Hey There,
I've Just Gotten to Ultimecia's Castle In My First Playthrough of FFVIII And I'm Having Trouble With the First Monster.

I Have Recently Tried Levelling Up A Little, But I've Heard That Just Makes It Harder.

I've Also Tried Junctioning Everything Strength To Squall, But Maybe I Just Need Some More Magic. I Also Have Never Remodeled A Weapon Yet, Would That be part of the problem? I Think It Should Become Easier Once I Have something like Limits or Gf's Back, But Could Anyone Help Or Should I Train More Or Anything?

Thankyou,
FFEnjoy

You've never ever remodeled a weapon? You're still fighting with the original equip? Oh my. I hope you have GF Tonberry so that you can learn Junk Shop, otherwise you're in trouble. If you need more magic, hop through the door outside of the castle, get the Ragnarok back and start drawing like crazy. If you have any refine abilities, use them on some of your items you have sitting around as well. And set your GFs to learn junction abilities you don't have.

I Know, Im Quite On the Weak Side, Also I've Skimped On The Gf's A Bit As Well. I Only Have 5-The 3 Originals, Diablos And Alexander. But Hey, It's My First Playthrough, And I Missed a Few Things. I've Been through the Portal, But I Dont Know Quite How to Get The Ragnarok Back.

Also, My Character Levels If You Were Wondering:
Squall Is Around Level 19-20
Rinoa And Selphie are 17-18
The Others are 13-14.

Thanks for your help,
FFEnjoy

Just a quick counter question: How the HELL have you got to disk 4?!?! jesus!

5 Tips:
1, Nuke the file, cause you're SCREWED! Seriously... how HAVE you managed to get this far?!
2, Start again
3, Stack Levels as much as possible,
4, Remodel your weapons (believe me, in Squall's case in particular it makes a HELL of a difference!)
5, Try and get as many GF's as you possibly can (soley for the abilities, cause after a while, if you're stacking levels, your characters become more useful for causing high levels of damage) They're all fairly easy to get, with the exception of Eden, and that's only 'cause Ultima weapon's a BITCH!

Well, I Only Started Having Serious Trouble Getting Through the Game Once i Got to Adel. Quistis' Limit Degenerator Seriously Helped Me There, (4000-9999 Damage)and With the Sorceress Time Compression Fight, Which was a Matter Of Strategically placed Revives and Such. Now Im At the Castle, With Only The Attack Command, Its Tough.

Ive Heard of Tonberry's Call Shop, And I've Been through the Portal to Attempt the Odin Mission Already, But Thats Complicated to Complete. I Think you can get Tonberry there As Well. Do you actually Have to Finish The Odin Thing Before Battling the Tonberrys to Get the Tonberry GF or can you do it before you finish that mission?
Sorry if Im Confusing you.

Thankyou,
FFEnjoy

About the Ragnarok, I recommend visiting GameFAQs, or try a Google serach for "Ragnarok on Disc 4."

About the Tonberrys --- you should get Odin first, because of the timer.

Levels in the teens --- have you been escaping from battles?

On my first play through, when i reached ultimecia's castle i was only on lvl 30. Well Squall, Zell and Quistis were lvl 30. The rest were on 15 or something. Know what i did? I was stupid enough to go to the island closest to hell. Yup. Anyway, i could win some of the battles as long as I used alot of healing items. Eventually they were all lvl 100. So now that three were lvl 100 i brought in one of the lvl 15 and used 2 lvl 100s to guard the lvl 15 (like keep healing them and reviving them). As for my weapons, i upgraded alot (Lionheart is very helpful). Also the "meltdown, Aura" trick always comes in handy. So yeah, try and do whatever you can out of all that.

I think you should start again and use an FAQ this time.

Yea, you better definitly start over, you have no chance of winning with your basic weapons, and lv. 20 ppl. And dont even try to go after Omega weapon...

And just so you know, GFs are worthless against the final boss, so you need to get a lot stronger. And you wont make it through all the fights if you cant junction anything either. And for your next game, Id recommend using Zell and Irvine as your party, two words: Armageddon Fist(check GameFaqs, its not a learnable move, just a technique) and 200+ strength Irvine and Fast ammo can be devastating. Yea, and definitly dont be stingy with draw, more important than you think. You wont even be able to get thru 20 Tonberrys, definitly not the King. Unless you managed to get Kamikaze already.

*Pats self on the back for simply DOMINATING Omega Weapon today. He didnt even get to cast Gravija on me.

His only setback is the weapons, but still the aura meltdown trick should still be helpful. Also, at a low lvl fighting is. closest to hell monsters you get easy limit breaks (whatever they are called...)

But the island monsters are lv. 100 no matter what, so I doubt youd have any chance against them. Just do a lot of leveling up, I gained 60 levels on the 4th disk, but i started at like 43 and had weapons. Definitely go after Bahamut and Cactuar, and at least try against Tonberry, not likely but its a shot. And Odin should be easy since he doesnt attack, and if your having trouble w/ the puzzle, it saves your progress if you fail, so you can go back and already have most of it done.

lol...wow...that is funny to hear you actually made it as far as you have...dont totally scrap the game. You can start a new one of course...but keep this one as yur ultimate goal in ff8...to beat the game, with those crappy chars, and crappy weapons...with those crappy GFs :D

Damn you made it that far with that setup? Wow you must've been real strategic as far as using items go. But since it's your first playthourgh you must be getting used to FFVIII's system.

Anyway just try to get the Tonberry from the Tonberry side quest, and when you do use Junk Shop to remodel your weapons (if you don't have enough items then use junction Mug on one of your characters and fight some monsters for the items). Level up to at least 50-60 range and go to Ultimecia's castle (you can go to the Island closest to Hell if you want to level up some more). Beat the Sphinx (the first monster) and get either GF or magic to use against the other boss monsters and get your regular battle commands back. Also if you want some of the GF's then get the Draw command back (from the eairler boss battles in the castle) and get draw some of the GF's from them (Tiamat has Eden for example). Then just level up some more before you go against Ultimecia.

That's the best stratgey I have and take advice from the others as well.

Im not reading all of this thread because I dont even know who Ultimeca is >.<
but I will fess up that I too have been using the orignal weapons ... and Im lvl 45 now... god I need to remodel, but I dont know where magazines are or anything = (

On my first time playing I missed all th ones you draw, I didn't know you could draw gf's... needless to say my first file was never beaten, but now I'm a lot better...

I've read a guide on howto play through the game at as low of levels as possible, so I know it can be done, but I seriously don't know how you could make it that far without having some levels and upgrades, unless you have some incredibly strong junctions...

There are always ways to beat the game at low levels if you really know what you're doing. If you use petrify on enemies, you don't get EXP, but you still get AP. And you can refine magic instead of drawing it.

There are always ways to beat the game at low levels if you really know what you're doing. If you use petrify on enemies, you don't get EXP, but you still get AP. And you can refine magic instead of drawing it.

i agree with you but when you refine magic from items, you lose items, especially the ones that are used for the compatibility of the gfs...
so like, i prefer drawing magic from enemy whenever you get into battle, even the normal battles...
that's what i did at the beginning of the game, and i got 100 of fire, scan, and other magic...

But who cares about GF compatibility? Most of the GFs are crap by that stage in the game and don't take that long to summon anyway. And there are some items that serve no other purpose other than being useful for refinement.

But who cares about GF compatibility? Most of the GFs are crap by that stage in the game and don't take that long to summon anyway. And there are some items that serve no other purpose other than being useful for refinement.

hey... not all of the GFs are useless that you don't care about their compatibility... especially eden...

hey... not all of the GFs are useless that you don't care about their compatibility... especially eden...

U R totally right but still...
At high levels most GF's are only usefull for defense purposes 'cause they have a reasonable amount of HP
so it doesn't matter if you kill them.

Damn how did you get so far on such low levels.

On my first play through I missed doomtrain. That was it. He may come in handy for him giving him a chance to train up.

Definatly remodel your weapons.

Best thing you can do though is start again. Fight and get the g.fs and as IRVINE said use the FAQ for help.

you know he can still beat the game....since you have diablios you can simply use enc-none at island of hell or island of heaven and you can draw a few good junction magics( prob 1 or 2 each time cuz of low ass lvl). if you remodel weapons all it really does is increse ur str by like a few points so no big deal in that...the bad part is you dont get limit breaks for squall....lvl up in the world map till you can handle some monsters on island of hell or heaven...you can also use the degenerater trick-type thing at the islands....simply put quistis's health in the yellow stage and have her cast degenerator first thing then BOOM! you get bout 1 or 2 lvls(maybe even 3 or 4 if ur lucky) for evry1....so i wuldnt recommend retrying the game just yet...you still have a chance

( btw he so faar did much better then me then i did on my first try at the game...i didnt know how to use the junction thing till i got past teh seed mission in dollet)

Woah, I GOTTA give ya some propz! I remember first time I played FFVIII I was on level 40 as I faced Seifer at Lunatic Pandora before the Ulitmicia and crap, and I lost. You're like 20 levels lower and ya beat him! Damn! You good

Let's just put this thread out of its misery. Folks, FFEnjoy prboably isn't reading anymore --- the thread was started around two months ago. immortal89 --- welcome to the Shrine; please don't revive ancient topics.