Trabia Canyon

Learn how to defeat the Ruby Dragon in Trabia Canyon in Final Fantasy VIII Remastered. Strategies include Drawing magic, using status effects, and managing its powerful attacks.

You'll be prompted to choose who gets what Junction set. Laguna will always have Squall's, but Kiros (and Ward, if you didn't read the Timber Maniacs issue in Shumi Village) can be given whosever Junctions you want. Just make sure everyone actually gets a Junction set (if not, they'll be completely gimped).

There'll be a long scene, after which you'll have a sword fighting mini-game. It looks tough, but is actually fairly easy. Simply block when the dragon attacks and when it recovers quickly from a previous attack (when it does its fast recovery, it'll attack very quickly afterward), and attack when you have an opening. You'll lose a ton of health if you get hit, so try to avoid that. If you lose, you'll be given the option to redo it.

Once you finish on the positive side, answer, "H-Hold on a sec..." to be given control of Laguna and co. Junction Kiros and Ward (their GFs will have been stripped, but they'll have the Magic of whomever you Junctioned them to). Return to the Save Point and Save and Tent if needed. (You can also run around the mountainside to fight Bite Bug and Mesmerize enemies, but there's little point to doing so.) If you're power-gaming, Draw on all characters alongside LV Up and LV Down on someone is highly recommended. Once you're ready, exit at the bottom and approach the dragon.

Now, a bit of discussion on the fight ahead (if you don't feel like trying to Draw powerful magic, feel free to just defeat the monster and skip the next section). You're about to fight a Ruby Dragon, which you haven't seen yet. It's no different than any other Ruby Dragon aside from the fact that the encounter is a fixed encounter, but there are a few key points to understand before engaging it in combat. First, it's weak to Ice and Holy, absorbs Fire and Wind (which are also the elements it uses), and vulnerable to Sleep and Slow. Second, high-level (45+) Ruby Dragons carry Flare and Meteor Magic (and this is the best source of the latter, but you can still fight Ruby Dragons elsewhere if you want, though you will have to wait quite some time for the next chance). Third, you can change its level using Tonberry's LV Down and LV Up commands. Finally, high-level Ruby Dragon monsters have access to Meteor and Breath, a massively-powerful MT non-elemental physical, when facing a three-headed party with no one KO'd.

From the above paragraph, we can arrive at a few different conclusions. If you don't plan to Draw from the Ruby Dragon, you probably won't see the high-level version. The low- and mid-level versions will just cast Fire spells and Aero, and are only somewhat threatening for their powerful basic physical, so just whack them (Ice spells in Elem-Atk speed this up). However, if you intend to Draw from it and Ward is in your party, you need a strategy to deal with the high-level Ruby's Breath attack (if you lack Ward, it will never be used, even by high level dragons). Even if you have Meltdown Junctioned to Vit, your Vitality stat will be around 100 or so, and Breath will still be incredibly powerful (you probably won't survive more than one). High HP (from a powerful Junction and/or HP+80%) is one option, but it's highly unlikely you can do that for all three characters (you'll need at least 2,600 HP to reliably survive the attack with Meltdown on Vit, if not more). Sleep status is another possibility, but Ruby has only 20% vulnerability to the status so it's unlikely to stick, and even then it wears off after a while (combine with Slow for best results).

This leaves two realistic methods for us to exploit. The first way is to KO a character while the others Draw (Breath can only be used against a living three-man party), then revive them and KO a different character to allow the first character to Draw. The "KO a character" trick works like a charm, but sadly it's not a possibility in a Perfect Game (you can't have KO'd characters and still get a Perfect Game). The other method is to have Meltdown on your Vit stat as well as a decent HP stat ( Regen or better as a Junction to HP is strongly advised) and a stockpile of Protect and curative magic. Give the character with Cerberus the GF command in addition to the LV modification Commands on someone else, then enter battle. Before increasing Ruby's level, Summon Cerberus to set Double and Triple on the party, the level up Ruby to over 45. Cast Protect on the party, then get to work Drawing (re-cast Protect if it wears off). Be sure to heal up anytime Breath or Meteor are used, both can take off big chunks of health. This second route is slower, but possible for those playing a Perfect Game.

For those of you Drawing, once you're done it's wise to level the dragon back down again, both to reduce Exp gain and to prevent further Breath attacks. On the other hand, Meteor especially will be very slow to Draw unless you have a good Magic stat (80 or better is ideal, though it can be done reasonably with at least 60 Mag), so you may prefer to Draw it later. However you choose to play, defeat the Ruby Dragon for a scene.