Exploring the World

Discover optional tasks and sidequests in Final Fantasy VIII Remastered after leaving the Garden, including the CC Group Quest, Centra Ruins, and Shumi Village.

When you wake up, simply head to the 3F bridge for some scenes. After you regain control again, you can move the Garden to most areas around the world (except for most of the eastern lands). Xu will suggest visiting Balamb, but there are a ton of optional tasks you can (and should) do first to make life easier. If you're rushing (and if you're rushing, why are you playing a JRPG?), go to Balamb and click here to continue with the walkthrough.

Note: It's possible, from this point forward, that you may run into a weird encounter with a UFO. This is part of a quest you can't complete just yet; hold off on actually looking for it for now, there'll be a much easier time later on, but you don't need to actually do anything with the UFO.

The new fun to be had is listed below:

• The CC Group Quest can now be completed. While it's rewards aren't that spectacular right now, just do it now so you don't have to worry about it later--it's the most rewarding sidequest in the game (aside from Triple Triad itself, from which this quest is an offshoot), by a very long shot.
• The Centra Ruins can be explored. They hold two GF's but I recommend only getting Tonberry King for now (Odin is best saved for Disc 4).
• It's possible to farm Cactuars in the southeastern corner of Kashbald Desert (on Centra Continent, the southern-most continent, on the far eastern edge). Each Cactuar you defeat gives 20 AP and very little Exp, but they are very difficult to hit. Squall's weapons have a 255% Hit rate, while you can Junction Triple to Hit for other characters (sadly, Selphie isn't available to take advantage of her Strange Vision weapon). However, I recommend waiting a bit, because a new GF will soon come available as part of the story, and none of the quests before then involve very much fighting.
• You can visit Shumi Village in the Trabia region (the large island north of the northern-most continent), which has some nice rewards.
• You can solve the puzzles of the Chocobo Forests.
• Pay a visit to Winhill for a few items.
• If you encouraged the journalist in Timber, you can now collect your reward: a very rare (though useless) Pet Nametag. Also in Timber, head to the train station by the pub. You'll see a girl playing on the tracks; after she falls, talk to her, and there'll be a scene. The ticker tape in the Hotel will also change after doing this (no items are given, however).
• If you missed anything in Dollet or Deling City, feel free to explore them.
• This is yet another opportunity to proceed with the Novice SeeD Candidates' sidequest. (This is only available until the end of Disc 2.)

Last, but not least...

Ultima Drawing Session #1

In Shumi Village (on Winter Island, the northern-most large island), there is an Ultima Draw Point. Save beforehand and Draw (if you get a low number of spells, reload and retry). If you're doing the Shumi Village Quest, you should do this each time you pass the entrance (you'll take a huge amount of steps during the quest, which refill the Draw Point), as well as after completing any of the other sidequests in this section.

Refinement Moment #8

It's been a while, so now is a great time to bring you up to speed on refinement possibilities. Assuming you're following the walkthough, you should now have an additional Magic refinement (Supt Mag-RF), players who can play Level 7 Cards (Martine in FH or the CC Group if you're doing that quest), a few new Rare Cards, and access to several new areas with new enemies. Thus, without further ado and in the same format as previous editions, the new possibilities (in order from most important to least):

• Rinoa Card * → 3x Magic Armlet (Level 10)
• Carbuncle Card * → 3x Glow Curtain → 300x Reflect (Supt Mag-RF) (Level 9)
• Irvine Card * → 3x Rocket Engine → 150x Triple (Time Mag-RF) (Level 10)
• Gilgamesh Card* → 10x Holy War (Level 8)
• Tiamat Card → 10x Flare Stone → 10x Flare (F Mag-RF) (Level 7)
• Red Giant Card → 5x Meteor Stone (Level 7)
• Ultima Weapon Card → Ultima Stone (Level 7)
• Ifrit Card * → 3x Elem Atk (Level 8)
• Quezacotl Card* → 100x Dynamo Stone → 2,000x Thundaga (T Mag-RF) (Level 8)
• Imp Card → Wizard Stone → 20x Dispel (Supt Mag-RF) (Level 4)
• 4x Blobra Card → Rune Armlet → 40x Shell (Supt Mag-RF) (Level 1)
• 2x X-ATM092 Card → Turtle Shell → 30x Protect (Supt Mag-RF) (Level 6)
• Propagator Card or Sphinxara Card → G-Mega-Potion (Level 7)
• Catoblepas Card → Rename Card (Level 7)

Now time for some comments on the refinements. Magic Armlet teaches a GF the Spr+60% ability, greatly reducing magical damage (teach it to all three endgame groupings). You may (or may not) want to use the Rocket Engine and (especially) Glow Curtain items to teach your GFs Spd+40% and Auto-Reflect respectively instead of refining them into Magic. For Spd+40% only the Defense setup needs it end-game, while for Auto-Reflect both the Strength and Magic setups will lack it if you use the suggested setups.

Holy War items are insanely cheap. They cast Invincible status on the whole party, practically guaranteeing a victory. Refining Tiamat Cards is much faster than Ruby Dragon Cards (the method we had to use before) for obtaining Flare spells (the yield is five times better for Tiamat compared to Ruby Dragon), although it will still take quite a while if you intend to give three characters 100 of the spell. Meteor Stone and Ultima Stone can't be turned into Magic yet, but they cast extremely powerful spells when used as Items. Finally, Elem Atk isn't all that great (a huge number of GF's have the ability naturally and with Cactuars AP is no longer such an issue), while Ifrit makes a very nice playing card, so I don't suggest modding it, but if you insist (or want to learn it faster on one that already has it), be my guest. Everything else you should either have a