Instruction Manual

A note on AI

The FF8 guide began as my own personal set of notes, and I wrote it by hand. It has its own AI disclosure at the top of the guide, which goes into more detail.

The other guides were researched and drafted with AI, following the same rules as the FF8 guide (the rest of this manual), and then checked against the achievement logic and at least two walkthroughs. I haven't played through them myself yet, which is why they're marked Unverified until I have (see Guide status).

Across all the guides, I've used AI to:

• Do research across the various guides and information on the internet, much of which is contradictory.
• Check achievement-relevant factual statements in the guide. For example: "is it correct that 44 of the 50 spells can be made at any time by Card Modding plus refining (for I Put A Spell on You)? Or have I counted wrong?"
• Enforce formatting conventions, so every box, achievement link and counter is consistent and renders properly.
• Build this site. The code behind it was written with AI.

What the guides are for

Each guide is intended to get you your Mastery badge in the most efficient way possible without ever having to consult any resource outside of the guide, for any reason.

They're organized more like a walkthrough you might find on GameFAQs than other RetroAchievements guides. Most guides on RA go achievement-by-achievement and give the necessary detail for how to get that achievement. However, in a lot of games many achievements require very precise unlock criteria that are easily missed and also are interwoven with each other, which makes that a very difficult and risky way to organize the information.

So why not just use a GameFAQs guide or some other guide on the internet? Well those guides have extra information that is not necessary for your mastery and also de-prioritize certain things that are critical for you (e.g., an enemy you only meet once, or a chest you can't come back for). These guides are laser focused on achieving your mastery.

They also aren't turn-by-turn. Each guide assumes you can play the game, and only gives directions where an achievement depends on them (if you have to take the left fork first for a missable chest, it'll say so) or where the spot you need is hard to find.

Every guide covers the official core set only. Subsets and bonus sets aren't included.

The rules every guide follows

1. The guide assumes you are moving step-by-step from the first line, line-by-line, until the end. There are many quests and tasks you need to do in order, and the guide is designed to help you move through that order.
2. Achievements that have measured counters call out what the count should be any time it changes. The main purpose of the guides is to keep track of exactly these kinds of achievements so you don't unknowingly lock yourself out of anything. Being able to cross-reference where you're at (by pulling up the achievement menu in your emulator) with where you should be (the guide's counter) is critical.
3. Every step of every achievement is done at the earliest possible time it can be, even if that's somewhat inefficient. With this principle, nothing can get missed and you can easily stay in line with the guide. For example, many of the pieces of a collection achievement (enemies to scan, chests to open, cards to win) are never permanently missable, so you could theoretically get them whenever you want. But if you don't get them when the guide assumes you will, you can't know if you missed one that is missable. Your emulator's count will be different than what the guide says you "should" have, and it will be extremely difficult to know if this is because you've missed a missable, or just delayed one you can get later. This is the primary reason why #1 is critical.
   • This means you might have to travel around the world to get something that's now available, even though you could do it later. This is slightly time inefficient, but I believe it's more important to adhere to this principle. Having said that...
4. There should be a minimum number of playthroughs, retreads, and backtracking. Anything that can be easily collected sequentially in the same run, should be. A guide will only tell you to start a new game or reload an old save if:
   • It is literally impossible to complete two achievements on the same playthrough (e.g., in FF8, Symphony of Destruction requires you to defeat X-ATM092, which causes deductions on your SeeD exam. This is mutually exclusive with Go Big or Go Home, which requires a perfect score)
   • It might be technically possible to complete in one run, but is substantially easier/less stressful to just reload, replay or start a new game
5. The guide is intended for you to check off your progress as you go. Every achievement-relevant step has a checkbox. See Tracking your progress.
6. If something makes an achievement easier, it's in the guide. Grinding spots, money tricks, power-ups and easy glitches all go in at the earliest point they're available, as long as they don't break a later achievement. Challenge fights get a complete strategy, and if there's a cheesy way to win, that's the one you get. See Glitches and exploits.

Reading a guide

The guide is split into sections in game order (discs, chapters or passes). Each section is a run of boxes, one per place or story beat. This box is from FF8:

Other things you'll see:

• Achievement rows sit under the box where the achievement pops. Each one has the strategy, then If missed: (where else you can do it), Fail Conditions (what locks you out) and Achievement Tracking (whether RA shows a counter).
• Collection boxes are one piece of a collect-them-all achievement: one enemy to scan, one chest, one card. Each one has a running counter.
• Note boxes hold side notes and the steps of long quest chains ("Step 3 of 5").
• 💡 Grinding Opportunity boxes are optional, but they make something later easier. They say what you get, how long it takes, and which achievement it helps.
• Warning boxes are for hard deadlines, SAVE SPLIT HERE points, and audits: at the end of a section, the running total you should have for every collection achievement.
• ⚠️ Warning lines inside a box are for things that would fail a challenge run (e.g., a fight that would level you up), with the safe way to do it.

Tracking your progress

There's no account. Your ticks are saved in the browser you're using, on that device, separately for each guide. Nothing is sent anywhere. A different browser or device, a private window, or clearing your browser's data for this site starts you from nothing.

Ticking boxes. Tap a box (or anywhere on its line) to tick it, and tap again to untick it. The landing page shows each guide's progress from the same saved ticks.

Moving to another device. Under Config, Export my ticks saves a small file with your ticks for that guide. On the other device, open the same guide and use Import ticks. If you already have ticks there, you can replace them or add the file's ticks to yours. Do it once per guide.

Starting partway through. If you're already some way into the game, you don't have to tick every box above where you are one by one. Tick the box you're at, and if there are 10 or more unticked boxes above it, the guide offers to tick them all. After Sync RA, the sync box offers the same thing for everything before your furthest unlock. Both tell you how many of those boxes are missable, so check those first, and both have an Undo.

Sync RA. Type your RetroAchievements username and the guide asks RA which achievements you've unlocked. Hardcore and softcore both count. Then:

• Every unlocked achievement's badge turns to color, with the date you unlocked it.
• Every box whose achievement is unlocked gets ticked, with a small RA tag. A box that links two achievements needs both.
• Sync only knows which achievements you've unlocked, not how far into one you are. So a box for an achievement you haven't unlocked yet stays unticked, and that includes collection boxes and the steps of long quests. Once the achievement unlocks, every box for it gets ticked.
• Boxes that don't link an achievement are never ticked by sync. Tick those yourself.

Sync saves what RA said at the time. When you unlock something new, press Sync again.

Your ticks and sync's ticks are kept separate, so sync never adds to, changes or removes your own ticks. A box can be ticked by you, by sync, or by both:

• You can't untick a box that only sync ticked, because its achievement is unlocked.
• If you ticked it too, unticking removes your tick, but the box stays ticked by sync.
• Disconnect removes everything sync added. Boxes that only sync ticked go back to empty, and badges go back to grey unless you've ticked the box where they pop. Your own ticks stay.
• Syncing as a different user replaces the first user's unlocks. Your own ticks stay, because they belong to the browser, not to an RA account (two people sharing one browser share ticks).
• Clear my ticks clears your own ticks and your "Mark earned" achievements. Sync stays connected, so its boxes stay ticked. To start completely over, Disconnect too.

Badges turn to color when RA says the achievement is unlocked, when you tick the box where it pops, or when you press Mark earned. Mark earned is only on story achievements that no box pops (they unlock on their own as you progress).

When a guide is updated, a box that's only reworded keeps your tick. A box that's rewritten completely, or removed, loses its tick, and new boxes start empty.

In-game saves

Don't play the whole game on one save slot that you keep overwriting. If a guide needs a throwaway run or a branch save, it'll have a SAVE SPLIT HERE box at the exact point, with instructions for when to go back to your real save.

It's also strongly recommended to make a new in-game save after every meaningful piece of progress. If you miss a missable or a required side-quest progression (and you probably will. I certainly did quite a bit.) you don't want to replay a big chunk of progress.

In hardcore mode you can't load save states, so in-game saves are all you have.

Glitches and exploits

The guides use whatever RetroAchievements' achievement hunting rules allow, unless the set's developer blocks it. That includes in-game glitches, item duplication, RNG manipulation with normal inputs, and reload loops. Fast-forward is fine.

What the guides leave out:

• Anything RA doesn't allow: cheat devices, cheat codes, memory or ROM editing, other people's save files, and (in hardcore) save states, rewind, slow motion or frame advance.
• Glitches that aren't easy for an average player, even when RA allows them: arbitrary code execution, save RAM tricks, frame-perfect or pixel-perfect inputs, and anything that takes speedrun-level practice.

An exploit only goes in if it helps an achievement (faster, safer or cheaper) and doesn't break any other achievement. If it can crash the game, corrupt a save or softlock you, the guide says so on the line.

Guide status

Every guide on the landing page is marked with one of these:

• Verified: I've personally played through it with the guide, and tweaked and edited it as I went.
• Unverified: built and checked against the achievement logic and the walkthroughs, but I haven't played through it myself yet, I'm in the middle of playing it, or I haven't tweaked/edited the guide to fix mistakes or smooth out inconsistencies. I don't 100% vouch for its accuracy.
• Planned: Planned, but not built into the site yet.

Credits

• Guides by Belthasar.
• Achievement data, badges and game icons: RetroAchievements.org. Each guide credits the walkthroughs and FAQs it used, and the RA players whose achievement comments helped.
• Initial guide format based on ASolidSnack's RA Guide Template.
• Game names, icons and any game artwork belong to their publishers. Each guide's page credits its own theme artwork.
• This is an unofficial fan site, not for profit, and not affiliated with RetroAchievements.