones like Cephiroth's and Scott Ong's are all excellent ones that can get you from the beginning to the end with all the secrets (and what BORING secrets they are!!) WARNING WARNING! These procedures can be very time consuming and sometimes boring and tedious. It's not too difficult though, as long as you know what you're doing. This is for all those players who got all the characters in FFVII really high stats by morphing enemies into Sources, or the obsessed players who used the "level up then down" trick in FFT to get god-like stats. Be forewarned of what you're looking at. Like I've said, I recommend that you complete the game normally first before attempting this procedure. FANAL FANTASY VIII ================== Final Fantasy VIII is the latest instalment to the legendary RPG series that dominated the RPG market and fashion trends. Unlike your everyday RPG series, every single member of the FF series has a unique battle/skill system, and unique characters. FFVIII is no different, upgrading the innovative but ain't-as-good-as-it-sounds Materia system in FFVII with the classic Esper system in FFVI and the interesting but out of date job system in FFV/FFT to form the new GF and Junction system that promises fully customizable characters. Although the menu/item/skill/spell names needs a lot more work (it reminds me of the item names in BOF1!!) the translation as a whole is extremely well done. Exceptionally humorous too! Square has obviously been outdone themselves in the sound and graphics department, I'm not exceptionally impressed with the story, as it still can't beat Parasite Eve and Xenogears. It's still much better than the classic fantasies though. The new Draw/GF/Junction system makes the game a lot more fun and you'll always be on your toes to looks for more and newer spells and GFs. Enjoy! FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ========================== Alright, new section. The purpose of this section is to answer your common FFVIII questions, and I'm sick of getting lots of letters everyday by people who keeps askin' the same stuff. So if you want to find a hard to get item, rare ingredients or just some other common stuff, look no further. Mind you, most of these has nothing to do with powering up. Q1: Where can I get Dragon Fangs? A1: The MOST asked question. Dragon Fangs are dropped or can be stolen from Blue Dragons, they appear in the Island Closest to Hell. Q2: Where can I get Adamantines? A2: Defeat Adamantoise on the shores of Long Island to the west to Dollet, or any shores in the Dollet region. They must be at a high level. Q3: Where can I get Pulse Ammo? A3: Refine Energy Crystals with Ifrit's Ammo-RF Menu Ability. Energy Crystals can be obtained by defeating Elnoyles or Ruby Dragons (rare.) You can also refine Laser Cannons or Power Generators, but they're equally as rare. Q4: Where's the Island Closest to Hell/Heaven? A4: It's surprising how many people don't know where these are. Hell is the western most island on the map while Heaven is the eastern most. Follow Long Island west of Dollet and the island on the end should be the Island Closest to Hell. Heaven can be found by taking the Ragnarock north-east from Esthar. When in doubt, land on the island and check your menu. Q5: How do I abolish the Random rule in Dollet? A5: Play in another region (like Timber) and head to Dollet, make sure they use different rules. Save at the hotel and challenge the guy standing on the right. When he asks you if you wanna combine rules say yes. Now when the screen with the list of rule shows up, you can either choose to play the game or decline, either way you're qualified for rule adjustments afterwards. After the game, there's a chance that an unknown rule is introduced to Dollet or one of Dollet's original rules gets abolished. If an undesirable event happen, reset and repeat the procedure until Random is abolished. Q6: Where can I find a Power Generator/learn Quistis' Ray Bomb? A6: If you set up all the traps in Laguna's second scenario, you can find one in Lunatic Pandora in disc 3. Otherwise mug LV30 or above Blitz enemies in the forest outside Edea's house and make sure you don NOT equip Rare Item. It takes a very long time because it's very rare. Q7: Where can I find a Dark Matter/learn Quistis' Shockwave Pulsar? A7: Build Siren to LV100 and earn Tool-RF. Now accumulate 100 Cursed Spikes (stolen from Tri-Face) and refine them into one Dark Matter with Tool-RF. Q8: Where can I get Aura magic? Q8: Refine them from Leviathan's Supt Mag-RF with a Fury Fragment, they can be stolen from Blue Dragons or dropped by Ruby Dragons on rare occasions. Also Aura can be drawn from Seifer at the end of disc 3... and finally, purchase Power Wrists can refine them into Aura Stones with Siren's Tool-RF. Q9: Where can I encounter Elnoyles? (For Energy Crystals.) A9: They're found outside Esthar but are very rare. There's a sure way to find them however. After the space event and getting Ragnarock, enter Esthar and you'll find a lone soldier in one of the highway streets. Talk to him and if he says something like "hehehehe" you'll know it's the right one. He's actually an Elnoyle in disguise and attacks. If you defeat him, exit the screen and come back, he'll be there again so you can keep on challenging unlimited Elnoyles. This is a good way of collecting Energy Crystals/Moon Stones. Q10: If you don't level up, how are you going to get abilities for your GFs? A10: Geez where did that come from? This should have been obvious if you read the sections below but you need to distinguish the difference between EXP and AP. EXP raises your GF's level while AP lets them learn new abilities. You can gain AP but not EXP by carding most enemies you come across. Q11: How can I get Malboro Tenticles easily? A11: You need as many ST-Defx2s and (preferably) ST-Defx4 as possible, then junction 100 Confuse, Berserk, (if you have x4) Sleep and Break. Bad Breath should be pretty mild. Then give someone Siren's Treatment command and go from there. An easier way is to equip Initiative on Quistis and get her to critical. Execute Degenerator the first thing. If you're staying with the theme of powering up, it's a lot harder to do as you'll need to level it up (if its level is too low, it'll drop crap like Poison Powders) and card it. See below for how I did this. Early in the game, you can try collecting Malboro cards. Q12: I got Squall's Lion Heart gunblade but he won't execute his Lion Heart finisher. How can I get him to use it more often? A12: Technically, there are no sure of way letting him execute Lion Heart more often since everything in the game is determined by random chances. However, lowering Squall's HP will likely to increase the success rate of executing a more powerful finisher (works for other members too.) Oops, it turned out that you cannot learn Lion Heart without getting Blasting Zone and Fated Circle at the same time, so that theory goes down the trash can. However, try to lower Squall's HP to critical and cast Aura on him, that way, he'll almost always use the best Limit Break. Q13: Wouldn't it be better for you if you didn't have a "female" nick? A13: I guess so, and I have had some pretty damn embarrassing times with this alias, but then again, what other names could I use? My real one? Give me a break! I want an alias that's cool, heroic (haha), symbolic and at the same time, simple and can be pronouced easily. (Don't you hate one of those names that no one can pronouce it right?) "Aya Brea" is all of the above plus more. Ok, think this: "Aya" is a unisex name right? So if the identity "Aya Brea" didn't exist, you'd have a pretty hard time determining the gender right? Well there you have it, "Aya" is just another one of those "Lindsay" or "Sam" type names. As for "Brea", it's just another surname. (Do you know how many "Anderson"s there are?) So there, a whole new identity called Aya Brea! Happy? Q14: I have read your guide and I think you've written a pointless guide. Carding enemies for half of the game just to get powerful to fight against the weapons? I know of many people including myself who have beaten Omega while playing the game normally. I just wanna ask why the hell did you bother to write this guide? A14: Well, I must admit, this guide is not for everyone, and I've listed the aim and possible consequences in the intro below. Everyone is different so everyone of us is a different gamer, but you can sorta divide them into 2 categories: The one who plays the game because it's "cool" for the sake of having completed the game, and those perfectionists who wants to wants to squeeze every tiny drops of pleasure this game has to offer. Of course, my guide is targeted for the latter, and I know that there are very many perfectionist gamers around. I have also received feedback from readers who claims that playing the game this way is much more fun that playing it normally, and I've also had much encouragement (thank you all) so I know that this guide is heading towards a good direction. Q15: Why is my timer red? A15: It means you've spent too much time on the game. Once you max out the timer (99:59:59), it'll reset and turn red, so the real time is "red time" plus 100 hours. Q16: Will you detail *enter mini-quest name here* quest in your guide? A16: Like I said, if it's relevant to powering up then yes, if it's not, look up Scott Ong's or Cephiroth's walkthrough. I have hand picked the coverage on the mini-quests so the ones that are left out will probably never see the light more than 1 sentence devoted to them in my guide. Q17: Where can I find a Ribbon? A17: Either through a PocketStation or GameShark. It can only be gotten by playing the Chocobo World PocketStation game but it's not available for sale outside of Japan. The same goes to Mog's Armlet and Friendship Item. Q18: Are you going to write anymore guides in the future? A18: Yes, I'm sure that I will. SaGa Fronteir 2 will be my next target since I'm such a big fan of the SaGa series and it's nice to be able to find an underdog RPG at this day of age. Q19: I have over 20 Chef's Knives in my inventory and I still can't get GF Tonberry... A19: Well I dunno, I've never had this problem but for some reason, a lot of people keep sending me this problem. From what I know, sometimes having 20 Chef's Knives is not enough, just keep fighting Tonberries until it shows up. Q20: Why can't I get into the Deep Sea Research Centre? Is this a bug? A20: Aha! Thank you Colin Pentney for the solution to this problem. All you gotta do is to climb aboard the deck of Ragnarock and talk to everybody. Stupid isn't it? Especially since none of them has anything special to say. :( Oh yeah, Qualera has gotten back two replies from Squaresoft when he e-mailed them and guess what they said? Something along the lines of this being a game-related problem and told him to dial a 1-900 number. How nice... But then again, it's likely nobody that works there has even played one of these games since a management or accounting degree is what you need to get a job like that, not years of gaming experience so we won't blame them. Q21: Any others?? OBJECTIVE ========= This is against everything you've been taught in RPG college or years of your personal experience but.. In FFVIII, you want to fight as LITTLE as possible, which translates into NOT gaining levels. Before you send me hate mails please listen to my explanation. You might (or might not) have noticed that the enemies in FFVIII takes the SaGa turn so that they level up as you do. You'll almost never run into exceptionally weak enemies. As enemies level up, they gain new attacks, new spells (and increase their Draw list too) and gains higher stats. However, the enemies gains stats a LOT faster than you do (ie, a level or two doesn't make too much difference in terms of power) so you'll find yourself weaker and weaker and the enemies stronger and stronger as you progress through the game. And by the time you get to the bonus bosses like Ultima and Omega Weapons, your stats might be way too low to even think of challenging them, or they'll mop the floor with you! You may object and say that there are always Junctions to rely on. Yes you're right, Junctions are very important in this game BUT Junctions can only do so much. For example, Ultima is the best spell to junction to most of your stats. Even with 100 Ultimas, you'll only be able to raise your Strength by 100 points while the maximum is 255. There are Character Abilities though, like Str +60% that can bring your Strength up to 255 without too much problem, but you can only equip up to 4 Character Abilities max (and it's extremely rare too.) You'll have a few problems with this. One is that Str +60% is extremely rare, so you'll have to stick to Str +40% most of the time (which may or may not bring your Str up to 255) but the other problem is more serious. There are about 6 very important stats that you need (HP, Str, Vit, Mag, Spr and Spd) but you can only equip 3 or 4 stat boosts, and since your other stats are so low, you'll have a hard time getting high values in every category. Not to mention the times when you need to equip another more important Character/Party Ability like Mug, Move-Find or Rare Item. I hope everyone understands this idea. Sure, how do you get high stats without fighting enemies? Well, I don't know if you had noticed but you can teach certain GFs "Bonus" abilities. These include HP, Str, Vit, Mag and Spr. How does these skills work? When you equip one of these and you gain a level, the respective stat will be boosted by 1 point, on top of any regular stats boosts you might get at level up (except for HP Bonus, which gives you an extra 30HP.) Like I've said, a couple of levels don't differ too much since the game is way to stingy at regular stats boosts at level up. You'll gain about 60 or so HP and 1 point of Str/Vit/Mag etc.. once every 2-5 levels! (Some other stats are even rarer, such as Speed or Luck.) What difference does one point make? Not much, but if you start equipping the Bonus abilities at LV20 and power yourself up to LV100, that's gonna make an 80 point difference! Wow! That's almost another 100 Ultimas! However, you'll only have access to these abilities quite a bit into the game, and have to get to Disc 3 to utilize these abilities to the max. So you'll want to keep your levels as low as possible, then power up to maximum level for maximum stats bonus! WHY BOTHER? =========== Well, to tell you the truth, this is not something I'd recommend that you'd do everyday since it can get quite tedious, especially if this is your first game. However, getting all the boosts in your stats makes the optional bosses a whole lot easier. Getting high stats might be a joy in it itself, to laugh at the boss' spells as if they're insect bites or killing them in 2 rounds. WHERE DO I START? ================= There are a few ways of getting rid of encounters or not gaining experience. Every point of EXP counts, remember that! 1) Running away Possibly the easiest option, running away is easy to do and you won't get any experience. However, if you plan to run away, make sure that you DON'T do any sort of damage to the enemies, since the run system in FFVIII has been improved so that you'll gain partial experience if you've done some damage to the enemies. Earlier in the game in your test missions (Fire Cavern and Dollet), running away is hazardous since it will cause a deduction in your points every time you run away, meaning you'll likely to get a low SeeD rank. However, this is a loose-loose situation where you have to choose either stats or SeeD rank (which translates into money.) I'd choose stats and run away since money isn't all that important, as you don't have to buy very many stuff. To make up for it, you can do a few things that gives you more points. - Choose the 10 minute interval in Fire Cavern. The Fire cavern is pretty straight forward and you only need about 2-3 minutes to fight Ifrit. I did it with just less than 6 minutes left on the clock! (This is why I recommend that you play through the game normally first.) - Do NOT talk to anyone except your own team. Otherwise you'll get points deducted. - KILL the X-ATM092 boss (the giant robotic spider.) Remember, you cannot kill it the first time around. (Its HP will be refilled when you deplete it to zero.) So weaken it first, run, then fight it again. Refer to the walkthrough if you want more information. Defeating it will result in 100 bonus points (I think.) NEW!! Actually, I've found a way better Dollet strategy not only lets you gain ZERO EXP, but also allow you to power up your GF and gain tons of AP. Anyway, kill off Squall and Zell (so they won't gain any EXP) and fight all the battles with Seifer. Your GFs will level up faster than he does and you'll gain lotsa AP!! Fight here as much as you wish. What's even better is that fighting heaps of enemies here will actually boost your points in the "Attack" category. (I gained no points in the game where I ran away from everything but I gained the full 100 when I fought them with Seifer.) These steps are described in detail in the walkthrough. The disadvantage of running away is that you won't be able to gain any AP that are vital to the GFs. And you won't be able to get any items dropped by the enemies either. 2) Card them You can learn the unique Card command from your first GF, Quezacotl. This is an extremely useful command to use when you have to fight. The advantage of this is that you WILL get the AP AND can pick up dropped items from enemies, and you will NOT gain any EXP! What's even better is that you'll get an extra card which can be changed into items via Quezacotl's Card Mod ability. The disadvantage is, of course, it's sometimes more fuss than it's worth. Because of this, choose to learn the Card command first, it's worth 40AP and isn't very hard to learn. (Simply defeating Ifrit will give you 20AP!) Anyway, you don't really need the Boost skill at that point in the game so choose Card first, then Boost. It's not hard carding an enemy though, but like Pok่mon, you have to weaken them first. You should Scan the enemy first to see its current HP, then predict how many attacks by certain members is enough to weaken it. It's ideal if an enemy is down to a quarter or less of its total HP, but you can start successfully carding them at about half health. (I carded a full-health Adamantoise once though...) The lower the enemy's HP, the more likely you're to succeed. Do NOT forget to equip the Card command like I do occasionally though, as you'll leave yourself in a sticky situation. Note it IS possible to card an enemy when its HP is about or below a half. If the game gives you a "miss" message and you know it's weakened enough, use the command again, you'll usually get it the next turn. (The game likes to trick you at times, to think you have to weaken it some more while you end up killing it.) To weaken them you can try a few different ways. I like to use normal attacks. Squall's attack is the best since as it has the "trigger" feature, and you can do a weak or a strong attack as you desire. His attack is also very reliable since it will NEVER do a critical hit (as you can use the trigger to do 150% of damage with every attack anyway, so he doesn't need one.) so you won't end up killing it with a critical. Gunblades also never miss (even under "Blind" status) which is a definite plus. Also, other member's regular attacks works too. You generally should not junction spells to your Elemental-Attack since the creature may be weak against it and you'll do too much damage. I always keep one member's Strength junction-free to do really weak attacks if I need it (like against Geezards.) Spells ain't a bad idea either. GFs are the same. Try to keep a collection of different spells in stock. Weaker GFs like Siren are also quite good at this if you need a weak attack. Also, you may or may not want to use Boost, depending on the situation. The BEST method I've seen is to use Quistis' Limit Break Micro Missile. The beauty of Micro Missile is that it's a gravity elemental attack so it can NEVER kill an enemy. Also, unlike other attacks, gravity attacks removes a portion of a target's current HP. The effect of Micro Missile varies though, but it's for the better. It depends on how serious Quistis or your party's condition is (ie, party member down, suffering from negative status, low HP) and it can remove from 50% to 93.75% of its current HP, which makes it absolutely perfect for carding enemies. Just keep Quistis in critical (ie, HP is in yellow and she's kneeling down) and use Micro Missile on the enemies in the beginning of the battle while another character use the Card command. Keep some Phoenix Downs/Life spells in stock just in case she dies. Note: Micro Missile will only work on enemies with 9999HP or less. The maximum damage it can do is 9999, so against enemies with higher HP, Quistis has to use it multiple times before the enemy's HP is low enough. A handful of enemies are resistant towards Gravity attacks, mainly bosses. Keep in mind. Some enemies cannot be carded. These includes bosses and human troops. 3) Diablos Sometimes not encountering any enemies is the best option, since the random encounter can be annoying at times. Diablos offers 2 crucial abilities and they are Enc-Half and Enc-None. You must learn the former before the latter becomes available. Enc-Half costs only 30AP (easy peasy) but Enc-None costs a whopping 100AP! (And it's nothing compared to the 200AP needed for Mug!) Because of this, it's best to challenge Diablos as soon as possible (ie, right after receiving the Magic Lamp from Cid.) He's well worth the effort you put into fighting him and gets some of the most useful abilities in the game! And believe me, he's powerless if you know how to fight him! You'll be able to get Enc-Half easily but Enc-None takes longer. Use the Card trick above or save the boss' AP for them. Then equip Enc- None and you'll never have to be bothered with random encounters again! (Although since you don't fight, you'll earn no AP for all your GFs, and you'll miss out certain useful abilities such as Mug. So de-equip the skill occasionally and Card some enemies.) 4) Tonberry Ok, you will gain some EXP with this method but it's VERY little! You can use Tonberry's LV Down command to weaken enemies and defeat them that way. Each LV Down halves their level, keep doing it until their levels drops to 1, then kill them. You'll gain 1-3 EXP for your team. This is great for the encounters that you cannot run away from and cannot be carded. (Such as enemy soldiers in Laguna's scenario.) Opposed to common believes, Tonberry can be acquired as early as when you have control of the mobile Balamb Garden in Disc 2!!! You can get Tonberry right after acquiring Odin. The Tonberry is so cute! IMPORTANT! Also contradicting to common believes, the requirement for the Master Tonberry to appear is NOT to kill 20 Tonberries! You need to have 20 Chef's Knives in your inventory, then the Master Tonberry will appear! This was confirmed by Happy Matt, however, I think the 20 Chef's Knives must come from defeated Tonberries. (If it doesn't work just keeping fighting the Tonberries.) 5) Other vehicles Another way of travelling without encountering anything is to travel in vehicles (for some reason, all of them are painfully slow!) You can get access to cars fairly early in the game, but they cost a bit of money and you have to refuel them at regular intervals. You can catch trains too, to travel to another city quickly but you don't seem to be able to catch any trains in the first half of the game except for story purposes. Balamb Garden is also quite a convenient vehicle since it can cross the ocean. And last (and the least!) are Chocobos. You'll only gain access to riding the chocs after Balamb Garden takes off, so you won't have that much use for it. (The way you catch a chocobo is also really boring.) You won't encounter any enemies while travelling in vehicles, but they're only available on the world map. 6) Terminate your own team members I don't think the EXP in this game is shared between the characters so you may want to kill/petrify 2 other members to keep them weak and fight the battle with only one member. I don't think it's that risky if you play your cards right. Remove the GF from the other members if you want. 7) The soul of stone Thanks to jay sar for this trick So, "jay sar" told me that if you junction Break in your ST-Atk and petrify an enemy unit with it, you'd get no EXP. Although it doesn't work as good as it sounds, because when you petrify an enemy, the game thinks that you've ran away from it and gives you the partial experience since your attacks will do some damage to them before petrifying them. Also, it's kinda risky since you may kill the enemy unit if you didn't petrify them. However, the problem is solved if you cast Break straight out of the bottle since it deals no damage. The problem with this method is that it won't give you any AP either! You can get Breaks easily by refining Cockatrice Pinions and Softs with Diablos' ST Mag-RF. Other notes and tips - Well, I guess you all know that the character who strikes the killing blow will get more EXP than the others. This is true however, nobody seems to get any extra EXP if the enemy is killed by a summoned GF! So use this to your advantage when you're fighting enemies when you don't have any other options. It doesn't stop you from gaining EXP but at least you won't gain any extras. - Appropriately enough, if you used a GF to do the killing blow, that GF will gain the extra EXP bonus after the bettle. - You should know by now that the bosses in FFVIII won't give you any EXP, which is a pleasant sign, and they (usually) give you a ton of AP that your GFs sorely needs! Try selecting an expensive ability before fighting the boss so you won't waste some of its AP. - Not fighting enemies will lower your SeeD rank and likewise, fighting lotsa enemies will raise your SeeD rank. It's likely that your SeeD ranks will be lowered in the course of the game if you follow my guide. However, it's again not like if it cannot be remedied: * Take sometime out of the game to card some enemies. This will help you avoid lowered ranks and can beef up your GFs who needs APs. I actually GAINED a SeeD level when I went on a carding rampage. * Taking the test! Always take as many tests as you can, to give your salaries a head start! * If you choose the shortest time in a timed quest, it's likely that your SeeD rank will be raised, if you succeed of course! Such as the Missile Base escape time. * Doing certain things right will also raise your SeeD rank. I do not have a list of those events though, but I know Rinoa's train quest is one of them. Make no mistakes and your rank will be raised! * One guy on the second floor of Balamb Garden will ask you to show him how to cast spells. DON'T DO IT!!! Casting spells in the hallways are forbidden and your rank will be instantly lowered! (I learnt it the hard way. :-( ) - GFs WILL gain AP and EXP when junctioned to a dead member, even though it makes no sense. - Spread out your GFs among your characters as equally as possible. The most important Junction ability early in the game is Mag-J, since you need it to draw decent spells from bosses. (Quezacotl, Siren and Diablos will provide you with those.) Critical Guardian Forces ======================== Now, you will need to keep this up until the point after the space mission and acquired Ragnarock. Now you need to get your hands on 2 vital GFs, Cactuar (Sabotender) and Bahamut. Cactuar On Cactuar's Island of course, with a tiny green thing that pops out of the sand occasionally. Land Ragnarok there and challenge it, but don't forget to junction your characters properly first. Beat it anyway you like (but I'd prefer drawing spells from it first.) And you'll be able to acquire it as your GF. The best thing about the Cactuar is that it comes with all 5 of the bonus abilities LEARNED!! Which saves you time having to learning it from other GFs (they costs 100AP each and all of them requires 2 prerequisite skills.) You may start training your characters now, but you need more slots to equip all the bonus skills, and since you're going to acquire Bahamut sooner or later (you are, ain't you?) why not do it now? Bahamut Head to Deep Sea Research Centre aka Battleship Island, which is not on the map but you can get there by heading Ragnarock towards the south-wester corner of the map. Look around and you should find some structure that looks kinda like an oil refinery. Land the ship on it (kinda tricky, look for the shadow.) Head towards the doorway and you'll be in a large room with a glowing cylinder. Choose to stay and move ONLY when the lights goes out, or you'll be attacked by some enemies (usually Anacondours, just run.) Look for the ring objects surrounding the cylinder though, and make sure they disappear completely before moving. You should be able to take about 3 steps each time the light goes out. Move to touch the cylinder and you'll be asked 2 questions. Choose the first option (can't remember what.) and you'll fight a Ruby Dragon. They shouldn't be much of a problem anyway since because you're weak, they'll be weak too. You can't fight this normally though, since you'll receive about 1200EXP for each member if you did, bringing you up a level instantly! Just level it down with Tonberry or card it (I chose the first option.) Beware, because Odin came and killed it and ruined it for me once so save your game before attempting this. You'll be prompted with another set of choices after you win, choose the second option. (Can't remember what it was.) And you'll be up against another Ruby Dragon. Just use the same strategy as the first one. Then you'll be asked ANOTHER question. Move the curser down and you'll be able to choose a third option, even though it's nothing! Choose it and you'll face Bahamut!! Defeat it (not that hard, but you should spend sometime drawing Full-Life from it) and you'll be able to get the king of all dragons as your very own pet! It comes with the as-good-as-it-gets Abilityx4 skill, which allows your character to equip up to 4 Character/Party Abilities! We're ready for action! PREPARING FOR THE BIG THING =========================== You've got a choice to make now. You've got 5 different bonus abilities for 5 important stats but you can only equip 4 of them at once. Anyhow, here's 2 of the best ways I've found. All round character This is intended for a balanced character who's good in every category. Equip: * Str Bonus * Vit Bonus * Mag Bonus * Spr Bonus And ditch HP, since HP is an easy one to Junction it to max. I prefer this method over the other one though. Customized character This works with a character's natural abilities (ie, Limit Breaks) to determine a character's fighting style, either a fighter or a magic user. Irvine, Squall and Zell are definite fighters so they should equip: * Str Bonus * Vit Bonus * Spr Bonus * HP Bonus Ditch magic since they don't really need it for their Limit Breaks. Selphie however, is the exact opposite, she uses magical Limit Breaks so substitute Str Bonus for Mag Bonus. Rinoa is an odd one since she has both physical (Angelo) and magical (Angel Wing) Limits and if you're going to use Rinoa at all, train her with the "All round" method. Quistis, too, is strange since her Blue Magic works in various ways so it's better to build her as an all round character. Anyhow, lets say you start the training at LV20. You'll be able to gain 2400HP and 80 points of the other stats. However, 2400HP is way more than you need. From my experience, a LV100 character without HP Bonus has around 4000HP, while the best spell for junctioning to HP is Full-Life (Ultima is better, but it's a waste to junction it to HP since Full-Life does the job nicely.) which gives 4800 boost, which makes about 8800HP, so you can just gain about 40 levels with HP Bonus on and swap it for the other attribute that you didn't equip. As a matter of fact, most characters can get maximum HP without HP Bonus just by junctioning 100 Ultimas to HP alone. (So they can save a slot to equip another ability.) Whatever you do, don't EVER ignore Vitality and Spirit!!! They're probably the most important attributes to the character (Spirit more so than Vitality, especially later in the game.) Remember, there are no armors in this game so these stats are the only defence your characters have. (And Evade too, which works amazingly well.) Some notes There are times where you just HAVE to go up a level no matter what (such as Laguna's second scenario.) it doesn't really matter too much but you can gain some partial stats boosts from these. Remember, Cactuar is not the only GF that offers these bonus abilities, earlier GFs have them too but they're usually way too expensive or inconvenient to acquire. However, when you do learn one of the abilities, equip the GF to the character who's just about to go up a level and they can gain one bonus point for the respective category. It's not the best but it's better than nothing. Here's what the other GFs offer: (All "Bonus" abilities costs 100AP.) HP Bonus – Brothers Prerequisites: HP +40% [120AP], HP +80% [240AP] (!!) Strength Bonus – Ifrit Prerequisites: Str +20% [60AP], Str +40% [120AP] Vitality Bonus – Carbuncle Prerequisites: Vit +20% [60AP], Vit +40% [120AP] Magic Bonus – Siren Prerequisites: Mag +20% [60AP], Mag +40% [120AP] Spirit Bonus – Leviathan Prerequisites: Spr +20% [60AP], Spr +40% [120AP] The other inconvenience is that you can only equip up to 3 Character Abilities without Bahamut so you need to power up in Disc 3 to get maximum effects. !!!IMPORTANT NOTE!!! ============================================== |It *IS* damn right possible to get through the first 2 and half | |discs WITHOUT going up a SINGLE level, I have done it!!! Anyway, | |it's not as hard as you think so you really don't need these | |abilities. HOWEVER, I was able to find a Rosetta Stone (learns | |Abilityx4) in Esthar so you'd want those abilities since you can | |actually train TWO characters at once!!! Details below. | =================================================================== Bonus Rosetta Stone Ok, I don't know if this is random or what but I've been able to get a FREE Rosetta Stone from Esthar. You know how sometimes you'll get a free gift when you visit one of the online shops in Esthar (like how Johnny's Shop sometimes gives you Mega-G-Potions.) Well, repeatedly visit Cheryl's Shop (the one that's always closed) and you'll eventually get a free Rosetta Stone! It took me about 20-30 tries. According to Adrian Dutkiewicz, you can only get one Rosetta Stone here. TRAINING ======== Hopefully, by the time you get Bahamut and Cactuar, your levels are still relatively low. Here're my character's levels in my first game: Squall LV19 Zell LV11 Quistis LV11 Irvine LV15 Selphie LV13 Rinoa LV16 It is indeed possible to get through the game without gaining a level, so character's level will remain as they were at the start: Squall LV7 Zell LV8 Quistis LV8 Irvine LV13 Selphie LV8 Rinoa LV11 Anyway, make up your mind on who you want to train first, I personally recommend either Quistis or Squall. (I prefer Quistis.) Remove all the GFs from your team members and junction it to the character you wish to train first, then go to an easy battle and kill off the remaining party members (they should be a piece of cake, since they have next to no HP and Vitality.) Now, you need to junction yourself properly. Make sure you've stocked up on good spells, and if you don't have enough, just "borrow" your team member's for a while. You can train your characters at a number of places. Happy Matt recommends the area outside Edea's house. You can only train one character at a time, so remove the GFs from the characters you don't want to train yet, and killed them off (so they won't gain any EXP.) Junction Death to your ST-Atk and equip the LV Up command. Get into a battle and use LV Up to raise the enemy's level to 100, then kill them off. You should get lotsa EXP and can gain a level per fight. However, the EXP gained this way is way too little for my taste. I like to play risky so my choice of training ground is... the Island Closest to Hell! (ooohh..) Junctioning your character is very important here, one wrong spell in the wrong place could mean instant death. Status Junction Elemental Junction A: Sleep (or Death) A: Blizzarga D: Confuse D: Flare D: Berserk D: Firega D: Death D: Shell D: Break D: Protect Status is crucial but elemental ain't as important. You can get ST- Def x4 from Cerberus (if you need AP, fight the Cactuars in the desert. They give you 20AP each and 1 digit EXP!) or Doomtrain. It's a must that you have ST-Def x4 as you'll come across Malboros and Blue Dragons. Malboro's Bad Breath can give you really nasty status like Confuse, Poison, Berserk, Petrifying, Blind, Silence etc. Junctioning the above spells will make Bad Breath mildly harmful, the only negative status that's a pain is Sleep. Just wait 'til it hits you with its acid attack and use Siren's Treatment command if you need it. The Blue Dragon however, likes to cast Death and Break occasionally, killing anyone without protection in one hit. Sleep won't work against all the enemies though, just the T-Rexaurs, Grendels and Ruby Dragons, but you may wanna try Death in ST-Atk to kill Grendels, Blue Dragons and T-Rexaurs in one hit. Elemental isn't that important, but since a number of enemies like Ruby Dragons, T-Rexaurs and Malboros are weak against ice, Blizzaga is good for doing extra damage. (No enemies are strong against it though, which makes it perfect.) You should be protected against Fire but all the other ones ain't all that important. None thing of note: Ruby Dragon's Breath is NOT Fire elemental! I know it because it used Firega on Selphie prior to that and she absorbed it, then it unleashed Breath and killed my whole team! Be careful of the Ruby Dragons ok? (Breath does 3000-5000 to the whole team!) It is also a "physical" attack, meaning it is your Vit that resists it, not Spr. As for stats junction, just use best fit. Squall should favour Attack while it doesn't really matter for Quistis, although a high Speed helps a lot. Make sure you've got good Vitality and Spirits! Junction Tornado to your Evade, I don't know why but it's really effective! (It seems to have a higher Evade chance than just 20%.) As for command, I'd choose Attack, Magic, Draw and Treatment. Oh yeah, save after every fight! These enemies are really tough and you're cheating death fighting right in front of them! Squall Just use attack on all the enemies, when your HP gets low, finish them with Renzokuken! Make full use of his trigger, and with a high speed, you should be able to attack 3 times before they even get a go. If you need healing FAST, use Curaga, but if it's not really urgent, don't worry too much about it because you can finish the enemies easily with Renzokuken. Or you might want to cast Regen. If you're against enemies that have very high HP (Ruby Dragons in particular) you may want to cast some Demi first, since it'll do 9999 damage for the first few castings! Don't use it against the T-Rexaur though, as they're really weak against cold and Sleep, so you'll be able to finished them easily with just regular attacks, for a lot of EXP! If you feel that the enemy's Vitality is too high, you may want to cast Meltdown (Merton in the Japanese version, which is a MUCH better name) or summon Doomtrain. Quistis This is easier done than said. Keep her in critical status (you can do it easily by exchanging Junctions between another character, then change back. Make sure she has acquired Degenerator. Now when you get into battle, immediately use her Blue Magic Degenerator to knock out the enemy in one hit!! If the triangle doesn't come out, use the famous "tap tap" easy Limits trick. You should be able to gain 1-3 levels per fight. I hate those Grendels since they have very high defence and don't give up enough EXP for my troubles. The other advantage fighting here is that the enemies occasionally drops really nifty stuff, such as Energy Crystals that can be refined into Ultimas or Irvine's Pulse Bullets and used to upgrade Rinoa and Quistis' best weapons. (I had soooo many of them in my last game, about 50+!!) If you haven't done so already, you can gather the 6 Malboro Tentacles required to summon Doomtrain here really easily, defeating them will net you 8 of them. Other characters Once Squall/Quistis gets to level 100, and bring another (live) member into the team and junction Bahamut and Cactuar (and some other ones) to them and equip the 4 "Bonus" abilities and start the process again. You're allowed level 100 characters in the team though, as they won't gain any EXP any more and the game isn't as risky any more since the level 100 character can revive the weak character if they die. Repeat until all 6 characters are level 100. Two characters at once! You can bring 2 weak members into the fight if you manage to get your hands on a Rosetta Stone, which can be found in Esthar. Use the Rosetta Stone on a GF (you may have to use an Amnesia Greens on a GF to make it forget an ability) and junction Carbuncle, Siren, Leviathan, Ifrit or Brothers on the same character so you can train 2 characters at once. (I used my Rosetta Stone on Shiva, if you really want to know, since use's full of crap abilities!) It basically uses the same strategy as above except it's much safer since if one character gets KO'd, the other can revive them, lowering the chance of you getting a Game Over. Anyway, I'd recommend that you train one "training friendly" characters (Quistis/Squall) and another not so "training friendly" characters (Selphie/Rinoa.) That way, the "training friendly" character can do most/all the work while the not so "training friendly" characters (with bad Limit Breaks) can tag along and gain levels at the same time. Quistis is exceptionally good at this! Oh yeah, junction the GFs that your characters don't need to the dead member so they can gain EXP faster. WANT EVEN HIGHER STATS? ======================= You should have really high stats after the intensive training. (If you want to see what I got, they're in the character's section.) If you want even higher stats, it's going to be difficult from now on. There are a few choices for these too, but none of them are really efficient/convenient. 1) Steal/Find Sources Those items that raise certain character's stats are back! (Although they've been renamed into [something]-Ups.) Some bosses carry them and can be won/stolen from them. - Raijin is the best example of this. You can win/steal Str-Ups from him during all 3 fights with him in the game. Remember if you steal, you cannot win anything, if you wanna to win from him you cannot steal. Sometimes the quantity varies depending on it you mugged them or won them. - There's also a Str-Up in the prison. - You can mug 2 Magic-Ups from the left orbs where you fight NORG. A Spr-Up is available for steal for the right orb. - According to EDIelectric@aol.com, you can steal 2 Str-Ups from the left portion of Mobile Type 8 and 2 Vit-Ups from the right. Anybody know any other bosses that drop or carry these wonderful Sources? Please e-mail me if you do. 2) Make Source This is easier said than done. Doomtrain's Forbid Med-RF ability can turn some items into stats boosting Sources. Here's all of them: 1x Gaea's Ring => HP-Up 10x Hyper Wrist => Str-Up 5x Adamantine => Vit-Up 10x Royal Crown => Mag-Up 50x Jet Engine => Spd-Up 1x Luck-J Scroll => Luck-Up 2x Aegis Amulet => Spd-Up 10x Magic Armlet => Spr-Up 50x Accelerator => Spd-Up 5x Rocket Engine => Spd-Up 1x Monk's Code => Str-Up 1x Knight's Code => Vit-Up 1x Hundred Needles => Spd-Up There are many more. As you can see, all of them require really rare items. I think you can win a Gaea's Ring from Jumbo Cactuar that can be made into an HP-Up. Most of them can be made from Eden's GFAbl Med-RF, like this: 10x Giant's Ring => Gaea's Ring 10x Power Wrist => Hyper Wrist 10x Orihalcon => Adamantine 10x Force Armlet => Magic Armlet 10x Hypno Crown => Royal Crown 10x Accelerator => Rocket Engine 100x Lightweights => Rocket Engine 100x Cactuar Thorn => Hundred Needle Most of these ingredients can be bought from Esthar Pet Shop although it's 15000 Gil a pop, and you'll need 100 of them to make ONE Source!!! Very expensive! I've saved up all my money for 80 hours and all I could afford was ONE Source!!! You can win some of these items from enemies occasionally (I think the Behemoths may drop Power Wrists on rare occasions.) Anyhow, thanks to the readers, you can use an easy trick to get all the money you want! EASY GIL TRICK!!! =================================================== |Thanks to Adrian Dutkiewicz and Tam Tran | | for this awesome trick! | | | |You must have gotten Carbuncle's Recover Med-RF for this to work. | |Tonberry's Haggle, Sell High and Call Shop are exceptionally useful| |here too! | | | |What you need to do is to purchase 100 Tents. With Recover Med-RF, | |you can refine 4 of them into 1 Mega-Potion. Cottages works exactly| |the same way except the ratio is 2:1. Get 100 of both for faster | |returns! Now sell all your Mega-Potions for truck loads of profits!| | | |Now let's do the calculations (assumed that you have both Sell High| |and Haggle skills.) 100 Tents costs 75,000 Gil, 100 Cottages are | |costs twice as much. So total cost is 225,000 Gil. They can be | |refined into a total of 75 Mega-Potions, each fetches 7500 Gil each| |at a shop which makes 562,500 Gil! Profit = 337,500 Gil! Repeat as | |often as desired! Oh yeah, use Tonberry's Call Shop makes this | |trick extremely convenient. | ===================================================================== With the easy cash trick above, you can make as many Sources as you want, however, there are still 2 problems. The first one is that it's still quite a slow process since they cost way too much already in the first place! You need 1,500,000 Gil to make a single Str-Up, so you need to do the trick about 5 times for each Source, and it can get really confusing after a while. (I remember how I bought 100 Giant's Rings then didn't know what I did but I lost them all!) The other problem is that you can only refine HP, Str, Mag and Spr- Ups from this method. Vit-Ups CAN be made by turning Vit-J Scrolls (bought in Timber Pet Shop) into Orihalcons, then into Adamantines and then finally into Vit-Ups. The rarer Spd and Luck-Ups requires extremely rare NON-store bought items (ie, Accelerators) so they cannot be refined no matter how much money you have. (At least none that I know of. Although there is a possibility that some of the ingredients needed might able to be refined from another Menu Ability with store bought items.) You can steal a Luck-J Scroll from Odin and find another from doing the Lake Obel quest, but I'd rather let one of my GF learn Luck-J. Anyway, I can see one item that's (in theory) reasonably easy to earn, that is the Adamantines. Get into a fight with the Adamantoises (they come in 2s I think) and defeating (not mugging) them will net you 2 of them! (You may need high level Adamantoises or I was just very lucky.) 3) Eating enemies Thanks to Happy Matt for this one. It was quite a long time ago when he told me that Eden's Devour command can be used to raise your stats. Ok, finally got the list, thanks to Happy Matt and FeralNoa. Ruby Dragon -> Max HP+10 T-Rexaur -> Strength+1 Adamantoise -> Vitality+1 Behemoth -> Magic+1 Malboro -> Spirit+1 NEW! Thanks to all who sent me a feedback on Devour, now it is possible to Devour an enemy easily. Like the Card command, the lower the enemy's HP, the higher the success rate. (Thanks to Joe Pirozzo, Eekeric@aol.com and about a million other people, actually, more like a multiple of a million.) However, that's still only half of the story, as the HP of the character who's trying Devour the enemy will also come in play. Basically, it works like the instant death spells from the older FFs, but instead of comparing levels, Devour compares you and the enemy's current HP. So, the enemy has more HP than you, you'll be put to a disadvantage, but if your HP is higher, it becomes reasonably easy to succeed with Devour. (~5 tries if you do it right.) Thanks to Weilun for the explanations. Eekeric@aol.com sent in this strategy: Keep casting Demi with all 3 characters until it starts doing less than 9999 damage, then revert to Diablos summon and let one character try out the Devour command. I must admit, Demi is an extremely useful spell here since all enemies on the good Devour list has an insane amount of HP. Careful with Diablos though, as even though the damage is gravity elemental, it can still kill an enemy since it works based on an enemy's maximum HP. One thing I'd like to point out is that the Ruby Dragons are not worth the effort to eat, since they have some of the highest HP and defence in the game and attacks like Meteor and Breath can drive you nuts. Do the infinite credit trick and refine HP-Ups there is MUCH easier! NOTE! Macaw just told me that he got penalized for Devouring a Malboro. It did 1000 damage to Squall and inflicted him with all the status ailments. Hmm, I really don't know why this is happening because I always successfully gain a point of Spirit when I eat Malboros. Could this be a rare even when the Devour back fires? 4) Any others? MY STATS ======== No, don't get so excited yet, it's not what you think. Anyway, it was a while ago that "Souma" wrote in suggesting that I should put up a section on how many battles I fought, ran away, game time and other stats. I thought it was a great idea but never got around to do it, so here it is, a brand new section. I've gathered 2 sets of data, the first one is right before starting to power up my characters. It's right after the event in disc 3 in Sorceress Memorial after getting Rinoa back. Just take note that I have a habit of leaving the game on when I need to fix dinner and stuff like that, and I also spent a lot of time playing cards. Time: 55:06 SeeD rank: 15 ---Battle report--- Walked: 2,156,631 Battles: 392 Won: 313 Escaped: 79 ---Character report--- Character Enemies killed KO'd EXP 'til next level Squall 56 18 382 Zell 20 7 322 Quistis 46 5 500* Seifer 87 0 - Selphie 127 1 239 Rinoa 29 2 600 Irvine 8 0 621 Edea 91 0 - * Quistis didn't gain a single point of EXP! Now here are my stats after powering up (note I did spend some time on Devour.) I ditched Character report for this though. Time: 73:08 ---Battle report--- Walked: 2,439,831 Battles: 694 Won: 614 Escaped: 80 OTHER TIPS AND TRICKS ===================== -> Magic I think most spells are best Stocked and Junctioned, not cast since all spells are limited. Certain spells are really common though, like the basic elementary spells and healing ones so you can use these without having to hold back. If you're really hungry on spells, try refining them from the menu. The best spells like Ultima, Meteor, Triple etc. shouldn't be cast at all, since they're much better when junctioned and your Limit Breaks are more powerful. I know many of you likes to cast Double/Triple on yourselves but keep in mind that this is only one way of beating bosses, and not a very efficient way at that. Most magic are considerably weaker than all character's Limit Breaks and are barely stronger than a regular attack (if you junction yourselves properly that it.) If you're one of these types, I recommend that you try another approach since this strategy will not work at all against later bosses, since they have insanely high Spirit and even your best damage-dealing spell (Ultima/Meteor) can only do so much, not to mention that they're extremely rare and you're getting weaker with each casting. -> Draw This is VERY important! You should always have the Draw command available on all characters and check every enemy you come across for new spells. You should spend some time drawing from the bosses too, since they tend to have really good spells. Try to get 100 of them on at least one character if you can. Don't be afraid to draw from most bosses since they're really not that dangerous (gosh, I was drawing Ultimas from Ultima Weapon! 290 of them!) and you can draw Cure spells or Life spells from most of them so you won't have much trouble healing your characters. Against bosses with status changing attacks, they usually have Esuna. I don't know about you guys but I'm the greedy type who always tries to get as much as I can carry. The better spells works nicely in your junctions and puts you ahead of your enemies. So if you're having problems, maybe it's because you're not drawing enough spells. -> More on spells Since you cannot level up, the enemy's draw collection will not expand, which makes drawing from bosses essential to getting good spells early. Another really good (and convenient) way of getting spells is to refine them from the menu (thank god these never fail, unlike SO2.) You can win items from enemies (by carding them) and changing cards into items and get even more spell "ingredients". Menu abilities like I Mag-RF or L Mag-RF (or in short, all of them) are essential but thankfully, they're quite cheap to learn. Try to spend some time trying out some all of these, as you can find some real bargain deals! Try to look out for the items that can be bought in stores or won easily, or can be changed into with cards. Some items like Softs or Tents can be refined into Break and Curaga spells, respectively, which are decent junction spells early in the game and are quite affordable. Also, learning Quezacotl's Mid Mag-RF can turn crap spells like Fire and Cure into fairly decent -ra spells, and it's a great way of disposing weak spells to free up slots later in the game. -> Cards I don't know about you guys but I like the card game a lot and it's also rather important aspect of the game since many of them can be refined into really great items! Make sure you have a look at what cards can be turned into what items. So when you win a card game, you'll know which cards to pick. You should pick one that you don't have (if there's a rare card, then definitely pick that one!) or a one that can be made into a decent item. Cards like Bite Bugs and Funguars are essentially useless, as they can only be refined into more crap items that plagues your inventory. Also, I do not recommend that you refine a rare card, as it'll be lost forever. (You could if you don't care about the cards though.) Play cards often to improve your skill, and always look for cards that you don't have, especially rare ones. If you don't like the card game, you can also get a lot of decent cards to refine into items by carding the enemies. -> More on cards If you're the type who plays the card games in every town, you'd noticed that there are some rules that are just a plain pain in the butt!!! (Random, Sudden Death etc.) Try not to keep the card rules from spreading except for the friendly Open rule. Try abolishing rules that you don't like. Actually, I'd rather get rid of every rule there is except for Open. Yes, some of the rules can be a lot of fun and strategic (ie, Random, Open, Same and Plus is a good combination.) But you'd want to win most of the time right? All the extra rules are interesting but all of them put you a step away from a sure victory. Since you'll be winning most of the time, try challenging the Queen of Cards often, so to modify the trade rule. Diff and All are both excellent for players who are on the winning streak or simply mastered the game (like me) so you can gather cards more quickly. Direct is crap though, it often makes you LOOSE rare cards so try not let it spread. Also, certain cards will be completely impossible to turn over if their weak sides are concealed (ie, Seifer's card placed to the top-left slot) and therefore, impossible to win it under the Direct rule. If you must play a Direct game, don't use rare cards (but it's a decent rule if you want to loose a specific card.) -> Rarer cards Very occasionally when you card an enemy, you'd get a completely different card! This is normal so don't freak out when your Funguar turns into a Biggs, Wedge Card. Remember that bosses cannot be carded? This is one way of getting your hands on the rarer boss cards. Now if you look in the card menu, every boss card should have 2 monster names to the bottom right of the screen. This indicates which monsters can turn into that particular boss card on rare occasions. -> Menu Abilities I think Menu Abilities are some of the best skills a GF can learn, since it opens up a huge window of possibility where you can make almost every item and magic with them, and most of these abilities can complement each other to turn some crap items into useful items/spells. However it becomes a pain in the butt when you want to get a _specific_ item/spell and don't know where to start. Well, as I've recently discovered, you can get a *full* list of the ingredients needed and its products from the tutorial menu, but only when you've learnt that specific skill. Neat feature huh? -> GF Like magic, summoning GFs ain't crucial in the success of this game, although they can be useful in certain situations. The GF command is useful, however, when you want to protect a character from attacks. Let them summon a GF and it can absorb the damage for that character if they get hit. In the mean time, have the other character cast Cure on them. Remember that even though the GF's HP is put over the character's, healing spells will heal the team member rather than the GF. Also, always make use of the Boost ability if you can. Try not to summon GFs that often later in the game, not even Eden. Most bosses have really powerful attacks later in the game and are really fast. GF's HP maxes out at 9999 and cannot be healed in battle via any convenient way. Most of them can only deal up to 9999 damage, not to mention you had to wait a while for them to get there. The GFs are however, useful when you just KNOW that your character is going to get KO'd (like via Omega's 9999 damage attack) so let your character summon the GF and it'll take the pain for you. The most useful GF is Doomtrain (IMO) and is worth the effort to summon it in almost all battles. Cerberus is nice if you like spells, Cactuar is nice since his attack is independent of the target's defence while Eden is a big damage maker! Of course, try getting their Compatibility with their master to 1000. -> GF Management Ah, here's an important task. You should choose an ability for the GF to learn rather than letting them do whatever they want to. They'll always learn the GF Abilities if you don't choose one for them, which are among the least useful of the bunch. If a GF has the Boost ability, then it's _usually_ a good idea to have them learn it first since it's cheap and it's quite useful. However, you should switch to Junction Abilities afterwards, then Character/Party. It really depends on the GF. For example, Shiva has a bunch of useless skills, nothing too great so let her learn Boost first, then Str or Vit-J, since you should really boost your characters' stats with them. (And because her other skills are not very useful.) Siren however, has a really good Party Ability – Move-Find so you should start with that one. As for Diablos, it's all about Character/Party Abilities, and his Menu ones don't suck either. However, when you get to Tonberry, you'll want his menu abilities such as Familiar and Call Shop first. Use your own judgement. You should get all the useful abilities before getting all the GF abilities like GFHP +10%. Check up on them regularly to see how they're doing too. -> Limit Break (I prefer to call them desperation attacks or specials.) You should try these often. They're only usable when your HP are low (or with Aura) but keeping them alive isn't really a problem, if junctioned spells into your Vit/Spr, you'll take very little damage from attacks so you'll be able to stay in critical status longer. If they're in danger then heal them, but you don't have to do it immediately when their HP becomes critical. During bosses, you should spend all your time Drawing spells from it then when your HP gets low, dispatch them with your Limit Breaks. (That's why you don't really need attack spells or GF summons all that much.) To use Limit Breaks easily, repeatedly tap the O button to switch between characters when your HP is low (or with Aura) and you'll eventually get the triangle that signifies a Limit is available. -> Quistis' Blue Magic Anyway, you'll be evading encounters if you follow my guide, so how are you supposed to get the items for her to her new Blue Magic? Well, if you card an enemy, they can still drop an item. Also, if you're keen card player like I am, you can also get those items by using the card Mod Menu Ability. Some of them are really easy to get your hands on, such as trading Gesper's card for a Black Hole. Some of the better ones may require up to 10 cards! Such as 10 Behemoth's into one Barrier or 10 Ruby Dragon's into one Inferno Fang. -> Weapon upgrade One thing I wanna get it straight is that you do NOT need to have read a specific magazine that the weapon you wish to upgrade is detailed in. Those magazines' purposes are to only indicate what materials are needed for what weapon models. If you have all the material a certain weapon requires, that weapon model will become available when you enter a Junk Shop. For example, if you have 1 Adamantine, 12 Pulse Ammo and 4 Dragon Fang, you can instantly opt to upgrade Squall's Revolver into a Lion Heart without ever touching the first edition of Weapon Monthly. However, if you only have 11 Pulse Ammo in your inventory instead of 12, you will not even see the Lion Heart in the menu. I don't recommend that you upgrade your weapon every time a better one becomes available, since most of them differ very slightly in power and hit rate. The only character who should modify his weapon regularly is Squall since he gets a new move when he changes his weapon. For all other characters it's a waste of ingredients. You should however, upgrade their weapons when their most powerful model is available. -> Reviving I always use Life instead of Full-Life since Full-Life is a rare spell, and also, if you bring back a party member with Life or a Phoenix Down, their status instantly becomes critical which means they can use Limit Breaks easily. According to Jonathan Ng, Alexander's Revive actually brings them to full HP, but since it's free, use that one if you have it. (Actually, I prefer the Magic command since it's much more versatile.) -> Speed over defence For some of the bosses, it's actually better to have a higher Speed than Vitality/Spirit (ie, save the slot for Spd +20% instead of Vit +40% or something.) The reason behind this is that certain bosses like Ultima Weapon can kill you in one hit regardless of your HP/defence anyway, so it's pointless having a huge defence with no speed. Most bosses of this type has powerful attacks too so if your defence is too low, it can also be hazardous. However, if you follow my guide, you should get decent defence levels even without Character Ability boosts (like 190+ etc.) Also, you may want to use Quistis' Mighty Guard that gives you every positive status imaginable. Her White Wind and Selphie's Full Cure are also extremely useful, especially to deal with Square's trademark, the "down to 1HP attack". When all fails, use a Holy War (Drink). -> Stock or Cast? Normally, it's a good idea to Cast a drawn spell so you don't have to use up your stock, however, keep in mind that casting a drawn spell directly works differently than if you casted it from your stock. There seems to be a lot of randomness involved with casting a drawn spell, as the damage can spread over a wide range! Casting a drawn Cure for example, with a character with Mag of 8 can heal from 30 to 500+ points of damage! So if you need stable damage/healing, stick to the magic command with stocked spells. Two spells have a very strange effect when cast a drawn spell, and they are Demi and Full-Life. Demi will sometimes do less (MUCH less) than 1/4 of the target's current HP, sometimes as low as 10%. Full- Life will not always bring the target back to full HP, so it has the effect of the scrub version: Life. -> Some words on ST-Atk ST-Atk is a great asset given by a chosen few GFs, they let you add a deadly status ailment to your attacks. Though not all status are effective against certain enemies, choosing the right one can mean turning a hideously powerful monster into a harmless machine that you can draw spells from. Remember however, a status will NOT be inflicted if the weapon was used for a Limit Break attack (Squall's Renzokuken for example.) Here's a recommendation of what's they best spells to junction: - Sleep: My personal favourite! Works on more enemies than any of the below and make them helpless for fairly long time, perfect for drawing spells! Even better is that you can cast spells on them or summon GFs without having to wake them up! - Drain: This acts almost like Regen, as every time you attack, you get some HP back! You'll be immortal as long as you keep attacking! Oh yeah, beware of undeads to, as you'll actually loose HP! This works exceptionally well though, as the more damage you can inflict, the more you can absorb! - Death: Instant death, we all like that don't we? Anyway, it's not as good as it is in theory since many of the more powerful enemies are immune to Instant Deaths and is useless on bosses. Works well on weaker enemies. - Break: If this was FFVII, Break'd be 100 times more useful since most of the powerful enemies can be turned to stone. However in FFVIII, Break is even lousier than Death, works on weaker enemies only! - Silence: Not too shabby but many of the enemies don't cast spells very often and many of the powerful ones are immune. Works nicely on soldiers though. But then again, you can just summon Siren. All other status are not as helpful. Ones like Stop or Slow may seem extremely powerful as but keep in mind that those spells works on almost NONE of the enemies! (Stop in particular!) -> Arms for the poor If you don't want to spend 100 Gil to rest at the inn, no sweat, here's an easier (and actually more convenient) way of healing yourselves. Put Selphie in the team and lower her HP to critical. Get into a fight and cast Full Cure from her Slots. It will heal all your HP and status, and since MP is absent from this FF, it means you're as good as new! -> Spell disposal!! Thanks to John Calvin for this trick It's a wonder that so many FFVIII players (including myself) didn't discover that there was a way of discarding unwanted spells! Anyway, what you do is go to the Magic menu and select Exchange. Highlight the spell you wanna dispose of and press the Square button. A message will pop up asking if you want to discard the spell. Select Yes and voila! Gone! Neat trick huh? (Actually, selecting "Use" does the same. Thanks to Weilun for the correction.) -> Draw Points get paid As you've already know, Draw Points will recover after a "while". How long is a while? It seems that (certain?) Draw Points recovers every time you receive your SeeD salary. I may be wrong though, but sometimes when I drew from a Draw Point and gets paid when I walk away, it magically recovers! Of course, certain Draw Points will not recover at all. If it turns blue instead of white then it cannot be recovered. If it's a spell that seems to be way too advanced for that period in the game then it's probably non-recoverable. -> Draw Points: Overworld or underworld? The Draw Points on the field map are completely different. First off, the field map Draw Points are spherical shaped, while the over world Draw Points "exists" over a part of the land. (Meaning that they have no material form.) Also, overworld Draw Points are completely invisible, even equipping Siren's Move-Find ability won't show their whereabouts. They usually occupy coastal areas, edges of mountains and various other "corners" of the world, so search those places if you're keen. Finally, the over world Draw Points are extremely inefficient because the most number of spells you can draw from it at one time is 5 charges! (I usually get 1!!) Compare that with 15 for field map Draw Points and 9 per round in combat (unlimited.) -> Gravity is NOT GF-friendly Gravity type attacks can never kill you right? Yes, but only if you're a human. What do you mean you ask? Well, the problem lies when a character is summoning a GF. Apparently, the game uses the summoner's current HP and NOT the GF's, so if your character has a very high current HP and your GF has relatively low current HP, it can actually kill them! However, if your character has low HP while the GF has high HP, the damage are comparable to bug bites. -> Vitality Zero or Spirit Zero? I guess you all have heard of the Vitality Zero status (shown in battle by a purple tint.) Anyway, that's misleading as magic defence (ie, Spirit) is also lowered! Try summoning Doomtrain twice in a row, you'll notice that the damage dealt by the second summon has been raised significantly. -> A good combo Try junctioning 100 Drains to your ST-Atk and equip the Darkside command. Use it and not only will you deal 3 times the usual damage, you'll also gain drain a huge amount of HP. I've forgotten who told me about this though, sorry... The only flaw to this trick is that you'll never recover to your full HP. Remember that the penalties for using Darkside (loose 10% HP) takes place AFTER the attack, so you'll always end up with only 90% of your total HP. -> You have been deceived! Well I'm not sure if you guys ever heard about this thing saying that all monster's levels are determined by Squall's level. That's WRONG!! *Gasp* Yup that right, the enemy's levels are determined by the _average_ of your (active?) party member's levels, or so it seems, because when I levelled up Quistis and not Squall, the enemy's levels are a LOT higher than Squall's. This is just an estimated prediction though so don't quote me on this, but it's a pretty good estimate I'd have to say. (The regular deviations in enemy levels are still there though.) -> To draw, or not to draw The field map Draw Points seems to have 3 states. The "empty" state where the ball is colorless. There seems to be 2 drawable states though, "full" and "semi-full". In its "full" state, the orb is filled completely with vibrant purple colored stripes. The "semi- full" state seems to have a very faint tint of purple color and less number of stripes. Sometimes it's very hard to tell whether a Draw Point is "empty" or "semi-full", since the purple present in "semi- full" Draw Points is very vague. The difference between "full" and "semi-full" Draw Point is the number of spells you can draw. You always seem to get 2 or 3 charges if you draw from a "semi-full" draw point, but the "full" states gives you a minimum of 6 to a maximum of 15. The fast recovering Draw Points (like the ones in the Shumi Village) seems to yield "semi- full" Draw Points more often than not. -> Gain skills even quicker Christian Groff suggested to learn certain skills with items and not AP, which is a really good idea. Here's a list he sent me: Steel Pipe: SumMag +10% Star Fragment: SumMag +20% Energy Crystal: SumMag +30% Samantha Soul: SumMag +40% (for Bahamut, Doomtrain and Eden) Healing Mail: GFHP +10% Silver Mail: GFHP +20% Gold Mail: GFHP +30% Diamond Armor: GFHP +40% (for Bahamut, Doomtrain and Eden) Healing Ring: Recover (Leviathan) Phoenix Spirit: Revive (Alexander) Gambler Spirit: Card (Quezacotl) Bomb Spirit: Kamikaze (Cactuar) Knight's Code: Cover (Brothers) Monk's Code: Counter (Carbuncle) There are many more items out there that lets you learn new skills, so search for them. Note however, there are no items to aid learning Menu Abilities. -> What to unlearn Later in the game, it is wise to buy Amnesia Greens from the pet shop and use them to help a GF forget an ability. All GFs can learn 22 skills at once, but you need to free up slots in order to learn new ones with items. This is important because you need to split your GFs six ways right before fighting Ultimecia, and you'll need enough –J abilities for all your major attributes for all characters. So here's my recommendation on what to forget: * If a GF has Elem-Defx2 or ST-Defx2, forget Elem-Def or ST-Def won't hurt, since having multiple ones won't grant any special effects. -Defx4 abilities acts in a similar way. * If you always pair together certain GFs, you get forget the Item, GF, Magic and Draw commands on one GF, since every GF has those 4 abilities. * When a GF's max HP is already 9999, forget a GFHP+??% probably won't lower it by much. (Especially for the GFs near the end.) * If you never summon a GF, you might want to forget their GFHP+??% or SumMag+??% skills. * You might want to delete the "Bonus" skills after you're done with them. * You may want to forget any HP, Str, Vit, Mag or Spr+20% if you have 40%, since a 40% is enough to raise the stats to max after powering up. (You can even delete Bahamut's Str and Mag+60% since it has +60% available.) * I personally don't like Elem-Atk very much so... (More than 6 GFs have that next to trash ability anyway.) However, do NOT delete any Menu Abilities or other unique and otherwise irreplacable skills, such as the Devour command or Auto- Haste etc. Don't forget any "rare" skills either, like anything that boosts Hit, Evade, Luck or Speed. -> Another good combo Thanks to Iaian Ross for this trick. This is a good use for the "useless" Zombie spells. Junction 100 Zombies to your ST-Atk and it will turn enemies into undeads. Afterwards, any reviving method will kill them in one hit, like Life spells, Phoenix Downs and the best of all, the Revive command ('cuz it's free.) This is a good way of dealing really high HP/powerful enemies like the ones on the Island Closest to Hell. -> Perhaps the best combo of all... It's (of course) critical status + Aura status!!! That way, your character will have a 90% chance of executing their best Limit Breaks (if they're random.) I've tried this on Zell when facing Omega Weapon and all four Duels came in 12 seconds!!! (No need to say, I trashed Omega and flushed him down the loo.) Anyway, try this out on the other characters, you'll almost be guarenteed to execute Lion Heart, Wishing Star, The End, Mighty Guard that grants everyone Aura and a slow Shot bar for Irvine. -> Rules are made to be broken Thanks to FenalNoa for the info on this. You should all know about he "5th trade rule" by now, it's the "Null" rule. (This tip used to be in the "Misc." section.) However, there was more to that rule than a pointless no trading game. Well, playing a Null game has the effect of completely deleting ALL rules in that region!!!!! The guy by the sea in Balamb used this rule before the Fire Cavern event, and playing a game with him has made the Open rule dissappear (and I had to pay the Queen 30000 Smackers to re-establish it in Balamb.) The Null trade rule, is however, potentially really useful since it has the power of nullify all those horrible rules in Space, Centra, Trabia, Dollet etc... But I myself have only seen that rule once. Does anyone know how to make the Null rule appear in other regions? -> Rule transfer tips I'm not sure if anyone knows this already but I've just found this out last night. Spreading a rule in another region also has the effect of spreading the trade rule from the original region, if it has been established. For example, play the Queen in Balamb to change the trade rule to "All" then play many many games to make the rule stay. (Ask the Queen about the trade rule in the region and she should say "Blah blah will spread throughout the region." If she says something else, then it means it still hasn't gained a solid ground, and will dissappear with time.) Now when you get to Timber (Galbadia region) and play a card game, ending up spreading the Open rule, and the "All" trade rull will also be spread!!! So before you leave Balamb, make sure the "All" rule (or "Diff") stays for good, as you will want to spread the Open rule from Balamb to all major regions, and therefore, making the world much more tradable for us! -> Steal and not Mug Thanks to Treylane47@aol.com for this trick Well, this sure helps if you wanna steal something but don't want the EXP. Simply give the Mug command to someone wil relatively low Hit% (Zell with his worst weapon) and cast Blind on him. His Hit% will be massively reduced that he almost never hits, but using the Mug command still allows a chance to steal. Of yeah, never try this with someone who's weapon has a 255% Hit. -> Something you may find useful I don't know if you know this but the Invincible status (effects of Hero, Holy War or Invincible Moon) will instantly negate all negative statuses your character had been inflicted. It does not seem to negate positive statuses though (whoohoo!!), at least not Haste, Aura and Float. (Protect and Shell won't make any difference anyway.) This might be useful when fighting against Malboros, execute Rinoa's Invincible Moon will cure all your party's ailments. More tips comin' up. CHARACTER EVALUATION ==================== Like my previous FAQs, I'll detail each character in this section, with their strengths, weaknesses, Limit Breaks and some other stuff. BTW, if you were wondering about the stats my characters had, they're in this section. I've found out something quite interesting from this second time through the game. The character's stats at level 100 will always be the same! So it seems that this game uses fixed level up stats boosts instead of random ones like in most other RPGs. The one on the left is my "test run" score and the one on the right is my best score, also the maximum you can get from equipping the Bonus abilities. Note only HP, Str, Vit, Mag and Spr have the MAX values, since all the other ones don't change. MAX HP is calculated since I never equip HP Bonus. (Note all stats are of the character at level 100 with their BEST weapon, meaning higher Str and Hit. Also, none of them are junctioned in any way.) ---Squall Leonhart--- MAX HP 4187 6977 Str 162 170 Spd 37 Vit 124 134 Luck 22 Mag 130 138 Eva 3% Spr 117 129 Hit 255% Comments on stats: Squall usually has the crappiest stats since you'll be forced to use him the most in the whole game, while his Limits are one of the best. He gets fairly good stats if you manage to not gain a level at all. His Str is decent. All his gunblades has 255 Hit rate though, meaning his normal attacks will never miss. Limit Break: Renzokuken When this is used, Squall will rush to his target and slash them anywhere from 4 to 8 times. A bar pops up at the bottom of the screen and green "waves" will start to flow from the right to the left, each of them represents a gunblade attack. You're supposed to pull the trigger (ie, the R1 button) at the exact time as the wave reaches the box near the left, and a "hit" will register, meaning that single attack will do 1.5 times of normal damage. (Very much like his normal attack.) Otherwise you'll miss and get no damage bonus for that single hit (and likely to screw up the timing of your next attack. I can never get the remaining hits right when I miss the timing.) You'll get the "Perfect" message if you timed every hit right, but it doesn't mean anything in terms of combat. I think each hit does about as much damage as his normal attack, or perhaps slightly more. His Limits are dependent on Squall's Strength. Note this is non-elemental even if you've junctioned spells into his Elemental-Atk. Randomly after executing the 4-8 hits, Squall may execute a finishing blow. Note the chance of Squall executing his finishing blow will NOT increase if you get a "Perfect" for the initial Renzokuken hits, it's just random. Squall will start the game with his most basic finishing blow, Rough Divide and the rest can be gained from upgrading his gunblades. Note however, not all models of the gunblade come with a finishing blow, just some of them. The initial Renzokuken hits are single targeted but a couple of his finishing blows can hit all enemies on screen. Gunblade model Finishing blow Revolver => Rough Divide Shear Trigger => Fated Circle [Other models] => Blasting Zone Lion Heart => Lion Heart (aka End of Heart) Ok, execuse me everyone, but the gunblade theory I had last time was TOTALLY wrong! Thanks to Iaian Ross who informed me about this. Anyway, it seems that whenever you upgrade Squall's gunblade, he'll gain the finishers that model grants AND all the finishers below it. In other words, Squall does not learn the finishers but the gunblades comes with certain finishers learned. For example, Squall upgrade his Revolver to a Cutting Trigger (skipping the Shear Trigger), he'll be able to use not only Rough Divide and Blasting Zone, but Fated Circle as well, since the Cutting Trigger is more advanced than the Shear Trigger. Because of this, the theory of increasing the chances of executing Lion Heart by upgrading the Revolver to a Lion Heart and thus trying not to learn Fated Circle or Blasting Zone would not work. Sorry if the previous theory gave anyone any trouble. Note: Fated Circle and Blasting Zone hits all enemies, however, if enemies are affected by Sleep prior to Renzokuken, the enemies which Renzokuken was not targeted on but was hurt by either of the above finishers will NOT wake up! -Rough Divide- This is what Squall used on Seifer in the intro FMV. Squall runs towards his target while while sliding the blade across the ground, then he leaps into the air bringing up rocks and a huge vertical shock wave damaging the enemy. This looks pretty cool but does more damage of that of a regular Renzokuken hit. Critical happen often with this! -Fated Circle- Squall will leap into the air and spins around with his blade on his way down, forming a ring shaped sonic boom-like force that cuts all enemies, then explodes into flames. Not a very powerful move, but stronger than a Renzokuken hit. -Blasting Zone- Gosh this takes ages! Squall gets surrounded by a whirlwind-like force field as he extends his gunblade up into the air. A vertical beam force lengthens from the blade and extends out all the way into space, then Squall brings his blade down as strong gale hurts all enemies. I don't like this very much as it only does slightly more damage than Fated Circle but lower than Rough Divide, and takes ages to animate. Extremely pointless but seems to be the finisher that gets triggered the most in the long run. -Lion Heart- This was originally named "End of Heart" in the Japanese version which was a much better name. Squall rushes to the enemy and uppercuts them into the air, then leaps into the air and beats them up with 16 hits of his gunblade, ending with a flashy diagonal strike. Then the enemy drops back to the ground. This is the most powerful attack in the whole game. Squall executes exactly 16 hits (thanks to Qualera) and each hit usually does 9999 damage. (Less against enemies with REALLY high defence, but the damage never really goes below 9000 per hit.) Can kill most bosses in one hit except Omega Weapon and the last form of the last boss. Note there's an extra hit when the enemy drops back onto the ground afterwards, making it a total of 17 hits!!! ---Quistis Trepe--- MAX HP 3883 6643 Str 161 163 Spd 34 Vit 118 122 Luck 21 Mag 132 134 Eva 3% Spr 121 126 Hit 107% Comments on stats: Quistis has the worst overall stats of the group it seems but since her Limit Breaks are some of the best, Quistis stands out in the game as the best character, IMO. Very pretty too, and looks a LOT like Aya! :-) Limit Break: Blue Magic I've always loved Blue Magic in the series. Blue Magic started all the way back in FFV where it's the specialty of Blue Mages, since they can only learn new spells through being hit by it, the game balances them out by giving them the ability to use better equipment. In FFVI, only Strago the Blue Mage can use Blue spells (Lores) and he has a few decent ones like Grand Train, but it still made him a less useful character. In FFVII, Blue spells were named Enemy Skills and can be learnt by the corresponding materia. They were really useful though, especially in the Battle Arena since they count as YELLOW materia, not Green, so you'll still be able to use spells when your Green materia breaks. Anyway, Quistis's Blue Magic are a bit different since she does not learn them by being hit as the enemy casts them like in the previous fantasies, instead, you have to use certain items that can be won or stolen from enemies on her. Some of her better ones are really hard to get though (Ray Bomb, Shockwave Pulsar, Mighty Guard, Homing Laser etc.) Blue spells have always worked in strange ways so even though a certain attack is generally more powerful, another attack may do more damage than it under certain circumstances. There are a few great things about Quistis' Blue magic too, because she has a great variety of them and she has one for every situation (ie, multi-target attack, instant death, elemental, status, gravity elemental, healing and defence!) Her spells are also extremely dependable, and she's the ONLY character who has non-random Limit Breaks. The disadvantage of it is that she has the least damage potential. Note: None of Quistis' damage dealing Blue Magic (except Gatling Gun) can be blocked, meaning the damage cannot be halved by both Protect and Shell. Likewise, no Blue Magic can be reflected. Also, despite that they're enemy skills, they work NOTHING like the enemy's version. I'll describe the differences (if any) below. -Laser Eye- Used by: Belhelmel has it as a counter attack Learnt from: None, initial spell Quistis starts the game with this. She turns away from the enemy then release a green beam of laser from her eyes and hurts the enemy. It's fairly weak (~200 damage at the start of the game but can get a bit stronger.) It's cool to watch though and actually does fairly decent damage if you power Quistis up. I think the Belhelmels only use this as a counter attack. -Ultra Wave- Used by: Caterchipiller Learnt from: Spider Web Defeat Catachipillers nets you this, they're really common. You can also get it from changing Catachipiller's card into it. Quistis damages all enemies with pink spiral waves that pop out from her body. This damages all enemies and does 300+ damage near the start but I think Laser Eye is generally more powerful. -Electrocute- Used by: Cockatrice Learnt from: Coral Fragment I think steal/defeating Cockatrices can get you this. I got it by trading Creeps' card for it. Quistis released countless golden lighting bolts from her body and fries all enemies, looks a lot like Vincent's Limit Break in FFVII. Kinda weak if you ask me though. This is like Trine from FFVII, which is weaker than Beta (Fire Breath) and Aqualung (Aqua Breath). I usually don't bother with this as even against robots, her other attacks does more damage. -Level ? Death- Used by: Torama, Omega Weapon (LV5 Death) Learnt from: Cursed Spike Steal/win from Tri-Face, or occasionally dropped by Molboros. It's easier to trade Tri-Face's card for it since those enemies appear later in the game. Not a good one at all! A reaper appears and smacks the enemies with its scythe and either kills it in one hit or has no effect. Thank god this is the only level-something Blue spell as I hated them. This is strange since the level multiplier can vary, from 5 to 1, depending on Quistis and your party's condition. I used it when I was powering up on the weaker enemies, and sometimes it works quite well. (Oh yeah, try this on those Fastitocalons.) The enemy's version has a fixed multiplier, ie, LV5 Death. -Degenerator- Used by: Gesper Learnt from: Black Hole Win from Gespars or trade its card for it. A large bubble surrounds the enemy and pulls it into a dimensional portal and is never seen again. This is the second best instant death spell in the game (next to Selphie's The End of course) as it works on ALL normal enemies, even really powerful ones like Iron Giants, Ruby Dragons and Behemoths. I've never seen it miss except for the Tonberries and I don't think it works on bosses though. Iaian Ross said that the Gespars does indeed use this attack, but only when you drag the battle on for over 5 minutes. Also, it doesn't really kill the affected character, but it removes them from battle (like the Midgar Zolom's attack in FF7.) -Aqua Breath- Used by: Grand Mantis, Chimera Learnt from: Water Crystal Win from Chimeras or trade 1 Fastitocalon or 5 Fastitocalon-F's card for it. Quistis sends streams of water bubbles at all enemies. This is a classic Blue spell and works fairly well too. It does really good damage, even Leviathan's Tsunami with Boost seems to be weaker! Get this early in the game by trading cards for it and it'll be Quistis' strongest attack for a while. (Water elemental.) Grand Mantis' version will cause Silence as well. Chimera has the normal version alright. -Micro Missile- Used by: GIM52A Learnt from: Missile Defeat or steal from GIM52A Quistis extends her arms forward and sends out many missiles that comes in on the enemy. This works very different to most spells as it's a gravity type spell, in that it will take out a portion of the target's current HP. The effect may vary though, from 50%, 75%, 87.5% and eventually 93.75%!!! However, the maximum damage this attack does is 9999 versus enemies with very high HP. Note some enemies are not a target of gravity type spells so this will score a miss on them instead. This is certainly one of her better spells. -Acid- Used by: Gayla (??), Tri-Face Learnt from: Mystery Fluid Defeat Gaylas or trade its card for it. Quistis turns away and a patch of sizzling liquid comes out of no where and burns the enemy. I don't use this too often but this will do light damage to an enemy but can also give them negative status. However, you won't deal a status ailment to the enemy every time you use this. I've only gotten the Poison status from this, but I assume there are more when Quistis/party's condition worsens. I've also seen Vitality Zero. I don't think the enemy's version causes a status, but it's much more damaging (about 4000+ at times!) -Gatling Gun- Used by: SAM08G (Actually, Quistis used this in an FMV in Disc 1) Learnt from: Running Fire Defeat/steal from SAM08G or Iron Giants, or trade SAM08G's card for it. This is like the gun Quistis used to shoot down X-ATM092 in the FMV after the Dollet mission. The damage it does it very good and it's non-elemental, but only targets one enemy. Sometimes it does really crappy damage and I've just found out why. It appears that Gatling Gun's damage is based on Quistis' Str and not Mag, I didn't junction spells to her Str so this attack was really weak when I used it. However, if you do junction good spells this is VERY powerful! This is strange since it's the only Blue spell that is subject to a barrier, Protect can halve Gatling Gun's damage. -Fire Breath- Used by: Ruby Dragon Learnt from: Inferno Fang Defeat Ruby Dragons or trade 10 of its card for it. I've only used this once. It looks just like the Breath attack the Ruby Dragon uses and is just as powerful. I think this is fire elemental but the dragon's version isn't for some reason. Burns all enemies. This is Fire elemental while the Ruby Dragon's version is both non elemental and physical (ie, is affected by Protect, not Shell.) -Bad Breath- Used by: Malboro, (Geezard) Learnt from: Malboro's Tentacle Defeat/steal from Malboros or trade 4 of its card for it. Quistis sends a breath of foul looking dark gas that sweeps all enemies. The effect is multiple status ailments on enemies but can vary depending on her condition. It can inflict Poison, Silence, Stop, Blind, Sleep, Slow, Doom (Death Sentence), Petrifying, Confuse and Berserk. Maybe Curse as well. I'm not too sure about Vitality Zero though. I use this on annoying enemies and paralyze them so I can draw from them. NOTE! If Quistis' condition is really bad (ie, below 1% health, status etc) Bad Breath will kill all the enemies (vulnerable to death attacks) in one hit!!!!! Which does the same thing as LV1 Death (LV? Death at its best!) Geezard has a Bad Breath attack as well, but it's completely different, as it deals damage rarely a status, it also looks very different. -White Wind- Used by: Adamantoise Learnt from: Whisper Steal from high level Adamantoise Soothing wind blows out of nowhere and surrounds the team. This is the second best healing spell in the game (and again, next to Selphie's Full-Cure, which is the best) and comes really useful in later fights, makes Quistis a very useful character. This works differently than all its previous incarnations in that is cures the difference between Quistis' current HP and her maximum HP. For example, Quistis has only 1 HP left and her maximum HP is 9999, White Wind heals 9998 to all members in your party. It does NOT cure status ailments though, like it did in FFVI and FFVII. This is different from Adamantoise's version because they can heal about 5000+ damage when they're at FULL HEALTH!! -Homing Laser- Used by: Mobile Type 8, Elastoids Learnt from: Laser Cannon Steal from the Mobile Type 8 boss. I think you may also steal from Elastoids for it too. Quistis releases 3 beams of laser that homes in on the enemy. I got this really late but I wasn't disappointed, as the Mobile Type 8 boss has this attack but it's really weak. It can do about 7000-9999 damage (later in the game) but only works on one enemy. I like to use this on Adel at the start of Disc 4 when you HAVE to use a single target attack on her. -Mighty Guard- Used by: Iron Giant Learnt from: Barrier Steal/kill Behemoths or trade 10 of its card for it. A translucent blue globe envelops each character in the team. This is the best Final Fantasy Blue spell at it's best! The effects of this spell will also vary. It will only put Protect and Shell on all members at its early stages, but Regen is present when Quistis is hurt bad, then Float and Haste are a bit rarer. The most useful status (and rarest) is Aura, effectively giving your team defensive, offensive and speed advantage over the enemies. You'll be using this spell a lot later in the game, especially against bosses like Omega and Ultima Weapon. The Iron Giant's version will only give them Protect and Shell. -Ray-Bomb- Used by: X-ATM092 Learnt from: Power Generator Steal from high level Blitz WITHOUT the Rare Item ability. REALLY rare! (I was extremely lucky and got this on my first try, YAY!) I heard you can pick on up in Lunatic Pandora if you did something in Laguna's second scenario. Steam pops up from the back of Quistis' head as she emits a laser from her eye and sweeps it across all enemies. The ground below the enemies turns gold and calls forth a massive explosion that sends all foes into the air and back again. Uhh.. This spell is really disappointing as after all the hard work getting a Power Generator, you come to find out that it's not all that good! The damage is only medium, about 4000-8000 on all enemies later in the game, and is sometimes not as strong as Aqua/Fire Breath! -Shockwave Pulsar- Used by: Griever Learnt from: Dark Matter Collect 100 Cursed Spikes and use Siren's Tool-RF Menu Ability to make it into a Dark Matter. Siren MUST be at LV100. All enemies gets trapped inside a white sphere where is gets lifted into another dimension and gets hurt by a dark energy blast. This is Quistis' best spell and one of the few attacks in the game capable to doing 5 digit damage. Usually around 12000 but if she has really good stats this can do well over 23,000! Ok ok, this is way less than the 200,000 or so that Squall or Zell can do at times, but it's really dependable. ---Zell Dincht--- MAX HP 4018 6778 Str 163 164 Spd 35 Vit 122 125 Luck 20 Mag 132 134 Eva 3% Spr 116 119 Hit 103% Comments on stats: Zell's one of the better ones. He's very strong and gets good HP, Vitality and Strength. His Magic is also pretty good but has low Spirit. Limit Break: Duel Zell uses a mixture of that of Sabin's (FFVI) Blitz and Tifa's (FFVII) Limit Breaks. Like that of Sabin, you must press certain buttons in a certain order to execute the move, each move has a different combination. However, like that of Tifa, Zell can chain together multiple martial arts attacks together, forming a long chain of deadly combos. You're given a time limit to munch in the combinations required for Duel and the chain combo ends either when the timer reaches zero, or when a finishing blow is executed. Zell's Duel has 4 different time intervals, and as his condition worsens, his chance of getting a longer interval increases. Duel can last around 4, 6, 9 or 12 seconds. He'll start with Punch Rush for the 4 and 6 second version but will use Booya first if he gets the 9 or 12 second version, so don't expect the same moves to can be linked after them. Note however, only certain moves can link after another and certain moves only links after a certain combination of moves (finishing blows are one of them.) For example, Mach Kick can always link after Dolphin Blow but Heel Drop cannot. Meteor Strike can link after Dolphin Blow only if Mach Kick was done before Dolphin Blow. These combinations of moves are sometimes quite confusing and I don't recommend you memorize every single link. To help you, the game gives you a list of the moves that can be linked after the move you're currently executing and their combinations, but you'll take less time if you knew which attack to do without having to look at it. Try practice this until you have come up with a certain pattern of the moves that you like, or try to recognize any "loops" (ie, 2 or 3 attacks that links into each other and can be repeated." Zell's Limit Break has the highest damage potential (yes even higher than Squall's Lion Heart finishing blow) but it all comes down to skill – memorizing few of the critical links and a quick tapper.) Practice makes perfect! Zell starts the game with 4 basic attacks and 1 finishing blow. He can learn the rest from reading Combat King magazines found throughout the world or bought in Esthar. -Punch Rush- Combination: O, X Just 3 repeated punches, nothing too special. This is also his weakest attack but it's kinda easy to tap and links before and after most moves. -Booya- Combination: Right, Left This looks like a headbutt but it's actually a knee! (Is it?) I found this is the easiest move to tap and does about the same damage as Punch Rush (ie, lower than the rest of his attacks.) Links too and from Punch Rush, thus making an easy loop that's preferred over his more spectacular moves by experts. -Heel Drop- Combination: Up, Down This looks weird as Zell lifts one of his leg up as if he's doing a vertical split then bring it down at the enemy. I guess you can sorta call it an Axe Kick. Slightly more damaging than the previous and the motion is just as simple to do. The disadvantage is that few moves links to this. -Mach Kick- Combination: Left, Left, O Zell kicks the enemy with a high roundhouse. I like this move. It does about 1.5 times as much damage than Punch Rush/Booya and isn't all that hard to tap. It links to and from Dolphin Blow, which is the loop that I use often. -Dolphie Blow- Combination: L1, R1, L1, R1 Combat King issue: 001 Like Tifa's attack from FFVII except there are 2 dolphins instead of one, and you can see the ocean behind the enemy. Does the most damage out of all the normal moves but requires 4 buttons to activate, but isn't all that hard to do if you practice. (I can sometimes do this in less time than Punch Rush, since I don't like the latter very much.) -Meteor Strike- Combination: Up, O, Down, O Combat King issue: 002 This looks just like Tifa's from FFVII, but it works differently. Zell lifts the enemy up with one arm (gosh he's strong, but what's even more impressive is that Tifa is as strong as Zell is!), leaps into the air and yank them back to the ground. As hinted from the magazine article ("...the bigger they are, the harder they fall.."), this move is of gravity elemental. (Ok, gravity attacks ain't defined as an element like in FFVII, but since they're used so much and are so wonderfully useful, I might as well give them credit and their own respective element that they deserve.) I think this does damage equal to 75% of the target's maximum HP, but it cannot do more than 9999 damage per hit. Also, it does not work on most bosses (but I think Mobile Type 8 is one which this attack DID work.) Against enemies with HUGE defence and HP (Ruby Dragons, Iron Giants etc.) you'd want to use this as often as possible, since it will do 9999 damage per hit, very worthwhile against those enemies. NOTE! The only enemy where this did not work on was a Behemoth The motion is quite easy to do (despite how the magazine says this is tricky) but won't link after many moves. Note if this attack does 0 damage, it means that the enemy is dead. The below moves are finishers, meaning that no matter how much time is left on the timer, Duel will end upon executing these moves. They will show up on the screen with their names flashing and they're all very tricky moves to do. Also, you can't just pull them right off the air, as they require a certain combination of moves to be done in a series before the option for a finishing blow becomes available. Remember, the pre-requisite moves are only the simplest chains that a finisher can be invoked! Meaning you can chain anything before the pre-requisite moves and still trigger the finishing blow. Note I don't know who started this whole thing about Zell must be at a certain level to use a certain finishing blow. I was able to use ALL of them at LEVEL 12!!! Go figure. -Burning Rave- Combination: Down, Down, Down, Down, Circle Prerequisite moves: Booya, Heel Drop, Meteor Strike, Booya or: Punch Rush, Mach Kick, Punch Rush, Heel