Your Levels..How High are You?

[Hearts]

What point in the game are you, and how are your levels?

Here's some advice to those going by the stradegy guide and not taking time to level up.

Before you do anything, I'd level up Squall and whomever was in my party to a high level. Every thing goes by quicker when you fight it, and you won't have to worry about leveling up late in the game. I just went by the stradegy guide on my 5th time playing the game, to make sure I got every thing and didn't miss a thing. Later in the game, I hadn't taken any time to level up just by training. I needed to level up when I was fighting Adel, and nothing seemed to work. In areas around bosses, monsters give you low EXP. At Lunatic Pandora, when you're supposed to go fight Adel, the monsters give you around 1. So, level up before you do anything! Even before you go on the SeeD mission.

[sayen]

i just started again on seed misson and got a level 10 squall i may add that the seeD misson starts after you meet quistis to fight ifrit so kill im with less than one min left to get 100 socre for jugment

[rubah]

disc 3, working on devouring for stats.

level 100.

Unjunctioned: Rinoa, Squall, and Selphie
HP: 6031 | 5197 | something lower than those
STR: 191 | 127 | 149
VIT: 111 | 91 | 107
MAG: 141 | 86 | 122
SPR: 71 | 44 | 93
SPD: 37 | 40 | 37

properly junctioned:
HP: 9999 | 9797 | 9170
STR: 255 | 255 | 255
VIT: 255 | 239 | 187
MAG: 255 | 186 | 222
SPR: 232 | 162 | 221
SPD: 87 | 110 | 107
JNC: STR/MAG+60%, SPR/VIT+40% | STR/VIT/SPR +40% | SPR/STR+40%
SPL: I dunno. stuff

<3 devour.

And if you're levelling before disc 3, you're one sad puppy.

[nik0tine]

And if you're levelling before disc 3, you're one sad puppy.

[Dark Matter]

When I was about to finish the game. Time: around 45 hours
Squall - lvl 100
others - around lvl 60 (Rinoa with the higher lvl among the five.)

..... no need to level up! I just hate fighting pawns. Escape while you can (I say it's relatively easy to escape.) or equip with non-encounter party ability. All I've done is to acquire every Gfs and master some unique abilities, my Squall's already at lvl 100!!! That's toooo easy. well, I spent a lot of time to draw and go shopping!!! ha, it's easy to make money too, no really need to fight monsters.... Whenever I was in danger, I'll ask Zell to ----KAMIKAZE----- (fanfare's playing right away!)

Ultimecia's bad.... I spent more than an hour to beat her.......

[Hearts]

When you're leveling up before disk three it's making things easier for disk three. (And four, lol) But which ever way you chose to level up is your choice. If it gets you to the end quicker, then hooray you. :P

I'm about to start a new game over because my disk finally decided to break. I'm going to gamestop sometime this week to get a new game..lol, but once I do I'll post up my levels and stuff like that.

Before the game broke, I was at the middle of disk three, with Zell and Squall at 100, Rinoa in the mid 90s, Selphie in the 70s or 80s, Quistis in the 60s, Irvine in the 80s..with some good junctions. I junctioned death somewhere in there to kill the monsters faster--killing monsters at such easy HP gets annoying after a while. lol..but yea, that's all I remember.

[Xaven]

I'm not in the middle of a game at the second but I do have my saved game right before Ultimecia. Squall, Quistis, and Selphie have their levels in the mid-30's and the others in the high-teens/low-twenties. I never go level up just for the purpose of it. The games easier/faster that way.

[Mo-Nercy]

I have about five games of FFVIII saved to my card, but my best one puts the entire six characters at level 25 at the final save point in fron Ultimecia's room. I'm very proud of it.

[DocFrance]

*sigh* When will people understand that levelling up is not the way to go with this game?

[ChaosCalibur]

On my second game i have my characters in early 40s, on disk 3, have just beaten bahamut, but the levels are far too high for my current goal

[Rinoa Heartilly]

First try --Squall at level 43 and the others not even level 40
Rinoa's limit break was my lucky break, it somehow got me through the end battle.

Second try --levelled them all to 100 save Zell. Not that I don't like Zell as a character I just didn't like his limits. Button codes+me= doesn't work

[nik0tine]

*sigh* When will people understand that levelling up is not the way to go with this game?

That is untrue. Leveling up is the way to go in this game. You have access to better magic if you level up, plus the enemies do not seem to level up at a proportional rate with you.

[Mo-Nercy]

is[/I] the way to go in this game. You have access to better magic if you level up, plus the enemies do not seem to level up at a proportional rate with you.

That is untrue. Although the magic you draw from enemies becomes better, the magic you can refine remains the same. It's actually very simple to end up with 100 Ultimas, Holys, Meteors, Flares, Triples on all your characters, no matter what level they are. As I say, lower level enemies with strong junctions will always be preferrable to high level enemies with strong junctions.

Enemies do level up with you. They're not always at the same level as you though. A Bite Bug can tank two hits from Quistis' Chain Whip at the beginning of the game when she's level 8. At level 100, with the same weapon, it'll still tank two hits.

[Rusty]

I'm at the end of the game (I've finished it) so all my characters are at level 100.

[Laugh at face of Danger]

Well, i personally have completed the game a few times, and i have nearly always found that levels do help with drawing magic and especially rounding your characters off and keeping them near enough even is a high priority. At the beginning, i personally think it's crucial to have good levels, enemies such as Ifrit will nearly always have the same HP, it will only differ by about 100~200 max if you level up one level or ten.

However, the Ultimecia battle will be really easy if you keep one character at a low level (as i found on three of my games) and she only has approximately 600,000 hp at the last stage, which is really nothing to worry about. Junctioning and Levels go hand in hand in this game: junctioning gets you levels and levels get you better junctioning - its just a repeating circle. I personally relied mainly on my levels and sats all the time to get me my magic, I hate refining.
And Ultimecia really shouldn't cause too many problems!