FINAL FANTASY VIII | How to Play Triple Triad

Everything you need to know to play the Triple Triad card game!

About

Triple Triad is a popular card game in the world of Final Fantasy VIII, available as a minigame. According to the Final Fantasy VIII Ultimania[finalfantasy.fandom.com], the card game was created by a psychic named Orlan who modified fortune-telling cards for use in a game. Triple Triad was initially played among soldiers, but spread to the common people and by the time of Final Fantasy VIII's events, the game is popular among all age groups.

Playing Triple Triad can net the player five achievements. These are as follows:

Icon	Achievement	Description
	Card Player	Play Triple Triad
	Professional Player	Win 100 games of Triple Triad
	Loser	Lose a rare card in a Triple Triad game
	Cards Club Master	Defeat every member of the CC group [finalfantasy.fandom.com]
	Collector	Collect all cards

FYI: This is the song that plays during Triple Triad. Enjoy it while you read this guide, because you'll be hearing it a lot throughout the game if you plan on doing this sidequest!

Knowing the Basics

To challenge someone to a game of Triple Triad, simply go up to an NPC and press the button. This will work with most NPCs.

Triple Triad is played on a 3x3 square grid of blank spaces where the cards will be placed. In a basic game, each player has five cards. A coin-flip decides who begins. The player who wins the coin toss may choose a card to play anywhere on the grid. After the first card is played, the opponent may play a card on any unoccupied space on the board. The game continues with players' turns alternating. Each player may play one card per turn.

Obtaining a Card

Cards are obtained by defeating enemies in battle (the chance for a card to drop is 9/256 or 3.5%). Alternatively, the player can use Quezacotl's Card[finalfantasy.fandom.com] ability to turn an enemy into its card form. Depending on the current trade rule (see 'Trade Rules' section below), the player can win cards off their opponents in Triple Triad games, and there are side quests that yield cards as rewards.

Cards can be refined into items via Quezacotl's Card Mod[finalfantasy.fandom.com] ability. Many of the game's rarer items are most easily found by refining these cards.

Reading a Card

• Each card has four numbers (known as ranks) placed in the top left corner; each number corresponds to one of the four sides of the card. The ranks range from one to ten, with the letter A representing ten.
  
• The top right corner of the card sometimes has an elemental symbol representing the card's element: Earth, Fire, Water, Poison, Holy, Lightning, Wind, or Ice.
  
• Each card also has an illustration of the enemy, boss, or character it represents. Scrolling over a card will show its name.
  
• Blue cards belong to you, and pink cards belong to the opponent.

How to Win

To win, a majority of the total ten cards played (including the one card that is not placed on the board) must be of the player's card color. To capture a card, the active player places a card adjacent to the opponent's card. If the rank touching the opponent's card is higher, the opponent's card will be captured and flipped into the active player's color. A card can be placed on any open spot on the board. The player who goes second will have a card remaining in their hand and that card will count towards their ending score. If both players have an equal number of cards of their color at the end, a draw will occur.

Types of Cards

There are ten card levels, with higher-level cards generally having higher ranks. There are cards depicting monsters, bosses, Guardian Forces, and playable characters; each having different stats. The seven cards that Squall gets for free near the beginning of the game are Level 1. Multiple copies of most cards from Level 1 to 7 can be kept, whereas GF and character cards are one-of-a-kind.

Special Rules

A set of special rules are applied, and vary by region. Wherever the player first starts playing, they start with the rules of Balamb. When the player challenges someone in a different region, the opponent may ask to play a game with both regions' rules. This will only happen if the previous region the player played cards in has at least one rule the opponent's region does not currently have. This "mixed-rules" game uses all the rules of both regions.

One of three outcomes will randomly happen regardless of the player winning, losing, or quitting:

1. A rule from the previous region not used in new region may spread to the new region
   
2. A rule from the new region may be abolished in the new region
   
3. There may be no change

An easy workaround to not mixing rules is to continue challenging the person and refusing the offer of a mixed-rules game; eventually the opponent will offer to play a normal game with their region's rules only. Even if a region has every rule and the player cannot thus mix rules, a random rule may still be abolished after a few games when starting to play in that area.

Whether a rule spreads, is abolished, or there being no change is random. If for example you are looking to abolish a specific rule from a region: save your game before playing any Triple Triad in the new region. Then try card games with mixing rulesets (still counts if quitting the card game before choosing the hand to speed up the process), and if anything but the desired rule abolishing happens, reset the game and try again.

Types of Rules

Rule	Description
Open	Enables the player to see which cards the opponent is using.
Same	When a card is placed touching two or more other cards (one or both of them have to be the opposite color), and the touching sides of each card is the same (8 touching 8 for example), then the other two cards are flipped. Combo rule applies.
Same Wall	An extension of the Same rule. The edges of the board are counted as A ranks for the purposes of the Same rule. Combo rule applies. If the Same rule is not present in a region that has Same Wall, Same Wall will not appear in the list of rules when starting a game because it can have no effect without Same but it will be carried with the player to other regions, and can therefore still be spread.
Sudden Death	If the game ends in a draw, a sudden death occurs in which a new game is started but the cards are distributed on the side of the color they were on at the end of the game.
Random	Five cards are randomly chosen from the player's deck instead of the player being able to choose five cards themselves.
Plus	Similar to the Same rule. When one card is placed touching two others and the ranks touching the cards plus the opposing rank equal the same sum, then both cards are captured. Combo rule applies.
Combo	Of the cards captured by the Same, Same Wall or Plus rule, if they are adjacent to another card whose rank is lower, it is captured as well. This is not a separate rule; any time Same or Plus is in effect, Combo is in effect as well.
Elemental	In the elemental rule, one or more of the spaces are randomly marked with an element. Some cards have elements in the upper-right corner. Ruby Dragon, for example, is fire-elemental, and Quezacotl is thunder-elemental. When an elemental card is placed on a corresponding element, each rank goes up a point. When any card is placed on a non-matching element, each rank goes down a point. This does not affect the Same, Plus and Same Wall rules, where the cards' original ranks apply.

Rules per region

List of default rules per region. These are the starting rules; playing with mixed rules may spread rules to new regions, or abolish rules in a region. The Queen of Cards[finalfantasy.fandom.com] can be paid to introduce new rules to a region, up until the point of no return (the fight atop Lunatic Pandora).

Region	Rules
Balamb	Open
Galbadia	Same
Dollet	Random, Elemental
Fisherman's Horizon	Elemental, Sudden Death
Trabia	Random, Plus
Centra	Same, Plus, Random
Esthar	Elemental, Same Wall
Lunar	Open, Same, Plus, Elemental, Same Wall, Random, Sudden Death

Trade Rules

Trade rules dictate which and how many cards the winner can take from the loser. Every time a challenge is made there is a chance of a region's trade rule being changed. Rule changes, if triggered, are made when asking someone to play; before going to the rules screen or playing through the game (when the player presses ). Unlike with the special rules, trade rules change without any outside indication beyond what is shown in the screen when starting a game.

The trade rules are as follows:

Rule	Rank	Description
One	1	Winner chooses one card from loser
Diff	2	Winner chooses one card per score difference
Direct	3	Both players directly take cards that are their color at the end of the game
All	4	Winner takes all

Manipulating Trade Rules

If the current trade rules are undesirable, there are three arduous ways in which they can be changed. I only suggest doing this if you are really farming for certain cards:

1. If the Queen of Cards[finalfantasy.fandom.com] is in a region, every challenge in that region (including to the Queen herself) has a 90/256 (≈1/3) chance of the Queen's current region adopting the Queen's personal trade rule. Every challenge to the Queen will have a 220/256 (≈6/7) chance of increasing or decreasing her personal trade rule by one step.
   
   
2. Every challenge has a chance of the dominant region's rule being adopted by a random region (possibly itself). The Queen of Cards will tell which region is currently dominant if you ask her about trade rules. The chance is 25/256 (≈9.76%) for every Dominance level the dominant region has. Playing in the dominant region (or an opponent from that region) increases that region's Dominance by 1, up to 10. Playing in a non-dominant region (or an opponent from that region) decreases that region's Dominance by 1; if Dominance is 0, the current region becomes the new dominant region with a Dominance of 1.
   
   
3. Every time Dominance is triggered (even if the random region is itself), there is a chance that a random region will adopt the One rule. Every challenge adds between 0/256 and 7/256 (about 0% - 2.7%) to the degeneration chance. It resets when the chance is above 98% (250/256). It is important to note that if degeneration chance is at least 128 (50%), asking the Queen about trade rules will result in her saying that people are avoiding risky trades.

If the Queen of Cards is in the target region, it is easy to manipulate the trade rule. As long as the Queen's personal rule is set to the desired rule, the player can simply repeatedly challenge anyone else in the Queen's region (other than the Queen) until they offer to play with the desired rule. For regions other than the Queen's current region, challenges will cause the dominant rule to start spreading (and affect Dominance), but it is not as easy to reset the rule once degeneration occurs.

**Towards the end of the game, after the obvious point of no return (the fight atop Lunatic Pandora), the Queen of Cards is only relegated to one location (being the crash site[finalfantasy.fandom.com]). Her personal region and trade rules cannot be changed after this point, and will instead be the ones she had previous to the point of no return.

Conclusion

Congratulations, you now have all of the tools necessary to challenge NPcs to your heart's content (at the absolute worst times in the story) There are 110 cards in all to earn, so good luck! Consider yourself a Triple Triad maestro!

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, feel free to leave them down below! Community discourse only makes a guide even better!

[Materia Keeper]

Nice guide good work!

[Ashoka]

@Alucard Yup, I love doing that! If you take the time to use the systems that are given to you, it can be extremely rewarding! Unfortunately, a lot of people tend to skip around it.

[Alucard]

Card and Card Mod can literally get you one hit killing anything before the seed mission even.