                        FINAL FANTASY VIII
                          POWER UP GUIDE
                           Version: 2.0
                       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 
that's coming out very soon (but it's very unlikely for the latter.) 

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
  - About me
  - Introduction
  - Final Fantasy VIII
  - Objective
  - Why bother?
  - Where do I start?
  - Critical Guardian Forces
  - Preparing for the big thing
  - Training
      - Squall
      - Quistis
      - Other characters
  - Want even higher stats?
  - Some tips
  - Character overviews
      - Squall Leonhart
      - Quistis Trepe
      - Zell Dincht
      - Rinoa Heartilly
      - Selphie Tilmitt
      - Irvine Kinneas
  - Step-by-step power-up walkthrough
  - 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


CREDITS
=======
* Happy Matt (Happy_Matt@msn.com) 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 (cephiroth@yahoo.com) for the X-ATM092 strategy on his 
guide and some other stuff.
* Scott Ong (kangning@mbox5.singnet.com.sg) for his long and deatiled 
walkthroughs that I had to refer to during the boring bits of the 
game (like Ultimecia's Castle.)


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 
if you feel like it. 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 for 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 (or maybe Xenogears, but I 
haven't played it yet.) 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!


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 to much since the game is way to stingy at regular stats 
boosts at level up. You'll gain about 80 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 or 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 Pokmon, 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. 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 included 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!

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. 

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.

  - 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!
* 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 Islnd 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 ting 
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 require 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 War Ship Island, which is not on the map but you can get 
there my head 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 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, are the exact opposite, they use magical Limit 
Breaks so substitute Mag Bonus for Str 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. Actually, it might be possible to play through the 
game up until the point where you acquires Ragnarock without ever 
going up a level, I'll have to see about that. Anyway, if you play 
your cards right, you won't really need these abilities. 


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
I'm trying to see if I can do better this time.

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                          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.

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!)

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 Doom Train. 

Quistis
This is easier done than said. Keep her at critical status (you can 
do it easily do 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 
Doom Train 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.

You can bring 2 weak members into the fight if you manage to get your 
hands on a Rosetta Stone. 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!)


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.

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. These are some 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
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 a certain boss (can't 
remember which one, I have one in my inventory) that can be made into 
am HP-Up. Most of them can be made from Eden's GFAbl Med-RF, they 
require stuff like 10 Power Wrists into 1 Hyper Wrist etc. 

Power Wrists can be bought from Esthar Pet Shop although it's 7500 
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!!! Anyway, you can win some of these items from 
enemies occasionally (I think the Ruby Dragon may drop Power Wrists 
on rare occasions.) 

You can steal a Luck-J Scroll from Odin, but I'd rather let one of my 
GF learn Luck-J though. 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 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. I cannot remember the exact enemies but they seemed to have 
been the powerful ones like Ruby Dragons, Behemoths, Iron Giants, 
Adamantoises etc. I'll try to find something out sometime. 

4) Any others? 


OTHER TIPS
==========
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 Doom Train (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. I have really used Alexander's 
Revive command all that much but I'm assuming that it has identical 
effects. 

Speed over defence: For some of the bosses, it's actually batter 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. 

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. (Remember, that was just a "test run", I'll try to 
see if I can do better.)

(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---

HP      4187
Str      162                      Spd       37
Vit      124                      Luck      22
Mag      130                      Eva        3%
Spr      117                      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. There isn't anything special about his 
stats as it's only rather average among the characters. His Str is 
decent and I junctioned 100 Ultimas to it for 255 Str. 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 R2 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 the 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)

Note once Squall learns a new finishing blow, he can use it 
permanently with all gunblade models. For example, when you upgrade 
his Revolver into Shear Trigger, you will be able to use both Rough 
Divide and Fated Circle randomly.

-Rough Divide-
This is what Squall used on Seifer in the intro FMV. Squall runs 
towards his target while striking 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 only slightly more damage than 
each hit in his initial Renzokuken attacks.

-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. Does about same damage as Rough 
Divide but hurts all enemies.

-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 takes ages to animate. 

-Lion Heart-
This was originally named "End of Heart" in the Japanese version 
which is 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 ~15 
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 
15-20 hits (kinda hard to count) 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.


---Quistis Trepe---

HP      3883
Str      161                      Spd       34
Vit      118                      Luck      21
Mag      132                      Eva        3%
Spr      121                      Hit      107%

Comments on stats: Quistis has the worst overall stats of the group 
it seems (remember, she started training at LV11) 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, White Wind 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. 

-Laser Eye-
Used by: Belhemel 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.

-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 Fang) 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.

-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. 

-Aqua Breath-
Used by: Grand Mantis
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 than 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.

Note Grand Mantis has a same/similar attack but it also causes 
Silence. I'm not sure if this can cause Silence on an enemy, perhaps 
it does when Quistis' party's condition worsens. 

-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 most 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 (??)
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.

-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!

-Fire Fang-
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.

-Bad Breath-
Used by: Malboro
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. I think it does Vitality Zero as well though. I use this 
on annoying enemies and paralyze them so I can draw from them.

-White Wind-
Used by: Adamantoise
Learnt from: Whisper
Steal from high level Adamantoise

Soothing wind blows out of no where 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, unlike it did in FFVI and FFVII.

-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. 

-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.

-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. 

-Ray Bomb-
Used by: X-ATM092
Learnt from: Power Generator
Steal from high level Blitz WITHOUT the Rare Item ability. REALLY 
rare!

Haven't got this yet as I couldn't be bothered. Heard it's really 
hard to get.


---Zell Dincht---

HP       4018
Str       163                     Spd       35
Vit       122                     Luck      20
Mag       132                     Eva        3%
Spr       116                     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, although I did keep his level at the lowest before training 
him. (My best team is Squall, Zell and Quistis.)

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. 

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.

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 Drop

Zell steps back and punches the ground with his fist as it cracks and 
the chasm travels to the enemy then explodes, sending the enemy high 
up into the air. This is really disappointing for a finishing blow. 
Does about 2 times the damage of his weak attacks and that's it! It's 
not worth the effort!

-Meteor Barret-
Combination: Up, X, Down, Triangle, O
Combat King issue: 003
Prerequisite moves: Punch Rush, Dolphin Blow
                or: Booya, Meteor Strike, Dolphin Blow, Mack Kick
                or: Booya, Heel Drop, Mach Kick, Heel Drop, Booya, 
                    Punch Rush, Mach Kick

Zell leaps into the air and gathers a green energy bolt in his hands. 
Then he glides down followed by a trial of energy like a comet and 
punches the enemy as they collide, and (supposedly) passes through 
the enemy as it explodes. This looks cheap when Zell is supposed to 
pierce right through the enemy, but I suppose the PlayStation's 
polygon power ain't as advanced to handle such animations. (Or maybe 
it's too violent but I'm hoping for the former.)

The damage isn't all that great either but I sometimes use this as a 
"stylie" finisher after my combos, and I time them just right to fit 
in this! (See below.)

-Different Beat-
Combination: Triangle, Square, X, O, Up
Combat King issue: 004
Prerequisite moves: Booya, Meteor Strike, Booya
                or: Booya, Heel Drop, Mach Kick, Heel Drop, Booya

Zell kicks the enemy into the air, jumps up and air-combo them with 
kicks then stomps them as his legs get surrounded by pink energy. 
This is probably my favourite finishing blow as it looks cool and is 
very damaging. 

-My Final Heaven-
Combination: Up, Right, Down, Back, Triangle
Combat King issue: 005
Prerequisite moves: Booya, Heel Drop, Meteor Strike
                or: Booya, Heel Drop, Mach Kick, Punch Rush

Zell holds his fist and sprints forward past the enemy and runs 
around the globe like Superman (as if his Meteor Barret ain't 
enough!) He gets back to the battle field and comes to a stop just 
behind the enemy, and his momentum are released as a fiery explosion 
that sends the enemy head over toes up into the air. 

Looks kinda cool but does abut the same damage as Different Beat. 
Uh.. not much else to say about this but you might wanna see this at 
least once but I don't find this move exceptionally useful. 

Tips
  - Learn a few links to some of your favourite moves. There's 
nothing wrong with referring to the screen listing all the attacks 
that can be executed after the current attack, especially when you're 
trying it out the first few times. You should be used to a few links 
and should be able to remember the button combinations to all the 
normal moves if you practice a few times. Here are some combinations 
that I found useful, feel free to submit more if you like:

* Booya, Punch Rush, Booya, Punch Rush, repeat.

This is also called Armageddon Fist to some (don't know who started 
it though) and it's also fairly useful. The 2 basic attacks are 
simple to tap and does decent damage. The damage is around 4000 per 
attack later in the game, and try junction spells to Zell's Luck 
attribute as a critical can do 9999 damage! You should be able to 
execute ~20 moves for the 4 seconds interval!!! What's even better 
about this is that it can be accommodated easily if Zell's starting 
attack changes.

* Booya, Punch Rush, Mach Kick, repeat.
or: Punch Rush, Mach Kick, Booya, repeat.

These 2 are identical the only difference is the starting move 
(remember how the starting move differs depending on the time 
interval you get.) This is also identical to Armageddon Fist except 
Mach Kick is added. I used this to take out the X-ATM092 boss in 
Dollet and it's really a killer. I like Mach Kick since it does more 
damage than the basic attacks and isn't really all that hard to use.

* Punch Rush, Mach Kick, Dolphin Blow, Meteor Strike, Dolphin Blow, 
           Mach Kick, Meteor Barret

I hope I got this in the correct order. Anyway, practice this and 
it's PERFECT for the 4 second interval. Of course, this don't work 
very well on bosses because of Meteor Strike, but this is what I used 
on the enemies on the Island Closest to Hell when training Zell, and 
it's a killer to the enemies there because of Meteor Strike. Also, 
the Meteor Barret makes a stylie finish.

  - Later in the game, you'll wanna avoid using finishing blow as 
much as possible, since they take ages to do and their maximum damage 
limit is still only 9999. Each normal blow can do 4000-5000 if you 
have 255 Strength (and use Meltdown for more) and a critical hit nets 
you an instant easy 9999.

  - Against normal enemies with high defence and HP, release Meteor 
Strike as often as possible. Meteor Strike is essentially one of 
Zell's best attacks as it's independent of his Strength and target's 
Vitality. So even if you have very low Strength and fighting a level 
100 Ruby Dragon, you can do 9999 with every blow of Meteor Strike 
while your other moves takes out less than 1000. 


---Rinoa Heartilly---

HP       4181
Str       180                     Spd       36
Vit       115                     Luck      22
Mag       148                     Eva        3%
Spr       123                     Hit      107%

Comments on stats: Whoa! Gosh, she's the girl with god-like stats! 
Too bad that her Limits are trashy. I think she is supposed to have 
good stats to offset her attacks. (If you can remember, she also has 
really good starting stats when she first joins!) Her Str and Mag are 
among some of the highest I've seen. She needs only 100 Meteors to 
bring up Strength up to exactly 255.

Limit Break: Combine
Rinoa is the only character in the game who has 2 completely 
different sets of attacks, Angelo skills and her unique Angel Wing 
status.

Angelo
Angelo is Rinoa's dog who is actually really smart and can learn 
various tricks to aid Rinoa in battle. I think Angelo skills were 
originated from Red XIII's Limit Breaks in FFVII and a bit from 
Shadow's dog, Interceptor in FFVI. Angelo skills comes in 2 types, 
automatic and manual. The automatically skills can take place 
randomly in battle, given that certain conditions are met, while a 
random manual skills will be executed when Rinoa uses his Limit Break 
from the command window in battle. 

Unfortunately, most of her Angelo skills are mostly crap, and since 
it's random, it can also be very weak compared to the others later in 
the game. She has a couple fairly decent ones though, so you might as 
well make the use of them. The damage dealing Angelo attacks are 
dependent on Rinoa's Strength.

To learn new Angelo skills, you must buy or find Pet Pals magazines 
from around the world. You must read them too (use it in the item 
menu) then the skill's name will appear in Rinoa's status menu along 
with Angelo's other skills. A full bar represents that skill has been 
mastered. Select a skill that you wish to learn and walk with Rinoa 
in your team and you'll eventually learn the skill. (Note some skills 
like Wishing Star can take a very long time to learn.)

The below 4 skills are manual skills:

-Angelo Cannon-
Pet Pals issue: None, initial attack.

Rinoa whistles for Angelo who runs onto the screen and jumps onto 
Rinoa's extended arm, then Rinoa launches him like a rocket that 
hurts all enemies with a fiery explosion. Then Angelo gets a bone for 
his hard work.

An ok attack I guess, since it targets all enemies but gets less 
useful as the game progresses. It can do 9999 damage to all enemies 
later in the game though, but that's nothing compared to what the 
boys can do.

-Angelo Strike-
Pet Pals issue: 1

Angelo runs onto the screen to the enemy, grabs them somehow and 
takes them into the air with him. Angelo rotates about 1080 degrees 
and slams the enemy back onto the ground for big damage.

This is a lot stronger than Angelo Cannon but targets only one enemy. 
The damage is quite strong though, about maybe 2000+ earlier in the 
game. However, since the damage maxes out at 9999, this will actually 
be WEAKER than Angelo Cannon later in the game, which can also do 
9999 damage but targets all the enemies. You may want to abandon this 
move so the chance that Rinoa executes one of her better ones 
increases.

-Invisible Moon-
Pet Pals issue: 3

Looks a lot like Red XIII's Howling Moon if you ask me. Angelo runs 
into battle, gets surrounded by silver energy waves (like a certain 
Red XIII Limit Break) and jumps into the air with a silvery moon in 
the sky. A curtain of translucent lights envelops all allies and they 
turn transparent. 

This well may possibly be Rinoa's best Angelo skill, as an invisible 
character is immune to all damage and status (even positive ones) and 
the effect is identical/better than a Holy War (Drink) since Holy War 
and Hero has no effect on Rinoa. This skill has a fair chance of 
being executed and I think the effect lasts longer as Rinoa's level 
increases. 

-Wishing Star-
Pet Pals issue: 6

Rinoa and Angelo runs towards the enemy and disappears while the 
background turns into a colored star field. Multiple shooting stars 
zooms across the screen and hurts all enemies for quite a number of 
hits. If you look closer, the stars are actually Angelo! 

I was really disappointed at this move when I first saw it. First, 
the rate which this attack appears is EXTREMELY low (about 5% max) 
and second, it wasn't as strong as I heard it was. Each hit did 
around 2000 points of damage for about 10+ hits. I've heard this 
attack can do 9000+ damage per hit though, but I'm not in the mood to 
spend about half an hour trying to see this move again!

The 4 skills below are automatically but randomly executed when the 
conditions are met.

-Angelo Rush-
Pet Pals issue: None, initial attack
Condition: Rinoa gets attacked by a physical attack

Angelo rushes across the screen at high velocity and charges into the 
enemy.

This works on the same basis as Shadow's dog Interceptor's Take Down, 
which is basically a counter attack. This attack sucks in many ways. 
One is that it's terrible when you want to keep the enemy alive to 
draw spells from or card them. This usually ruins it for you. The 
damage Angelo does is no where near as much as Interceptor. So this 
means one thing: Rinoa is a terrible character if you want to card 
enemies.

-Angelo Recover-
Pet Pals issue: 2
Condition: Any ally in critical condition 

Angelo comes onto the screen and uses an item on the ally in critical 
condition and restores their HP.

I don't like this skill either. Sometimes I purposely lower an ally's 
HP so they can use Limit Breaks easily but no.. Angelo comes along 
and heals them. The amount healed varies, but usually a lot, I've 
seen as low as 1500+ to about 6000+! Not bad if you really need 
healing in a boss fight or something. Note a character who is not 
Rinoa CAN receive the benefit of his skill too.

-Angelo Reverse-
Pet Pals: 4
Condition: Ally KO'd

Angelo comes into battle and uses a Phoenix Down on a fallen ally

Now this is a useful one, but it would help if it happens a little 
more often. I've seen this only ONCE during my 80 hour game. What's 
neat about this is when an ally is revived, their HP would be 
critical and you can execute Limit Breaks easily.

-Angelo Search-
Pet Pals: 5
Condition: Don't know

I've never seen this at all! 


Angel Wing
After the scene in space (and a terrible micro-game!), Rinoa gains a 
new Limit Break. You can use this while inside Ragnarock the first 
time. With this, a pair of wings appears on Rinoa's back and she gets 
lifted into the air, then she comes back onto the ground like if 
nothing had happened. You'll notice the effect soon though, as you'll 
realise that you cannot control her any more, as she's gone berserk 
in a way. 

Whenever Rinoa's turn comes up, she will cast a _random_ spell on a 
random enemy. The quality of the spell is really quite a mixed bag. 
Rinoa will either cast a really powerful spell like Ultima or a 
really sloppy status spell like Sleep, and Scan/Dispel occasionally. 
What's sorta worthwhile about this is that the power of a damage-
dealing spell is increased by 5 times, WOW! (Watch out for Meteor, 
it's a real killer on a single enemy. Can do upwards of 40000 
damage!) However, she rarely uses one of them (about 5 crap spells 
per 1 good spell) which makes Angel Wing no better than her terrible 
Angelo skills. 

Note that this is actually a status, which means that it will have no 
effect while Rinoa is in the Invisible status (Invisible Moon.) Rinoa 
is immune to Berserk, Silence and Confuse status while in Angel Wing. 
Also, her spells ain't THAT random as there are certain spells that 
she will never use, such as any aiding/healing/reviving spells, and 
certain weaker attack spells. The power of her spells is also 
dependent on Rinoa's Magic attribute. 

These are the only offensive spells that she will use: Holy, Flare, 
Water, Tornado, Quake, Ultima, Meteor, Meltdown


---Selphie Tilmitt---

HP       3680
Str       157                     Spd       37
Vit       115                     Luck      26
Mag       136                     Eva        3%
Spr       123                     Hit      255%

Comments on stats: No too bad. She's kinda weak physically but has 
decent Magic stats. Her Speed is decent though and she's the luckiest 
character in the game. Her best improvement is probably how her best 
weapon has a 255% hit rate, meaning she can no longer miss the target 
with her regular attacks.

Limit Break: Slots
Selphie's Slots is completely different to Setzer and Cait Sith's. 
Selphie can cast any spell up to 3 times in a row. Her Slots window 
will show a random spell with a random number of times that spell 
will be cast. If that's not the spell you want, you may select "Do 
over" which will bring up another spell. When the desired spell comes 
up, you may select "cast" to cast it. These spells will not consume 
Selphie's stocked spells so use them as often as you wish.

Note time does not stop as you select your spells, even with the 
"Wait" option. (The Wait option sucks in this game anyway.) So 
spending too long on her Slots trying to get better spells can be 
dangerous.

Selphie has 4 unique spells on her Slots too, and they're all good 
ones. At the beginning of the game, you may only get crap magic like 
Fire but she'll likely to get better spells as her level does up. 
(ie, Ultima may have about a 1% chance or less of showing up while 
she's at level 10, but at level 100, Ultima comes up quite often.) 

Note if a certain spell is cast multiple times, the targeting is 
random and it's not every effective if you ask me! When you come up 
with say a positive status spell (like Haste) cast 3 times, it never 
works so that each member on your team gets a dose, which wastes the 
spell. (The spell will always cast on a same member twice.)

Below are the 4 unique spells Selphie that can be cast only with her 
Slots. Note none of these can be cast multiple times, since they 
don't need to. When you cast one of these spells once, it will show 
up in her status screen and the chance of getting that spell on her 
Slots in the future will increase.

-Full Cure-
This heals all allies to full HP AND it will cure negative status 
too, effectively the best healing spell in the game. Also, I'm sure 
this spell will work on Invisible allies! The chance of getting this 
on her Slots is very high, so you don't need to struggle when you 
want healing, although Full Cure shows up less times when she's at 
higher levels. 

-Wall-
A stone barrier raises through the ground to guard all allies. Not a 
bad defence spell but if Quistis is in your party, have her use 
Mighty Guard instead. Wall will only give you Shell and Protect, but 
it's pretty decent if you don't have access to Mighty Guard yet.

-Rapture-
A useful spell with a terrible translated name, which puts a pair of 
wings on each enemy's back and they get lifted into the air and is 
never seen again. Works well on normal enemies but certain enemies 
are resistant to it (like Tonberries.)

-The End-
EVERYBODY fears this spell! Flowers will appear before the enemies 
and the background turns into a flower filled meadow and the words 
"The End" pops up like if the game has ended. Then the enemies die 
for no reason. What's so powerful about this is that it will even 
work on really tough bosses like Omega! Very rare on her Slots, but 
has a decent chance of showing up at high levels.

NOTE! I know that there are 2 extra unique spells that Selphie is 
supposed to have but hasn't been put into the game due to time 
constraints (I think) but are obtainable via a GameShark. If you've 
seen these 2 spells then please tell me what they looked like and 
what their effects are. 

Since time is not paused when Selphie uses her Slots, try to use it 
when another character/enemy is executing a lengthy action (casting a 
spell etc.) The best way to select your spell is to do it during a GF 
summoning animation, if you wanna give up Boost for it that is. 
Diablos is the best since his attack is lengthy and don't use Boost. 

The spell to look for depends on your situation. Early on in the 
game, basic elementary spells can satisfy most purposes and may 
actually top Squall or Zell's Limit Breaks! Later in the game 
however, her usefulness pans out since everyone else has at least one 
really powerful attack or defensive skills. So Selphie is best used 
as a healer with her Full Cure. Her Wall is also good if you don't 
have Quistis. If you manage to get Aura then you might as well use 
it. Haste is also fairly decent. 

As for offence, the best Selphie can do is probably multiple Meteors 
for single targets or multiple Ultimas for multiple targets. (Meteor 
will actually do respectable damage when her Magic attribute is 255.) 
If you manage to get The End, you can end the fight in one shot! (You 
might not want to do it though, as it kinda spoils the fun in a boss 
fight.)


---Irvine Kinneas---

HP       4120
Str       156                     Spd       39
Vit       108                     Luck      21
Mag       128                     Eva        3%
Spr       105                     Hit      115%

Comments on stats: For some reason, Irvine seems to have really low 
stats. His Str is the lowest... I think something might have gone 
wrong. His low Spr is because he gained 7 levels without Spirit 
Bonus. (I used him to help Squall fight a Malboro, but I didn't know 
that he'd gain 7 levels in one fight!) He's the fastest though.

Limit Break: Shot
Hehe, his Limit is fun. Choose a type of ammo that you've stocked in 
your inventory and tap the trigger button (R2) rapidly to shoot as 
many bullets as you can under a time limit. The time limit is a 
depleting bar to the lower right of the screen and the amount of time 
he has available can vary. Unlike Zell though, Irvine's bar does not 
lengthen as his timer is expanded, instead it moves slower, so it's 
not easy to identify the amount of time he has available or the 
amount of it's left. It's also hard to tell how many different time 
intervals Irvine has. When a shot deals zero damage, it means that 
the target is dead so don't waste any more bullets. (But it sucks 
since you'll always waste at least one bullet for this purpose.)

By obtaining new bullets, Irvine can expand his variety of shots. 
Most of them can be bought in stores, some of them can be won or 
refined from cards, and all of them can be refined from Ifrit's 
Bullet-RF Menu Ability (some of the rarer bullets can only be gotten 
this way.) Make sure that you browse through that ability menu often 
as you can find some really good deals that you just CANNOT resist! 
(Like 1 Chef's Knife into 10 AP Ammo or 1 Poison Powder into 10 Dark 
Ammo!) The power of Irvine's Shot is dependent on his Str. 

Since his Limit Break is not free like all the others, I don't use 
his as much. The descriptions of each shot are comin' up next time.


STEP-BY-STEP POWER-UP WALKTHROUGH
=================================
This is my first time at writing a walkthrough so I may not be an 
expert in this department. Keep in mind that this is not an ordinary 
walkthrough that lets you play through the game "normally", but it's 
a special walkthrough containing all of the above contents and only 
relevant information for powering up (ie, you won't find any mini 
quests in here unless they're vital to your success.) In other words, 
if you found my above instructions a bit vague or you couldn't 
possibly imagine how on earth I can get through a length of the game 
gaining minimum levels. So here's how I did it.

I am going to be a bit vague and won't tell you exactly what to do in 
certain sections since I'm assuming that you've played through the 
game once and is familiar with the puzzles and settings, although I 
am thinking of upgrading it to a more detailed walkthrough if it's 
requested. The walkthrough may also contain some spoilers.

Some of the terms:
> Junction Check!  All about what GFs, spells and commands to 
junction. 
> GF Check!  New GFs, or GF ability acquisition recommendations or 
just anything to do with GFs. Remember: Love your GFs!
> Magic Check!  Any info on spells, whether it'd be drawn, refined, 
upgraded or whatever.
> Card Check!  Anything that's got to do with cards, such as rare 
cards or refining cards.
> NOTE!  Just some interesting or important stuff.
DP  Draw Point
SP  Save Point
BOSS  A boss fight


---It begins---
Watch the opening movie and if it's the second time you're playing 
through the game, you should be able to understand it.

When you wake up, you can enter a new name for Squall (although I see 
nothing wrong with "Squall") and Dr. Kadowaki will call your teacher 
Miss Trepe. After a short scene you'll be in the hallway with 
Instructor Trepe. You know what to do so just walk and see how the 
pre-rendered background turns into an FMV! 

> GF Check! Quezacotl and Shiva are obtainable from your study panel. 

Before you meet Quistis you'll want to wonder around Balamb Garden a 
bit. You'll bump into a girl (who is later known as Selphie) in the 
hallway. If this is your first time through it then definitely show 
her around but otherwise do what you wish. 

> Card Check! Remember to speak to the guy in the 2F hallway, he'll 
give you 7 el cheapo cards. (Don't challenge anyone yet though, you 
won't stand a chance with those.. "cards".)

> Magic Check! Draw Esuna from the DP in the library and the entrance 
for Cure. Now go to the Training Area (don't forget to Junction both 
GFs first) and draw (preferably) 100 Sleeps from a Grat, perhaps some 
Silence as well. (I'd get 100 of each.) Run away when you're done. 
(Don't worry, this part does not count in the test so you won't get 
points deducted.)

If you're hurt you may want to rest in the dorms. Meet Quistis at the 
entrance and she'll teach you something about GFs. Pay attention if 
it's you're first time.


---Some "hot" special training---
> Junction Check! Junction Quezacotl to Squall (Magic-J, put your 100 
Sleep in it) and Shiva on Quistis (Spr-J, put Cure in it.) 

> GF Check! As for what abilities they should learn, Quezacotl should 
definitely choose "Card" while it doesn't matter all that much for 
Shiva, but "Boost" may come in handy sometime. If you wanna be more 
AP-efficient, have Shiva learn a more expensive ability first.

> Magic Check! You need spells before challenging the Fire Cave. 
Encounter some Fastitocalons at the beach and draw lots of Blizzards 
and more Sleep if you want, also get some Scans as they're really 
useful when carding enemies. Run for it when you're done (you'll 
probably get points deducted but..)
> Caterchipillers holds Cures (draw lots of them) and Thunders.
> Draw some Fires as well if you want. Bite Bugs have them. Run from 
all of the above encounters since you don't want to gain any EXP.

> Junction Check! Give Squall lots of Blizzards and junction 100 
Cures into Quistis' Spirit. Put Magic, Draw and GF commands on Squall 
and Item, Draw and GF on Quistis. Save your game outside the Fire 
Cavern.

Choose the 10 minutes option to give your points some boost. Ready? 
Run all the way to the centre of the cave, it should be really 
straightforward. Run away from the encounters as well. When you get 
to a lava pit, you'll encounter the boss. There should be about 8-9 
minutes left on your clock so no worries.

BOSS - Ifrit
He's really not that hard. Have Quistis summon Shiva repeatedly while 
Squall (with Sleep junctioned to his Magic) should cast Blizzard on 
Ifrit. You shouldn't have any problems. If either one of you guys 
needs curing have Squall draw Cure from the boss and cast on the 
character. If Squall's HP becomes low, let him execute Renzokuken. 

If Squall is unluckily enough to get killed, let Quistis revive him 
with a Phoenix Down, but you probably won't need to use it. 

This will be a quick fight. When you win, you'll gained Ifrit as your 
GF and you'll also get his card (your first rare card and a VERY good 
one, one of my personal favourites!) The timer has stopped so 
junction Ifrit to Squall and get the hell out of the place, and don't 
forget to run away from all encounters.

Back in Balamb Garden, Quistis will leave you. However, you might 
want to head to Balamb town to purchase some spare Phoenix Downs. 


---Dollet Me--- (As in "Doh ray me".. nevermind..)
After a few scenes with Zell, Quistis and Seifer, drive the car to 
Balamb. Pay attention to Xu's briefing and view another pretty damn 
good FMV.

> Junction Check! Put a GF on each guy. I junctioned Ifrit to Zell, 
Shiva to Squall and Quezacotl to Seifer. 

> GF Check! 
  - Shiva: She should have learnt Boost if you assigned it earlier so 
the next most important skill of hers is Str-J. Otherwise let her 
learn Boost now.
  - Quezacotl: You should be halfway of acquiring the Card command.
  - Ifrit: Boost is perhaps the best option now.

> Magic Check! Exchange Quistis' magic to Seifer. You may want to 
give him 100 Sleep to junction to his Magic.

Save at the SP. There are about 5 fixed encounters here that you 
cannot run from, but you've got an Ace up your sleeve. Seifer! When 
you encounter the first bunch of soldiers, let Squall and Zell kill 
themselves off by drawing and casting spells on themselves. (You 
might want to draw some spells before you do so.) Let Seifer finish 
off the enemies (they're easy) when you're satisfied. 

> NOTE! Seifer is certainly a strange kid for 2 reasons. 1) He has 
really good starting stats and gains stats very fast as he levels up 
and 2) His Limit Break "No Mercy" can be executed EXTREMELY easily!! 
He has no trouble getting the triangle to show up even at FULL 
HEALTH! Too bad you can't get him as a permanent member.

Anyway, what you wanna do here is to leave Squall and Zell alone and 
fight the battles with just Seifer. Since Seifer is the only active 
member in the team, you'd want to keep a close eye on his HP and 
since he can use his Limit so damn easily, you don't really have an 
excuse not to try to keep his HP as high as possible. 

After the 4 fixed battles with soldiers, random battles will start to 
show up. Fight these as OFTEN as you wish and as many as you want! As 
a matter of fact, it's a really good idea to fight many random 
battles here with Seifer since your GFs will grow with the AP/EXP 
(and more abilities will show up when their level rises.) Fighting 
here will also earn you points in the "Attack" category in your SeeD 
test scores, which translates into a high SeeD rank and more money. 

You might be tempted to remove all the GFs from Zell and Squall and 
junction them all to Seifer. I recommend you keep them where they are 
since they gain EXP quicker this way. 

> GF Check! You GFs will gain tons of AP here if you continue to 
fight, which means that they can master many abilities here. Here's 
some abilities that I think are quite important and should be learnt 
before everything else.
  - Quezacotl: His Card command should be ready, so let him learn the 
Card Mod ability which complements the former nicely. T Mag-RF is not 
bad either (and cheap) and will unlock the useful Mid Mag-RF.
  - Shiva: Pick up her Str-J and Vit-J first from her list of trashy 
abilities. Then either I Mag-RF or Vit+20%.
  - Ifrit: Um.. if you're after his Str Bonus ability just in case 
you levelled up then start from his Str+20% and +40% first (but 
they're good skills never the less.) Otherwise his HP-J and F Mag-RF 
are the way to go.
> You may want to adjust these to be more AP-efficient. There's a 
boss worth 18AP coming up and an optional boss with a whopping 50AP! 

At the top of the stairs you'll have to fight an Anacondour. It has 
about 1400HP but isn't really all that hard. It has a strong attack 
though, can cause ~70 points of damage per hit. Keep Seifer's HP high 
and summon Shiva if you junctioned her to Seifer, of just use 
Blizzard. His Limit Break is easily usable but it still won't cause 
as much damage as Blizzard. You may want to turn it into a card 
(since Quezacotl's Card ability should be completed right about now) 
but it will give your GFs quite a bit of EXP when you kill it.

If you want to build up your GFs, wonder around this area. You can 
encounter a double Anacondour here. They're tough but the 8AP and 
~600EXP you gain for winning is worth it. Keep Seifer's HP high is 
mandatory since they are both quite fast and powerful. (I remember 
getting the Game Over screen fighting them when I was careless.) 

> GF Check! Before you go on to the next area, your GFs should be at 
least level 10 as they won't be able to gain any more EXP for quite a 
while. Shiva's Doom commands becomes available at level 10, and the 
same goes to Ifrit's Bullet-RF (crucial ability!) and Mad Rush (not 
so).

Follow along the path to the Communication Tower. After the scene 
where Seifer runs away, you'll be introduced to Selphie by a cute 
FMV. Note that Squall and Zell are both revived with 1HP if you 
killed them earlier. Use a Cure on both of them.

Don't take the shortcut (like Selphie did) or you'll get points 
deducted. Instead, walk along the paved road. Talk to Selphie and 
she'll join you.

> Junction Check! Junction Quezacotl on Selphie, Shiva on Squall and 
Ifrit on Zell. Shiva should have gotten Str-J if you trained her. 
Junction whatever magic is best fir for the team. As for commands, 
here's what I had:
   Squall:  Attack, Draw, Magic, Item
   Zell:    Attack, Draw, Magic, GF
   Selphie: Attack, Draw, GF, Item
> The Item command is crucial at this point of the game since Phoenix 
Downs are the only way to revive a KO'd member right now. 

> GF Check! The up coming boss holds 18AP, so adjust your abilities 
for it. 

> Magic Check! Selphie inherits all the spells Seifer had stocked so 
you don't have to worry about her being magic-less. There's also a DP 
for Blind inside the tower, it's not that important spell right now.

Save at the SP and take the elevator up and meet Biggs. After an FMV 
that I'm sure you're all familiar with since it's detailed in the 
demo, you'll have to fight some bosses.

BOSS  Biggs, Wedge
You'll be facing Biggs first. He's not very powerful. Take some time 
to draw his Esuna. Since only one character in your party has Mag-J, 
the other 2 will fail quite often. But since this boss is quite 
harmless, I usually try to stock up on as much Esunas as I can hold. 

After a bit, Wedge comes to help Biggs. He's even less of a threat as 
most of the time he will just stand there. You can call a GF to wipe 
out both of them in one shot when you've drawn enough spells since 
your GFs are of a high level.

After you beat on them for a bit, they'll get swept away by a 
whirlwind and you'll be up against...

BOSS  Elvoret 
This is a continuation from the last battle. Elvoret is no joke. 
Every 3 rounds he'll use his Storm Breath attack, a wind elemental 
attack that does about 150 to all 3 members of your team, so keep 
your HP above 200. 

> GF Check! Do NOT forget to draw Siren from this boss.

Elvoret has a nice spell to draw  Double! Again, I'd have all my 
characters draw Double from it and 200 of them would be my goal. 
Double is _slightly_ easier to draw compared to Esuna, or so it 
seemed. Your characters without Mag-J will still have some problems 
coping with it but Doubles are really useful in junctions so I think 
it's worth it. 

When one of your characters need healing, have a character without 
Mag-J draw Cure from Elvoret and cast. If all your characters need 
healing (ie, after Storm Breath) then let Selphie use her Full-Cure. 
If you're unfortunate enough to get KO'd, use a Phoenix Down.

After a while, Selphie should have 100 Doubles stocked, so let her 
summon Quezacotl to raise their Compatibility. Keep an eye out on 
Quezacotl's HP though. If it gets too low, only summon it after 
Elvoret does his Storm Breath. The other 2 should keep on drawing 
Doubles from the boss.

You'll be able to beat it after summoning Quezacotl about 5 times. 
For all your troubles, you'll get to pick up a bootie full of free 
goodies like Elixirs. As if it weren't enough, you've gotten a full 
supply of good spells and a new GF.

> Junction Check! Junction Siren to Squall and junction 100 Doubles 
into his Magic (steal Doubles from Zell if you haven't got enough) 
Junction 100 Doubles to Selphie's Magic as well. Don't change your 
commands. Junction 100 Thunders to Zell's Elem-Atk if you wish.

> GF Check! 
Quezacotl: He should've gotten Card Mod already. Any Menu Abilities 
should do now. If you've been training hard and have gotten all his 
Menu Abilities, get his Junction Abilities. 
Shiva: Get Vit+20% then Spr+20%.
Ifrit: Get his Str+??% abilities.
Siren: Definitely Move-Find first.

You now have 30 minutes to get to the shore so run like hell!!!

OPTIONAL BOSS  X-ATM092
This is an optional boss where you can choose whether to fight it or 
not. Killing it will result in 100 bonus points and loads of AP but I 
think you're NOT supposed to kill it. It's your choice whether you 
wanna take it down. Yes you are under a time limit of 30 minutes but 
it should be enough to take it down without much problems. If it's 
your first time through the game then I don't recommend it, but if 
you've played through the game and wants revenge, this is the way to 
go (may be..)

FIRST ENCOUNTER
You'll first encounter the X-ATM092 at the entrance of the tower, and 
it's a mandatory battle. You cannot however, defeat it in this fight. 
Even if you deplete its HP to zero, it will be refilled and believe 
me I learnt it the hard way! So all you can do is to do about 1500 
damage and it'll collapse. Just cast Thunders and summon Quezacotl 
with Selphie. Run when it gets down.

SECOND ENCOUNTER
This is the time to defeat it if you wish. Since you will not run 
into any random encounters during the chase, it's better to fight it 
as late as possible (however, I just cannot get through the part near 
the steps where the ground shakes and you can't move.) 

Selphie should summon Quezacotl non-stop and since she's summon it 
many times during the fight with Elvoret, they should have good 
Compatibility. Use Boost to get the fullest effect, especially if you 
have a turbo controller. It can do 1300+ if you manage to get 130 or 
so with Boost. 

Zell and Squall should have fairly low HP (don't heal them during the 
fight) and execute their Limit Breaks every round. They should both 
have spells junctioned to their Str too. For some strange reason, 
Squall's Renzukoken will always be 4 hits versus the X-ATM092. Zell 
should use mainly his Punch Rush and Booya, and maybe Mach Kick. (It 
should do more damage than Squall's even for the 4 second time 
interval!)

If Squall/Zell gets KO'd, revive them with a Phoenix Down and keep 
going. It'll eventually explode. This fight can take about 10-15 
minutes but there's plenty of time left. You'll get the whoppin' 50AP 
that I just couldn't shut up about. I heard that the X-ATM092 will 
leave a good random item when it destructs but I've beaten it twice 
and all I got was a cheap Orichalcon both times. (Why couldn't it 
have been the upgraded version like an Adamantine? Oh well, at least 
I got my 50AP!)

BTW, you WILL run into random fights with the X-ATM092 out of the 
way. Just run from them all (points deducted.) A strange thing 
happened when I was against a soldier, the game wouldn't let me run 
so I had to take him down.

If you decided not to beat it, then just run away from it and use the 
same strategy as the first fight to take it down temporarily and run 
for it. Of course, there's a huge advantage in NOT killing off the 
boss, and that is you'll be treated to a nifty FMV (my personal 
favourite) where the team runs from the "Black Widow" and the foxy 
Quistis shoots down the robot with big guns. (Gosh, she can take on 
Lara Croft AND Jill Valentine both at the same time with THAT!)

Once you arrive back in Balamb, just head back to the Garden if you 
don't have anything to do. Stay at the hotel if you wish.

After a few story scenes, you should get your SeeD report. You should 
get something like a 7 if you followed my steps. Don't forget to talk 
to Cid again for the Battle Report.


---Voulez-vous couchez avec moi ce soir?--- (I hope that's correct..)
Congrats congrats, now you're a SeeD members. Get changed (noticed 
how he got changed with the doors OPEN while Selphie is just standing 
outside?!) and talk to Selphie when you're done.

You'll be treated to a couple of bootieful dance FMVs with an unknown 
girl. Quistis then comes along and wants you meet her in the secret 
area in the Training Area. Get changed again (I don't see the point) 
before you go you should junction both Squall and Quistis properly. 

> Junction Check! Junction 2 GFs on each character, I had Squall with 
Ifrit and Siren while Quistis got Quezacotl and Shiva. Junction the 
200 Doubles that you've worked so hard for in each character's Magic. 
Junction Blizzard to Ele-Atk if you wish and Junction Sleep to 
Squall's ST-Atk. Finally, the commands should look something like:
   Squall:  Attack, Draw, GF, Magic
   Quistis: Attack, Draw, GF, Card
> Substitute in Item instead of GF for Squall if you wanna play safe 
just in case Quistis dies.

> Magic Check! Trade someone's magic to Quistis and trade the Blind 
spells to Squall.

> GF Check! Your GFs should have learnt some decent expensive 
abilities if you took down the X-ATM092.
  - Quezacotl: Card Mod should be complete now. Learn T Mag-RF then 
Mid Mag-RF if you haven't done so. Then HP-J and the other J 
abilities.
  - Shiva: Vit+20% and Spr+20% followed by the +40%s.
  - Ifrit: Str+20% and +40%, then Str Bonus if you wish or HP-J.
  - Siren: She should have gotten Move-Find already. Learn Boost then 
either all her Menu Abilities (L Mag-RF is great!) or her Mag+20%.

> Card Check! So you have gotten Card Mod, it's time to get some new 
Blue Magic for Quistis. You can get 3 decent skills just by modding 
some of the crap cards you were given at the start of the game.
    Caterchipiller -> Spider Web    -> Ultra Wave
    Gesper         -> Black Hole    -> Degenerator
    Gayla          -> Mystery Fluid -> Acid
If you've played some card games already and manage to win, you might 
have more cards that can be turned into Quistis' new skills.

Save your game in Squall's room. Head to the Training Area and 
Quistis will be waiting for you. She'll teach you something about 
Status Attack.

Enter the Training Area and prepare for a fight. If you encounter 
Grats, have Squall weaken them and have Quistis turn them into a 
card. If you encounter a T-Rexaur, try putting it to sleep by 
attacking it with Sleep Junctioned to ST-Atk. If it doesn't work, 
have Squall cast Blind on it. You can Scan it if you want, it should 
have about 13000HP. Summon Shiva with Quistis and another GF or cast 
Blizzard using Squall. When you've done about 8000+ damage, you can 
card it with Quistis. You'll get a nice 10AP for your effort, which 
is worth it IMO. You may want to stay here for a bit to build up your 
GFs.

BOSS  Granaldo and Raldo
You'll have to fight 3 Raldos and a Granaldo to save a girl. This is 
an easy battle since they can't really do much damage, maybe about 30 
points max. 

Draw Protects from the Raldos as they act as decent spells for 
Vitality, and cast them on your team if you want. When your Limit 
Break comes up (will be quite a while since they're so weak!) 
eliminate them in one hit with Squall's Renzokuken and Quistis' Laser 
Eye or Ultra Vibration. I usually get 100 Protects for either member.

When you finished with Protects, Granaldo holds Shells which is nice 
for your Spirit. I usually get another 100 each, but if you don't 
want to then don't worry too much as it's not the best spell in the 
game and it can be refine really easily later. Draw some Blinds too, 
they're not good for junctions at all but are useful against many 
enemies who uses physical attacks, like T-Rexaurs. 

Finish them off with your Limits once you're satisfied, or if you're 
no where near critical HP, summon your high level GFs to kill them in 
one hit (Ifrit works well.)

<That's it for this version. It'll squeeze more in next time. I have 
about a week off before my next exam so I'll be writing more on this 
guide, although it sounds kinda bad since I really should be 
studying, but maths? I don't think so! Any comments, suggestions, 
complains on my guide please e-mail me. Also, e-mail me if you want 
to see a specific section in my guide. I'm kinda thinking of doing a 
Triple Triad strategy section but..>


MISCELLANEOUS
=============
This section just includes all the weird and interesting stuff on 
this game.

* Is Doomtrain REALLY the train boss from FF6? Well, I asked Happy 
Matt and he checked the monster compendium in the Japanese version of 
FF6 and he said that the boss' name could be directly translated into 
"Magic Train" or "Phantom Train" or something along the lines of it. 
The Japanese name of Doomtrain is "Grasharaboras" so there is NO 
evidence that Doomtrain is exactly the Phantom Train in FF6. However, 
it's possible that they're related.

* Like FFT, FFVIII contains lotsa references from the previous 
fantasies (and I don't just mean the FF regulars like Chocobos, 
Moogles, Shiva, Behemoth etc), these are the ones I've found:

-FFIV-
None yet.

-FFV-
-> Gilgamesh, who was Ex-Death's servant in FFV, a comical villain. 
Likewise, 2 of his sword attacks are also from FFV.
  => Excalibur: The sword he wanted so much but..
  => Excalipur (Excalipoor is just a poor translation) was the one he 
got. A joke item in FFV as it can only ever do 1 point of damage.

-> Boco (again, Boko is another bad translation): Butz's Chocobo is 
now the default Chicobo name.

-> Omega: I hated this bonus boss as it's next to impossible to beat! 

-FFVI-
-> Doomtrain (see above)

-> Odin's fate: Remember what happened to Odin in FFVI? That's right, 
he got slaughtered by an inverted version of his sword attack, which 
is used by Seifer in FFVIII.

-> AtmaWeapon (Ultima Weapon): see below

-FFVII-
-> Cloud: He owns a shop in Esthar where he sells some useless stuff.

-> Ultima Weapon: Another bonus boss that appeared in FFVI, VII and 
VII. 

-> Ultima Weapon: And the Ultima Weapon is holding Cloud's Ultima 
Weapon. It's not as strong as it was in FFVII though.

-FFT-
-> Olan/Orlan (I'm not sure which is the bad translation) is the 
person who invented Triple Triad. And he IS Olan from FFT since 
there's a picture of him in the card tutorial. You can also see a 
Black Mage in the background drawn in FFT style.

-> Diablos: Have you ever wondered how much Diablos resembles that of 
the Lich (the summon) in FFT? They look identical and works the same 
way, so I guess they're the same thing.

-> Eden: Is Eden Zodiac? They look kinda similar and share few 
features, that they're both the most powerful summons and that it's 
next to impossible to tell what they're supposed to be. (IMO, Zodiac 
looks like a fairy and Eden looks like a giant mushroom.)

-> Save the Queen: Quistis' best weapon is of the same name is 
Meliadoul's (and other Divine Knight's) sword.

-> Blind: Ok, this is a bit off the topic but the Blind spell in 
FFVIII looks suspiciously similar to the one in FFT.

-Other-
-> Ehrgeiz: The fighting game, but the timer runs out way too fast 
for my liking!

* In Laguna's scenario where he asked the receptionist about Julia's 
room, the receptionist called her "Ms Julia". Meaning she's married!



This FAQ is intended to be used for non commercial purposes and there 
shouldn't be any money involved. It is free to everyone who is 
interested and you can print is if you like (although with my type of 
format, it's not very print friendly.) Please do not rip me off by 
claiming that it's your own work or rip any others off by selling 
them a free FAQ. As I've learnt from my "debut" walkthrough, that 
writing a walkthrough is really not an easy task at all but I've 
really worked hard on it. So enjoy this "free" guide!

Copyright 1999 by me. E-mail me at i_love_aya@hotmail.com

Final Fantasy VIII (c) 1999 Squaresoft


