Carbon Ocelot's Final Fantasy 8 Walkthrough

Index

Intro
Disc 1
Disc 2
Disc 3
Disc 4
SeeD Tests
Side Quests
Other GF
Cheats
Card Game
Card Mods
Weapons
Magazines
GF Abilities
Refine Abilities
Item List

Single Page Version

Optional: Enter the Rangnarok:
If you just wish to beat the game you may safely skip this section. Otherwise, jump through the last door (the one farthest from where you started - you kind of have to jump off the middle of the link) to get back to the Rangnorok. When you go through the door, you will be on the beach off the eastern coast of Esthar in Grandidi forest. Enable Enc-None, then go north a little way until you can pass through a valley. Then follow the right wall to the small Chocobo Shrine up there. The shrine looks like a normal Chocobo Forest, except that is is in the middle of a regular forest. Once you get there you can ride the Chocobos in this forest for free. Just hop on him.

OK, Why would you want to do this? Because the Chocobos can run through shallow water! Head east to the coast where your door is, then follow the coast line all the way down to near cactuar island. You are looking for the Rangnarok. (Hint: You can find it by looking for the big red dot on the full screen map. Once you get to the Rangnarok, if you have defeated all the CC members, you can now play against them again, only this time they have RAD cards. You can complete your full collection of cards here and card mod them for all sorts of usefull things. In addition to playing the CC group, you can also go after other GFs and devour some enemies (See toward the end of the Disk 3 section of this walkthrough.) As far as I know, you can't enter any populated areas that I have found.

Card Club Strategy:
One of the quickest ways to get your characters really leveled up involves playing the card game here. In the room where you first found the Purple Propagator (the one with the long stair case on the right) you'll find the two girls who are Card Club Diamond. They play with Trabia's rules. Directly up from there (through the bit door with the ciricle) is CC Jack, who plays with Balam's Rules. If you go through the smaller door on the far right instead, you can find a save point. So here's the trick. The girl on the left will regularly play with any card you don't have from pages 8-10. You can use the Balam / Trabia jump to try and have various rules you don't like abolished. This means you can get rid of random, if you haven't already. One thing to know about CC Diamand. The one on the LEFT is the one you want to play. She plays with pretty much all cards. The one on the RIGHT only plays with SOME cards. If you play Left CC Diamond, she'll play with the first page 8 card you don't have, then the first page 9, then the first page 10. This means you can Card Mod the Angelo card into 100 Elixirs, then Med LV-Up those to 10 Megalixirs, then win back the Angelo card and quickly get yourself 100 Megalixirs, which could come in handy. I like to play with Irvine, Zell, Edea, Seifer, and Squall. That's a power card in every corner, and Zell as a good all-rounder. I'm guessing you're OK with becoming rediculusly overpowered at this point, so here's a guid for which cards to use and win back, and what you can do with them:

Card	What you get	Use Ability	To get...
Chubby Chocobo	100xLuvLuv G	Nothing	Each LuvLuv G will Raise compatibility w/ all GF by 20.
Gilgamesh	10xHoly Wars	GFAbl Med-RF Forbid Med-RF	10xHoly Wars => 2xKnight's Code => Forbid Med-RF => 2x Vit-Up
Minotaur	10xAdamantines	Forbid Med-RF	10xAdamantines => 2xVit Up
Eden	3xMonk's Code	Forbid Med-RF	1xMonk's Code => 1xStr-Up
Irvine	3xRocket Engines	Forbid Med-RF	5xRocket Engines => 1xSpd-Up
Zell	3xHyper Wrist	Forbid Med-RF	10xHyper Wrist => 1xStr-Up
Edea	3xRoyal Crowns	Forbid Med-RF	10xRoyal Crowns => 1xMag-Up

Other Doors:
There are two other doors by the chain. The first door teleports you to Galbadia- Wilburn Hill (near the now destroyed missle base). For yucks, you can go stand on top of the missle base remains and draw confuse. ;) The second door takes you to Centra- Serengetti Plains. You can get to the Centra Ruins from here, and obtain Odin and/or Tonberry at this location. I'm not sure there is anything else you can do on the Centra plains. Well, other than fight fish, jelleyes and geezards. I suppose you can get a chocobo at the chocobo forest there, but, uh, why...?

The Castle Improper:
Here we come a castling among... Oh Sorry, lost my focus for a bit there. (Danged ADHD!) Head up the chain from the beach where Edea lives (You have to go through a door to get there, though.) When you get to the top, you can save your game (and draw flare if you don't have all your chars full of it) and I suggest you do. Once saved, you can go back down the chain and level up your guys if you thing you don't have them good enough. When you have saved your game, head forward and all your other characters will show up. You will be allowed to select a new party, then you enter the castle. What's going on here is that there are different monsters in the area here that have sealed off certain powers.

You must get your powers back so that you can do things like save your game, revive down members, use items, use GFs, etc. Your party is broken up into two groups. I recommend two parties where one group (the usless one) only have Diablo's Enc-None ability. This party is only used to pull levers and flip switches, etc. The other party should be REALLY buff and kick-butt. I'll go through this in the order I recommend you do it. If you think you have a beter way of doing it, by all means let me know. Also, depending on which end game strategy you want to use, there are two ways to work this. One strategy is to get all your guys up to really powerful, and the other strategy is to just use three good guys to beat this section. If you are planning on getting all your guys up to powerfull, don't forget to switch around the character's you are using to do the real battles. They way I do it is this: when I go to save my game afer every major battle, I look to make sure I am fighting with Squall and the two weakest (I use lowest level to mean weakest in this case) characters. One more thing... If you missed any GF on your way here, you may want to draw any of the ????? you run across while fighting the minions below. You're welcome. ;) )

First Minion/Ability: Sphinxara/Magic:
You really need magic to defeat some of the other opponents (as they are only suseptable to things like Fire or Wind, etc. So head up the stairs in the middle of the enterence way with your real party. Junction your most powerful magic (ultima/full-life) to your strength, and don't forget to junction your Str +40% GF abilities if you have them, then go beat him up. He has two faces, and you have to beat both of them. You can Mug an elixir from him. :) If he summons another enemy, just ignore that one. You only have to kill off HIM, not his summons. Once you have defeated him, take the time to stop and junction your magic skill to your characters. Since you can't use any of you other abilities anyway, it doesn't really matter which one you junction to. Now (despite the fact that the game says you can't save) go back out the door and down the stairs to the enterence of the castle. You can save your game there, but don't save over the previous save spot, as that is where you will need to come back to if you find out your character's aren't powerful enough to defeat these guys. Don't forget to swap out some guys if you are playing that method. Now that you have your magic let's go onto the next battle.

Second Minion/Ability: Trauma/Draw or Resurect:
Depending on whether you character's have plenty of the best spells in the game, you may want to postpone enabling the Draw command for a while. If you don't have very good magic (how did you get this far?!?) then you will want to enable Draw for the next battle. Get your tripple and Tornado magic ready, and head up the main stairs again to where you fought Sphixara. From that screen, head right and go through the door at the end of the banister. In the next room, head down the stair case and through the door at the top of the screen (ignore the rope and green disc for now.)

Once you enter the art gallery, look at all the paintings, then head up the stairs on the right. You're going to need to look at all the paintings on this level too. Go left first and look at all the paintings you see, the return here and do the same thing on the right side. At the very far right, continue until you come to a draw point. I know, I know, no one can draw yet. But you aren't here to c draw. Look down at the clock painted on the floor. Where are the hands pointing? Look at the minute hand. It's pointing at the number four (roman numerial IV) but the spelling in roman numerials is listed here as IIII. The hour hand is pointing at Eight, or roman numerial VIII. The second hand is pointing at six, or roman numerial VI. You need to know this, because you will not be able to get to the next level until you figure out this puzzle. The way it works is this: When you look at the big picture opposite the stairway you took to get up here, you will be prompted to enter the three titles that are included in the work. They are the titles that include the letters in the roman numerials that the clock is pointing too. (Easy to figure out, isn't it?)

Anyway, you can only enter titles of pictures you have looked at, so if you didn't do it before go look at all the pictures in the room so that you have all the names to use. The title of the Picture is "In the Garden Sleeps a Messenger" or "Vividarium et Intervigilium et Viator." You must enter them in that order (hour hand, minute hand then second hand. See, it's easy isn't it?!?) Once you enter the name of the painting, you'll see a blck blob. Examine it and the next enemy (Trauma) will show up behind you.

You can either beat him up with weapons, or you can attack him with haste+tripple+tornado, either one should kill him off. FWIW, he has nothing to mug, but if he summons anything to help him out, be sure to mug THOSE for various stones. Although, if you have weak characters, physical attacks might not do much damage to him. Once he is defeated, you should get an Elem-Atk, and then you can unlock any ability you want. If you don't have the best magic, it't a good idea to unlock Draw. If you have OK magic, you can unlock Resurect to ensure you can bring your guys back from the dead. Remember, though, that you don't have the item skill, so you can only bring them back by magic (you did unlock that before, right?) or using the "Revive" GF Ability (when you unlock the command-ability ability). Once you have enabled your ability of choice, head back out of the castle and save your game again. I know, it's a pain, but do you really want to have to do this entire thing over again if you have bad luck on one battle? I didn't think so. (Of course, your computer may also decide to reboot itself for NO APPARENT REASON! I hate this machine! DA!) Don't forget to swap out guys if you want to play that strategy. You are now ready for your next battle.

Third Minion/Ability: Red Giant/Draw or Resurect:
Return to the clock, then head up though the door at the top of the screen. Ignore the green circle for now, and head down the stairs between the suits of armor. Take the leftmost bridge and enter the door on the left. When you enter the room, the door will close behind you. Junctin Pain or Blind to one of your charcter's attacks. Go forward and take the key. Now for a little advice. Unless your guys are REALLY strong, don't bother trying to attack him normally. If you do, you are going to get worked. He mocks you after an ATTACK. Note that a MUG is not an attack. If you have your guys MUG instead of attack, you'll be fine; he won't mock you. That being said, it won't do much damage; the only time you should attack him is with the character that is going to blind him. Nail him with Demi after that and he should fall easily. If you have draw and magic, you can draw/cast it on him. Or if you have triple and Expend 3x1 you can do A LOT of damage to him in one shot! When/if he throws away his sword you know he is almost dead. Have one of your characters on standby to heal the rest, as blind doesn't affect his ability to hit you with his fist. Once Demi starts doing only a small amount of damage (read double digit) switch one character to physical attacks to finish him. Take back whichever ability you didn't take above. Use the prison key to get out of the prison. Go back and save your game, and don't forget to swap out some characters if you are playing that strategy.

Fourth Minion/Ability: Tri-Point/GF Command:
Go back up the main stairway, but this time go through the big door at the top of the stairs. You will see a chandelier. Go across it and it will fall. When you get up, look a the hatchway that the chandelier just landed on. It should have broken enough to open up now. Open it and you will appear at the top of a stair way. Now comes the fun part. Equip as much thunder magic as you can to Elem-Defense. If you get above 100% def, this guy's damage will give you back health! If you don't you're gonna get hurt! Junction fire magic to your Elem-Attack. Walk to the bottom of the stairway and walk toward him. If the game doesn't start the battle, you may need to walk a little farther away from him. At the start of my battle, I got an "excalibur" which did 3K+ damage to him. Cool! I recommend haste-tripple-firaga.

Prepair to be scaned. He will scan you to analyse your weaknesses (if any). When he scanned my guys it just said: "Absorbs" and listed all possible elemental attacks. :) Wail on him, and you shouldn't have much trouble. Remember, this guy has a unique "Counter" ability that will send 4 million volts through you! (Number stolen from a Monty Python skit.) So if you don't have your guys all able to absorb lightning magic, you may have to resurect your guys! After you beat him, go and save your game Difficult to do this time, isn't it?

If you go back up the stairs, through the door at the top left, and then go down and right, you should exit by your other party. If you want to walk all the way back, go back up the stairs and through the door on the left. Next, go down a hallway and out the door at the end (on the right). You'll be back in the narthex (that's an entry way for those of you who didn't go to one of those kinds of churches growing up ;) ).

Fifth Minion/Ability: Gargantua/Limit Break:
Return to the castle and take your main party up to the fountain via the falling chandelier method (go up the staris, through the door at the top, and walk onto the chandaleer; when it falls, go through the door at the top of the screen). Walk around the fountain, and inspect it everywhere. Eventually you should get the 'Treasure Vault Key' around 7 or 8 o'clock. I just happen to find it one day while I was looking for a way to drink out of the fountain. Go through the doors behind the fountain and head up the stairs to your immediate right (ignore the swirling mass of stuff for now). As you walk across the little bridge, you will knock a thingy off the bridge.

Now go back to the room with the fountain and use the 'Other-Party-Leave-The-Castle' trick to get your party back quickly. Now enter the castle again. Go up the stairs and back to the Art Gallery. When you get there, go through the door and down the stairs between the knights. Now there is something glittering in the 'river' there. Head over the rightmost bridge and pick up the shiny thing in the water. Now go through the door on the right. You may draw ultima (if you don't have it full) then attack this guy. He starts out being a standard Vysage and the two hands (Mug a life ring and some wizard stones), then becomes Gargantua when you beat him. This enemy has a counter function (Counter Twist) that you may want to know about. Your weaker (Vitality wise) characters may need to use GF command (if you have it) or cast magic on him. He can be easily beat with Holy magic, by the way. Again, I recommend the haste-tripple-holy combo. Once you beat him, get Limit Break (really, you're gonna need it.) Remember, to quickly return and save your game, you may go back to the knights and switch to the other party, then head down to the area outside the castle to save your game.

Sixth Minion/Ability: Catoblepas/Command Abilities:
This one is drawn out. In fact, now you will need both parties. Make sure the dummy party has Diablos's Enc-None enabled and consists of all females. The other party should be the male characters. Really, otherwise it WON'T WORK! Take your main party to the green circle where the dummy party is waiting. Switch to the other party. Take the dummy party up the stairs and go left at the top. Go through the door there, and follow the parimeter around and down the stairs, through the door and down a long hall. You can stop at the next green circle (located in an elevator.) Switch to the other party. Take the other party to the room where the knights are (just past the art gallery) and (instead of going down there) take the stairs above the knights and go through the doorway on the left and down the not so long hallway. You should end up in the room where the other party is. If not, backtrack and make sure you followed these directions correctly! Walk onto the green circle and (if you have three guys) you should move the elevator down. Select "Switch to other party" and have them go left one screen to the library. Pick up the shiny thing on the ground (flood gate key), draw Curaga if you want/need, and go back to the elevator. Now take the real team to the room past the Art room (the one with the knights), then down into the basement. This time, go over the left bridge and examine that pump handle two times. The second time should cause the water to subside. Now, head back to the main screen. If you didn't get it above, you can get the treasure vault key by heading up from the room where the chandellier falls and examining the fountain there.

From there, go up the stairs and to the left, through the doorway, down the winding staircase, and through the door at the top of the screen. Just past the first collumn on your left, try to open the hidden door which leads to the treasure vault. Go down and use the Holy draw point, if you need. To proceed from here, you have to open all the coffins. Examining each coffin causes a different thing to happen. Let's label them from bottom left to upper right "A, B, C and D." Examine them in this order: C, A, D, B. This causes Catoblepas to show up. DON'T USE LIGHTNING. Instead, junction lightning magic to your defense and just use Earth/Water magic/GF against him. My favorite combo is haste-tripple-quake, but it's also pretty effective to junction Quake to your Elem-Atk. Oh, he has nothing to steal, so you don't need to worry about Mug. If you junction Pain to your attack, you can inflict Darkness on him, which renders his Deadly Horn attack useless. :)

He will fall. In fact, I have found almost all monsters (except Fastitocalon-F) in this dungeon to be weak against water. Keep that in mind. When you beat him, he'll use meteor against you, do don't be almost all the way dead. You should receive a Status-Atk from this battle. Get Command Abilities. He's a real wuss. Go and save your game. Don't forget to switch your guys back now. You don't have to have all guys and all girls here. :)

Seventh Minion/Ability: Krysta/Item:
OK. This guy is a real pain. At the beginning, have your dummy party go up the stairs and ride the chandelier down. Go stand in the green circle. You will be informed that the lever has been depressed (Maybe it needs some Cymbalta?) Switch to the other team and have them go up to the chandelier. They should be able to run across it to the door at the far end of that screen. Go through it and draw Meteor from the hidden draw point here. He's got a nasty counter attack (and he has nothing to steal), so don't mug or attack. Tripple Flare works well. Don't fight him using Ice magic, try fire and lighthing. He counters with Ultima when he's about to die, so be careful. You should get al Elem Guard from this, so your GF can learn Elem-Defx4. Also, after he's defeated, you can draw Meteor from the draw point here. When you beat him, go back and save your game, then switch any characters you want.

Eighth Minion/Ability: Tiamat/Save:
Last ability here. Take your main party to the room with the organ. Go up the stairs on the right, across the bridge, and through the left door. Climb the tower until you get to the pendulum. Just before the section of the walkway which has collapsed upon itself is a gap in the railing where the pendulum is swinging. "Examine" that gap an you should jump over. Once you jump over, enter the doorway. If your guys are good enough, kill him before he casts "Dark Flare." Of course, if you are set to absorb all magic, you'll get MAJOR health from him when he casts it. That's VERY nice. Of course, Rinoa's Angle Wing + Meteor does wonders, too. If you have to, cast Aura on Squall. That's all there is too it. I mean, if you have all your guys above 7500 HP then you might get a second chance, but other then that, make sure you have saved earlier. :) Anyway, when you beat him, take "Save" and then jump back across the pendulum area. You now have a choice to make you make take the Omega Weapon (see side quest section) or go ahead and finish the game (see below). Of course, you could always go and get a Rosetta Stone if you want. Return to the level with the Organ. Just go up to the organ and mash all the keys together in the following order: B1, B2, B4, B3. (That's Do-Re-Mi-Fa). After pressing the last button, let go, press B-10 to end and head down to the fountain. Take the right road and notice that the barred area is now open. Go through that and around to the right. [ If you've got water covering it, you've missed something. Go back to the room at the bottom of the stairs between the knights past the art room (whew that's a mouthful!) and crank the handle just past the left little bridge. ] Anyway, at the end of the hall is a box. There is a Rosetta Stone inside that lets your GFs learn how to have four abilities instead of three. Cool, huh?

End Game
OK. When you are ready to go to the end of the game, climb to the top of the tower (ride the chandaller down, go out the door, past the fountain, then past the organ up the stairs. If you can't get there, you are skipping ahead and should be ashamed of yourself! :) ) So, when you get to the clock hands, run left until you are on the ladder, then climb down. From there, climb down to the platform. Go right a few steps until you can climb down a ladder. From the bottom of that, you can only head strait ahead. I hope you are able to save! :) Go forward and save your game at the (final) save point. When you open that door, you'll start the final battle(s). There are two schools of thought here. Since three (random) people will be chosen, You can either distribute your GFs evenly and have each character have an even shot at beating her, or you can just give three characters the total edge. As long as all three aren't killed off, a "dead" character will eventually be replaced by a reserve member. If you have a Laguna card, use the card mod and med level up abilities to turn that into a Holy War. Use aura to get limit breaks without being near death, then use a Holy War and this battle is a total walk in the park. :)

Whichever strategy you choose, once you beat the first form, she will call griever. My guys beat him easily, then there was a combined form. Once we beat her, Ultimacia finally showed herself. Just do your worst. If you can beat her quick, you are home free. :) If not, use hero, aura, and GFs to keep from being smeared into the crevases of the world you curently occupy. Only a few more limit breaks (with a dialogue box in between each) and it's over. :) Then watch the CG for 20 minutes. You don't have to press X on these dialogue boxes, btw, which is good - because "20 minutes" isn't exactly misleading.

Final Notes:
Well, I hope you had as much fun playing this game as I had writing this walkthrough. As you may have noticed, there are quite a few other walkthroughs on this site. Please play the other Final Fantasy games and use my other walkthroughs, if you had fun with this one. If you enjoyed this, please . See you around!