With Laguna, Kiros, and Ward now onboard the Ragnarok, the finale of the game is set in motion. Laguna will give one last pep-talk and you are free to fly toward Lunatic Pandora and the beginning of the game's conclusion. However, once you are on disc 4 and time compression begins, we will be cut off from the overwhelming-majority of the world, which makes it imperative that we finish any and all side-quests now. Before we set out for those, if you talk with Kiros and Ward in the Ragnarok's passenger seating, it will become clear, which you probably already knew, that Squall is the son of Laguna and Raine. There will be a new Esthar (3) entry into your tutorial/information now, too.
You can play cards with Laguna here, too, and he has his own son's card to win.
Speaking of Laguna, remember the area that Laguna battled the Ruby Dragon during the film production? We can access Trabia Canyon now in possession of the Ragnarok. Its entrance is located to the southeast of Trabia Garden, just past the huge crater (What caused that anyway?).
Although, there is absolutely nothing to see or do here. The enemies, Bite Bugs, Mesmerizes, Gaylas, and Ochus are still the same as in Laguna's time. You can exit out to the Esthar continent on the other side, an area which will be important in a later side-quest.
On the Trabia continent, there is also one other hidden draw point we can only find with the use of flight. It's on the edge of the snowy terrain to the northwest of Trabia Garden, behind a mountain range that is only reachable with the Ragnarok. The draw point contains Flare magic.
Our first side-quest begins at the Shumi Village; located within a strange-looking structure to the northwest of Trabia Garden.
If you circle around the shore to the above screenshot near Shumi Village, you will find a Regen draw point.
If you make your way east of the Village, around the mountains, you will arrive at a Blizzaga draw point once you can proceed no further.
With the Ragnarok, there are three other hidden draw points on the tundras behind Shumi Village. The first draw point, Quake, is at the extreme southwestern tip.
Almost directly facing the Blizzaga draw point, inside a frozen lake, is a Sleep draw point.
The last is a Silence one, a little bit west of the Sleep draw point, in the corner of the island between a mountain and the sea. With those covered, we are now ready to enter the Shumi Village.
Near the elevator, you'll find three shumis guarding a draw point. If you pay 5000 Gil, you can draw from an Ultima point. Considering how there's not a whole lot to use for Gil, this is, in fact, an excellent way to stock Ultima magic and the point, itself, recharges quickly. You'll be coming and going from this area multiple times, so I recommend paying up to use it each time. Ultima is the best spell to junction to pretty much every statistic in the game, except for status defense. I recommend using it for either Strength, Magic, or Luck. You can then take the elevator down to the actual Shumi Village. Note: This creates a Shumi Tribe entry in the tutorial/information section of the main menu that you can miss if you never visit here.
You can't do much, at first, except use the inn where a familiar tune will be playing. You can, however, enter the right-hand-side house across from the pond. The final Timber Maniacs magazine in the game is here, lying upon a bed. Just to note, if you had picked this magazine up before the Laguna dream in Trabia Canyon, Ward would not have appeared in it with Laguna and Kiros. Make sure, at least once, you return to Balamb Garden and use Squall's study panel to access Selphie's Sir Laguna page to see all of the articles she collected from the magazines you picked up. This issue in particular, Selphie says Ward isn't pictured, but he clearly is, so...? I dunno.
Enter the left-side house across from the pond and you will find a Laguna statue that is in construction. The Sculptor here will direct you to speak with the shumi Elder, who's house you passed by with the draw point and moomba outside. You'll learn about Laguna's history with the shumi tribe from the Elder and he offers you a gift, but first, it's customary for you to work for it.
Return to the Sculptor and he will advise you to find "special" stones to help him complete the Laguna statue being built. Afterwards, search the large blue stone nearby to find the first stone.
The next stone, the "Wind Stone", is found near the large rocks to the left of the inn. Take it back to the Sculptor to advance.
Squall can climb the vegetation to the right of the Elder's home to find the "Life Stone". Once again, you'll need to return it to the Sculptor.
For the "Shadow Stone", ride the elevator back to the surface and search the upper-right side of the screen for it. Back to the Sculptor; there is only one left to find.
You can find a "Faux Water Stone" from the frog near the pond for a scene, but the real "Water Stone" is in the sink inside the Artisan's home you found the Timber Maniacs magazine. When it is returned to the Sculptor, you can see the Elder for your reward.
The reward is: the Elder will show Squall his hands, which won't make much sense until you exit the house and hear the option for Squall to explain the significance of it. You do, however, receive a Phoenix Pinion from the Attendant, to satisfy the human custom of something tangible. The quest isn't over, though. You're going to need to go back and forth, talking with the Sculptor, Attendant, Elder, moomba, and the Artisan, to progress the building of the Laguna statue. Once you reach the point where the Elder requests the help of the Artisan, but he refuses, you can advance the quest.
Remember the Grease Monkey from Fishermans Horizon? He is a fellow artisan and is friends with the Shumi Village's Artisan. Fly to FH and talk with him and he will send his moomba doll along with you to help in the building of the statue.
Return back to the Shumi Village and present the moomba doll to the Artisan. The Grease Monkey will speak to Artisan through the doll and convince him of his pride as an artisan. Back outside, you will meet up with the Master Fisherman from FH, an old friend of the shumi tribe who has come to fish at the pond here, then, Artisan will leave his home to help with the statue, talking about moving to FH and evolving into a human, instead of a moomba.
The Elder will reward you with a Status Guard item to complete the quest. This item will teach a Guardian Force the ST-Def-J x4 ability. Only two GFs have this ability, Cerberus and Doomtrain, so you will need to teach this to a third character's GF to be able to fully-junction to all character's status defense.
If you're curious, while there is no reward, this quest does have an ultimate conclusion. I'm unsure of the timing, but many hours in the game later, if you return to the statue, it will have been completed. You'll get special scenes with all the character's involved, including a flashback from Laguna's time in the village, and even shows the picture being taken of the photo that shows in Laguna's Timber Maniacs article you can see on Selphie's Sir Laguna webpage if you picked up the appropriate one. The Master Fisherman from FH makes another appearance and one of the two possible choices from your concert in FH, the Irish Jig, will play through Shumi Village from now on. As for our next quest, we need to equip Diablos' Enc-None ability, which will make life much-easier; we're going UFO hunting.
Southeast of Timber, on the shore known as Mandy Beach, even with Enc-None equipped, the party will enter a battle void of enemies. You'll then see a spacecraft carrying away a Moai head! Hmm...I've seen this before.
Ah, yeah, it's at the bottom of the sea in Final Fantasy V!
It's a completionist item in Castlevania: Curse of Darkness, as well. However, I have highly digressed...
Back to the issue at hand, our next encounter is on the plains outside of Winhill. The craft has hijacked a cow from the village, apparently.
I don't remember seeing one of these around, but the UFO is carrying away a pyramid in the Kashkabald Desert, near Cactaur Island, to the far-east of Edea's House.
It's a bit tricky to find the latest encounter with the spacecraft. You need to land on this small island in the Trabia region, northeast of the Garden, on what is known as Heath Peninsula.
No clue what it's got here, but must be important. Having seen all four encounters with the UFO, we are ready to confront the craft itself.
Northeast of Esthar, around the enclosed Grandini Forest, you can land on the bluffs in the screenshot above to find the last encounter.
You'll have to fight the UFO, itself, although it won't fight back. It'll then explode and fly off into the distance, leaving an Aegis Amulet behind. This important item teaches a GF the Eva-J ability, that only Cactaur, and the later GF, Eden, have. So, you'll need to use this on one of the third character's GFs to be able to junction magic to all three character's Evade stat. I recommend junctioning Tornado to your character's Evade%. The Aegis Amulet isn't the true reward, however. To finish this quest up, we need five Elixirs, which, with Tonberry's Familiar ability, can easily be purchased from Esthar, and to equip the item command to a character.
Check around the crater left by Balamb Garden's ascent earlier in the game, and you will encounter the alien, PuPu: Final Fantasy VIII's version of the Magic Pot. Use the five Elixirs on him and he will hand over his one-of-a-kind card.
You can NEVER, ever get this card anywhere else. So, make sure you don't play it during card games or Card Mod it. Although, it does Card Mod into, possibly, the rarest item in the entire game, but we'll, unfortunately, have to use another way to get it...
Our next destination is the game's token bonus dungeon: the Deep Sea Research Center. Here, we'll finally obtain the game's last two GFs. The dungeon can be found with the Ragnarok in the lower-left-hand corner of the world map, and has a convenient helipad to land on.
If you bring Zell when you land, he'll give you a background on what this area is all about. Either way, you'll get new entries in your tutorial/information section. Inside the Research Center, a core will be pulsating with blue light. If you walk while the light is flashing, it's an instant random encounter; so, make sure to move only when the light is dimmed.
When you reach the core, answer the questions as "It's not our will to fight" and then "Never". Between each answer, you'll have to battle a tough Ruby Dragon. Make absolutely sure at the beginning of these battles to cast Protect on everyone: its Breath attack can deal upwards of 7000+ damage to the entire party. Once Protect is up, summon Doomtrain, and then, if you heal up between Breath attacks, the fight shouldn't be too difficult. Ruby Dragons are also the only common encounter in the game you can draw the Meteor spell from. After the next boss, Ruby Dragons can be regularly encountered in this room.
For the next question, there is a hidden, third, option to select. Choosing it will bring you into a boss battle.
Compared to what you'll encounter further in, Bahamut is a pushover. Summon Doomtrain to inflict him with Blind and Slow, then use this chance to draw and stock 100 Full-life spells, if you haven't already. You may consider casting Shell on the party to protect against Mega Flare, but with 6000+ HP, you should be okay without it. Once you defeat Bahamut, he joins you as a Guardian Force, you receive his playing card, and a Hyper Wrist item. Bahamut comes with a second Mug ability, that you cannot get anywhere else, so you may consider junctioning him opposite Diablos, but having two characters with Mug is kind of a moot point, in my opinion. Along the same idea, Bahamut has the Expendx2-1 ability that only Cerberus has as well and cannot be learned via item, but is rendered useless due to being able to teach Expendx3-1 via a Three Stars item. Also, don't be fooled by his Rare Item ability, it is, in fact, detrimental to obtaining rare items, in the long-run.
Return to the Ragnarok, then land again at the Deep Sea Research Center, and a new path will have emerged that allows you to climb to the depths below. At the bottom, have Squall search the machine on the left-side of the screen to open the way to the next floor.
Below the first floor, you'll begin to commonly encounter Tri-Faces again, and this is the best place in the game to find them. You can draw Pain and Flare magic, and mug the usual Curse Spikes, which if you haven't collected 100 of them to refine to a Dark Matter item to learn Quistis' best blue magic, Shockwave Pulsar, I recommend you do now. We'll be farming even more Curse Spikes later on...
Use the control panel in the upper-right corner of the screen and have Squall select to use 2 RSP to open the entrance to the next floor.
On the next floor, use the panel to the left of the stairs to open the steam room nearby.
You can encounter a former boss inside the steam room: the Oilboyle, although, there's nothing special about them other than being a unique find. Use the switch in the upper-part of the steam room to replenish some of your RSP and return to the previous room.
For this control panel, select 1 RSP to gain entry to the next floor.
1 RSP at this panel, too, to open the path downward.
Once more, 1 RSP at this switch to activate an elevator on the left-side
of the screen you can use to descend even father into the Research
Center.
Squall will automatically expend 4 RSP to open the passage to the Deep Sea Deposit. There will be some new encounters inside this sunken, temple-like structure as you circle your way down. Don't miss the semi-hidden save point on the first screen.
If you encounter two Iron Giants, Blind them or summon Doomtrain immediately. Two of these, unblinded, are as dangerous as a Ruby Dragon.
Near the very bottom of the ruin, before the archway, there is a hidden Ultima draw point you can use.
Just before the final control panel, if you equip Siren's Move-Find ability, you will see a nearby hidden save point I highly recommend you take advantage of. The upcoming boss is like none you have faced, thus-far. If you have Squall's Lion Heart, things will be over quickly, but if not, be prepared for a long and drawn-out battle. I recommend Quistis and either Zell/Irvine for this battle.
Wow! That sword is awfully familiar, and its damage doesn't decrease with HP loss, but don't get distracted from the task at hand. Immediately draw the Eden Guardian Force from him, have the character with Cerberus attempt to summon him, and the third cast Meltdown, also, don't attempt to steal from him. He has a fairly rare Three Stars item to steal, but obtaining the amount of his dropped item is even rarer. Ultima Weapon is ridiculously quick, and you're going to be fighting from underneath the entire battle. This battle is all about being resilient with keeping character's
revived, as Ultima Weapon's Light Pillar attack is an instant 9999
damage, regardless. If you managed to get Cerberus summoned, triple Haste and Aura onto the party. More than likely, he'll have used Gravija by now, reducing your HP to almost none; this is where Quistis comes in: have her cast White Wind to restore the party, and if she, unlikely, gets another turn, use Mighty Guard. During this time, between casting Full-life to revive downed characters and recasting Aura, have Squall and Zell/Irvine use their limit breaks. With Meltdown cast, if Squall pulls off Lion Heart, the battle is pretty much won, at that point. Once Ultima Weapon is defeated, if you didn't steal his item, you will receive 100 Ultima Stones, the game's final GF, Eden, and the Eden playing card. As a side-bonus, your SeeD rank will increase after the battle, as well. Note: Once Ultima Weapon is defeated, all encounters in the Deep Sea Deposit will cease, but those inside the Center will remain.
Eden has the ability we've been waiting for: GF Abl Med-RF. With this, we can create Guardian Force ability items, which will allow us to customize our characters in almost anyway we want. Eden also comes with the Devour command ability, that can be used to permanently increase character's statistics. Lastly, Eden is the third Guardian Force that comes with the Hit-J ability; that cannot be taught with items, so you need to spread Eden, Cerberus, and Diablos evenly between your three characters. This GF also comes with the Darkside and Mad Rush abilities, held by Diablos and Ifrit, as well, and they cannot be taught to other GFs, so separating Eden from them is an option if you want to have as many commands available to your characters as possible. Eden's attack, Eternal Breath, along with Cactaur's Kamikaze and Quistis Shockwave Pulsar, are the only attacks in the game that can break the damage limit of 9999; and this is easily done with Eden, being able to boost to the maximum of 250. Both the GF items we can now create and the Devour ability will be covered in-depth in an upcoming chapter. For now, make your way back out of the dungeon and to the Ragnarok.
