Can You Beat Final Fantasy 8 Without Junctioning?

vehicles Final Fantasy 8 is my second favorite Final  Fantasy or third I'm not really sure the eighth entry is often looked at as the black sheep of  the series and this is partly due to the fact that it has one of the most unconventional and  divisive systems I've ever seen in an RPG The Junction system everything stems from junctioning  summons magic even something as simple as using items in battle if you don't learn the junction  system you're not going to get very far or are you do you ever

actually need to use the pesky  or intuitive Junction system to get through this game can you beat Final Fantasy 8 without  junctioning let's find out let's look at some rules but first if you enjoyed challenge runs on  classic games like this then you're in the right place please subscribe after all over 84 of people  who watch this channel are not actually subscribed I promise you won't regret it back to the rules  rule number one we cannot use the junction system for anything this means no s

ummons no abilities  no magic no items in battle or any other optional commands in battle rule number two no battle  boosts these are basically built in cheats that come with the remastered version of the game the  only boosts we're allowed to use is speed up and rule number three once we defeat sorcerer's  ultimasia the final boss of the game we win just to give a quick rundown of the junction  system you start off by assigning a summon or summons to each character once you do that that  charac

ter can then use summons in battle as well as magic in and out of battle items in battle and  the draw command as well as any other commands that can be learned throughout the game you would  have to manually assign a subset of up to three of these commands per character so that they can  use them in battle by default each character only has access to the normal attack command and if we  never use the junction system to assign a summon to our characters the attack command is the only  command we

will ever have access to we are given two summons right away but all summons will be  useless in this run we can't even assign abilities to our summons for them to learn because if we  don't equip a summon to a character that someone will never gain any ability points in battle and  thus will never learn any abilities anyway before we leave balam Garden we enter the library query  and grab the occult fan Magazine from the Shelf the first boss of the game ifreet is very early  on we run away fro

m all Random Encounters and head straight to the fire Cavern we must select a time  limit but this has very little bearing on the run as a side note in the interest of fairness we will  be avoiding the speed up boost during in-game time sections since the Boost only speeds up gameplay  and not the time we also run away from all Encounters in the fire Cavern as well defeating  ifreet without summons or magic takes a bit longer than normal which means we will inevitably take  more damage too we're

going to be very limited on healing in battle throughout the entire run due  to not having access to Healing magic or items we can still use items outside of battle though our  biggest Lifeline in this run will be limit breaks if certain conditions are met in battle then  a character has a chance to use their unique limit break when their turn comes around these  conditions are mostly all based around how much danger we are in during battle the danger level is  officially called the crisis leve

l there's a whole formula that the game uses every time a party  member's turn comes around and that formula works out the current crisis level for that character  the crisis level may be boosted the more danger we're in but it's also a very RNG heavy a few  of the conditions that boost the crisis level are low HP having status ailments or having dead  party members so for now the lower RHP is the more likely we will get access to our limit breaks we  can even attack our own party members in bat

tle to reduce their HP quicker we know the limit break  is available if we see an arrow next to the attack command squall's limit break renzoken is a series  of gun blade attacks whereas quistas's limit break is a laser attack questus can use certain items  later to learn more limit break attacks but for now the laser is all she has ifrete ends up  wiping out questis and he Whittle squalls HP down we use renzoken from there to win the fight  it freet will now join us as our third summon and this

will be the last summon we gain in the whole  run up until the final boss bosses don't give any experience points upon defeat which is actually  a good thing for this run the reason for that is that the vast majority of the Run we actually want  to keep almost all of our characters as low level as possible this is the reason we've been running  away from all Random Encounters so far and here's why almost all enemy levels increase depending on  our party's average level if our party's average le

vel is 19 or under then that ensures that the  Random Encounters and even bosses stay on the lowest stats possible normally in low-level  runs of Final Fantasy 8 you can use summon abilities and junctioning to boost the character's  stats with magic spells this ends up being more beneficial than stat boosts we gain from Pure  leveling whereas this strategy of keeping our levels low is very helpful to start with not being  able to use the junction to boost our stats with magic is going to make th

is run a lot harder later  on the next major part of the game is the dollar Mission and right away we're joined by Zell and  sifa we can run away from all Random Encounters but there are some mandatory battles against  galbadian soldiers to avoid receiving experience points to our main characters we can attack  ourselves to knock out both zero and Squall this leaves sifa to receive all the experience points  which is fine since sifa is a temporary party member anyway this also means that sifa is

stuck  fighting the Anaconda mini boss fight on his own fortunately sifa gets access to his limit break  far easier than any other character all he needs is 84 percent of his max HP or less so we're able  to start spamming his limit break early on to win this fight it was a close one though shortly after  sifa is replaced by a new party member selfie this is the party we have when going up against the  next boss the duo of Biggs and wedge since sifa left the party will have to revive Squall and

  turns out with Phoenix downs we don't want to heal them too much though since their low HP will  improve their odds of getting limit breaks the fight starts off with just bigs so we used normal  attacks until wedge shows up alongside bigs it's worth mentioning that if we hit the R1 button  right as squaw's attack connects with the Enemy it will deal extra critical damage we continue to  attack Biggs normally until both Biggs and wedge are blown away by Alvarez we carry on the battle  seamlessl

y and elveret hits Squall with Fire magic right away since scores HP is getting low we can  get a couple of renzos off for some Fair damage as we mentioned before the crisis level is increased  the lower our party members HP normally the amount of hits that squalls Renzo deals has a chance  of increasing depending on how high the crisis level is however some bosses like this one have  scripted Renzo animations and thus squalls render will result in the same number of hits every  time Squall does

have a chance of ending each Renzo with a follow-up attack the light likelihood  of which is also influenced by the crisis level Squall learns more of these follow-up attacks as  we upgrade his weapon but for now rough divide is the only one we have access to elveret then breaks  out its most powerful attack storm breath this kills Squall and severely weakens Zell now it's  time to see Zell's limit break duel it's basically a series of button commands that we can choose  from to string together

as many of these attacks as we can in a time limit the amount of time that  we get is also directly influenced by the crisis level the attacks we see on screen here are the  most basic duel attacks in the game since we're only near the beginning normally you would need to  acquire combat magazines in game to learn new duel attacks and have them visibly displayed during the  Dual limit break however if we already know the button combinations ahead of time we can still  input them and perform tho

se attacks basically with the power of the internet we already  have access to all of zel's most powerful duel attacks it's not as easy as just inputting the the  commands to use the most powerful attacks over and over though certain commands are only available  after certain other commands have been input in the sequence already I won't go into crazy detail  as it gets quite complicated but I'll let you know which string of commands we're going to use and  when they are important to the run for

now we want as much physical damage as possible and the  attack we need for that is different beat here is an example of a command sequence we can use to  get different beat Booyah heal drop Mac kick heel drop buoyah and now we need to input the button  command for different beat even though that attack does not display on screen that button command  is Triangle Square X Circle up this deals a good amount of damage but Zeal is downed immediately  afterwards now it's only selfie left on her feet

and without junctioning we can't use revived magic  or all items in battle however selfish limit break allows her to cast random magic attacks up to  three times the higher the crisis level the more powerful the magic we have to choose from  we use this to deal some more damage and we can also use this to heal selfie as well this ends up  being our strategy from here use selfie's limit break to cast magic and heal herself when needed  she hits with normal attacks until she is weak enough to use

her limit break again rinse repeat  this for long enough and eventually elveret goes down we're already feeling the difficulty already  now we have a 30 minute time limit to escape dolit all the wire we are being chased by the x atm092  or the Black Widow so we revive Squall and Zell first right away we're forced into fighting the  Black Widow outside the communication tower all we need to do is damage the Black Widow enough to  stagger it and for that we need our limit breaks again the Black W

idow uses Ray bomb to weaken all  three party members and we follow up with a couple of renzos and a duel this is enough to stagger the  Widow and we make our escape this starts a Chase sequence where we are being chased by the Widow  all the way through dolit if it ever catches party we must fight it all over again there are ways to  completely avoid fighting it ever again first we run away as fast as we can when we get onto this  screen we must hold down the circle button to walk so that we do

n't lose our footing on the bridge  we must run away until we hear it jump over us as soon as we hear that we turn around and run the  other way it then jumps over us one more time and we head back to the right and we're home free  you can run inside the hotel to hide from the Widow this works fine but if you do that you miss  out on the coolest cut scene in all of video games we have our dance with Renault in another cool  cut scene I think every cutscene in this game is cool and soon it's just

Squall and quistus on the  team we revive questis and heal up a little bit as our next boss fight is coming up soon granaldo  considering what we just went through in dollar granaldo is pitifully weak in comparison it's  even joined by three raldo enemies but even then it hardly poses much of a threat we spam normal  attacks to the roundos until granaldo finally deals enough damage to put squall Limit Break  range several renzos later and all the enemies go down now we have a party of squall Ze

ll and  selfie once more we sell the occult fan magazine in balam town for 17 and a half thousand Gill and  we stock up on some potions and Phoenix Downs make sure to save 3 000 kills so we can catch the train  before long we find ourselves in control of a new party Laguna Kiros and Ward we continue to flee  every random encounter however Laguna's scenario is only cut scenes from here on until we are back  in control of squall we continue the story until we arrive in Timber and meet up with rena

ult's  resistance soon renewa is on the team along with her pet dog Angelo if we enter renault's status  screen we can see Angelo's attacks that are used as part of renault's limit break keep these in  mind for later we continue our mission until we are faced with our next boss geroguero this boss  starts out as the fake president but it's really slow and we can get several attacks in over and  over until it finally transforms into Garrow Arrow it's a lot more dangerous now and the worst part  i

s it can puke on party members to cause various status effects one of these status effects is  Curse this gives them a dark glow and completely removes that party member's limit break until the  curse wears off this is a killer as our normal attacks do terrible damage to geraguero the best  method of dealing damage to gero gero is to use magic and only selfie's limit break can do that  in this run unfortunately selfie is affected with the berserk status which forces her to use normal  attacks wi

th Zell being blinded as well our first attempt was a bust the new strategy was to attack  selfie before the fake president can transform so that we can be ready with her limit break as  soon as he does we have selfie's turn lined up ready to go whilst Squall and Zell hit the fake  precedent to force the transformation with selfish limit break the magic attacks on offer are random  and weakened Mulligan over and over until we see a result that we like we just happen to find a  three Fire cast an

d fire is geroguero's weakness now as soon as we see the transformation begin we  can cast those Three Fires for big damage Squall gets puked on and on selfie's next turn we found  two fire casts for even more big damage one more triple cast of fire and garogero is beaten after  leaving the train we can enter the timber Pet Shop here we purchase Pet Pals Vol 3. do not purchase  Pet Pals volume 4 or we'll just be making this run harder for ourselves we use pet power vol 3 from  our items to begin

learning renault's Invincible Moon we can now select Invincible moon from the  NOAA status screen to begin learning it by default Renault can already use Angelo Cannon Angelo's  strike is available to learn right away since we obtained a pet pass magazine automatically in a  cut scene but we need to make sure that we prevent learning Angelo's strike we'll see why later now  any step that we take with Renault a party will make progress towards learning that ability during  our travel to galbadia

Garden we once again find ourselves in control of Laguna's party we need  to escape Esther and in the process there are several forced encounters against s the soldiers  even though they are forced encounters they're not considered bosses so they will reward us with  experience points since we're trying to remain as low level as possible we kill off both Laguna  and keros and then have Ward win these fights by himself this ensures that all experience points  are only awarded to Ward and no one

else these three characters levels are actually linked with  whichever three characters fall asleep in this case Laguna is Squall Kiros is selfie and Ward is  questis we flee from all optional battles and have Ward solo all required battles as we make our way  to the exit until we find this save point we save here and head to the left on this screen we need  to find a random encounter against a guest we got lucky and we found it immediately as our first  encounter but if you're not so lucky then

just close the game down completely and boot it back  up again and retry for the encounter rebooting like this will reset the randomized seed that the  encounters are on and should improve the odds of finding guests for early gespers are strange in  that they target friend and foe alike with random commands for example this one casted both protect  and cure on Ward upon defeat the gesper has close to a 70 chance to drop a black hole item this item  is going to be essential to this run the final

e of this scenario is a battle against a gauntlet  of Esther soldiers two or three normal attacks usually put them down but eventually Ward gets  weak however Ward's limit break massive anchor is a very strong attack that hits all Targets  wiping out any soldier in one it's a close call but Ward solos the lot of them now we return in  control of squall's party and right away we use the black hole item to teach questis a new limit  break called degenerator this attack completely removes any singl

e Target from battle with the  exception of most bosses Irvine joins the party and we head over to dealing City the very first  thing we do here is rent a car and drive to the nearby desert right around here we have Renault  in our party to help her learn Invincible Moon and quistus for her new degenerator ability we  are now farming for a very specific enemy and it is called fastita Callum it's very common to  encounter regular faster to call on F's here but quite rare to encounter a regular fa

st attack on  what makes this even more Awkward is that we don't know which type of faceta kalon we're fighting  until we hit it enough times to make it pop out of the sand only on rare occasions will it turn  out to be the larger faster to Calon that pops out of the ground and even then we still have  to kill it and hope it drops the item we need for water crystal when we finally found one it  was flanked by two faster to count on F's Squall and questions were both knocked out and Renault  was

weakened but this allowed Renault to use her limit break which randomly selects an attack  from Angela there's only one attack that can occur by default and that's Angelo Cannon which  will deal damage to all Targets it took us over an hour but we finally got the faster to call on  to drop the water crystal better yet only Renault gained any experience points from that fight we  used the water crystal on questis to teach her another new limit break attack Aqua breath we  fast forward to the boss

fight against the two iguians and we only have Squall and Irvine in our  party we started this fight with full HP on both characters so we'll need weakening before we can  use limit breaks if both iguians are alive then they can use their resonance attack for Hefty  damage to both party members they can even use magma breath which also hurts and casts Doom onto  the target with this and resonance back to back we failed this fight the first time the second time  time we tried they focused more o

n Squall which allowed him to kill one of the iguians with arenzo  Squad got knocked out shortly afterwards but since one of the iguyons was dead that removed their  resonance attack Irvine landed normal attacks over and over until he was weak enough to use his  limit break basically you select an ammo type that we have in our inventory and spam R1 to Rapid Fire  that ammo into the target you can switch targets halfway through this limit break shot also has a  time limit that's influenced by the

crisis level we have a bunch of normal ammo by default so we  unloaded as much of it as we could into the last iguyon this brings us to questis selfie and zel  in the sewers underneath dealing City but since there's no boss fight down here this is just  a case of fleeing from every random encounter until we escape it's back to school for the next  boss and it's against sifa he hits with Fire magic and gunblade attacks that hit harder than ours it  isn't long before Squall is weakened and it see

ms we only have one chance for a Renzo if this didn't  take sifa down then he would hit us one more time and we would lose thankfully the game considered  the situation to be dire enough that we got a rough divide at the end of the Renzo I want you  to know something though I did the math on this fight since Squall is level 7 sifa is level 7 and  at level 7 sifa has 386 HP every hit that Squall landed before the rough divide added up to a total  of 385 which means sifa only had one HP remaining

we needed that rough divide or we would have lost  for sure immediately following that boss fight we have another boss fight sorceress idea Squad is  joined by Renault and Irvine for this fight and I'd love to break down some interesting strategy  for this battle but did you know that if Squall goes down in this fight and stays down for a full  round the battle just ends it's true Irvine and renoa turned heel on Squall and dropped him where  he stood the game just moves right along to the follow

ing cut scene where Renault Sully decides  that she cares about Squall after all we're in control of Laguna and Kiros once more but as  always we flee every battle we can to avoid the experience points there aren't even any boss  fights here either so at the end we get to see Laguna brag that we eliminated zero monsters now  we go to Zell who's going solo for now we choose to stand up for the Mumba when the security guard  gets too violent and soon after we must decide if Squall gives in to the

torture or not we choose  let me die as it unlocks a shortcut in the prison later plus this one text box always amuses me now  Zell must fight two guards by himself so it's a good thing they're pathetic they go down after  a couple of hits each that brings us to the next boss fight and it's against the returning bigsen  wedge but at least we get a full Party of Three beforehand it seems all characters are fully  healed automatically at this point so we will once again need weakening before we ca

n use limit  breaks we target wedge exclusively with a barrage of normal attacks and he eventually Falls we do  the same to Biggs and whereas we get a lot of turns before he even gets one he uses his turns to  cast regen and cure on himself he is now healing himself faster than we are dealing damage so we  take matters into our own hands we attack questus to allow her to use her limit break her brand  new Aqua breath deals over 600 damage per hit and since the amount of damage dealt by quisus's 

limit breaks is dependent on the crisis level 600 is about the lowest damage it can deal that just  goes to show how useful Aqua breath will be going forward after the fight before rescuing Squall we  will travel all the way down to Floor 2 to find a strength up item inside one of the cells this is  the first of several strength up items we will get in this run and we will be giving all of them  to squall to permanently boost his strength stat you'll see why much later the next mandatory  battl

e is actually the very next boss fight we can choose our party ahead of time for this one  and we need to make sure that questis is in the party the fight is against two gim-52a robots and  one gal combatian Soldier The Soldier's job is mainly to buff the robots whilst the robots  attack the party questus is still weak from the bigsen wedge fight and she's hit with micro  missiles right away she just survives the hit and fires back with aqua breath it kills the soldier  but not the robots luckil

y both robots attack Squall and Renault instead of questis so she's  able to use Aqua breath one more time and then the others finish them off there is a chance that  this boss drops a missile item for questis but we were unlucky and we didn't get it this time but  don't worry there will be an opportunity to get one later now we divide our six characters into  two parties of three we send Squall requesters and Irvine to balam garden and we send selfie Zell  and Renault to the missile base before

arriving at the missile base we need to make sure that  Renault has finished learning Invincible Moon if she hasn't yet taken enough steps you can wander  around outside on the nearby train tracks or the roads this ensures you won't run into any random  encounter once Invincible moon has been mastered we can head inside the missile base we keep a low  profile the whole time we're here right up until the missiles are ready to launch we only reveal  ourselves when we must and this is right before

the fight against the three galbadian soldiers  selfie is the closest to getting her limit break and right away she's hitting them with a volley  of strong magic attacks like thunderer Zella gets confused and nearly kills selfie due to selfie's  even lower HP the crisis level has increased and she gets double thunderer this time luckily Zell  hits the right target next time zou returns to his senses after being hit by a soldier but with  the two weaker soldiers dead the last one knocks out self

ie Zell is soon weakened enough to finish  the fight with a single duel we need to find the right control panel next before we can leave  this room this means we can't Advance into the next room or backtrack to the previous room until  we inspect all the control panels in this room as soon as we do inspect them all we backtrack to the  save point first otherwise wise this save point will disappear and since there is a challenging  boss coming up we're gonna want to save the game here we can also

use this opportunity to weaken  our party members as much as possible as we can now get Random Encounters the boosted crisis  level will be invaluable we set the place to self-destruct and we can select a timer if the  timer hits 20 minutes or less a shortcut will be opened up to get outside quicker once we're  outside we Face our toughest challenge yet the boss fight against the bgh251f2 but we'll just  call it the tank to showcase the difficulty of this fight this was our first attempt the ta

nk one  shot all three of us right away our goal is to get renova's turn as early as possible and use her  limit break if the crisis level is high enough there's a chance that she will use Invincible  Moon unfortunately the RNG is not on our side either Renault dies before getting a turn or she  uses Angelo Cannon instead which is the much more likely outcome of Renaissance break the reason  we need Invincible moon is that it makes all surviving party members completely invulnerable  to all dama

ge for a few rounds since the crisis level is boosted if any party member is downed  we do get invincible Moon after selfie dies this allowed us to get quite close to winning but  the invulnerability wore off right before the tanks beam Cannon attack we need to improve our  odds even more if we're going to get one shot by the tank anyway then we may as well boost our  crisis level as much as possible by weakening our party members all the way ahead of time we Farm  Random Encounters in the missi

le base and get the enemies to hit us over and over until we're all in  critical HP we even get selfie down to 16 HP and Manoa all the way down to seven this helps selfie  get stronger magic for her limit break and we jump at the chance for a thunderger since the tank  is weak to lightning damage better yet Renault gets Invincible moon right away with all three  party members Alive Now Zell and selfie can spam their limit breaks as often as possible during  our invulnerability phase we use norma

l attacks with Renault as there's a fair chance that she'll  just use Invincible Moon again which does nothing if it's already active something very useful to  know about this game is that limit breaks take priority over any other turn if a limit break is  selected during the animation of a previous party member's turn then it doesn't matter if the enemy  selected their attack first the limit break will occur first this can be used very strategically  throughout the whole game for example we can

skip the characters turns with the triangle button to  get another character's turn first using this we can make sure that all our ATB bars are filled up  at the same time and then have Renault take the first turn during the animation of her limit break  we can take the time we need to cycle through selfish magic knowing that as long as we make a  selection before the animation is finished selfie will still act before a boss couple that with the  fact that we can spam triangle to skip through c

haracters turns if they don't have access to  their limit break right away until they eventually do get it this becomes a bit of a complex  Balancing Act but after a while I was enjoying the extra strategic element that this added to  the run it takes a bit of look but if we can get an invincible Moon every time when we need it then  this routine will continue until the tank explodes revealing three soldiers inside it's at this  moment our invulnerability wears off once again we had renault's li

mit break lined up ready to go  once more but it ended up being an Angelo Cannon this time this still damages all three targets  though and kills two of the guards one Jewel later and the fight is one now we're back at balam  Garden with the other team we want to immediately leave the garden to get a random encounter we use  this to weak and Quest this and knock out Squall to prevent him from gaining any experience points  from the upcoming battles upon entering balham Garden we first swear our

allegiance to the Garden  Master to ensure fewer battles but we still have to participate in a few of them most of these  battles are simple but one of them is against a T-rex or this is finally where quizzes degenerator  ability comes into play as we mentioned it completely removes an enemy from Battle it doesn't  affect every enemy in the game and most bosses are immune to it but it does affect most enemies from  Random Encounters and the T-Rex or is one of them using degenerator to win a batt

le still earns  the party experience points this is why we made sure score was knocked out ahead of time in fact  speaking of degenerator would you believe that one of the very few boss fights in the whole game  that degenerator can actually be used successfully is the very next one against two oil boils Squall  goes down early but then questis cleans up with a degenerator to each oil boil it's not long before  we're in the next boss fight either against Garden master norg and this is another to

ugh one all  three party members are healed automatically prior to this fight which does not help with our  crisis level plus there are two orbs changing color we must hit them to revert their color back  to the default blue otherwise norg will hit us with strong magic nor book doesn't attack in any  other way until we break open his shell so we can use that time to do damage to questus so that  she can use her Aqua breath we get to use Aqua breath a few times for fair damage but once nog  is ex

posed he can hit hard he wipes out all three party members one at a time next time we decided  to not weaken any party members during the first phase and this time focus on dealing damage until  he is exposed once more we figured that we would let norg deal the damage that we needed for us to  use our limit breaks and we would hit him with as many normal attacks as we could in the meantime  his water magic is doing the job first Irvine is weak enough to use his limit break and then  questis is r

educed to 2 Hp her crisis level was now very severe and this led to her hitting Aqua  breath for over 2 700 damage Squall got dropped right after but this only helped to boost the  damage from Aqua breath and the second time it was over 2 400 damage That's All She Wrote for  norg we soon arrived at Fisherman's Horizon and after meeting with the mayor it isn't long before  galbadia attacks the mayor tries to take things into his own hands but this just leads us into a  forced fight against three

galbadian soldiers they all go down insultingly easy directly afterwards  the tank from the missile base returns and it can jump apparently but this tank has seen better  days we can't underestimate it though the tank still hits hard we find that the game has topped  up our character's HPS before this fight as well our goal was to attack it until it weakened  us enough for us to start using our limit breaks however the tank had other plans as we were  being weakened the tank used its beam attack

this is strong enough to One-Shot Squall and finished  off questis and Irvine our new plan is to use the initial fight against the three soldiers to our  advantage during that fight we attack questus to weaken her before the tank fight starts we leave  Squall and Irvine with enough HP to survive one or two attacks with questis weak she starts the  fight using aqua breath at our party's current average level the tank will have about 6000 HP  Aqua breaths damage will vary with RNG but it's more l

ikely to do more damage the lower quizzes  HP is the first one deals over 1 800 damage Irvine gets a critical hit for over 100 damage and the  second Aqua breath does over 1 500 damage this is over 3400 damage so far somehow the tank has not  taken a turn yet and quitis gets in another Aqua breath for over 1 700 damage we've now dealt over  5 000 damage all before the tank could do anything however the tax pilot must have caught wise and a  beam Cannon wipes out questus she did good but now the

rest of the damage is up to squall and Irvine  they both unleash their normal attacks over and over and thankfully the tank blew up before it  could kill us after the fight we pay a visit to the Grease Monkey in his house nearby he says he  wants to gather the remains of that tank then we go to leave Fisherman's Horizon and Irvine joins  us before we get to the exit if we then revisit the Grease Monkey now a girl Guardian Soldier  is trying to strong arm him into repairing the tank Squall challe

nges him to a fight but the  soldier escapes through the window the Grease Monkey will reward you with a mega Phoenix whether  we use this in this run or not I figured I'd show you just in case anyone found this useful we  will be seeing the Grease Monkey again though still in Fisherman's Horizon Irvine is deciding  which instruments each party member should play during this we have control over Irvine if we  decide to leave this area first and revisit the Grease Monkey one more time we find tha

t he  is being terrorized by that same Soldier again this time the Grease Monkey himself knocks the  soldier out he rewards us once more this time with a phoenix down we can also mock the soldier  for five fast ammo AP ammo and pulse ammo in a casual playthrough we would need 12 pulse ammo for  squall's strongest weapon but the five pulse ammo we get here is the only pulse ammo we can find  in the entire game without junctioning so we'll never be getting squirrel's Ultimate Weapon in  this run w

e now have control of of the Garden on the Overworld we form a party of squall Irvine  and questis and we must now get a few specific item drops to aiders in the Run going forward we  pilot the garden all the way to the most southern land on the map and then we get into a fight  so that we can weaken questus we then enter the nearby Chocobo forest and get a chocobo we just  pay the kid to catch one for us we can now ride this Chocobo from here all the way to the very  top right of the map since

the Chocobo can run through shallow water we can enter the water from  a beach near the desert area and then we make our way across the edge of the land to the mountains  we need a chocobo to get here due to the mountains being covered in forest and you can't Land The  Garden in a forest area we then explore the forests here until we find another Chocobo Forest  we'll be saving the game here now we must begin to farm enemies outside of this Chocobo Forest first  things first we kill Squall to pr

event him from receiving experience points everyone gangs upon  him even the unicorn and the caterpillar help us out the very next in encounter has a cockatrice  in it and we need its cockatrice pinion drop we use the generator to remove the cockatrice from  the fight completely and get the cockatrice pinion this item will be used to upgrade a weapon later  we keep farming encounters right here until we find a Marlboro we quickly used to generate on it  before it has a chance to use its signatur

e bad breath attack which would have been a disaster  this earns us the Marlborough tentacle and we can use this item from our inventory right away  to teach questis the bad breath attack now we need to farm hexadragon enemies for their Red  Fangs unfortunately at our current party level the Red Fangs are the hexadragons rare drop if we  don't get the Red Fang drop that we need we end up with more experience points on questus and Irvine  than we want we could reload the game after every hexa Dra

gon we find but since the randomized seed  the game is on is the same with every reload the encounter and the item drop will be the same every  time to increase our odds we can save the game and completely reboot the game to reset the randomized  seed the farming can continue from there the Red Fangs have less than a 20 chance of dropping if we  find a hexa dragon and the drop is not a Red Fang that's when we need to reboot the game you repeat  this until we finally get two Red Fangs that we nee

d it was pretty clutch too because we got back  attacked and Irvine died immediately Chris just managed to get a degenerator off before the same  thing happened to her and we got both Red Fangs at the same time once again we'll be holding on to  these items for some weapon upgrades later on now we can get another Chocobo and travel all the way  back to the Garden again we fly the garden back to balam and then swap Irvine visel we revive Squall  but only heal him a little bit then we get another

encounter outside the town and weaken both Zell  and quistus now normally you would have to solve some kind of puzzle to find where raijin is hiding  this would involve talking to the fishing guards going to Zell's house getting a dog to get the  fish scent offers Etc but there's actually a way to completely skip this entire puzzle if we just  transition the screen back and forth between the center of town and the the hotel entrance for a  total of 17 times the guards outside the hotel are now i

n a completely different stance talking to  them now will prompt raijin to return up and the puzzle is skipped we now have a boss fight against  rygin and Two Soldiers at the same time raijin has some fairly strong physical attacks but the plan  is to get Quest is to use bad breath which targets all enemies this has a chance of inflicting  several status ailments the two soldiers were put to sleep blinded silenced poisoned and doomed  and raijin was also blinded raijin will now miss a lot of his

attacks and questis takes out the two  guards with a single Aqua breath it's now Zell's time to shine there is another dual command  sequence that will prove very useful in this run there is a particular command called meteor  strike and it deals 25 of the target's current HP so for example if the target had 4 000 HP  remaining meteor strike will deal 1000 damage there just so happens to be a specific sequence  of commands that allows us to use meteor strike as many times as we can fit within t

he jewels time  limit this means that we can take huge chunks of HP off the target with this combo however despite  meteor strike being a physical attack it does not work on enemies that are immune to gravity damage  most bosses are immune to gravity damage but not all of them a good example of bosses that are  vulnerable to gravity damage are most humanoid enemies just like rygin so here's the combo the  First Command will depend what shows on screen if punch Rush is displayed we start with tha

t  if Booyah is displayed then we start with that instead Booyah is directly after punch Rush anyway  so the combo will be the same following the Booyah after buoyah we use meteor strike which is down  Circle up Circle we follow that with a heel drop another meteor strike a dolphin blow which is  L1 R1 L1 R1 then meteor strike heel drop so on and so forth basically after Booyah we use meteor  strike like every other command and the commands in between meteor strikes will alternate between  heel

drop and dolphin blow this assures that we can use meteor strike as many times in a single  use of duel as possible you can see that against raijin the damage that meteor strike deals  heavily outweighs the damage of any other of Zell's attacks but also the amount of damage that  each meteor strike deals will gradually reduce due to 25 percent of the target's current HP being a  lower number each time meteor strike lands this still heavily weakens rygin in this fight raijin  responds by trying t

o take Zell down but he misses due to being blinded one more Aqua breath and  Rising goes down without a break in between we are thrusted straight into a boss fight against both  ryajin and fujin together before we even get a turn fujin used tornado and killed us all outright  failing here means we have to do both fights again we can save ourselves a bit of time by using the  save point in Zell's house after the guards have changed their stance but this will also fully heal  the party this can s

till work though we just need to take the time to reduce questis and cells HP  first in the first raijin fight Zell gets in a duel to deal a lot of damage to raijin but Squall  and Zell are both defeated shortly afterwards questis is on her own now the more Dead characters  we have in our party the higher the likelihood that the remaining character will get their limit  break and the higher their HP can be and still get it this means we can get bad breath and aqua  breath back to back also raiji

n won't attack female party members if there's only one female  party member Still Standing this basically means that raijin can't touch us at this point it also  means that we have to go straight into the fight against both of them with just Twisters right  away fujin uses tornado again but since questis had slightly more HP this time she just manages  to survive two dead party members and a very weak questis means the crisis level right now is very  high we very quickly use bad breath which pu

ts fujin to sleep but doesn't do much to raijin  at all but Rising still won't hit any female if there's only one still standing now we spam  Aqua breath as many times as we can before fujin wakes up the high crisis level results in massive  damage raijin will heal himself with high potions but Aqua breath out damages his healing physical  attacks will wake up sleeping targets but Aqua breath is not considered a physical attack a total  of three Aqua breaths is enough to defeat both of them we r

eceive a strength up item for each time  we defeated raijin so that's two more for Squall to further boost his strength stat after many cut  scenes we are now at war with gal badia we make sure to flee all Random Encounters as usual and  when prompted we make sure to keep questus in the party we take the time to kill Squall in a random  encounter before we must fight a mandatory battle against four stronger soldiers score being dead  improves our crisis level and prevents him from Gaining experi

ence points questis gets hit with  silence but all that does is prevent her from using magic and we can't use magic in this run  anyway we end up benefiting from this as having a status effect on questis boosts her crisis level  and thus makes Aqua breath more powerful after two Aqua breaths questis takes down all four of them  and on a moment too soon when we find ourselves inside galbatia Garden we form a party of [ __ ]  questus and Irvine and progress through until we make it to the central

area near the entrance we  can save the game here but we need to farm an item right here before we leave just make sure not to  bump into Cerberus right in the center of the area we're looking for a death claw to get its sharp  Spike drop we want to kill off Squall first to once again prevent him from Gaining experience  points and have questis use degenerator we had Irvine with us as our third party member both here  and for the other item farming that we did earlier so that he would gain a sha

re of the experience  points this isn't to level him up specifically but it's to prevent another party member from  Gaining those experience points instead as we want to ensure or their levels are kept as low as  possible for now once we have the sharp Spike we swap Irvine for Zell and we revive Squall ready  for our battle with sifa right away we use Zell's Jewel and since safer is a humanoid enemy he is  susceptible to gravity attacks which means we can use the same combo that we used against

raijin  with the multiple meteor strikes since Zell's HP was so low we got a decent amount of time and  after that all it took was an aqua breath and a Renzo to finish off sifa shortly following that  fight we must fight both sifa and sorcerer's idea back to back we went into this fight with the same  strategy we just used a single duel took down sifa a few seconds after sifa is defeated adio will  always use Maelstrom since this deals percentage damage it won't actually kill any party member  b

ut it inflicts the curse status on all Targets this is a killer because the curse status removes  the ability to use limit breaks and we really want to use another duel on her basically if you is  Maelstrom and inflicts us all with curse you may as well reset in the rematch we were able to get  Zell's Jewel lined up and ready to use immediately after Cipher was defeated but we didn't have  enough time to deal enough damage and to do use Maelstrom again right afterwards instead we  swap quistus w

ith Renault before the fight and we use some Random Encounters in the area to weaken  Renault the plan is to use renault's Invincible Moon and make the party immune to Maelstrom  and that is exactly what happened then we spammed Jewel and Renzo a few times and a deer Was  Defeated now we're back in control of the garden we form a party of squall questus and Irvine and  fly to the area outside dolit we need to farm some gizzards here because we want them to drop some  screws as soon as we find on

e we kill off Squall and Irvine and have Quest issues to generator if  there are multiple gizards in one fight then Aqua breath should be enough to defeat them all we keep  this up until we have 12 screws in total now we want to do something that we've been putting off  until now we must complete Odin's Tower we swap Irvine for selfie and heal up a little bit we have  a time limit here so we won't be using the speed up booster we flee every encounter as usual and  after we solve the tower's puzz

le we input the password to open the door to Odin's room if our  timer is running low then an option we have here is to leave the tower and re-enter the timer will  reset but the door to Odin's room will remain open this ensures we have the maximum possible time to  defeat Odin Odin never actually attacks at all the challenge of this fight is purely defeating him  within the time limit this is why we didn't need Renault as Invincible Moon wouldn't help us we  need as much damage as possible Odin

won't take any gravity damage either so Zell's out too  we just Spam Renzo's Aqua breaths and selfish randomize magic instead after this Odin will  join the team as a summon but the unique thing about Odin is that we don't need to use Junction  to summon him Odin will spawn at the beginning of a battle randomly and insta kill all enemies in  that battle when he does there is a flat 12.9 nine percent chance of oding spawning but of course  Odin will not spawn for the vast majority of boss fights

we soon end up in control of Laguna kiras  on Ward again we want to assign selfie to Kiros and Irvine to Ward after winning a fight against  a Ruby Dragon in a mini game we must fight it for real we have the option to backtrack slightly  and save the game first before we fight the Ruby Dragon we find a random encounter and kill  off Laguna and kiras you would be forgiven for assuming that the Ruby Dragon was a boss fight  since it is a mandatory fight to progress but the game considers this to

be a normal enemy this  means the fight will award experience points which is why we killed off Laguna and Kiros and also  why we assign Irvine to Ward basically Irvine is our experience Point sponge for any mandatory  battles but this means that Ward must go this fight alone although wardwood really struggled  to win this one by himself but since this isn't a boss fight that means that 12.9 chance that  Odin will spawn at the start of the fight can end this fight right away we just need to keep

  reloading the game every time that Odin fails to spawn until he finally decides to help us out  and one shot the Ruby Dragon we gain control of the garden again and at this point we realized  we don't have a dino bow in our inventory and we need one for later it was possible to get  a dino bone in the T-Rex or encounter back in the garden when the garden master was taking over  but we were unlucky back then we weak and quizzed it and kill off Squall and we Farm a T-rex or  encounter in the for

est outside the lamp the first one we find we use the generator and we got  a dino burn after some more cut scenes we can now put a deer in our party so we'll swap Irvine for a  deer now is normally the time that we would weaken the party but we want to be able to survive a  few hits from the upcoming boss fight Abaddon this thing has strong physical attacks and it can  use them surprisingly frequently it can also use a lick attack for moderate damage and to cause the  Cur status effect since Ab

addon is an undead enemy it takes damage from healing spells and items  in a casual playthrough we would just throw an Elixir or an x potion at it for an instant kill  but junctioning is required to use items in battle so that's a no-go now and then Abaddon will swap  from Crouching to standing upright and this boosts its Vitality stat squalls rendered useless in  this instance our best chance is a deer's limit break I strike since it deals good magic damage  the damage isn't influenced by the c

risis level so he can guarantee good damage from it every time  this also means that if the deer gets licked and cursed this attempt is pretty much dead curse can  wear off over time but by then abodine will likely have killed it all Abaddon killed Squall but we  managed to get an ice strike in early Christus took a heavy hit and nearly died but she followed  up with an aqua breath while more eye strike for big damage and Abaddon is down we're right back  to Laguna Kiros on Ward so we assign Chr

istus to Kiros and Irvine to war since [ __ ] was dead  before this scene the game revives Laguna with one HP thankfully Laguna's limit break Desperado one  shots the Esther soldiers so we win this fight as long as we get our turn first Garrison Ward joined  the next fight and they are fully healed we still want to avoid experience points for both Laguna  and kieros though so he killed both of them off ward will attack the enemies over and over until  he is hit with confusion thankfully he still

only attacks the enemy and when confusion wears off he  is weak enough to use his limit breaker to win the fight Ward must win the next fight completely  solo he takes a couple of hits but his massive anchor dropped the Two Soldiers Ward survives the  laser attack and it takes two more massive anchors to finally defeat the robot this also happens to  be the battle that earned us the 100 kill trophy I imagine that normally comes a fair bit earlier  in the game casually Ward lands a few more mass

ive anchors on the Esther soldiers we had to use a  single potion first for safety which was needed as Ward would have died otherwise we find ourselves  back with Squall and Co in the city of Esther we head to the shops to buy a few things for safety  they are 40 High potions 30 Phoenix Downs eye drops softs and remedies what's important though  is that we purchase over 40 dark ammo for Irvine break much later on this is also the time to  upgrade school's weapon to the twinlands using the dino b

one two Red Fangs and 12 screws that we  gathered earlier this will give Squall a decent strength boost and give him access to a couple of  different attacks at the end of his limit break next we rent a car and drive close to the space  station here we can Farm encounters outside until we find mesmerizes we want one of them to drop a  mesmerized blade which is the last item we need to create a new weapon for Renault squirrel  and Christus are both down so Adia solos them both for the mesmerized

blade we could go back to  Esther Now to create the new weapon for Renault it requires the cockatrice pinion a mesmerized blade  and a sharp Spike all of which we acquired in this run I actually forgot to go back to Esther here  and make this weapon but I highly recommend that you do it now to be safe the extra attack power  will help renoa out when she is next playable we choose to take selfie into space with squirrel  and Renault and this leaves zelquistis and Irvine and adir in s the soon The

Lunatic Pandora  arrives in Esther so we bring Irvine with us as we infiltrate it this is now the last chance we have  at obtaining the missile item as we can now find Random Encounters against galbadian soldiers and  their robots the specific robot we need to defeat is the gim-52a and we found two of them together  with a single soldier a deer's limit break is so strong that she wiped out the first robot the  second one then used Ray bomb and killed Irvine the soldier used meltdown on Zell and

now both  Zell and the deer are very weak a deer hits one more eye strike on the second robot but it just  survives idea then goes down but we managed to use Zell's duel in time the crisis level was high  and we got the maximum time on the Dual countdown we made sure to Target the soldier since he was  at full HP the plan was to use a combo of attacks that ended with the burning Rave attack this  is because the burning Rave attack targets all enemies and since the robot was so weak after  survi

ving the ice strike this would have had the best odds at defeating both enemies at once  we made sure to get in the meteos strikes after a Mac kick and a punch rush and then we went  straight in for the burning Rave the robot died but the soldier only just survived thankfully  this Soldier is so slow Zell got another duel in before he got a turn it was close but it was  worth it as we got the missile drop we entered the lunatic Pandora remember to use the missile  lonquistis so she learns the mi

cro missile ability and then the mobile type 8 robot knocks us off the  lunatic Pandora after some lengthy cut scenes we find ourselves with a party of just Squall and  Renault aboard the Ragnarok it's here we must defeat eight of these creatures called propagators  they come in four different colors two per color we need to defeat any two that are the same  color back to back for them to stay dead if we kill any out of order they will respawn at the  bottom of the stairs there is a purple one b

ut we need to make sure to wait for it to walk away so  we can run through this door before it can catch us in this room there is a green one and a save  point we fight the green one in hopes that we can get access to the save point at defeating it but  sometimes these propagators get several turns in a row and they wipe us out Upon returning to this  room we try to bait the propagator so we can run around it and to the save point and even in this  tiny room we pulled it off now when we game ove

r and reload Squall is at the save point and Renault  is at the door she runs over to squall right away and runs straight into the propagator which  initiates the battle despite the fact we never moved basically we're not going anywhere until we  kill this thing easier said than done we need to hope that the propagator spends turns casting  silence and blind on Squall and Renault these status effects don't hinder us at all actually fun  fact Squall can never miss a normal attack whether he's bli

nded or not Squall being blinded prevents  him from hitting critical hits with R1 but we still get Critical Hits during Renzo regardless so  silence and blind will just help Squall boost his crisis level Instead This section of the game  is exactly the reason we gave Squall all those strength up items and it's the reason we went out  our way to upgrade score's weapon without that extra attack power we wouldn't stand any chance  against these propagators after several attempts Squall just managed

to live long enough to use  Renzo twice and since he had such low HP he ends the first Renzo with his new blasting Zone attack  and the second Renzo he ends with his new fated Circle attack this was enough to defeat the first  propagator and what's more not only is Squall on very low HP but he's still silenced and blinded  this continues to boost scores crisis level so much that his Renzo's hit more times and often  ending powerful finishes this helps us defeat the remaining propagators one by

one since Squall  is one hit away from Death the entire time we make sure to return to the save point to save after  every propagator we kill some of these fights can be tricky if they insist on hitting Squall first  but if we're lucky that 12.9 chance can kick in and Odin will insta kill one or two of them for us  it's worth noting that renault's dog Angelo isn't with the party right now since we're in space  and as a result Renault can't use her usual limit breaks she does have access to a new

limit break  called angel wing but this just allows Renault to cast random magic with increased Effectiveness  however unlike selfie it must be magic that Renault has already Acquired and without  junctioning she can't acquire any magic once all the propagators are dead and all the cutscenes are  done the party members are reunited it's time to break into the lunatic Pandora and we do so with  a party of squall questis and Irvine but first we need to weaken our party since they've been fully  h

ealed as soon as we do enter the lunatic Pandora we must have a rematch against raijin and fujin  Squall goes down immediately but Quest is hit a bad breath right after which blinds raijin and  puts him to sleep it completely missed fujin though Earth I followed up by using his dark ammo  that we purchased to use dark shot on fujin this has a chance to Blind silence and put the target  to sleep with each shot with both raijin and fujin asleep we must avoid normal attacks as that will  wake them

up Christus uses micro missile which is perfect to use here as it deals at least 50  percent of the target's current HP but with Squall being dead the boosted crisis level can increase  that percentage even more it can only hit them one at a time though but it does cause heavy damage  and it doesn't wake them up after a total of three micro missiles fujin wakes up and casts haste on  raijin we were ready with another dark shot to put her right back to sleep one more missile on fujin  and rygin w

akes up killing Irvine as soon as he does we go from missiles to Aqua breath now as we  want to damage them both fujin goes down but rygin survived and since he has haste he now acts fast  with two attacks in a row but he's still blinded so questis Dodges both attacks and then takes him  down with a final Aqua breath with two dead party members and a blinded questis the crisis level  ensures big damage and finishes Rising off now we want to switch up the team we go with Squall  Renault and Zell

we revive Squall and weaken Renault and Zell at a later save point we continue  through the lunatic Pandora until we encounter our next Boss mobile type 8. this is a tough boss but  it has a big weakness it's susceptible to gravity attacks this means that the usual dual combo from  Zell with the numerous meteor strikes works very well unfortunately it's going to take more than  a single duel to take it down that's why we need Renault to use Invincible moon to Keep Us Alive  otherwise mobile type

8 will counter any of our offensive attacks and limit breaks with twin  homing laser which easily defeats us because this is a counter attack it takes priority over  any queued up limit breaks too this means that we need Invincible Moon before Zell's first duel the  weaker we know it is the better odds we have of getting that Invincible Moon Squall goes down on  the enemy's first turn but renaa gets Invincible moon on her first turn from there Zell uses duel  every turn he gets we barrage it wi

th as many meteor strikes as we can until its HP is whittled  all the way down to almost single digits and the Invincible Moon ensures that we take zero damage  from all of its counter-attacks so the last meteor strike of the third duel dealt three points of  damage so we knew its remaining HP was pitiful the invincibility wore off before our next attack  but Renault was able to land one and that was the final hit we needed to finish it off thankfully  it does not counter attack after it's defea

ted now that mobile type 8 is down sifa is waiting for  us in the very next area but we actually want to backtrack to the Ragnarok throughout the whole  run so far we've heavily limited the amount of experience points that we've earned this was  of course due to most of the enemies in this game getting stronger the higher our party's  average level is we've ensured that almost all enemies in the game up to now have been as low  level as they possibly can be otherwise this run would have been nex

t to impossible however now is  the time to throw that strategy out the window we form a party of [ __ ] questus and selfie we use  the Ragnarok to fly to either the island closest to heaven or the island closest to Hell these  two islands contain some of the strongest Random Encounters in the game but a weakened Quest is can  one shot anything with her degenerator ability we will Farm encounters here and questus will solo  each and every enemy we run into of course we will save our game after e

very fight that we win  so that if any of our party members die we could just reload and try again we continue this until  we get these three characters to a very high level you could take all three of them to level 100 if  you want to but we absolutely want selfie to be level 80 or above at least between level 80 and  89 might be preferable for selfie but going to level 100 is still fine we don't need Renault to  be level 100 right now we will have an opportunity to return here to grind her up

later but feel  free to grind her up now if you really want to you can grind the other party members to their  max level 2 if you want but leveling up zel or Irvine at this point won't really help much  this will give any character that we grind up a significant boost in stats but since enemies  get stronger the more levels we gain we're still very much outmatched by almost everything the game  intended the player to both level up and and use the junction system to boost our stats after  all we

also get a lot of item drops from this grind too we can use the two Marlboro Tentacles  from the Marlboros and two dragon skins from the hexa dragons to make a new weapon for questis the  Red Scorpion we also decided to get an Adamantite from the adamant toys on the beach near dolit with  that along with four more Dragon skins and a fury fragment that we got from grinding Ruby dragons  we can make a new weapon for Zell the ergis now we are ready to return to the lunatic Pandora and  take on sifa

for the last time we go in with a party of squall Renault and selfie we fully heal  Squall to his new maximum HP of over 4 000 ahead of the fight this is just so that squawk and tank  a few hits if needed but Noah must be weakened a lot though since we have Odin he will be summoned  in automatically at the start of this fight only to be cut in half by sifa the boss fight then  truly begins since we have grinded a lot of levels cephas stats are also very high so we still  find ourselves outmatch

ed cells meteor strikes are useless this time around as C for us develops  an immunity to gravity attacks this time sifa attacks often so we need Renault to use Invincible  Moon as early as possible otherwise sifa will make short work of us all with Fast Gun blade attacks  or Fire magic we included Sophie in this party as her limit break was our backup strategy but  she is killed very early on Renault then gets two Invincible moons in a row right afterwards  this ensures that we survive many of

sifa's Rapid Fire attacks but did you know that if the party  is still alive after cefaz attacked 13 times Gilgamesh is automatically summoned to defeat sifa  this still happens if you deplete all of sifa's HP but I didn't know it happened after 13 of his  turns this is where his rapid attacks actually work in our favor as is only speeding up his own  defeat whilst we're Invincible this is also why it didn't really matter what our levels were for this  fight since it was going to end after 13 tu

rns anyway the next boss fight follows very shortly  after but we will first backtrack to the save point we've actually lost Renault at this point  in the game as Adele has merged with her and she won't return to the party until Adele is defeated  we need to prepare for that boss fight first though near the previous save point there is a  tunnel entrance this tunnel is just a dead end but there is a specific enemy that we can encounter  very regularly in this tunnel the Imp we add quizzes to the

party and farm encounters against  imps the reason for this is that they can cast both blind and silence on the party as soon as we  find one we do nothing and let it take its turns it's a good idea to fully heal before to ensure it  can't One-Shot us they can also cast other status magic like berserk or confused but those statuses  don't remain after battle unlike silence and blind the strategy is to get selfie both silenced and  blinded who went a bit overboard and got status on everybody but

we only really needed it for  selfie right now with that we are ready to face sorceress Adele without Renault we cannot rely  on Invincible Moon Adele has merged with Renault which means we must avoid using attacks that hit  all Targets otherwise we will damage renoa if Renault dies here it's game over what's more Adele  will start the fight by absorbing HP from renoa and then casting meteor immediately afterwards  since we were trying to get selfie's limit break we went in with low HP and mete

or wiped us out the  new strategy is to heal a bit of HP first so we can survive the meteor meteor hits a total of 10  times and each hit is spread across the surviving party members this makes it difficult to know the  best amount of HP to go into the fight with so we had to use a bit of trial and error our plan for  victory however is to use the most powerful spell that selfish limit break can do and it's called  The End self-estimate break is the only legitimate method in the game of casting

this spell and all  it does is instantly win any fight immediately even boss fights of course this sounds completely  overpowered but there's a catch remember how he mentioned that the magic that selfie gets with her  limit break is random and we can choose do-over to Mulligan the spell that we get well to add a bit  more explanation to it there are 16 table of magic and each table contains 64 magic spells each time  we choose do over it re-randomizes both the table and the magic spell within th

at table the list  of magics change depending on selfie's level but even at level 100 the end only appears in three  of these tables twice in two of them and once in the remaining one since both the table and the  spell that we get are randomized every time the odds of getting the end are very slim let alone  getting it before whatever boss we're up against kills us first there is a bit more to self-islimit  break than that but we'll go into further details later on since you will likely be hitt

ing do-over  rapidly whilst looking for the end it's also very possible to accidentally skip over it and you  can't go back one benefit we have is that the animation for meteor is quite long and if selfie's  turn comes up before its cast we can quickly search for the end during the meteor animation  we also healed up both Squall and quizzes to full HP to help them tank at least a hit or two we  healed up Sophie a bit but not to the a maximum the reason we wanted double status on selfie was  to b

oost her chance of getting her limit break straight away without her being in critical HP and  sure enough after many failed attempts we got the end as our very first spell right at the start  of the fight but as we said as soon as the fight starts Adele absorbs HP from Manoa and then goes  straight into casting meteor this bypasses the usual priority that limit breaks have so selfie  must survive this meteor before she can cast The End which she does she had just the right amount  of HP to both

be able to use her limit break under double status and to still survive the meteor  attack with that we get to enjoy the animation of the end as it defeats Adele instantly something  else to note selfie loses access to the end if she is between level 40 and 80. the highest odds of  her getting the end are when she's between levels 80 and 89 but levels 90 to 100 still work this  is why we mentioned that leaving selfie between level 80 and 89 might to be preferable we get a  chance to save our ga

me but there's no going back from here we have another boss fight right away  we're able to change our party members so we go with Squall questus and Irvine we must fight a  gauntlet of sorceresses they spawn in one at a time to replace the defeated one but there can  only ever be two sorceresses in battle at any one time the idea is to use Irvine's limit break  to darkshot each sorcerer's one at a time darkshot also has a chance to poison enemies as well as  put them to sleep this buys us the t

ime we need to weaken questis so that she can finish off the  sorceresses with aqua breath when Irvine's turns come back around we save it and as soon as a new  sorceress replaces a defeated one we quickly use his limit break to get a dark shot on the new  sorceress we make sure to only use a couple of dark shots per sorceress to conserve ammo a couple  of shots should be all that we need to put them to sleep anyway it's best to use darkshot when there  are two sorceresses in the fight so we can

hit them both in a single turn we can use squirrel's  renzone now and then to finish one of them off if an aqua breath doesn't quite cut and sometimes  even Gilgamesh will spawn into attack as well yoga mesh has replaced Odin now and he can attack  in the middle of fight sometimes instead of just at the start the last sorceress is the strongest  one by far and we can't put this one to sleep but this final sorceress is also locked at level 45  no matter what if we attack this last sorceress she

will counter-attack for big damage we barraged  her with our limit breaks but her counter-attacks killed us off very quickly instead of attacking  right away what we need to do is withhold our turns until a 5 turn countdown starts as soon as  his countdown starts she no longer counter-attacks if her countdown hit zero she will cast Ultima  which will wipe us out for sure this is the time to unleash micro missiles and renzos the missiles  do massive percentage damage and arenzo will always do sev

en hits in this fight we do this  as many times as we can during the countdown and we just managed to finish her off before the  timer hit zero that was a close one this is also the point in the game where we can walk back to  of the Overworld using one of three portals the middle portal can lead us to a chocobo forest and  a chocobo can get us back to the Ragnarok this is the last opportunity we have to grind so if you  haven't already make sure Renault is level 100 as that can boost our chance

s of getting Invincible  moon now we enter the final dungeon ultimasia's Castle upon entering the castle we instantly lose  access to a lot of in-game actions and abilities as long as we're inside the castle we can't use  summons magic items or even limit breaks and we can't even save the game in the castle of course  no limit breaks is our biggest issue here there are several mini bosses throughout this castle  and defeating each one of them allows us to unlock one of our abilities we can also

switch  between two parties of three in this castle at these green circles the party we took for the  first mini boss had Squall questis and Irvine in it upon reflection it probably made more sense  to take selfie over Irvine since she was a higher level but it doesn't change much the first mini  boss sphinxara is right upstairs with all of our ability it is locked the game has forced us to  only be able to use normal attacks this would still be the same in a casual run so all we can  do is atta

ck it over and over since we can't use limit breaks yet we go into this fight fully  healed so we can take as many hits as possible score is our biggest damage dealer here so we  need to make sure that every time he lands a hit we press R1 for that critical damage part way  through sphinxara will summon a monster to help it but it's best to ignore it and focus all attacks  on the sphinxara still sphinxara can also cast both zombie and doom however if it casts zombie on  a party member who alread

y has the Doom effect it removes the Doom status this is an example of how  sphinxara can just waste its turns sometimes it can also put us to sleep too but the inactivity  in battle can sometimes cause Gilgamesh to Turn Up and Deal some extra damage for us although  we probably don't want the small monster to die because if it does then sphinxara will summon a  more powerful skeleton in its place Irvine dies and questis very nearly did but eventually we  landed enough hits to take sphinxara dow

n the monster someone's dies along with it too after  the win we can pick one of our locked abilities to unlock of course we select limit breaks we  can exit the castle to save the game and reform our parties this time we set party one as Squall  Zell and questis and then we switch to party two for the other three characters we head upstairs  and walk over the chandelier to drop it down and break open a trap door heading down there will  put us against the second miniboss try point we enter this

fight with Irvine already down and a  weakened selfie Andrew Noah this helped Renault get invincible moon right away selfie will use  this time to begin searching for the end when renault's turn comes back around we use angel wing  purely for the lengthy animation and this gives Sophie even more time to search an invincible  moon will also remove the status effects from selfie but regardless of that we eventually find  the end before the invincibility wears off and we win this fight with that t

he second ability we  unlock is resurrection it might seem like this doesn't matter much but you'll see why it does  soon once again we leave the castle to save the game but we don't change the party member school  questus and Zell could hold the lever to keep the chandelier in place and selfie Renault and Irvine  can travel over the chandelier to the other side the next mini boss Krista is waiting right here  on the balcony this was our first attempt at this boss right away Renault used Angelo

Cannon  instead of invincible Moon which was unfortunate but selfie got the end after hitting do-over only  four times that was very lucky but we noticed that Krista killed Renault first which means that was  a counter-attack it didn't matter though because selfie got the end in right afterwards however  I had forgotten that this boss has a desperation attack that it uses after it dies and that attack  is Ultima it took selfie down along with it and then it teased Us by showing us Krista's death

  animation right before the game over screen in the rematch we need to get invincible Moon first  to survive this it took several attempts but the Stars finally aligned we got Invincible Moon  and then the end the ultimate attack doesn't hurt us and that's our third ability unlocked  we select save this time as we want to be able to save the game before the final boss these are  all the abilities we'll need so we can now travel all the way through the castle to the very end we  do this with Par

ty 2 that consists of Zell Irvine and questis right before the final boss there  is one last save point this save point will actually revive any Dead characters with one HP  but only if we unlocked the resurrection ability this means that if we kill off each character  one at a time we can use the save point to revive them all with one HP which allows them  to be at the highest possible crisis level with that we enter the final boss room the final boss  against ultimasia is very difficult this b

attle has four main phases and each one presents its  own challenges the three characters that start this fight are selected at random but if any of  them die and stay dead for long enough they are replaced with another character her first form is  the easiest but you'll still need Invincible Moon early on to avoid being cursed by her male strong  attack the reason I say this is the easiest form is because she is susceptible to gravity attacks  this means that both questis and Zell can deal heav

y damage with micro missiles or meteor strikes  this wouldn't help in Phase 2 onwards though as All Phases after this are immune to gravity if we  had Sophie and Renault in the fight we could use the usual method of searching for the end whilst  we're Invincible however we would need to get very lucky to have the game randomly put them both  in the fight at the start also as we mentioned this fight has four phases this means we would  have to get the end four times one in each phase this would r

equire immense amounts of luck it was  bad enough just getting it once for the previous bosses not to mention that we would need even  more look with Renault getting Invincible Moon again after again after it wears off each time  if Renault uses Invincible Moon whilst already Invincible it won't refresh the effect it just  misses instead we can't even start getting this string of immense look if we don't get both  Renault and selfie at the beginning of the fight anyway basically our best strateg

y involves  an absurd amount of RNG getting the end is still the preferred method to Victory here ultimasia's  four phases are simply too powerful to defeat in a no Junction run otherwise so that means it's  time to learn about RNG manipulation first things first we want Squall selfie and Renault to be the  three chosen to start the fight would you believe the method the game uses to decide the starting  party members is the step count depending on the number of steps we've taken since last boos

ting  up the game we will start with a different Trio knowing this we can reboot the game at the save  point and take a specific number of steps before entering the door the number we're looking for can  vary but once we find that right number of steps that exact number of steps should work every time  after some experimenting we found that 10 steps forward seven steps diagonally and then running  forward got us the three characters we wanted if Renault doesn't get invincible moon right away we 

may as well reload and try again but if she does we can start manipulating selfie's limit break  we men mentioned there are 16 tables each with 64 magic attacks and each time we choose do-over  it randomizes the table and then randomizes the magic within that table there is an exception to  this if we select selfish limit break during an animation like squall's blasting zone for example  it randomizes the table as normal however if we then choose do over it won't re-randomize the  table as long

as that same animation is still occurring instead choosing do-over will simply go  to the very next magic attack in the list of 64 Magics within that same table it's only when the  animation finishes the do-over will re-randomize the table again this means that if we knew what  all 64 Magics were in these 16 tables in their exact order we would be able to manipulate this  to find certain Magics so it's a good thing that people have already delved into the game's code  and extracted those very t

ables then so here's the strategy Renault uses Invincible Moon and Squall  uses Renzo we even set squirrel's Renzo to Auto in the settings this prevents a bar showing up on  screen during a Renzo and we can use that time to search through selfie's limit break instead every  time School uses Renzo we're hoping that he ends it with a final attack with a lengthy animation  blasting zone is perfect for this the enemy attack animations can still be used as well if they're  lengthy enough we also use

renault's angel wings following her turns for more long animations as  soon as a long animation skins we use selfie's limit break when we see the first magic we locate  all instances of that magic along with its number of casts within the 16 tables let's say for  example the first magic was full cure times one we then choose do-over to see what the next magic is  if it matches the very next spell following full cure times one in any of our tables then there's  a good chance that could be the tab

le of Magics that we're currently in we can choose Duo for  four or five times and check that all the magic attacks match the list of whatever table we're in  this is how we can determine exactly which of the 16 tables we're in we mentioned that only three of  these tables has the end in it this means that if we get several Magics in a row that only matches  with one table that doesn't have the end in it we know that we need to change tables we can change  Tables by pressing triangle to skip sel

fie's turn and then selecting her limit break again we would  never have enough time to look up every single magic spell we get and cross-reference it with our  magic tables all before the given animation finish so it's a good thing we can pause the game anytime  we can just hit pause right after choosing do-over this gives us all the time we need to check our  tables for the magic we see when we determine that we are in one of the tables that contains the end  we will also then know exactly whe

re in that table we are this means we know how many times we need  to press do over to reach the end from there if we hit the bottom of the list of 64 spells it resets  us back to the top again if for example we are 10 Magics away from the end and it seems like there's  enough time in the current animation we can hit do over 10 times quickly and will be guaranteed to  get the end this is what we need to do for all four phases of this fight the second phase is  against grieva and it will use Shoc

kwave Pulsa upon defeat so if we don't have Invincible Moon  active at that time we lose instantly we noticed that Renault will get about two turns in before  the invincibility wears off so on her third term we need to be ready to use her limit break in the  hopes that she'll recast Invincible Moon if we're unlucky and she uses something else like Angelo  Cannon then we need to hope that we get another chance before we die otherwise we start the  whole fight from the beginning we must have made

close to 100 attempts at this boss and it  was only when we really got this tragedy down that we actually managed to get through some of  these phases and even then it all hinged on look with renault's limit break the third phase is  ultimasia junctioned with grieva thankfully she uses up a turn or two summoning these helixes to  Aid her in battle but the m still wipes out this form along with the helixes that she's summoned  this now reveals her final form and she always starts this phase with

her hell's judgment attack  which reduces all party members to one HP but since we started this fight on one HP this ends up  being her worst attack if our invincibility ends up wearing off before her final form then we'll  know that she'll just waste a turn using hell's judgment we use the same strategy that we use for  the first three phases and we get in one last the end to finish her off except she doesn't die it  turned turns out after depleting her HP to zero in her final form she is reviv

ed with exactly  100 HP five times so following a fourth the end we will now need to deal at least 100 damage  five times before she'll finally go down for good it was at this point when our invincibility wore  off she also has two parts that we can Target and upper part and a lower part we need to only target  the upper part with all three of our characters being level 100 their normal attacks definitely do  over 100 damage so all we had to do was attack her five times to win we landed two atta

cks with Squad  and selfie and ultimasia will also use up a turn to draw the apocalypse Magic from her lower half  this buys us a little bit of time but we know that apocalypse will wipe us out if she has a chance to  cast it for some reason I wasn't confident that we would have time to land three more attacks so I  figured I would use renault's limit break instead I figured we may as well since if it was Angelo  Cannon then would have dealt the 100 damage that we needed but if it was an invinci

ble Moon then  the apocalypse wouldn't have affected us do you remember way back when we were in Timber and we  mentioned that we should prevent learning Angelo strike if learned Angelo's strike has a chance of  being used along with Angelo Cannon and Invincible moon in general it's a good idea to avoid learning  this just to slightly improve the odds of Renault using Invincible Moon instead Angelo's strike  deals physical damage like the cannon does except it's only to a single random Target so

mehow in  this run we learned Angelo's strike and we had no idea how so instead of either Cannon or moon at  this crucial moment renella used Angelo's strike and its random Target was ultimasia's lower half  Squall and selfie got in their third and fourth attacks on the upper half right afterwards but  then we got wiped out by the apocalypse if we had never learned Angelo's strike then we would have  won this fight this was a devastating way way to learn this lesson so if you plan on trying this

  challenge out for yourself do not learn Angelo strike thankfully it wasn't too long before  we're able to get back to her final form for one more try this time we just held the x button  down so that all characters would go for their normal attacks as fast as possible we landed three  attacks and then ultimacia Drew apocalypse as she got ready to cast it right then our invincibility  wore off it was a race to see who would get their returns first and honestly if we weren't holding  the x butto

n down to ensure that we attacked as quick as we could I don't think we would have  made it we got in two more attacks just in time to finally put ultimacy down once and for all  but there's no time to celebrate yet we're not done yet are we we still need to take on the game  Super bosses the first one is within ultimasia's Castle our first party will be our combat  party which will be made up of squall Renault and selfie we send party one to the Fountain area  and then we switch to our second p

arty we use our second party to enter the upper right room where  there'll be a rope to pull pulling this starts a timer we quickly switched the first party again  and run to the room ahead before the timer runs out right there will be Omega weapon there  is a high chance Omega weapon will use level 5 death on its first turn and this kills every  party member whose level is a multiple of five since all three party members are level 100  they all die immediately it's possible that Omega weapon wi

ll use a physical attack first  instead but if it kills selfie we've already lost this fight that's right we need to go back  to the tried and true the end manipulation none of the super bosses have multiple phases so a  single the end will be enough to win this fight the only real challenge is getting either the  end or Invincible Moon early enough as any attack Omega uses will kill us after several attempts  we finally managed to get the End early enough to take omega down next we're heading t

o the hidden  research facility located far in the bottom left corner of the Overworld we use the same party that  we for Omega we need to get to the blue light in the center of the room but we only want to walk  when the light is off otherwise we will encounter enemies every step preferably we want as few  encounters as possible so we make sure to take our time the light can dummy you sometimes and turn  back on suddenly once we get to the light we need to answer the question with our only opti

on it's  not our will to fight this forces an encounter against a Ruby Dragon we use the same manipulation  for the end to win this fight we likely could have used questis to beat the Ruby Dragon with  degenerator but we don't want quizzes in our party and you'll see why defeating this Dragon prompts  a second question this time answer with never once again we must fight a Ruby Dragon and we win this  fight in the same way one more question prompt shows and this time we must select the third  hi

dden answer you can't read it when you select it but after you select it it's revealed to say  it's in our nature now we must fight Bahamut this is why we didn't want questis in our party we need  to use both Invincible moon and the end to win fight and since these three fights are all four  in a row we couldn't have swapped party members between them having to manipulate the end three  times in a row gives us flashback to ultimasia but after a few failures we finally pulled it off  once Bahama

is defeated we want to climb down the hole left behind after the battle however the hole  isn't accessible yet first we must return to the Ragnarok press triangle to enter the cockpit and  talk to Irvine to control the Ragnarok again now Upon returning to the research facility we find  that we can climb down to its lower levels there is a puzzle in here that we must solve in order  to challenge our final super boss Ultima weapon the puzzle involves using certain amounts of steam  pressure to acc

ess lower floors we start off with 20 steam pressure but 4 is used automatically on  the first door leaving us with 16. this puzzle changes slightly if you have zel in your party  but since we don't I'll just explain how to get through this without head down another floor and  expend two more steam pressure at the monitor to open the next floor here we must first interact  with the monitor on the the left of the room and expend four steam pressures to open a door inside  here we can use a valve

to replenish seven steam pressure to our current total which should now be  17 back in the previous room we interact with the monitor on the right and expand one steam  pressure to open another floor in here we simply expend one more steam pressure at the only  monitor to continue and we expend one more again in the Next Room our total is now currently 14  and this activates an elevator that we ride down we're required to spend four more to advance so  that brings us down to 10. we can save the

game here and make our way deeper it goes without  saying that we flee all encounters down here as they are very strong at the very bottom of  these underwater ruins we must expend our last 10 steam pressure to complete the puzzle and summon  Ultima weapon I'm sure you've already guessed the strategy by now but it took me by surprise  because in our very first attempt at this fight Renault used Invincible moon on her very first  turn Ultimate Weapon then used gravager on its first turn which did

n't affect us of course but  during the gravity animation we got into a magic table that had the end on it by the time we'd  worked out where we were in the table we were 22 do-overs away from the end I wasn't exactly sure  how long the gravity animation was but I decided to give it a try we spammed do over 22 times as  fast as the game would allow and we just landed on it at the very end of the animation with that  the last superboss is defeated and the Run has finally come to a successful end

can we beat Final  Fantasy 8 without junctioning with patience look strategy full knowledge of selfish magic tables  and even RNG manipulation yes you can I need to seriously thank the Final Fantasy 8 speedrunners  over on their Discord server for answering my many questions but I especially need to thank the  Final Fantasy 8 expert and speedrunner kyvel for his help he supplied me the magic tables and  taught me about the RNG manipulation techniques that we used in this run check out his twitch

if  you enjoy Final Fantasy 8 speed runs the man is a well of knowledge on this game if you enjoyed  challenge runs on classic games like this then you're in the right place please subscribe and  if you want to see these challenge runs performed live then follow our twitch as well speaking  of twitch allow me to thank all of our twitch subscribers they are a lazy Dragon Amber Sky big  wolf Chris corbyn Corp crawling wrestler dafs brander D stot Duncan f93 evolve pixel Finn living  with a ghost

gardenberger heiky Joey 14 hair Druid Thai Noel Helios 963 henna Man 1 individu Jax  pratti jamhead 91 Jesus christ00 A.D jin0505 John fitz49 John Von Bass Lake CAD one Nat Kami  7yt lacerated Hunter igmies M3 Phyllis Mackenzie 1398 Mad King encrypted Mel Phyllis Miss barbs  Nath hd123 nurse bobber Peewee platonic penguin cyvel Queen Cinder 621 Spectrum z90 static joke  sunbro 77 tame Hunter 10 divided by 6. Terry under Turvy MFR TG side effects that Chloe is of  the bloody screen the Jammy Empe

ror Tim zero tall zh true dk0 XD Curtis DX and xx Snooki XX and of  course a big thank you to our patrons as well they are a lazy Dragon Anthony Carmack Courtney der  Nike and Oscar Olson beautiful people that you are I really enjoyed this run my favorite thing  about it is the fact that all playable characters had their uses at one point or another it made  this challenge feel more like a puzzle with every boss which I feel sets it apart from my Final  Fantasy 9 trance only video speaking of yo

u can check out that video right here it's linked on  screen or maybe you want to know if you can be all the Dark Souls 1 and 2 bosses in alphabetical  order well if I got a playlist for you foreign