The Battle of the Gardens

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.

Two schools collide. The first half of this is defending your own; the second half is walking into theirs, which you have already visited once and which is not laid out the way you remember it being used.

Before anything happens, stock up

There is no shop, no save opportunity you should rely on, and no way back out once the second half starts. Everything from here to the end of the disc is one continuous run.

Bring healing items you can use on the whole party at once. The last stretch is three fights with no gap.

The defence

You are asked to give orders. The orders do not do anything. One source says so plainly and no source describes a mechanical consequence of any kind — guides do not even agree on how many options there are.

The one decision that sticks is who you take with you. Choose the two you have actually been junctioning.

There is a Cottage handed over by a junior classman in the second-floor hallway. It is the only pickup in the whole defence sequence, and one source flags it as missable, so take it on the way past.

There is also a fight on a rope — block, punch, kick, with a heavier option opening up after you block successfully. Losing it costs nothing. You go again. Do not reload.

The lobby

When you get inside the other Garden, there is something waiting in the main hall that is entirely optional and that a lot of players never fight at all.

Fight it. It is worth 30 AP, which is the largest single-fight AP award anywhere in this guide so far, and it hands over a Guardian Force that is otherwise almost impossible to get — one wiki calls it the only one in the game that is not normally drawable and becomes drawable only if you miss it here.

Two warnings about it, and they are the opposite of what your instincts will say:

• It absorbs Thunder. Your lightning summon heals it.
• It is immune to Wind. Your wind summon does nothing.

Between them, that is very likely the two summons you have been leaning on all disc. Use Fire, use Ice, use physical attacks, and use Demi — it works, despite one guide saying otherwise.

Draw from it, and draw hard if you are level 20 or over. Below 20 its list is Quake and Double. From 20 a third slot opens and it holds Triple, which only one other enemy in the entire game carries. Steal too — there is a Spd-J Scroll in there, and killing it hands over eight G-Returners.

Through the Garden

Three students hand you card keys, one at a time, and you cannot get anywhere without all three. Guides disagree about which corridor each student is standing in, which is unsurprising given the corridors are identical. Walk them all.

Two draw points here exist only on this visit: an Aura point outside the entrance, hidden in the trees and needing the hidden-item ability to see, and a Protect point in the ice rink. The rink was in use the last time you were here, which is probably why.

One source says an enemy appears in the ice rink and nowhere else in the game, which sounds like a reason to detour. It is not one. That enemy has no card, and everything it carries is Hi-Potions. Skip it unless you are level 30 or over, in which case it is a convenient place to draw Blizzaga.

One more enemy worth knowing about: there is a floating thing with three faces roaming the Garden. It takes triple damage from Holy and absorbs Poison, and it is worth 130 EXP, which is high. If you are keeping your levels down on purpose, avoid it. If you are not, it is the fastest EXP in the building — and above level 30 it also starts carrying Flare to draw and Star Fragments to drop, neither of which is in its tables below that.

The last three fights

Back to back, no save, no shop.

Draw from all of them. The final fight in particular holds a Guardian Force that anyone with Draw equipped can take, with no level requirement of any kind — its draw list carries it at every level band, alongside Demi, Esuna and an ice spell. It is also, per one source, a prerequisite for building a much better Guardian Force a long way from here.

Mug the fight in the office. It gives eight Mega Phoenixes where killing it gives eight Mega-Potions, and that is the single largest consumable haul available at this point in the game — it will carry you well into the next disc.

Mug the last one too; there is a Royal Crown in it and a Force Armlet if you kill it instead. The one worth skipping is the swordsman in the auditorium — his steal table and his drop table hold the same two items in the same order, so the turn buys you nothing at all.

Game Notes

The 30 AP thing in the lobby is optional and most players skip it.

I want to be specific about how large that number is. The guide has covered seventeen areas, dozens of fights, and every boss in the game so far. Nothing has paid 30 AP for a single encounter. The nearest comparison is roughly a third of that.

And it is standing in an open room, on your route, with no requirement attached other than walking up to it.

This is the shape of FFVIII’s whole design and it took me until here to say it cleanly: the game does not hide its best rewards behind difficulty. It hides them behind knowing. The draw points are invisible unless you have an ability equipped. The card rules corrupt themselves if you play in the wrong order. The best magic in the game is sitting behind a 5,000 gil cover charge two areas ago. And the single richest fight on this disc is in a lobby you walk through anyway.

None of that is hard. All of it is missable. That is the game.

Completionist mode. Full spoilers, in play order, with every permanent loss called out before you reach it. 11 entries below are marked where our sources disagree with each other — we have not picked a winner for you.

Spoilers from here.

What is settled and what is not

Every HP, EXP, AP, elemental and flag figure on this page is read out of the shipped game files. The draw point placements, the card key locations and the order-menu behaviour are researched from published guides and are not settled — the field script does not expose draw points at all.

The headline: four Seifers and two Edeas

The game stores four separate Seifer records and two separate Edea records. Every published HP figure for either character — and there are a lot of them, and they do not agree — sits on one of these six curves.

This is the fourth name collision the datamine has turned up — after two BGH251F2, two Fujin and two Raijin — and it is by a distance the largest.

The mechanism is the same one every time. One monster database numbers its Seifer entries one, two and three without saying which fight each belongs to. Guides then quote figures across encounters interchangeably, because from inside a playthrough there is no signal at all that you are looking at a different creature. The name on the window is the same. The sprite is the same. The character is the same. The record is not.

The lobby fight

Cerberus. 7,100 HP at level 1, 8,000 at level 10, 10,000 at level 30. Settled, matching one database and one guide exactly at every level they publish.

Zero EXP. 30 AP. That is the highest single-fight AP award in the guide so far by a wide margin, and the fight is optional and skippable.

• Absorbs Thunder. Quezacotl heals it.
• Immune to Wind. Pandemona does nothing.

Those two are, for most parties arriving here, the two summons in heaviest rotation. The fight is not difficult; it is a trap for people playing on autopilot.

Mug: Spd-J Scroll, all four rarity slots. Drop: eight G-Returners, all four. Neither moves with your level. The Guardian Force is awarded by winning — it is not in the enemy’s own draw list.

Correction: it is not immune to Gravity

One guide lists Cerberus as immune to Wind and Gravity. Two other sources list only the Wind immunity and say nothing about Gravity.

The Gravity-immunity flag is not set on this enemy. Demi works.

Given how much HP it carries relative to what the game expects you to have at this point, a fractional-damage spell that actually lands is a material piece of information, not a footnote.

Correction: the third draw appears at level 20, and it is Triple

Three sources say the third spell becomes drawable from level 20. One walkthrough says level 30.

The three sources are right.

The third entry appears at the medium band boundary, which is level 20 for this enemy as it is for almost every enemy in the game.

What no source says is what the third slot holds. Triple is drawable from exactly two enemies in the entire game — this one, from level 20, and Odin, at any level. Both are optional fights that a great many players walk past. The argument for taking the lobby fight was already 30 AP; above level 20 it is 30 AP and a stock of one of the best junction spells in the game.

Note what this does to the level argument. Everywhere else in the guide, arriving higher costs you — bigger HP, harder curves. Here it is the only thing that puts Triple in the list at all.

The office

Seifer, record two. 1,300 HP at level 1, 10,000 at level 30. Settled at both ends of its published range. Zero EXP, 20 AP.

• Only elemental modifier: Poison at 150%. Nothing else, at all.
• Mug: eight Mega Phoenixes. Drop: eight Mega-Potions. Each fills all four rarity slots at every level, so there is no roll to lose.
• Draws: Fire, Thunder, Dispel, Haste — the two elemental slots step to Fira and Thundara at level 20 and Firaga and Thundaga at 30.

That drop is worth stating plainly: it is the largest consumable haul available anywhere in the game at this point, and it will comfortably carry a party through the whole of the next disc. Mug it — the trade is eight Mega-Potions for eight Mega Phoenixes, with certainty on both sides.

The auditorium

Seifer, record three. 1,200 at level 1, 3,000 at level 10, 7,000 at level 30 — a flatter curve than the office fight, and he arrives already damaged. Zero EXP, 20 AP. Draws the same four as the office fight.

His mug table and his drop table are identical — Hero, Hero, Holy War, Holy War, in that order of rarity, at every level. So unlike the office fight, mugging him here cannot win you anything the kill would not have given you. Spend the turn attacking.

Edea, record two. 500 at level 1, 5,000 at level 10, 15,000 at level 30.

Published figures give a ceiling of 16,000 from four sources and 15,000 from one, and both are correct: 15,000 is the curve at level 30 and 16,000 is it at level 32, which is where it caps. Zero EXP, 30 AP. No elemental modifier of any kind.

Mug: Royal Crown. Drop: Force Armlet. Each fills all four rarity slots at every level, so both are certain and the only question is which of the two you want.

Correction: Demi works on this Edea and did nothing at the parade

One source claims a Demi weakness here. Two others say this enemy has no weakness of any kind — which makes the first source read as simply wrong.

It is not simply wrong. The parade record is flagged immune to Gravity. This one is not.

So a player who tried Demi at the parade watched it fail, and a player who tried it here watched it land. Both wrote up what they saw. Both were right. Neither had any way to know they were describing two different entries in a table.

To be precise about what the flag means: this is not a weakness. Edea takes no extra damage from Gravity. It is simply not blocked, where the earlier record blocks it.

Correction: the 50 AP figure is a sum

One source gives 50 AP for the final encounter. Another gives 20.

Edea’s 30 plus Seifer’s 20 is exactly 50. Both sources are right and neither said which it was counting.

That is the fifth time in eighteen areas that a total and its own parts have been published side by side as a factual dispute — after Granaldo, the tomb brothers, the prison exit, and the NORG encounter.

Alexander

Drawn from the final fight. Its draw list holds four entries at every level band and the Guardian Force is present in all three, so there is no level requirement — the only requirement is that somebody has Draw equipped and remembers to use it.

The other three slots are Demi, Esuna, and an ice spell that steps from Blizzard to Blizzara at level 20 and to Blizzaga at 30. So every Draw turn in that fight returns something, and the ice slot is the only part of the encounter that gets better if you arrive higher.

One source notes it is a prerequisite for building a much later optional Guardian Force.

The roaming enemies

Tri-Face — 6,390 HP at level 10, 130 EXP, 8 AP. Settled.

• 250% from Fire. 300% from Holy. Absorbs Poison.

130 EXP is high enough to matter to anyone managing their level deliberately. This is an enemy to avoid, not to farm, unless you want the levels.

The Tri-Face farm is two different farms

One source recommends farming it here for a weapon component by restarting fights in the main hall. It does not say which component, and it does not say at what level — which turns out to be the only thing that matters.

The drop, across its four rarity slots:

Three things change at 30 and none of them is small.

Star Fragment is not in the drop table at all below level 30, and at 30 it occupies two of the four slots at three apiece, displacing the Dead Spirit. The Curse Spike mug triples. And the draw list is replaced outright — the status spells go, Flare arrives.

Only twelve enemy records in the entire game carry Flare, and every other one is a boss or a late-game encounter. A roaming enemy in a school corridor that hands it over is unusual, and it exists only for a party at level 30 or above.

So the published advice is not wrong so much as undated. It is correct for whatever level its author happened to be standing at, which is the same failure the Energy Crystal farm produces three areas from here.

Slapper — 240 HP at level 10, 40 EXP, 3 AP, no elemental modifier of any kind. Settled.

One source states the ice rink here is the only place in the game this enemy appears; a monster database’s location field is consistent with that but does not make the claim.

Correction: there is nothing in the rink to miss

The obvious reading of an enemy that appears in one room and nowhere else is that its card and its drops are a one-visit window. Both halves of that are wrong.

Slapper has no card. All three card bytes are empty — the same reading that puts 81 of the game’s 142 records in the no-card column. There is no Slapper card to win, mod or lose.

Its drops are Hi-Potions. One or two on a kill, two on a mug, at every level from 1 to 100. That is the whole table.

So the exclusivity claim can stand and cost nothing. What the rink actually holds is a draw list that grows: Blizzard alone below level 20, Blizzara and Water added at 20, and Blizzaga at 30. A cheap third-tier tap for a high-level party, and nothing at all for a low-level one.

Draw points and card keys — researched, not settled

Two draw points are tied to this visit by two sources: an Aura point outside the entrance, hidden among the trees and requiring the hidden-item ability, and a Protect point in the ice rink goal. The rink was in use on the Disc 1 visit, which supports the attribution.

Sources also split on whether the Shell, Life, Haste and Double points belong to this visit or the Disc 1 one — one database assigns several to Disc 1 while four walkthroughs collect them on this route. Nothing in the data can settle this: draw points are field script operands and are not readable.

The three card keys are handed over by students rather than found, and sources place each of the three in two or three different rooms. The corridors are near-identical, which is the likeliest explanation for the disagreement, and it does not matter in practice — you cannot progress without all three, so the route collects them regardless.

Point of no return

Not stated by any source. Every walkthrough ends the section at the disc break without saying when Galbadia Garden becomes unreachable, and one location database says only that this content is available “during the battle”.

Treat the disc break as the deadline. In practice this is one visit.

Game Notes

Six records under two names.

I have been calling these name collisions since batch 2 and this is where the pattern stops being a curiosity and becomes, I think, the single most useful thing this project has produced.

Here is the honest version of what happens. A writer fights Seifer at the parade and records 176 HP. Another writer fights Seifer in the office and records 1,300. A third fights him in the auditorium and records 1,200. A fourth, much later, records 3,700. Four people, four numbers, four correct observations, one name.

Then those numbers meet on a forum, and the only conclusion available to anyone in the conversation is that three of the four people are wrong or lying or playing badly. There is no fifth option visible from inside the game, because the game never once tells you that the thing in front of you is a different table row than the thing you fought an hour ago.

That is not a community failing. That is a data model leaking through a name.

And it compounds with the other two mechanisms this guide keeps hitting. Level scaling means every number is a point on a curve, so two honest observers disagree by default. Party branching means two honest observers see different content. Name collision means two honest observers fight different enemies. Stack all three and you get the FFVIII guide landscape exactly as it is: enormous, careful, well-intentioned, and internally contradictory in ways nobody in it can resolve from where they are standing.

The fifth total-versus-parts dispute on this page is the small comic version of the same thing. One person counted the encounter. One person counted a fight. 30 + 20 = 50. It has been sitting there as a “dispute” for twenty-five years and it is arithmetic.

None of this required cleverness. It required reading the file.