Final Fantasy VIII [22] – The Shumi Village

The Shumi Village is an optional area with an optional line of two quests. The first quest could’ve been done as soon as I was able to travel around with the Garden, but I forgot about it then, so I decided to do both quests now. The Shumi are Norg’s people. They aren’t human and their biology is very different to that of humans. They start out as regular Shumi and, after a while, evolve either to Elder’s such as Norg, or to Moombas, the little lion guys that I’ve met throughout the game.

Final Fantasy VIII, Shumi Village Elevator

The elevator ride is long, annoying and has to be repeated several times.

Next up, I used the elevator to go down and start up on the first quest. The Shumi took care of Laguna, Ward and Kiros after their cliff drop years ago. They have a tremendous amount of respect for Laguna, so they want to make a statue of him. For that, they need special rocks which I had to gather. I was the one to do this because the village elder wanted to give me a gift, but couldn’t unless I do something for them.The first thing I did was to pay 5000 gold at the village entrance to access the draw point which contains Ultima. Ultima is by far the strongest spell I can junction to anything, so 5000 gold per draw is definitely worth it.

In any case, all the rocks could be found around the village, one by one, so I’ve spent some time gathering them. None of it really gave me any trouble, since I remembered the locations from my first play through. The reward for gathering all the rocks was to see the Elder’s hand. Lucky for me, I also got a souvenir as I was leaving – a Phoenix Pinion. This one, if I remember correctly, summons the hidden GF Phoenix, which resurrects all of my fallen party members.

Final Fantasy VIII, Shumi Village

There was a lot of running back and forth, but it was worth the final prize.

The next quest involved the statue again. The Sculptor lost interest in completing it, so I had to first convince him, and after that the Artisan as well as the Attendant to help him. The Attendant was simple enough, but in order to convince the Artisan, I had to go all the way to Fisherman’s Horizon to get a special item. The reward for this quest was a Status Guard, which teaches any GF the ability Status Defense x4. Definitely worth it!