Final Fantasy VIII - Maxing Stats by playing Cards

In this short tutorial, I will show you how easy it is to max your characters' stats by playing Triple Triad.
I personally think it is faster than getting max gil, buy items, refine these or devouring creatures.

First, you will need the following abilities (learned by your GF):

Quezacotl - Card Mod
Doomtrain - Forbid Med-RF
Eden - GFAbl Med-RF

Then, you must have completed the CC Club. That way, you will find all members on the Ragnarok in Disc 4.

It is pretty basic: Several player and GF cards can be refined into rare items, which can be refined into stat ups.

======================================

Here is a list of cards you can refine plus the abilities used for it:




Ward - 3xGaea's Ring - Forbid Med-RF - 3xHP Up

Eden - 3xMonk's Code - Forbid Med-RF - 3xStr Up

Minotaur - 10xAdamantine - Forbid Med-RF - 2xVit Up

Edea - 3xRoyal Crown - Forbid Med-RF - 10xRoyal Crown = 1xMag Up

Rinoa - 3xMagic Armlet - Forbid Med-RF - 10xMagic Armlet = 1xSpr Up

Irvine - 3xRocket Engine - Forbid Med-RF - 5xRocket Engine = 1xSpd Up




The trick:
You can refine GF/Player cards and win them back from CC Club member Diamond, which are the Twins.
I recommend refining 1 card ONLY at a time, because that way, the Twins will have only 1 "strong" card. This will result in much less trouble playing against them. :D

=====Combination of Selling and Refining=====
SamIves85 found out that you can simply refine 1xBahamut Card to get 100xMegalixirs, which can be sould for 750000 Gil (with Haggle, Familiar etc.). Depending on the Stat you want to boost, you can then buy enough items from the Esthar Pet Shop to refine them into Stat Ups. Here's what you get for refining and selling:

Bahamut - 100xMegalixir [750000 Gil] - Call Shop - 50xGiant's Ring - GFAbl Med-RF - 5xGaea's Ring - Forbid Med-RF = 5xHP Up

Bahamut - 100xMegalixir [750000 Gil] - Call Shop - 50xPower Wrist - GFAbl Med-RF - 5xHyper Wrist
10xHyper Wrist - Forbid Med-RF = 1xStr Up


Bahamut - 100xMegalixir [750000 Gil] - Call Shop - 50xHypno Crown - GFAbl Med-RF - 5xRoyal Crown
10xRoyal Crown - Forbid Med-RF = 1xMag Up


Bahamut - 100xMegalixir [750000 Gil] - Call Shop - 50xForce Armlet - GFAbl Med-RF - 5xMagic Armlet
10xMagic Armlet - Forbid Med-RF = 1xSpr Up

So, as you can see, this is a great method for faster HP and Mag/Spr boosting. Str and Vit are still better improved by refining Eden/Minotaur cards.

=====Another neat fact about refining cards=====

You can refine items that teach GF abilities, such as Counter, Recover, and Auto-Abilties.

Here's what you get for which card:




Squall - 3xThree Stars - Teaches GF "Expend3x1"

Kiros - 3xAccelerator - Teaches GF "Auto-Haste"

2xMinotaur - 20xAdamantine - GF Abl Med-RF - 1xSteel Curtain, teaches GF "Auto-Protect"

Alexander - 3xMoon Curtain - Teaches GF "Auto-Shell"




Other cards, like Leviathan, will give you active abilities you can use in battle, though I personally don't do that. You can go on and get every character to use Recover, Revive and Treatment that way. Pretty useful!



==========HINT=========
Normally, the Twins will use the "Random" rule out of standard circumstances. This is one of my least favourite rules, and a REALLY annoying one...

You can manipulate rules by mixing them. It goes like that:
Play with Twins, you get the Random rule. Play with any other member that has a rule you prefer, I did with "Sudden Death".

SAVE!!!!!! before going on, this is basically a trial and error thing.

Now, go back and challenge the Twins again. They should ask you to mix rules, accept.
Don't (!) play, just select "Quit". Here comes the important part, 3 things can happen:
1.: Nothing happens. If that is the case, challenge them again.
2.: They will ACCEPT a rule. If that's the case, soft reset and try again.
3.: They will decide to ABOLISH a rule. You want to abolish the RANDOM rule, so reset and retry until that's the case.



This concludes this little tutorial. I prefer this over any other method, because, for example, raising the Speed stat of your characters is a PAIN in the ass otherwise. You would have to kill Cactuars until you have 100 thorns, then refine these into 1 (!) Hundred Needles, which will refine into 1 (!) Spd Up.
That's just ridiculous, takes too long and.... TAKES TOO LONG! XD


So, I hope this was helpful!

PS.:
I made some experiments about whether one of both girls prefer using the refined cards or not, since they count as one player.
By simply playing with them, there is a ~56% chance that they will use the refined card, changing the girl to challenge will give a SLIGHT improvement of around 14%, so it is percentage reliant if they will use refined cards or not... XD

Enjoy!

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• Final
• Fantasy
• VIII
• Maxing
• Stats
• Triple
• Triad
• card
• game
• CC
• Club
• SamIves85

[xxcddxx]

where do you get the irvine and laguna,kiros,ward cards?

[HixXxXxiH]

@xxcddxx

I have no idea, I never bother with the sidequest.

I just wait until disc 4 when the card queen has all cards you missed. Play her and win them (she uses EVERY rule you don't wanna have though, so save inbetween).

[SamIves85]

@HixXxXxiH Oh damn! You know, I started a new game a few months back and as I progressed I started realising that I was missing a few things as well as realising that I could do this with 0 deaths and 1 run. So after reaching disk 4 and practising the card mod trick and trying out GF combinations I knew that it was a practice run and that I'd have to start over again with my newly acquired knowledge. Being a perfectionist is so time consuming! lol

[HixXxXxiH]

@SamIves85

Did the same. I can't even farm Dark Matters, Ultima is dead already. I won't bother with Omega/Ultimecia until I perfected everyone (aside from Luck).

[SamIves85]

@HixXxXxiH I get 3-4 hours of free time at work so I'll keep at it til I get bored then just come back and do bits here and there in between making music.

Oh I have the perfect GF setup, designed to split GF's 6 ways and able to give everyone every stat junction with the 3 main characters having all abilities. When I get time I'll message you with the details :)

[HixXxXxiH]

@SamIves85

I don't play frequently, and I won't bother with Luck. :)

[SamIves85]

@HixXxXxiH Damn if only she played modded cards! :(

Btw, how are you getting on with Spd and Luck maxing?

[HixXxXxiH]

@SamIves85

Yeah, I know that. Only the QoC uses multiple rare cards at once.

[SamIves85]

@SamIves85 ...If you modded Gilgamesh, Bahamut and Ward then challenged her she will play Gilgamesh 1st until you win it, then Bahamut,then Ward. I'd love it if she did play more than one strong card though! It would be more of a challenge not to mention how much faster refining the items would be!

[SamIves85]

@HixXxXxiH Which makes sense because I'm currently maxing HP and I haven't played since Friday. Well I just checked and you're absolutely right! I'm glad it at least works for one stat though.

Hey thanks for the credit! I like how you broke it down :)

I noticed in your description you recommend only refining one card at a time. I refined many cards and found that she only uses one strong card per game in order of where they appear inn the list, for example: ...