Help FFVIII--Help--disc 4

[the tourist]

Ok, so, I'm really not a gamer (I own 2 snowboarding games and FFVII and FFVIII, that's it). I've had this game for years and still haven't beaten it because I tend to abandon it for months at a time, maybe over a year in some cases (like now) and also, I just don't plan much for these games--I don't upgrade weapons much along the way, I don't bother with most sidequests, I don't do so many of the things that you're supposed to do. Originally, this was because I didn't know they existed-- but after FFVII I looked online and saw there was more to it. But I got sidetracked with my normal course of action in FFVIII, which brings me here. I need help with a couple things, things which probably wouldn't been much easier had I done them earlier in the game... I'm on Disc 4 now.

1) Upgrading to Lionheart. I need the adamantine and I've been having a hell of time finding it. Battling the adamantoises (sp?) doesn't seem to work and the only other option I've found is using an ability of Eden's to refine something (can't remember what) into it. Only I don't have Eden. So I'm battling my way to the bottom of the Deep Sea Research Center to draw it from Ultima Weapon...
1a) Is there any easier way to get adamantine once on Disc 4 that I'm not aware of?
1b) Is there another place to find Eden, who I want regardless of the adamantine issue anyway? If not, what's the best way to beat Ultima Weapon? My characters aren't particularly strong, except Squall, and I don't have Holy Wars, which I've read are useful.
1c) How do I get Holy Wars? Or the Gilgamesh cards to refine them from? Is there anywhere left to play cards on Disc 4?

2) In addition to Eden, I'm also missing these GF's and would like to know where, if possible, I can find them now: Tonberry, Alexander, Brothers, Leviathan, and Doomtrain.
2a) I also need the Cactus guy, but I know where to find him-- how do I kill him though?

3) HP and strength. I know junctioning effects these things, but I seem to have a really hard time getting my characters other than Squall up to higher HPs and able to do a fair amount of damage with an attack. Is the only way to fix this (i.e., beef up my other characters) by stocking up on various magics (like at those islands full of draw points) and junctioning them all accordingly?


Ok, that's all...for now.

Thank you very much for reading, as I know it was long. Any help is appreciated.

 

[Donald Trump]

For the first point, Junction Diablos and use his ability mug rather than attack. Also you can go back to the tomb of the lost king and get GF Brothers, after defeating them you will get their cards which can be refined for Adamantine.
There is another way to get Eden and that's drawing him from Omega Weapon. It's very easy to get Eden from the Deep Sea Research Centre, just use Diablos' encounter none. Have Zell in your party and you won't even need to do the pressure thing, which is fairly straightforward anyway.
I'm not sure how you get Holy Wars, but you don't need them

It's too late for Alexander, whom you draw for Edea at the end of Disc 2 and Leviathan who you get from Norg.
I've said you get brothers from the tomb of the unknown king, and it would be better googling that than me explaining.
For Doomtrain you need 3 different items, again I suggest googling
Tonberry will take some time, you go the place where you get Odin, if you didn't it's in Centra and looks like an aerial sticking out of the ground. There you fight 20 tonberrys, though not at one time, you can leave draw magic, train outside etc before re-entering. After you fight 20 tonberrys, you fight Tonberry king, beat him you get GF Tonberry.
To beat Cactuar you just need to know that he is weak to water, so junction water to elemental attack, and just keep hammering away at him. Use the Meltdown, Aura combo if you want.

And junctioning is the only way to improve your stats, they increase when you level up, but the increase is negligible. Mastering the junctioning system is the key to the game, perhaps watch the tutorial again if you have some difficulty with it. Get strong magics and junction them to strength, to HP etc and you'll see a big improvement in your characters.

 

[the tourist]

Enc-None doesn't work in the DSRC though, that's what makes it difficult. Again, I don't know if that's something that's different depending on whether or not the time compression thing has happened, so maybe pre-Disc 4 Enc-None would have worked. I haven't tried Enc-Half...maybe that's still useful here.

 

[Ness]

First off, welcome to the forums.

1) I'm not sure what guide you read or where you got your information, but I don't know of any ability that Eden possesses which will produce Adamantine for you. One way or the other, Eden is useful to have...so you should still fight your way to the bottom of the DSRC.

The reason that Enc-None doesn't work is that on the path down to Ultima Weapon, you fight in several forced encounters. All of these monsters have high levels and are just meant to give you a hard time before you reach the true "prize" of the area. As far as a strategy goes for fighting him...well, my strong recommendation would be to have Lionheart first. Otherwise, Haste is an absolute necessity (he's quite fast) and be ready to do a LOT of reviving (his Light Pillar attack deals 9999 to a character). Use Aura and Limit Breaks and you shouldn't have too much trouble with him.

The best way to get Adamantine is to refine it from the Sacred/Brothers (I forget which) card...but if you're trying to steal it, keep in mind that monsters carry different items at different levels.

The only opportunities to play cards are the Card Queen, who is located at the Esthar crash site, or the CC Group who will be located on the Ragnarok (only if you completed the CC Group sidequest before this point). All the rare cards in the game will actually be distributed among the CC Group members, so hopefully you've got this option available to you.

2) Any GFs that you missed drawing from bosses can be drawn in Ultimecia's castle, from the 8 mini-bosses located there. Just check each one and grab Alexander and Leviathan this way. Brothers is described above. Doomtrain requires that you have six Marlboro Tentacles, 6 Steel Pipes, and 6 Remedy+. The latter is the most complicated one, you can only refine those using Med-LvUp, which is an ability from Alexander, who you don't have. You'll also need to have picked up the Solomon Ring from Tears' Point BEFORE Lunatic Pandora shows up, otherwise it's too late.

3) As described in the post above me. However, keep in mind that different spells affect different stats in different ways. Healing/curative magic will junction much better to HP than to Str, for example. As you said, though, running around the Island Closest to Heaven/Hell should give you plenty of good magic to choose from.

Hope that helps.

 

[blakstang98]

Ok, I think I can be of some help here.

1) For getting Adamantine, battle with the Adamantoise, but do not Mug them, this will increase your chance to win Adamantine's. If you have Bahamut, use his Rare Item ability, as it increases the chance to win GF ability items (Rare Items are generally GF ability items, even though the game never tells you that and Adamantine is to teach Vit+60%, so that works). Or more simply, you can get Brothers and refine Minotaur's card to get 10 the easy way.

Most GF's, believe it or not, can be acquired by drawing them out from the mini-bosses at Ultimacia's Castle. Once you beat Sphinxaur, unlock the Draw ability and draw them out from the others. So yes, you can get Eden without dealing with Ultima Weapon. You can still get Tonberry, Brothers, Cactuar (as you know) and Doomtrain by other means, but Alexander and Leviathan you'll have to get at the Castle.

As well as the Gilgamesh card, you can refine Holy Wars from Heros (then to Holy War Trials), but there will be a ton of time put into item farming and refining. Gilgamesh is the much easier route to take, but you won't be able to because it comes from the CC Card Group Side Quest, which you have to do in Disc 3 (if done in Disc 3, then you can get it in Disc 3 or 4).

2) Tonberry can be gotten from the Centra Ruins Side Quest, which can be a little difficult, but not too bad. Kill 20 Tonberry's for the King to come out and take him down. You know about Cactuar, so I won't explain that. For Brothers, when you get into the Tomb, just keep turning to the right and you'll first encounter Sacred, then pull off the gear lock, then drop the draw bridge. Then you'll be at the enterence if you keep going right, simply go straight from the enterence to find the Brothers. In order to get Doomtrain, you'll have to find Remedy's from enemies, or wait until you get Tonberry and learn his Call Shop ability to buy them. Then you'll need Alexander to use Med Lvl Up to turn 60 Remedy's into Remedy+. You can get Steel Pipes from mugging Wendigo's (they're near Deling City and Tomb of the Unknown King). And Marlboro Tentacles from Marlboros. You can either use Degenerator from Quistis until you can get 6 of them (this can still be hard to do and you may have to escape many battles with them), or you can use Stat Def x4. I use 100 Pains, Berserks, Confuses and Sleeps when battling Marlboros and it works like a charm (you'll just be slowed and have slow Petrify).

3) For HP and Str, I always use Flare for HP and either Meteor or Triple for Str. Flare and Meteor can be drawn out from high leveled Ruby Dragons. Beware that these guys can kill you very quickly, if you can, put them to sleep if you're going to draw the spells out. Triples are really hard to come by. The best ways are to either draw them from Odin (don't know if you have him yet) or to refine a Quistis card into 3 Samantha Souls that will refine into 60 Triples (don't know if you have her card either). With a ton of these spells, you'll increase those stats significantly.

Anyways, hope that all helps. I'm sure some of the other posts mentioned the same things, but hopefully it'll help anyways. Good luck!

 

[the tourist]

Ok, so maybe it would be best for me to leave the Deep Sea Center and go to the Tomb and get Brothers, so that I can get Lionheart, and then return to battle Ultima Weapon?

It was a long time ago that I was looking up how to get adamantine, well over a year, so maybe I'm mixing up Eden with Brothers as the one who can refine Adamantine for me. I know there was some specific reason I needed Eden, though, otherwise I wouldn't have bothered with the Deep Sea Center and would've just stuck to the castle. It's hard to resume after now playing for so long, I just don't remember all of what I'm doing, haha.

Thanks for the advice, guys. I'll try looking for Brothers and, if that doesn't work, I'll go battle some more adamantoises.

 

[the tourist]

Hey, I've got Lionheart now! (Got the adamantine from Brothers-- in the past my issue has always been getting lost in the tomb... but I just drew a copy of the map so I could look at it as I went. I also beat the cactus, since the Lionheart limit makes everything easy, haha.

Stocked up with magics on the Islands Closet to Heaven/Hell and leveled up a bit there too. For clarification, I'm still having trouble getting Quistis to do much damage with her attack-- is that all dependent on what I junction to strength then? Because I have her junctioned to Meteor, which I thought was a good one for strength.

Also, the characters I'm not playing with have very low levels and things, since I don't bother with them much unless I have to (i.e., those parts in the game the require a specific character). Will I regret this down the road? Should I try and level up everyone? Or will I be fine focusing on the three I have? (Which are Squall, Zell, and Quistis, by the way). I don't mind spoilers, so share away if there's a reason I should be sure to amp someone or everyone up.

I've headed back to the Deep Sea center now and will probably resume battling my way down later tonight.

 

[PrincessGarnet]

To answer your question about the other characters. No You don't really need to level them up. Although while in Ultimecia's Castle, you do have to use both parties (whichever ones you want as your main party members and then the other ones) this is to open different areas and such to progress through the Castle. Just make sure you are controlling your main party members when fighting the bosses in there. Also remember that all of your abilities are sealed while in Ultimecia's Castle. Beating each boss in there will allow you to select different abilites to be unsealed. (I would use a guide on GameFaQs or something to make sure which boss has the GFs you need to draw so that you make sure you have the draw ability unsealed by the time you get to that boss.)

Also,when you enter the battle with Ultimecia at the end, she randomly picks 3 party members to fight against her. If say she picked Squall,Rinoa, and Selphie,since Rinoa and Selphie are not your main party members,you may want to let her kill them. Once they are killed,they will be "lost in time" and replaced by another party member. I do this until I get my main party in battle. Just make sure you revive a party member that you want to use if they get killed. ^^

 

[Sora_lion_heart]

You can steal an item from Adamantoise beside wispers that will turn into adamantine with edens GF Abl RF. I can't remember the name but it raises VIt by 40%.

Tiamat can be fought and Eden can also be drawn from him. He is in Ultimecia castle. I'd suggest getting eden this way if you have trouble fighting Ultimate Weapon.

 

[Donald Trump]

Hey, I've got Lionheart now! (Got the adamantine from Brothers-- in the past my issue has always been getting lost in the tomb... but I just drew a copy of the map so I could look at it as I went. I also beat the cactus, since the Lionheart limit makes everything easy, haha.

Stocked up with magics on the Islands Closet to Heaven/Hell and leveled up a bit there too. For clarification, I'm still having trouble getting Quistis to do much damage with her attack-- is that all dependent on what I junction to strength then? Because I have her junctioned to Meteor, which I thought was a good one for strength.

Also, the characters I'm not playing with have very low levels and things, since I don't bother with them much unless I have to (i.e., those parts in the game the require a specific character). Will I regret this down the road? Should I try and level up everyone? Or will I be fine focusing on the three I have? (Which are Squall, Zell, and Quistis, by the way). I don't mind spoilers, so share away if there's a reason I should be sure to amp someone or everyone up.

I've headed back to the Deep Sea center now and will probably resume battling my way down later tonight.

The quantity of magic effects how much stronger it makes your stats, ie 10 meteors as opposed to 100.
Thought to be honest, you don't really need anything else if you have the meltdown aura combo.
Don't forget that the monsters level up with Squall except for Ultimecia who has a max level of 65 and the monsters on the islands closest to heaven and hell. It shouldn't take too long to level the rest up if you want to, but it's not necessary. If you get three characters you don't like facing Ultimecia you can always reset the game. Though all you really need is Life, Curaga, Meltdown and Aura and you should do fine.

 

[the tourist]

Thanks everybody! I beat the game. It's funny, but it took me forever to defeat Adel at the end of Disc 3, but I beat Ultimecia on my second try, relying mostly on Squall's limit break, Ultimas, and MegaElixers. Much thanks to all the help with GFs and stuff, but especially for helping me find the Lionheart. That sealed the deal, really.

Now I'm contemplating diving into 9, haha. I only have 7, 8, and 9 and won't be bothering with any more after that. My system is just an original PlayStation, after all. I think I'll make it a point to read up on some stuff and figure out what's important in 9 and try to build up accordingly. Otherwise, it's nice to know I can always ask for help here.

I'll probably move over to the 7 board, actually, and see about advice on Emerald Weapon. My sister played and beat the game, but she never beat Emerald Weapon and she really wants to-- now out of frustration more than anything-- so once I figure out what her specific situation is (i.e., what materia she has, etc.) and see what advice you'd have for her.

Thanks again!