Deling City and the sorceress parade

Story mode. Written for a first playthrough and kept free of spoilers — it will not tell you what happens here, only what the game is asking of you.

This is the biggest chapter on the disc and it ends it. Do everything before the parade starts.

The gate, and the number

A soldier on the mansion gate wants a code. You do not have it. He will tell you where it is — a tomb to the northeast, which has its own page here.

Go and get the number, come back, and then read this next bit carefully, because it is the single most useful sentence on the page:

The code is entered backwards. The prompt asks for the last digit first. If your number is 162, you enter 2, then 6, then 1.

The number is randomly generated, so nobody’s guide can tell you yours. Write it down when you see it.

While you are at the gate, the same soldier sells a map upgrade that shows where you are on the world map. It is worth the money; several later things in this game are described to you as coordinates.

Before the parade

The sewers have a magazine in them. Getting to it is the fiddly part, and it is probably the most argued-about item in the first half of the game — six guides give six different accounts of whether you can lose it.

Here is what is actually going on. There are two ways into the sewers. The magazine is down the manhole in the outdoor area near the crates and the save point, and it is not on the route the other half of the party takes later. So if you go down as the wrong group, you will not find it and will conclude it is missing. Go down the manhole near the save point.

Stay a night at the hotel and there is a magazine in the room afterwards.

There is a man in black near the shops who may have a rare card. He only exists if you sent the card woman toward Dollet much earlier — if he is not there, he was never going to be.

Take the draw points. One in the city, three in the sewers. One of the sewer ones is hidden.

The study

When you are locked in the study: take the drinking glass off the shelves by the door and put it in the statue’s hands. That is the whole puzzle.

The parade

Three fights, back to back.

The first one is two lizards, and it is the important one. They come in with Reflect already active, which makes them annoying — and the fix is also the reward. There is a Guardian Force inside them. Draw it. Drawing it strips the Reflect and hands you one of the most useful summons in the game, and one source says your next chance at it is not until the final disc.

They are immune to Fire, so do not bring fire. They take double from Earth and two-and-a-half times from Holy, and they are completely normal to everything else. One widely-copied guide lists them as slightly weak to Ice and Thunder. They are not.

The second fight is one-on-one. Its only weakness is Poison. If you were looking for an elemental angle, there isn’t one.

The third fight is the end of the disc. Almost everything it does is magic, so the Guardian Force you just drew is the answer — put Reflect on your whole party and most of the fight bounces off.

One trap that guides mention last and should mention first: while Reflect is up, your own healing magic bounces too. Heal with items for that fight, not spells.

If you have a character who can steal, steal in all three fights. Two of the best consumables in the game are in there, and neither of those two fights drops anything at all, so stealing is the only way you see them. Both items turn up again later, so this is a copy you are missing, not the item.

Game Notes

None of the three fights at the end of this chapter gives you a single point of experience.

By now that should not surprise you — we established back at the Fire Cavern that FFVIII’s bosses pay zero EXP as a rule. But it is worth stopping on here, because this is the densest run of boss fights so far and it is the end of a disc, which is exactly the shape of moment where a normal RPG hands you a level or two and a sense of progress.

FFVIII hands you nothing. You will finish Disc 1 at almost precisely the level you were when you walked into this city, unless you went out of your way to fight things on the world map.

I find that genuinely elegant, and I do not think it is an accident. In a game where the enemies scale to you, handing out experience for story progress would be a treadmill with the belt attached to your own feet — you would walk forward, everything would get bigger, and nothing would change. So the designers simply took it out of the story. What you get from bosses is ability points, which buy abilities, which are the one currency in this game that is genuinely yours.

Your level is not a measure of progress in FFVIII. It is a setting. It is closer to a difficulty slider than to a score, and the game has been quietly telling you so since the first cave.

Completionist mode. Full spoilers, in play order, with every permanent loss called out before you reach it. 10 entries below are marked where our sources disagree with each other — we have not picked a winner for you.

Spoilers from here.

The gate code

Randomly generated per playthrough, found on the tomb floor beside a Galbadia Garden weapon, and entered in reverse — ones digit first. Three sources agree on the reversal and it is the thing people get wrong.

The soldier also sells hints for 3,000 gil and the Current Location Displayer for 5,000. One FAQ flags the Displayer as missable; another describes it as a standing offer.

Weapons Monthly, May — the argument, and what is actually going on

Six sources, six positions:

The reconciling fact, from a GameFAQs answer thread: there are two ways into the sewers, and the magazine is only on one of them. It sits down a manhole in the outdoor crate area beside the save point — reachable as Rinoa alone, or as Squall and Irvine, and not on the route Quistis’s party takes through the sewer maze.

So a writer who went down as the wrong party genuinely could not find it and would report it missable. A writer who went down as the right one would report it standing there. Both accounts are honest. Neither is a claim about the game.

We can confirm the magazine’s presence in the game’s field text on a Deling City map, which settles that it exists here; it does not settle the access window, and neither does anything else we have. Get it while you are Rinoa or Squall.

Timber Maniacs

Hotel guest room, after paying 100 gil for the night. Issue number is 6 per two sources and 12 per two others. Position is between two beds, under the upper-left corner of the middle bed, under the middle bed, or in a back room among magazine piles.

Kiros card

Held by a man in black near the shops — position given four ways. He is the payoff of the Queen of Cards chain: lose MiniMog to her at Balamb, reload until she travels to Dollet, speak to her there, and her father paints this card in Deling.

Card Mod turns it into three Accelerators, which teach a Guardian Force Auto-Haste — one of the better returns on a single card in the game.

One wiki says it is recoverable late, from the Queen at the crash site or from Card Club members aboard the airship.

Draw points

Thundara somewhere in the city — five sources, five positions. Esuna, Zombie and Bio in the sewers, with Bio hidden; four sources list all three, one lists only Esuna, and one location database lists none at all.

Nobody addresses refilling. As everywhere on this site, draw points are researched rather than settled.

Iguion ×2 — settled

755 HP at level 10, 1,880 at 20, 3,455 at 30. Zero EXP, 10 AP each.

The correction: one guide adds a minor Ice and Thunder weakness — there is none. Another walkthrough lists Holy in both its Weak and its Strong column; Holy is the largest weakness these have.

Draw list: Cure, Esuna, Break, Carbuncle. Identical at low and medium; at level 30 Cure becomes Cura and nothing else changes. So the level bands do almost nothing to this fight, which matters twice over.

Carbuncle is drawn here. Three sources note the Iguions arrive with Reflect already up and that drawing the GF out of one strips it, which makes the draw both the reward and the tactic. One source says the next opportunity is not until Disc 4 — and the tables support a second chance existing: exactly one other enemy in the game carries Carbuncle in a draw list, Krysta, and no third. It is in all three of the Iguion’s bands too, so no level locks you out of it.

Break is the overlooked slot. Petrify as junctionable stock at the end of Disc 1, from a fight every guide tells you to draw the summon from and nothing else. Three other enemies carry it, and two of those only from level 20 up.

Mug gives six G-Returners each, drop gives four each.

Seifer — settled

525 HP at level 10, 1,150 at 20, 2,025 at 30. Zero EXP, 20 AP.

Published: 342–1,150 over levels 7–20 · 176–1,150 over levels 1–20 · a cap of 1,150 · a flat 1,151. One curve, plus one source that gives this fight the same HP as the Iguions, which is almost certainly a table error.

Its only elemental modifier is Poison at 150%.

Draws: Fire, Cure, Life — three slots, and the first two step. Fira and Cura from level 20, Firaga and Curaga from 30. The sources listing Fire, Cure and Life are right; the one that adds Thunder is wrong about this fight. Thunder is in the draw lists of two later records that carry the same name, which is the name-collision problem again, two areas before we name it.

Mug: Hero, in all four slots. One source says Hero or Holy War; Holy War is not in this record at all, and is in the steal tables of two later Seifer records. Same cause.

It drops nothing. The drop table is empty, so the Hero exists only if you steal it.

Edea — settled

4,000 HP at level 10, 7,000 at 20, 10,000 at 30. Zero EXP, 20 AP.

Published: 4,000–7,000 over levels 10–20 · 1,300–7,000 over levels 1–20 · a cap of 7,000 · a flat 6,700. The same curve again.

Two things settled from the files:

• It is flagged immune to Gravity. Exactly one guide claimed this. It is right.
• It has no elemental modifier whatsoever — all eight elements do exactly normal damage. One source lists its weakness as “unknown”, which turns out to be the correct answer.

Draws: Cura, Dispel, Life, Double — the same four at every band, no tiering at all. Mug: Elixir, all four slots. Its drop table is empty too.

One source says the fight is effectively unloseable — the cutscene plays either way, and the AP is only awarded if you actually reduce it to zero.

Neither steal is unique to this chapter

Worth correcting because this page used to say they were. Each of them appears in four other enemies’ tables. One of the Elixir sources is a soldier you fought back at Dollet, and the same soldier drops three more of them in the prison two areas from here. Missing these two steals costs you this copy. It does not cost you the item.

The Reflect answer, and the half nobody leads with

Every source recommends Carbuncle: almost everything the fight does is magic, so party-wide Reflect turns most of it around, and Edea then spends turns casting Dispel or falls back on physicals.

The part that gets buried: while Reflect is up, your own healing spells bounce off your own party. Heal with items. A player who follows the Reflect advice and then tries to cast Cure will conclude the strategy is broken.

The parade sequence

Three-way split — snipers on the roof, the gate team at the mechanism, Rinoa independently. Rinoa’s possession is scripted.

Nothing here can be failed. Two sources state the sniper sequence progresses regardless and the miss is scripted; dialogue choices affect conversation only. One guide alone mentions a clock time by which the gate team must reach the controls, and no source describes any consequence attached to it.

When does the city close?

• A missables guide: inaccessible after the chapter, end of Disc 1.
• A location database: returnable after the Battle of the Gardens, with changed dialogue, but never on Disc 4.
• A wiki page on the Rinoa card: implies Disc 2 access.
• Two walkthroughs: document no return visit at all.
• One walkthrough: the magazine is available again on Disc 3 from a bookshop.

Finish the city before the parade and the question stops mattering.

Game Notes

The Weapons Monthly May argument is the best thing in this chapter, and not because of the magazine.

Six guides. Six incompatible claims about whether an item is missable, ranging from “permanently available” to “gone the moment the party splits”. That is not a small disagreement about a detail; those are claims that cannot all describe the same game.

And the resolution is not that five writers were careless. It is that there are two entrances to the sewers and the magazine is only behind one of them — so which party you happened to be controlling when you went down there determined what you saw, and then you wrote it up as a fact about the item.

This is structurally the same error as the boss HP curves, and I want to name the shape because it keeps recurring: a writer observes something that is true of their playthrough, and publishes it as something true of the game. The HP version is caused by level scaling. This version is caused by party branching. FFVIII has a lot of both, which is why its guides disagree far more than guides for its neighbours.

It also suggests something about how to read the remaining disagreements on this site. When six sources split six ways, the useful question is usually not “who is right” but “what were they each standing in when they looked” — and that question has an answer much more often than you would expect.