Let's Play: Final Fantasy VIII - Part Seventy Two

 Part Seventy One

 Masterpost

 Day Thirty: I'm A Prisoner Here, Of My Own Device

 I'm not going to lie, it's getting kind of slow around here lately.

 I'd grown weary of the plot, since I'd inadvertantly done so much of it on Day Twenty Three and Quistis was being genuinely awful by the end. (Which was totally unnecessary, but we'll get to that once we return to plot posts.)

 Now, however, I'm growing weary of the sidequest stuff.

 Well, I say 'growing weary', but I'm basically sick of it already.

 These are genuinely some of the worst side quests I've seen in my life.

 Thankfully, there's only one left to finish off and then we can return to the plot and complaining about Zog's inability to emote like a normal human being.

 Today is all about preparing for that fight.

 One of the things I had to do was collect two hundred Ultimas. Why? Because it's a much more efficient spell for junctioning to the Strength stat than Firaga, which was the one I was using previously. So efficient that Zell maxed out his strength stat on it.

 Zog too, which is more impressive as Zell's been kind of over powered for a while now. He's been at about twice the damage Zog was dealing per hit for some time.

 In order to get them, there are a couple of options.

 Option One: Go to the draw point in Shumi village. You know, the one guarded by the price gouging Shumi. This is handy, but sloooow.

 Option Two: Go to Esthar city and fight the scripted battle over and over again.

 Option Three: Visit the Island Closest to Heaven and the Island Closest to Hell.

 I'm not joking, there really are places in the game called that.

 This is what they look like:

 That's it, by the way. There's nothing there to explore, nothing there to make them stand out.

 Nothing whatsoever to make you think these island are handy, useful, or important.

 There's nothing there to make you think of heaven or hell.

 The first one can be found around the northern coast of the Grandidi forest, there's a small archipelego there and it's one of those islands.

 The second one is off the west coast of Galbadia. There's a pronged island that looks a little like a crab's claw at the end of an archipelago and that's the one that you want.

 Again, though, there's nothing particularly heavenly or hellish about either of those places or the islands themselves. Getting there was kind of a massive let down.

 There are, however, a bunch of invisible draw points on both of the islands that contain really powerful spells like Ultima, Aura and Meteor. So they're handy to visit, but still massive disappointments.

 A more reliable method of getting your hands on Ultima is to fight the Elnoyle in Esthar a bunch of times. Once you've beaten it, just go off the screen it was on and back off again and it'll respawn.

 I'd tell you where to find it, but I've already talked about how confusing Esthar is to navigate in the last post I ran around beating this thing up in.

 Pro tip: Junction a hundred death to someone's status attack to make this thing easier to take down. You could Mug and run, which I did the last time I was here, but this is handy to have around because grinding and it gives nearly enough experience to reliably level characters up.

 Each Energy Crystal this thing drops can be refined into three Ultimas as well as being refined into Pulse Ammo and used to upgrade various weapons.

 (I fought it a few more times than strictly necessary to finish upgrading Nina and Quistis' weapons. The latter of which needed a couple more Malboro tentacles too.)

 While doing all this, I'd set Theo to learn Auto-Haste, which he'd nearly done by the end of the play session, so before I go and take on Ultima, I will be finishing that up.

 Which will be next time, in Part Seventy Three!