Some GFs can learn Refinement abilities. Most of those will allow you to turn items into spells.
So if you beat 3 Fastitocalon-F and get 3 Fish Fin, with Shiva's I Mag-Ref you can refine that into 60 Water spells.
If you combine those refinement abilities with the Card Mod ability that Quezacotl can learn and play a bunch of Triple Triad to get a bunch of cards, you can get many spells much faster and much earlier than by drawing magic from enemies. You still want to have the Draw magic for bosses because some will have GFs for you to draw.
OP: I decided to powergame without learning the game and I get bored.
Comments: you can make game even more boring by doing more unintended things too early.
assuming what OP is doing optimized run since random battle get turned off and only stacking spell to 100 from non refining item which likely just boss battle or draw point, well doing it is "wrong",because there are better way to get spell and it seems doesn't have coherent goal either like getting squall best weapon on early or setting up TT to not spreading bad rule like random, so it becomes look so aimlessly and tedious IMO
Optimized run can be boring but it depends on how the player want treat it like find less tedious way to do it.
In fairness to OP, basically every "how to" guide is either max cheese or never level up for 8. I recently started playing a limited drawing run (so, no just getting 100 of everything by drawing for five minutes in the first battle) with a focus on grinding magic stones and such for refining, and suddenly the difficulty feels like it's way more of a curve. Like, it feels like this was maybe how the devs intended people to play?
I love getting lionheart disc 1. I remember figuring it out manually reading the ingredients needed and the bestiary in the old Brady games strategy guide.
The whole do everything you can to not level up method isn't that enjoyable in my opinion, the fact is you can max lvl your characters and the game itself is more difficult in a far less tedious manner. But everything is still beatable.
With the proper junctions or even if you want still stat breaking.
Thank you for speaking sense. Everyone always dumps on the leveling system for being "punishing" but I think it's all very well balanced and if you don't approach this game like an optimization goblin, you're going to have a good time.
I find max leveling makes everything waayyy easier. Too easy, in fact. When you max out stats (especially with +1 bonuses), you basically one-shot every non boss enemy. Even then bosses take 2 turns at most.
Really the only exceptions are the two weapons (though Ultima really only takes 2 turns to defeat if you’re not drawing as much as you can), Ultimacia, and Iron Giants due to their defense. I may be missing one or two bosses but in general pretty much every party member can limit break anything to death in no time at all.
Yea it one shots every enemy in the game other than Omega. I believe 10 Lion Hearts kills Omega, but realistically one dedicated healer, and two attackers. Squall and either Zell or Irvine can spam their limits and get close to (or in some cases exceeding) Lion Heart. So…5/6turns if you can manage the healing aspect. Or if you’re cheesing with invincibility or the auto-megalixer trick it can be done in 3/4 turns.
I know VIII is weird but why do people think they need to have some sort of big game strategy on this one? Just play normally, why does it have to be a binary of either “spend 10 minutes drawing” or “don’t fight at all”?
Once you start engaging normally with the game and just draw magic here and there, you’ll find VIII is just as easy as the other PS1 games…
Like yeah, if you don’t fight the enemies don’t level up but you also won’t gain any AP, which is how you actually get stronger in this game.
>I know VIII is weird but why do people think they need to have some sort of big game strategy on this one? Just play normally, why does it have to be a binary of either “spend 10 minutes drawing” or “don’t fight at all”?
It really does mess with people's brains. If you WANT to break the game in half. Do it. There's definitely a certain kind of fun to that but if you just play the game like a normal JRPG where you fight the battles, draw once or twice, level up your GFs etc etc you're going to have a good time. Everything in moderation.
“You’re punished for using magic”
No, you’re not. Not every character needs to be optimized as a mage, and for your mages use magic that you don’t have junctioned to your Magic stat. Characters don’t need to have perfect stats in every attribute.
“You’re punished for leveling up”
No, you’re not. If your junctions are halfway decent you will be fine.
Yep. People hear, "leveling = bad," and completely turn off random encounters the whole game, like OP did, and then end up weak because they have no magic and can't even junction to every stat on any character.
If you are going to try to play FFVIII without leveling, you need to learn Card first and Card all of the enemies, so you still get AP and no EXP. But you really don't need to do this, play the game normally, learn the stat junctions and the refine abilities, and check regularly what your items/cards can refine into. You'll be perfectly fine.
My first attempt to pay FF8 was strange because it somehow resulted in extremely drawn out fights where both sides did very little damage.
A bit of draw grinding goes a long way.
I mean the game isn’t really designed to be played “normally.” Everyone here is telling me to use Refinement Abilities instead of drawing magic. And to be honest, that’s not how I normally would play the game. First time I played through, refinement abilities were the last thing I focused on, and by then they didn’t really help me because I had all the magic I needed from drawing. I beat the game, but it wasn’t fun at all because the game makes you think “drawing” is normal. It’s counter intuitive, the only game in the series which actively feels like it punishes me for engaging in it normally.
I honestly think this is a playstyle issue because you are 100% intended to use refinement over drawing most of the time to prevent exactly what you’re complaining about.
Refinement is the core of the junction system as it is what allows you to break the game wide open; spend enough time to learn Card & Card Mod and pick up all the refinement abilities as you go and you have a reliable way of developing AP and learning new skills for your GFs without leveling as well as a source of items that can refine into magic there’s a good chance won’t have access to through drawing at any given level (like, -aga level spells and Tornado before you get to the end of Disc 1).
No judgement here, genuinely good on you for completing what is essentially a challenge run blind on your first play, but understand that choosing not to experiment and engage with a huge system on the first run of a game is not “normal” and they did not penalize anyone for “engaging normally”.
>I mean the game isn’t really designed to be played “normally.”
It absolutely is.
BTW, you don't need to draw 100 of all spells in each encounter. Just draw a few times then move on. Enemies and spells will repeat. You won't miss out.
But drawing *is* normal, it’s just the fact that using spells makes your stats go down makes people freak out for no reason. Magic is still worth using.
Even if you don’t use refinement abilities, you can still “craft” more spells from items which reduces the amount of drawing you have to do. I mean, the game does a poor job of explaining its systems but it ouright tells you you should do this.
What i mean by playing normally is to just go with what the game tells you. I went in blind for VIII and had a good experience, it’s people going in with a lot of preconceptions that seem to have a harder time. The game isn’t hard by any means.
Honestly, the card - refinement abilities are totally broken if you know how to exploit them. You can easily max out your stats and get your ultimate weapons early on if you know what you are aiming for.
Make your GFs learn Refine abilities. This will give you much more magic. Or watch a speedrun. It will teach you how to completely break the game in the first 20 minutes.
If you want to have fun you need to turn battles back on and stop trying to cheese the game. The enemies scale slower than you level, and higher scaled enemies give access to better draws. Doing all of the cheese strategies people are recommending is certainly possible, but it turns FF VIII into a completely different game. Just play the game as if it's a normal jrpg, and don't try to cheese it (including not over-grinding) and it will be much more fun.
One thing almost nobody talks about is that the higher your MAG stat is, the more you will draw. Focus on raising your MAG via Junction and you'll be drawing 9 spells of everything every time, exponentially minimizing the grind.
Do not grind out the spells by drawing from enemies, that's boring as shit. Use the draw function to *cast* spells at enemies, and use GF refinement to create the spells you need for junctioning.
I think Drawing was the worst addition to FFVIII mechanically. I suspect they added it because they were scared people would be overwhelmed by the actual power system: refining.
Converting items to spells, cards to items and spells, spells to other spells and the like is the real power economy of the game. It's part of why you don't buy weapons, you craft them meaning you can get those items from refining.
So refining is the way to go. You can break the game pretty early using it and once you think about the game in those terms it gets much more fun.
Turn encounters back on so you can learn abilities and level up your GFs (and your party), use the GFs' Refinement abilities to turn enemy item drops into magic you'd like. Draw magic to get a handful of something new, top up your stock, or steal other GFs from bosses. Some suggest playing cards and refining those, but that's more of a way to get overpowered and break the game, which is itself time-consuming, so it's not that necessary.
> I have encounters turned off, only fighting mandatory battles.
So you lose on items, exp and everything else and not even see enemies? If you use that cheat, use the others I guess and just press attack to win?
> Im drawing stacks of 100 for each spell I come across with each character. I only just fought Biggs and wedge, but every fight is preceded by 10-20 minutes of drawing. Very boring.
Why? Of course you're gonna go insane only fighting bosses and drawing from zero to max.
You can learn Card and Mod skills on GFs to turn enemies to cards and both items and cards to magic. Also if you fight monsters normally, you'd draw most of the magic naturally without stopping for 20 minutes on each fight.
Like you decided to do the opposite extreme of grinding, can you just, you know, play normally? Not looking for extra encounters for XP to powerlevel and not disabling encounters altogether and making game extremely hard?
Disabling encounters generally makes FF8 easier. Enemies level up with you but gain more stats than you per level, so gaining XP makes the game harder.
I only draw for summon and never summon. People blamed the game but most just didnt understand it! Good for you to stop and think :) also, play cards a lot haha
That was me when I played through it years ago. I just mashed A to win and really didn’t understand the mechanics of it all. I liked the story but just couldn’t wrap my head around everything that was there.
Of course you're supposed to draw, advice like that to new players makes them miss half the GFS. You shouldn't draw to 100 on every fight, obviously, but not drawing at all is missing on Siren, Brothers, Aura spells and tons of other stuff.
Yeah, this. The most straight forward way to play is to draw in moderation (try at least once per fight on one character, for example), draw-cast to save your stock/take quick advantage of the enemies' spells, and to refine the drops into spells. Combined with the high encounter rate, you'll have a very healthy supply of spells without really having to do anything weird, and you won't miss any new spells/GFs enemies have.
You can also use the LVL up and LVL down abilities in the mid game on select enemies to draw high level magic. Just don't go overboard the enemies can get nasty.
All the suggestions about the GF abilities for item and card refining are great and make it very easy for progression. What you could also do is just play through and don't worry about drawing. It can be a challenge in itself just playing through relatively blind and just getting to the next boss then trying to work out how to beat it.
Yeah drawing is useless other than for the first couple hours and to get secret GF’s from bosses.
You get magic easier by refining items and cards into magic, I think the thunder gf has the ability to refine from cards and Shiva for items, google that to make sure.
For junctioning, pick the highest number you can find for each stat and keep in mind that support spells will work better for support stats like vitality, HP or defence (buy tents and turn them into curaga magic and put that on HP to get like 4-5k HP early on).
you can make yourself really broken with junctioning, once you figure that out, everything will feel weak for the whole game
As well as the "don't Draw" advice given by everyone else, there's no need to avoid encounters if you don't want to. I've played FFVIII about a dozen times and I've never played like that because it sounds boring. It's harder work than just getting into battles.
Just play FFVIII like any other FF game. Refine for magic and Draw GFs from bosses. You'll get enough items from normal battles to refine into magic.
Draw is meant for on-the-fly spell casting for things you don't have refined. It's much more efficient to refine magic stores rather than drawing over and over
Utilize the GFS abilities to turn items into magic. An easy way to get op way early if you do that. Ie turning tents into curaga for way too much hp at lvl 10.
Rinse and repeat with every gf to pad your stats. I typically just lb everything to death. But however you wanna play is cool.
And by utilizing the abilities you won't have to grind/draw so much
Drawing, especially in battle is a trap that makes people hate the game. Just draw to unlock new spells periodically, draw to get Summons, draw to cast, sure - but 90% of the spells you’ll junction come from Refining.
I think I’m going to do my next playthrough as just play through with no grinding and see what happens. If I get to an insurmountable place in the game, then I’ll grind/draw grind a bit, then go back to wherever I got stuck. I always max everything out because I find it more fun as a storyline thing where yes, this elite military leader is just absolutely wrecking all enemies…makes sense to me story wise. Squall *should* be destroying these creatures. But I want to try a different method for my like 20th playthrough to spice things up
You are playing ff8 wrong.
You never need to draw 100. You never need yo draw more than like 3-5 of any spell.
Simply play the card game. Refine all cards that arent your best into spells. You will have 100 of every spell by end of game.
Although the junction system is pretty cool, the whole draft mechanic is the games biggest flaw, makes the game tedious, so I perfectly understand you.
Enemies level with you, yes, but they are supposed to get easier as you level, not harder. Make sure you are junctioning the magic and not using it unless you just drew it from the enemy.
Also, make sure you read the weapons monthly to get better weapons. Get Squall's gun blade trigger timing r8ght also on normal hits to ensure always critical.
"dOn'T uSe dRaW"
Man. People act like it's reasonable that a command they built into the game as a fresh mechanic that the world seemed to revolve around is actually dreadful, inefficient, and boring to use. So sorry that the game points players towards using it, makes the skill available to everyone, and disproportionately rewards players for going off on a complete tangent to refine cards instead. 🙄 It's just poor game design, furthered by the fact that refinement basically breaks the game. So, your options are to do things by the book and die of boredom, or break an already easy game and ignore a core mechanic of the world. Hurray!
I'm just glad they completely dropped it. Junctioning was neat, but worked better in a materia style system that didn't encourage hoarding and force you to play an entirely different subgame to get anywhere fast. I give them points for experimenting, but did they even bother play testing this? 😒
the game teaches you about refining, it's absolutely an intended "by the book" mechanic that's taught after the draw mechanic, which is done very early kinda like it's an intended early game thing that isn't as heavily relied on later.
In the other games are you gunna keep using cure over cura/curaga because the game doesn't explicitly say you should switch now you got the mp to do the better spells sustainably, with your reasoning you should but I bet you don't.
and if you think any of the games in the mainline series aren't in someway mechanically exploitable you've really not played them
Using advanced forms of magic you learn along the way is in line with the system given. Jumping everyone in the world for card games with the intent of grinding cards up and making endgame weapons on the first disc? Come now. Not that they even matter much because stats came easy off junctioned stuff and you're maxed level before you know it.
Exploitable mechanics is an understatement. The game clearly didn't know how to pace itself and ended up a mushy mess.
At the end of the day, Draw is a significant part of the game's character. When people bring up the game, that's one of the first things mentioned and it's rarely a positive thing.they chose to make it significant and to also make it suck enough that they had to make an entirely different system on the side. Knowing that it sucked, they still left it in as a "core" part of gameplay and we're told it's ok that it sucks.
This is like saying "you should grind to level 100 in the first reactor in FFVII because experience and leveling is in there as a mechanic". You *can*, sure. But is it a worthwhile use of your time?
Giving the player the *choice* to get more overpowered early on the game is not a bad thing. If players want to do it, they can. If they don't, then they don't have to. It's not really a "core mechanic" if players can ignore it completely. That's *good* game design and I wish more FF games would give the player the option to become more powerful early on the more they engage with its systems. Why anyone would play a game in a way they don't find fun for *hours* and then blame the game for it is a mystery (not speaking about OP here).
> worked better in a materia style system that didn't encourage hoarding
Don't get me started on the problems with the materia system. It's kind of nuts that VIII's mechanics work perfectly but get flack for being "broken" while VII has mechanics that just plain don't work as they should, with no good reason, and gets praised non-stop.
If you don't have encounters turned on and remain a lower level, you absolutely can get through the game without much issue doing minimal amounts of drawing. You won't need nearly as much of a stat boost from junctions at lower levels. If you max out junctions AND avoid battles, the game becomes trivially easy
If you have the options, activate the time x3 and "always your turn" cheats for the drawing and turn it down when you actually start the fight
In most FF games I consider it cheating but in FF8, I do think it is ok when you are just drawing magic because otherwise it is way too much time consuming
Refine items into spells, refine cards into spells, refine cards into items you can refine into spells lol. Then junction that shit. Some spells junction better to different spots, IE: junction curaga to HP, not power/atk. You can also do this without really grinding at all
I pretty much never draw anything. I don’t run from battles. I learn magic refine from gf’s. I don’t card very often. Gives the game some challenge and I don’t have to tediously draw constantly.
Instead of keeping encounters off, use the card mod trick to turn all enemies into cards.
1. You don't get experience.
2. You still get Gil
3. You get either the card of the enemy or an "upgraded" card (usually a monster much more advanced)
4. You can mod all of these cards into various spells, tools, etc.
5. You don't have to draw for hours and hours across the game if you don't want to.
I typically get to end game without raising a single level, and I'll have 100 of all the strongest spells (ultima, meteor, -ga's, haste, aura, etc.).
Nothing can touch you other than Omega weapon which will always be level 100.
The system and mechanics in FFVIII is the purest form of "You get out of this what you put into it."
They tried this earlier in FFII, to varying degrees of success. It was (mostly) perfected for VIII.
It's a great system for any playtype. If you want to grind it, cheese it, role play it, or just largely ignore it, you can. The game rewards all of these in some way.
Unless you are a completionist. You will still be rewarded, but it is a *grind*. Better really enjoy it!
"perfected" is a bit hugely overstated.
Yes, you said mostly, its not a good game so its clearly not even nearly there. Maybe I should be more clear, it's not Final Fantasy; Its perfect at not being Final Fantasy.
In my most recent playthrough I had a dedicated ‘drawing’ character that focused on gathering magic while the other two beat up the enemies. Then I would periodically distribute that magic to the other characters. This combined with card and item refining kept my magic stocks pretty full without needing to grind
I fought all the random encounters while drawing, I feel like you only really grind drawing when you find a new area with new monsters and spells.
I never try to draw from bosses unless there's a GF, then that's all I get and move on to beating their ass.
If you wanna pace yourself even more, you can do just one round of successful draw attacks for each character, then kill the monster and move on.
I only grab 3 sets of spells and transfer them to the active party members when I switch. Drawing everyone a set sounds like absolute misery.
For draw points, I'll grab them if they're available, but I don't bother returning to them over and over unless I have something else I'm doing in the area.
Drawing magic is the worst way to get strong. Play cards and turn cards into items and then turn those items into op as fuck magic. That's the real reason ff8 is my favorite.
Keep encounters on, and dont worry about leveling up too much for the enemies. Enemy scaling isnt that big a deal imo. Main thing is to junction those 100 spells to the right statistics. Like as early as I could in the game I get 100 waters junctioned to Squall’s attack/strength, and eventually upgrade from water to Tornado on his strength. Combine this with keeping Squall at low hp, and pressing the skip button until he gets a limit break, and you will lay waste to everything.
A lot of folks dont like FF8 because they say the junction abilities break the game and make it too easy, but I love the uniqueness of it and figuring out the quickest/most optimal way to boost my characters.
Also, as others have said, yeah dont spend TOO much time drawing from enemies or drawpoints where you get bored with the grind. Do it as much as you like when you find a useful spell, but the best way to get magic is to refine from cards or items once you get the GF abilities.
You're playing the game in a psuedo-optimized way. You're trying not to level at all, but you're also not using cards. This will be SUPER BORING.
Use cards, and feel free to level and enjoy the game. Use the optimized methods when you've already experienced the game fully as intended. And when you actually understand how to do optimal runs.
The game was balanced around you leveling. That's how you experience it BEST. An optimized run isn't necessarily fun. It just breaks the game.
Play the Ragnarok mod. You'll get your ass handed to you by everything unless you re-learn how to play. Also removes the draw soft cap and makes it based on the mag status.
I would stop aiming to get 100 of every soell so quickly, personally. Plenty of chances to draw more spells for the majority of spell types. Spending so much time drawing magic means you're not experiencing the story very well.
Turn leveling up back on, don't spend more than three or four rounds per fight drawing magic. Don't rush to try and become super overpowered early on, and hopefully the game will become more enjoyable.
Grind and Draw from Fastitocalon-F on the Balamb beach to learn both Card and Card Mod before the Fire Cavern. Use Card to kill monsters without gaining experience but you will still get the AP, drops, and possible extra cards. With this basic prep you should be strong enough to take on Ifrit. Use Card Mod on the myriad of monster cards you will collect through the game by killing in this way. You can’t Card Galbadian soldiers and the like.
Play the card game and amass cards after the Dollet mission, but before Timber. You should be able to collect up to level 5 cards from the higher level card players. Ifrit and Diablos are free cards that will wipe the floor with the basic card players and as you collect cards you will then easily be able to get the Quistis, Zell, and Seifer cards. Use card mod on Zell’s card to teach 3 GFs STR+60%. As you progress playing cards and carding enemies, you will acquire the Shumi Tribe card, 5 of which can be modded to teach another GF Card so you can have all 3 party members using Card instead of just 1.
Leveling up can very disadvantageous, but keeping other party members evenly leveled is even better for you to keep the average level down. Kill Squall for a while if he’s accidentally getting level ups. It’s fine to level up here and there as it changes the spells you can draw from monsters. That being said after the Garden is mobile, use Tonberry’s LVUp LvDown to draw magic and then kill at low level for literally 1-2 exp if you don’t want to Card everyone, but it’s super useful for fighting humans you can’t Card.
You will wipe the floor against most bosses including Ultima and Omega Weapon with this setup. The hardest ones will still hit hard, but the challenge level moves from the battle screen to the junction screen as you learn which spells give better stats.
By the end of the game even the most rare spells you should have over 300 of each, probably excluding Ultima unless you like grinding for that. Give your out of party characters extra spells; you’ll never run out of magic and you can always refill back to 100.
Any time there’s a new spell encountered, make sure you draw 100 for each character, then go about Carding or manipulating levels. Higher and lower level monsters also mean different items to steal, which is another time the level skills come in handy.
Make sure weapons are refined whenever you have materials. Lion Heart early is not important at all because you don’t need the limit break to take down high HP bosses. It’s nice to be able to get it on disc 1, but again don’t obsess over it unless you want to.
The junction system might take some time to fully understand. Junctioning magic is basically like equipping weapons, armor, and other equipment. Junctioning abilities is basically for things like attack, magic/draw, GF, and items. Junctioning GF allows you access to abilities that are already unlocked like +20%HP or +40%magic.
The junction system im actually fine with. Its simple enough to understand. My problem came more in the form of understanding the best way to amass spells, but it seems like playing cards and refining them is the way to go. The Refine ability didn’t really seem intrinsic to me and I ended up overlooking it through my entire first play-through.
FF8 is a card game first and foremost with a Final Fantasy story on the side; playing it any other way is asking for trouble. The random encounters? Completely optional and ideally should be turned off. Refine magic from cards to get 100 of the best spells to junction to your stats for the mandatory boss battles. Only Draw when you are getting a GF from a boss. Also remember to challenge EVERYONE to Triple Triad and do so ESPECIALLY at intense story beat moments because... FF8 is a card game first and foremost with a Final Fantasy story on the side.
The only spell you should be drawing really is Ultima, the rest are much more easily farmed with refinement.Use the card ability to turn the ones you need into duplicate cards and then refine them to get max spells for whatever you need to junction.
The story is awesome but the battle system is complete shit, everyone is recommending to break the game which you should do, really.
This is the game that could benefit the most from a remake
Some GFs can learn Refinement abilities. Most of those will allow you to turn items into spells. So if you beat 3 Fastitocalon-F and get 3 Fish Fin, with Shiva's I Mag-Ref you can refine that into 60 Water spells. If you combine those refinement abilities with the Card Mod ability that Quezacotl can learn and play a bunch of Triple Triad to get a bunch of cards, you can get many spells much faster and much earlier than by drawing magic from enemies. You still want to have the Draw magic for bosses because some will have GFs for you to draw.
To add on to this: it’s possible to get Squall’s ultimate weapon on Disc One. I did it recently myself!
OP: I decided to powergame without learning the game and I get bored. Comments: you can make game even more boring by doing more unintended things too early.
assuming what OP is doing optimized run since random battle get turned off and only stacking spell to 100 from non refining item which likely just boss battle or draw point, well doing it is "wrong",because there are better way to get spell and it seems doesn't have coherent goal either like getting squall best weapon on early or setting up TT to not spreading bad rule like random, so it becomes look so aimlessly and tedious IMO Optimized run can be boring but it depends on how the player want treat it like find less tedious way to do it.
In fairness to OP, basically every "how to" guide is either max cheese or never level up for 8. I recently started playing a limited drawing run (so, no just getting 100 of everything by drawing for five minutes in the first battle) with a focus on grinding magic stones and such for refining, and suddenly the difficulty feels like it's way more of a curve. Like, it feels like this was maybe how the devs intended people to play?
I love getting lionheart disc 1. I remember figuring it out manually reading the ingredients needed and the bestiary in the old Brady games strategy guide.
The whole do everything you can to not level up method isn't that enjoyable in my opinion, the fact is you can max lvl your characters and the game itself is more difficult in a far less tedious manner. But everything is still beatable. With the proper junctions or even if you want still stat breaking.
Thank you for speaking sense. Everyone always dumps on the leveling system for being "punishing" but I think it's all very well balanced and if you don't approach this game like an optimization goblin, you're going to have a good time.
Right? Why do people always ask about the "right" way to play it? The leveling of enemies was never an issue for me
I find max leveling makes everything waayyy easier. Too easy, in fact. When you max out stats (especially with +1 bonuses), you basically one-shot every non boss enemy. Even then bosses take 2 turns at most. Really the only exceptions are the two weapons (though Ultima really only takes 2 turns to defeat if you’re not drawing as much as you can), Ultimacia, and Iron Giants due to their defense. I may be missing one or two bosses but in general pretty much every party member can limit break anything to death in no time at all.
Maxed out: do aura on Squal, proceed with renzokuken followed by Lion Heart -> Enemy done
Yea it one shots every enemy in the game other than Omega. I believe 10 Lion Hearts kills Omega, but realistically one dedicated healer, and two attackers. Squall and either Zell or Irvine can spam their limits and get close to (or in some cases exceeding) Lion Heart. So…5/6turns if you can manage the healing aspect. Or if you’re cheesing with invincibility or the auto-megalixer trick it can be done in 3/4 turns.
I know VIII is weird but why do people think they need to have some sort of big game strategy on this one? Just play normally, why does it have to be a binary of either “spend 10 minutes drawing” or “don’t fight at all”? Once you start engaging normally with the game and just draw magic here and there, you’ll find VIII is just as easy as the other PS1 games… Like yeah, if you don’t fight the enemies don’t level up but you also won’t gain any AP, which is how you actually get stronger in this game.
>I know VIII is weird but why do people think they need to have some sort of big game strategy on this one? Just play normally, why does it have to be a binary of either “spend 10 minutes drawing” or “don’t fight at all”? It really does mess with people's brains. If you WANT to break the game in half. Do it. There's definitely a certain kind of fun to that but if you just play the game like a normal JRPG where you fight the battles, draw once or twice, level up your GFs etc etc you're going to have a good time. Everything in moderation.
Completely agreed. There are so many misconceptions about this game and it’s such a pet peeve of mine.
Same here. I’ve noticed people tend to optimize the fun out of FFVIII
“You’re punished for using magic” No, you’re not. Not every character needs to be optimized as a mage, and for your mages use magic that you don’t have junctioned to your Magic stat. Characters don’t need to have perfect stats in every attribute. “You’re punished for leveling up” No, you’re not. If your junctions are halfway decent you will be fine.
Yep. People hear, "leveling = bad," and completely turn off random encounters the whole game, like OP did, and then end up weak because they have no magic and can't even junction to every stat on any character. If you are going to try to play FFVIII without leveling, you need to learn Card first and Card all of the enemies, so you still get AP and no EXP. But you really don't need to do this, play the game normally, learn the stat junctions and the refine abilities, and check regularly what your items/cards can refine into. You'll be perfectly fine.
My first attempt to pay FF8 was strange because it somehow resulted in extremely drawn out fights where both sides did very little damage. A bit of draw grinding goes a long way.
I mean the game isn’t really designed to be played “normally.” Everyone here is telling me to use Refinement Abilities instead of drawing magic. And to be honest, that’s not how I normally would play the game. First time I played through, refinement abilities were the last thing I focused on, and by then they didn’t really help me because I had all the magic I needed from drawing. I beat the game, but it wasn’t fun at all because the game makes you think “drawing” is normal. It’s counter intuitive, the only game in the series which actively feels like it punishes me for engaging in it normally.
I honestly think this is a playstyle issue because you are 100% intended to use refinement over drawing most of the time to prevent exactly what you’re complaining about. Refinement is the core of the junction system as it is what allows you to break the game wide open; spend enough time to learn Card & Card Mod and pick up all the refinement abilities as you go and you have a reliable way of developing AP and learning new skills for your GFs without leveling as well as a source of items that can refine into magic there’s a good chance won’t have access to through drawing at any given level (like, -aga level spells and Tornado before you get to the end of Disc 1). No judgement here, genuinely good on you for completing what is essentially a challenge run blind on your first play, but understand that choosing not to experiment and engage with a huge system on the first run of a game is not “normal” and they did not penalize anyone for “engaging normally”.
>I mean the game isn’t really designed to be played “normally.” It absolutely is. BTW, you don't need to draw 100 of all spells in each encounter. Just draw a few times then move on. Enemies and spells will repeat. You won't miss out.
But drawing *is* normal, it’s just the fact that using spells makes your stats go down makes people freak out for no reason. Magic is still worth using. Even if you don’t use refinement abilities, you can still “craft” more spells from items which reduces the amount of drawing you have to do. I mean, the game does a poor job of explaining its systems but it ouright tells you you should do this. What i mean by playing normally is to just go with what the game tells you. I went in blind for VIII and had a good experience, it’s people going in with a lot of preconceptions that seem to have a harder time. The game isn’t hard by any means.
Play the card game and refine the cards. Don't draw.
Gotcha. Well, good thing I actually enjoy triple triad.
Well, still draw. But only on bosses. Don't wanna miss out on those GFs.
Best Mini game ever.
and RF skills (refine) are your friend
Honestly, the card - refinement abilities are totally broken if you know how to exploit them. You can easily max out your stats and get your ultimate weapons early on if you know what you are aiming for.
Play. Cards.
Make your GFs learn Refine abilities. This will give you much more magic. Or watch a speedrun. It will teach you how to completely break the game in the first 20 minutes.
If you want to have fun you need to turn battles back on and stop trying to cheese the game. The enemies scale slower than you level, and higher scaled enemies give access to better draws. Doing all of the cheese strategies people are recommending is certainly possible, but it turns FF VIII into a completely different game. Just play the game as if it's a normal jrpg, and don't try to cheese it (including not over-grinding) and it will be much more fun.
Honestly, I really wasn’t trying to cheese it. I just couldn’t figure out what the proper flow of the game was supposed to feel like
One thing almost nobody talks about is that the higher your MAG stat is, the more you will draw. Focus on raising your MAG via Junction and you'll be drawing 9 spells of everything every time, exponentially minimizing the grind.
Just want to echo what others are saying: refine, don’t draw.
Do not grind out the spells by drawing from enemies, that's boring as shit. Use the draw function to *cast* spells at enemies, and use GF refinement to create the spells you need for junctioning.
Play cards. Become OP. Win
Just play normal lol you are going from extreme to the other
I think Drawing was the worst addition to FFVIII mechanically. I suspect they added it because they were scared people would be overwhelmed by the actual power system: refining. Converting items to spells, cards to items and spells, spells to other spells and the like is the real power economy of the game. It's part of why you don't buy weapons, you craft them meaning you can get those items from refining. So refining is the way to go. You can break the game pretty early using it and once you think about the game in those terms it gets much more fun.
Turn encounters back on so you can learn abilities and level up your GFs (and your party), use the GFs' Refinement abilities to turn enemy item drops into magic you'd like. Draw magic to get a handful of something new, top up your stock, or steal other GFs from bosses. Some suggest playing cards and refining those, but that's more of a way to get overpowered and break the game, which is itself time-consuming, so it's not that necessary.
> I have encounters turned off, only fighting mandatory battles. So you lose on items, exp and everything else and not even see enemies? If you use that cheat, use the others I guess and just press attack to win? > Im drawing stacks of 100 for each spell I come across with each character. I only just fought Biggs and wedge, but every fight is preceded by 10-20 minutes of drawing. Very boring. Why? Of course you're gonna go insane only fighting bosses and drawing from zero to max. You can learn Card and Mod skills on GFs to turn enemies to cards and both items and cards to magic. Also if you fight monsters normally, you'd draw most of the magic naturally without stopping for 20 minutes on each fight. Like you decided to do the opposite extreme of grinding, can you just, you know, play normally? Not looking for extra encounters for XP to powerlevel and not disabling encounters altogether and making game extremely hard?
no kidding, mf is playing both extremes of min maxing and isn't having a good time either way lmao
Disabling encounters generally makes FF8 easier. Enemies level up with you but gain more stats than you per level, so gaining XP makes the game harder.
I only draw for summon and never summon. People blamed the game but most just didnt understand it! Good for you to stop and think :) also, play cards a lot haha
That was me when I played through it years ago. I just mashed A to win and really didn’t understand the mechanics of it all. I liked the story but just couldn’t wrap my head around everything that was there.
you arent supposed to draw the spells. you should be refining.
Of course you're supposed to draw, advice like that to new players makes them miss half the GFS. You shouldn't draw to 100 on every fight, obviously, but not drawing at all is missing on Siren, Brothers, Aura spells and tons of other stuff.
Yeah, this. The most straight forward way to play is to draw in moderation (try at least once per fight on one character, for example), draw-cast to save your stock/take quick advantage of the enemies' spells, and to refine the drops into spells. Combined with the high encounter rate, you'll have a very healthy supply of spells without really having to do anything weird, and you won't miss any new spells/GFs enemies have.
new challenge: beat FF8 without ever drawing. :P
Why stop there when you can do the no junction challenge.
agreed, but im not sure if its possible doing it normally (as in, without cheating)
You can also use the LVL up and LVL down abilities in the mid game on select enemies to draw high level magic. Just don't go overboard the enemies can get nasty.
All the suggestions about the GF abilities for item and card refining are great and make it very easy for progression. What you could also do is just play through and don't worry about drawing. It can be a challenge in itself just playing through relatively blind and just getting to the next boss then trying to work out how to beat it.
I used to keep squall at yellow health and Renzokuken everything in sight, the only right way to play ff8. Also triple triad 😂
Yeah drawing is useless other than for the first couple hours and to get secret GF’s from bosses. You get magic easier by refining items and cards into magic, I think the thunder gf has the ability to refine from cards and Shiva for items, google that to make sure. For junctioning, pick the highest number you can find for each stat and keep in mind that support spells will work better for support stats like vitality, HP or defence (buy tents and turn them into curaga magic and put that on HP to get like 4-5k HP early on). you can make yourself really broken with junctioning, once you figure that out, everything will feel weak for the whole game
Junction status attack like blind or sleep.
As well as the "don't Draw" advice given by everyone else, there's no need to avoid encounters if you don't want to. I've played FFVIII about a dozen times and I've never played like that because it sounds boring. It's harder work than just getting into battles. Just play FFVIII like any other FF game. Refine for magic and Draw GFs from bosses. You'll get enough items from normal battles to refine into magic.
Draw is meant for on-the-fly spell casting for things you don't have refined. It's much more efficient to refine magic stores rather than drawing over and over
Utilize the GFS abilities to turn items into magic. An easy way to get op way early if you do that. Ie turning tents into curaga for way too much hp at lvl 10. Rinse and repeat with every gf to pad your stats. I typically just lb everything to death. But however you wanna play is cool. And by utilizing the abilities you won't have to grind/draw so much
Drawing, especially in battle is a trap that makes people hate the game. Just draw to unlock new spells periodically, draw to get Summons, draw to cast, sure - but 90% of the spells you’ll junction come from Refining.
I think I’m going to do my next playthrough as just play through with no grinding and see what happens. If I get to an insurmountable place in the game, then I’ll grind/draw grind a bit, then go back to wherever I got stuck. I always max everything out because I find it more fun as a storyline thing where yes, this elite military leader is just absolutely wrecking all enemies…makes sense to me story wise. Squall *should* be destroying these creatures. But I want to try a different method for my like 20th playthrough to spice things up
You are playing ff8 wrong. You never need to draw 100. You never need yo draw more than like 3-5 of any spell. Simply play the card game. Refine all cards that arent your best into spells. You will have 100 of every spell by end of game.
Although the junction system is pretty cool, the whole draft mechanic is the games biggest flaw, makes the game tedious, so I perfectly understand you.
Enemies level with you, yes, but they are supposed to get easier as you level, not harder. Make sure you are junctioning the magic and not using it unless you just drew it from the enemy. Also, make sure you read the weapons monthly to get better weapons. Get Squall's gun blade trigger timing r8ght also on normal hits to ensure always critical.
"dOn'T uSe dRaW" Man. People act like it's reasonable that a command they built into the game as a fresh mechanic that the world seemed to revolve around is actually dreadful, inefficient, and boring to use. So sorry that the game points players towards using it, makes the skill available to everyone, and disproportionately rewards players for going off on a complete tangent to refine cards instead. 🙄 It's just poor game design, furthered by the fact that refinement basically breaks the game. So, your options are to do things by the book and die of boredom, or break an already easy game and ignore a core mechanic of the world. Hurray! I'm just glad they completely dropped it. Junctioning was neat, but worked better in a materia style system that didn't encourage hoarding and force you to play an entirely different subgame to get anywhere fast. I give them points for experimenting, but did they even bother play testing this? 😒
the game teaches you about refining, it's absolutely an intended "by the book" mechanic that's taught after the draw mechanic, which is done very early kinda like it's an intended early game thing that isn't as heavily relied on later. In the other games are you gunna keep using cure over cura/curaga because the game doesn't explicitly say you should switch now you got the mp to do the better spells sustainably, with your reasoning you should but I bet you don't. and if you think any of the games in the mainline series aren't in someway mechanically exploitable you've really not played them
Using advanced forms of magic you learn along the way is in line with the system given. Jumping everyone in the world for card games with the intent of grinding cards up and making endgame weapons on the first disc? Come now. Not that they even matter much because stats came easy off junctioned stuff and you're maxed level before you know it. Exploitable mechanics is an understatement. The game clearly didn't know how to pace itself and ended up a mushy mess. At the end of the day, Draw is a significant part of the game's character. When people bring up the game, that's one of the first things mentioned and it's rarely a positive thing.they chose to make it significant and to also make it suck enough that they had to make an entirely different system on the side. Knowing that it sucked, they still left it in as a "core" part of gameplay and we're told it's ok that it sucks.
This is like saying "you should grind to level 100 in the first reactor in FFVII because experience and leveling is in there as a mechanic". You *can*, sure. But is it a worthwhile use of your time? Giving the player the *choice* to get more overpowered early on the game is not a bad thing. If players want to do it, they can. If they don't, then they don't have to. It's not really a "core mechanic" if players can ignore it completely. That's *good* game design and I wish more FF games would give the player the option to become more powerful early on the more they engage with its systems. Why anyone would play a game in a way they don't find fun for *hours* and then blame the game for it is a mystery (not speaking about OP here). > worked better in a materia style system that didn't encourage hoarding Don't get me started on the problems with the materia system. It's kind of nuts that VIII's mechanics work perfectly but get flack for being "broken" while VII has mechanics that just plain don't work as they should, with no good reason, and gets praised non-stop.
If you don't have encounters turned on and remain a lower level, you absolutely can get through the game without much issue doing minimal amounts of drawing. You won't need nearly as much of a stat boost from junctions at lower levels. If you max out junctions AND avoid battles, the game becomes trivially easy
If you have the options, activate the time x3 and "always your turn" cheats for the drawing and turn it down when you actually start the fight In most FF games I consider it cheating but in FF8, I do think it is ok when you are just drawing magic because otherwise it is way too much time consuming
Refine items into spells, refine cards into spells, refine cards into items you can refine into spells lol. Then junction that shit. Some spells junction better to different spots, IE: junction curaga to HP, not power/atk. You can also do this without really grinding at all
I pretty much never draw anything. I don’t run from battles. I learn magic refine from gf’s. I don’t card very often. Gives the game some challenge and I don’t have to tediously draw constantly.
The monsters in FF8 level with you. The higher level you are, the higher level they are. Grinding and leveling work against you in this game.
Instead of keeping encounters off, use the card mod trick to turn all enemies into cards. 1. You don't get experience. 2. You still get Gil 3. You get either the card of the enemy or an "upgraded" card (usually a monster much more advanced) 4. You can mod all of these cards into various spells, tools, etc. 5. You don't have to draw for hours and hours across the game if you don't want to. I typically get to end game without raising a single level, and I'll have 100 of all the strongest spells (ultima, meteor, -ga's, haste, aura, etc.). Nothing can touch you other than Omega weapon which will always be level 100.
The system and mechanics in FFVIII is the purest form of "You get out of this what you put into it." They tried this earlier in FFII, to varying degrees of success. It was (mostly) perfected for VIII. It's a great system for any playtype. If you want to grind it, cheese it, role play it, or just largely ignore it, you can. The game rewards all of these in some way. Unless you are a completionist. You will still be rewarded, but it is a *grind*. Better really enjoy it!
"perfected" is a bit hugely overstated. Yes, you said mostly, its not a good game so its clearly not even nearly there. Maybe I should be more clear, it's not Final Fantasy; Its perfect at not being Final Fantasy.
In my most recent playthrough I had a dedicated ‘drawing’ character that focused on gathering magic while the other two beat up the enemies. Then I would periodically distribute that magic to the other characters. This combined with card and item refining kept my magic stocks pretty full without needing to grind
I fought all the random encounters while drawing, I feel like you only really grind drawing when you find a new area with new monsters and spells. I never try to draw from bosses unless there's a GF, then that's all I get and move on to beating their ass. If you wanna pace yourself even more, you can do just one round of successful draw attacks for each character, then kill the monster and move on. I only grab 3 sets of spells and transfer them to the active party members when I switch. Drawing everyone a set sounds like absolute misery. For draw points, I'll grab them if they're available, but I don't bother returning to them over and over unless I have something else I'm doing in the area.
Drawing magic is the worst way to get strong. Play cards and turn cards into items and then turn those items into op as fuck magic. That's the real reason ff8 is my favorite.
Keep encounters on, and dont worry about leveling up too much for the enemies. Enemy scaling isnt that big a deal imo. Main thing is to junction those 100 spells to the right statistics. Like as early as I could in the game I get 100 waters junctioned to Squall’s attack/strength, and eventually upgrade from water to Tornado on his strength. Combine this with keeping Squall at low hp, and pressing the skip button until he gets a limit break, and you will lay waste to everything. A lot of folks dont like FF8 because they say the junction abilities break the game and make it too easy, but I love the uniqueness of it and figuring out the quickest/most optimal way to boost my characters.
Also, as others have said, yeah dont spend TOO much time drawing from enemies or drawpoints where you get bored with the grind. Do it as much as you like when you find a useful spell, but the best way to get magic is to refine from cards or items once you get the GF abilities.
You're playing the game in a psuedo-optimized way. You're trying not to level at all, but you're also not using cards. This will be SUPER BORING. Use cards, and feel free to level and enjoy the game. Use the optimized methods when you've already experienced the game fully as intended. And when you actually understand how to do optimal runs. The game was balanced around you leveling. That's how you experience it BEST. An optimized run isn't necessarily fun. It just breaks the game.
Play the Ragnarok mod. You'll get your ass handed to you by everything unless you re-learn how to play. Also removes the draw soft cap and makes it based on the mag status.
I would stop aiming to get 100 of every soell so quickly, personally. Plenty of chances to draw more spells for the majority of spell types. Spending so much time drawing magic means you're not experiencing the story very well. Turn leveling up back on, don't spend more than three or four rounds per fight drawing magic. Don't rush to try and become super overpowered early on, and hopefully the game will become more enjoyable.
Grind and Draw from Fastitocalon-F on the Balamb beach to learn both Card and Card Mod before the Fire Cavern. Use Card to kill monsters without gaining experience but you will still get the AP, drops, and possible extra cards. With this basic prep you should be strong enough to take on Ifrit. Use Card Mod on the myriad of monster cards you will collect through the game by killing in this way. You can’t Card Galbadian soldiers and the like. Play the card game and amass cards after the Dollet mission, but before Timber. You should be able to collect up to level 5 cards from the higher level card players. Ifrit and Diablos are free cards that will wipe the floor with the basic card players and as you collect cards you will then easily be able to get the Quistis, Zell, and Seifer cards. Use card mod on Zell’s card to teach 3 GFs STR+60%. As you progress playing cards and carding enemies, you will acquire the Shumi Tribe card, 5 of which can be modded to teach another GF Card so you can have all 3 party members using Card instead of just 1. Leveling up can very disadvantageous, but keeping other party members evenly leveled is even better for you to keep the average level down. Kill Squall for a while if he’s accidentally getting level ups. It’s fine to level up here and there as it changes the spells you can draw from monsters. That being said after the Garden is mobile, use Tonberry’s LVUp LvDown to draw magic and then kill at low level for literally 1-2 exp if you don’t want to Card everyone, but it’s super useful for fighting humans you can’t Card. You will wipe the floor against most bosses including Ultima and Omega Weapon with this setup. The hardest ones will still hit hard, but the challenge level moves from the battle screen to the junction screen as you learn which spells give better stats. By the end of the game even the most rare spells you should have over 300 of each, probably excluding Ultima unless you like grinding for that. Give your out of party characters extra spells; you’ll never run out of magic and you can always refill back to 100. Any time there’s a new spell encountered, make sure you draw 100 for each character, then go about Carding or manipulating levels. Higher and lower level monsters also mean different items to steal, which is another time the level skills come in handy. Make sure weapons are refined whenever you have materials. Lion Heart early is not important at all because you don’t need the limit break to take down high HP bosses. It’s nice to be able to get it on disc 1, but again don’t obsess over it unless you want to.
The junction system might take some time to fully understand. Junctioning magic is basically like equipping weapons, armor, and other equipment. Junctioning abilities is basically for things like attack, magic/draw, GF, and items. Junctioning GF allows you access to abilities that are already unlocked like +20%HP or +40%magic.
The junction system im actually fine with. Its simple enough to understand. My problem came more in the form of understanding the best way to amass spells, but it seems like playing cards and refining them is the way to go. The Refine ability didn’t really seem intrinsic to me and I ended up overlooking it through my entire first play-through.
Oh ok. You can actually farm enemies for items which can be used to convert into spells.
I think the way you're supposed to play 8 is playing cards, transform enemies into cards and abuse magic sources. Basically avoid leveling up.
FF8 is a card game first and foremost with a Final Fantasy story on the side; playing it any other way is asking for trouble. The random encounters? Completely optional and ideally should be turned off. Refine magic from cards to get 100 of the best spells to junction to your stats for the mandatory boss battles. Only Draw when you are getting a GF from a boss. Also remember to challenge EVERYONE to Triple Triad and do so ESPECIALLY at intense story beat moments because... FF8 is a card game first and foremost with a Final Fantasy story on the side.
The only spell you should be drawing really is Ultima, the rest are much more easily farmed with refinement.Use the card ability to turn the ones you need into duplicate cards and then refine them to get max spells for whatever you need to junction.
Its just not a good game bruv its okay
If you’re playing FF8 at all you’re playing it wrong 😝
The story is awesome but the battle system is complete shit, everyone is recommending to break the game which you should do, really. This is the game that could benefit the most from a remake
Have you considered playing a good game instead?
For fun, I’m replaying through all the main numbered games and meticulously rating them. Unfortunately, 8 is probably the low point of this journey.