Welcome to my completionist guide for Final Fantasy VIII. Almost twenty years ago of this writing, I wrote a complete walkthrough for this game which you can still find in its section on GameFAQs; long before I was a completionist or barely even a decent writer. FFVIII has always been one of my favorite Final Fantasies and it is a pleasure for me to bring this to you so many years later. My goal with this guide is to provide you with how to acquire every GF, item, ect. available in the game with nothing unturned. Hope that you enjoy reading and that it is of help to you.
After the introduction video plays, the main character, Squall, will wake in the doctor's office of Balamb Garden; having been injured during a training (?) session with fellow student, Seifer. You will be given the opportunity to change his name, if you'd like.
Squall will sense a strange girl is watching him and then Quistis, his instructor, will enter the infirmary to take Squall back to the classroom. Walk with her as you talk and you get some close looks of the Garden.
In the classroom, Quistis will scold Seifer for wounding Squall and then inform everyone that the SeeD exam is upcoming. When you gain control of Squall, first check his study panel to bring up the menu in the screenshot. Select the Tutorial to pick up your first two GFs: Quezacotl and Shiva. For now, you can read various things about Balamb Garden on the study panel, but this will have more use later on in the game. When you are ready, talk with Quistis who will be waiting for you at the gates of the Garden to support Squall on his mission to qualify for the SeeD exam.
If you plan to do some fighting at the Training Center, go ahead and junction both Quezacotl and Shiva to Squall and set them to learning abilities. With GFs, I recommend you start learning Boost and then move on to their stat-junction abilities. However, Quezacotl will be vital to the upcoming SeeD exam, so we will need to approach his a little differently. Start with Boost, then SumMag+10%, T Mag-RF, and then Card. I will cover this more in the next chapter.
Heading toward the elevator, a new student will run into Squall and ask if he can give her a tour of the Garden. Choose whichever you like, but since we will be getting to know this girl a lot in the future, I always go ahead and except.
Talk to the guy hanging out before the elevator and he will hand over a starter deck of cards to Squall. While you can start playing cards with a majority of the NPCs around now, I highly advise against it. For some reason, everybody in this Garden is playing with much more than a starter deck and you will likely lose every game. Don't worry though, we will be gaining a trump card to combat this very soon. At the bottom of the elevator, if you chose to, Squall will give a little overview of the areas within Balamb Garden and then will be left to freely explore.
On the east-side of the Garden, enter the library and search around the bookcase shown in the above screenshot for Squall to nab an Occult Fan I item. This will be the first of many magazine items that give subtle hints for how to obtain items or side-quests, but otherwise, just for collecting.
Try to walk to the end of the same bookcase and you will enter another screen. There is an Esuna draw point here. Esuna is one of the most vital spells in the game and junctions well to your status defense, when it becomes available. Unfortunately, while most draw points will replenish after Squall takes a certain number of steps (With each one, usually, varying) this draw point will always be empty after the first time you use it.
The next location north of the library is the Training Center. Squall can fight battles with, mostly, fairly simple Grat enemies that you can draw Sleep and Silence spells from and easily fall from summoning Shiva, but if you encounter the T-Rexaur shown above, RUN AWAY! We will be able to take care of these guys a little later on in the game. There's nothing else in the Training Center other than a Blizzard draw point.
Circle around to the northwest to find the cafeteria. You will see a scene involving Seifer, his gang, and Zell. After the scene, talk to the cafeteria lady on the left-side and listen to her story; this will be important to a small side-quest later in the game. There's nothing else to do in the Garden at the moment, so go ahead and head due south from the directory out to the front gate to meet Quistis.
Quistis will join your party here and give you a tutorial on Guardian Forces. You will also acquire Quezacotl and Shiva at this point if you didn't get them from Squall's study panel. Your destination is the Fire Cavern out on the world map, but first, let's take a look around the area. For reference: Most of Quistis' limit breaks, like her beginning Laser Eye, grow in strength the lower her HP gets, along with the growth of her magic stat.
Directly behind Balamb Garden, in the mountainous area, you can search the above area to find a hidden Cure draw point.
Follow the mountain toward the west and behind Balamb Town to search the tunnel that the trains run through to find a Esuna draw point.
Back to the east-side of the island, above the Fire Cavern, search around for a Blizzard draw point. On the last two discs of the game, this actually becomes a Cure draw point for some reason. It's the only draw point in the game that ever changes it spell, as far as I know.
Speaking of Cure spells, around the mountainous area here, you will frequently encounter Glacial Eye enemies. You can draw Cure spells from them and I highly recommend you stocking at least 50 of these; they are not only useful for battle, but junction to stats nicely as well.
Most monsters in the Balamb area will drop M-Stone Pieces upon defeat. This is a very common item at the beginning of the game and not much use, but is noteworthy for one reason: Since enemies in Final Fantasy VIII level up with your party, so do their drop and stolen items. Once these enemies (Bite Bug, for example), reach level 20, you will be unable to get this item from them and to obtain it you will need to use the GF Card Mod ability to get them or from the Buel inside the upcoming Fire Cavern where the enemies level do not change. Of course, much, much later in the game you will be able to manipulate enemy levels, but if you're an item collector, go ahead and start farming them now. If you'd like, once you have the required ability, you can refine these into low-level magic like Cure and Thunder.
In the forest areas of the world map outside Balamb, you will encounter Caterchipillar enemies. They can drop, and later you can steal, Spider Web items from them. One of these will be used to create a weapon later on and using it in the main menu will teach Quistis the blue magic, Ultra Waves, which is a rather weak attack on all enemies and does not contain the chance to inflict the berserk status like the Caterchipillar's does.. Spider Webs can be refined into useful Slow magic as well. With the world map covered, let's take a look inside Balamb Town on the western side of the island.
There's not a whole lot going on in the town at the moment. Inside the second house on the right, on the second screen, you can find a faux issue of Timber Maniacs. Jerks.
However, if you go inside the Balamb Hotel and up to the second floor and search the table above, you will find an issue of Timber Maniacs. These don't show up in your inventory, and are only useful for plot purposes which will be covered later on in the game. Down past the hotel and to the harbor, you will find a Cure draw point in the water.
On the eastern-side of town, you will find a Thunder draw point, a weapon remodel shop, an item shop, and then the Card Queen standing before the train station. For the most part, unless you really enjoy the rules and such of the card game, I would ignore the Card Queen until it comes time to take part in her side-quest. Interestingly enough, if you didn't take the Timber Maniacs magazine in the Balamb Hotel, there will be one inside the train station on the ground. They are both the same magazine and when you pick one of them up, the other will disappear. That's all in the Town of Balamb, we are ready for our first dungeon, the Fire Cavern, on the western-side of the island.
At the entrance, Quistis will give you another tutorial on how to junction magic and you can talk to the shady-looking guys to begin the exam. Your time selection here is important. If you run out of time, the game will end, and how much time is remaining on the clock when you defeat the boss will reflect on your later SeeD ranking. 10 minutes should be all the time you need, though. The Fire Cavern is extremely linear and apart from having to escape from battles, you should have little trouble.
You'll come face-to-face with the GF Ifrit at the end of the Cavern. While an easy boss, we need to closely watch the timer here. For your SeeD ranking, Ifrit needs to be defeated with less than 10 seconds left. To do this, summon Shiva twice, and then draw and cast Scan on him to view how much HP he has left. Use normal attacks to whittle away what's left of his HP until you can take him out with one more physical attack. Wait until there is about 13 seconds left, then finish him off; the rest of the timer will count down during the victory screen. You will obtain Ifrit as your next Guardian Force, but even better, he leaves behind his own Ifrit card which is said trump card from earlier. With this thing, along with a few others we will find in just a minute, the card game will became much easier.
After the battle, Quistis will give you yet another tutorial and we can freely explore the Fire Cavern now, but there's not much here other than monsters and a Fire draw point. The Buel enemy is of note due to it having all three of the elemental spells to draw; stock up on as many of these as you can. Another note is: the enemies in the Fire Cavern are the only ones in the game that have their levels locked, which means you can gain AP for GF abilities here without leveling up too much and because of this, the Buel enemies here will have M-Stone Pieces to steal and drop throughout the entire game. Some players like to keep their levels low to use the stat-bonus GF abilities later on in the game, but that's not really something I will be shooting for. If you are interested in stat increases, you will eventually get a GF ability that will allow you to raise your stats by using it on certain enemies. While that method takes more effort, it is my opinion that forcibly keeping your levels low is more of a headache, but you decide for yourself.
Hopefully, by now, you have learned Quezacotl's Card ability. When you equip this command, you can change a weakened monster into a card item. To go with your new Ifrit card, try to change a few Bomb enemies into cards here; they are very nice to have. With the Ifrit and Bomb cards in hand, we are ready to start seriously playing the card game and can return to Balamb Garden.
