Chapter 8: Tairon Under Alert

Monastery area

Rachel's war hammer lies amidst the ruins of the Dworku monastery.

You'll begin the level at the save point next to the ruins of the monastery. Run inside the monastery, and search the rubble along the left wall to find Rachel's war hammer on the ground. It's a little more than halfway to the back of the monastery, before you reach the altar. Exit the monastery gates to the plaza, and you'll fight some soldiers. These aren't the pansy, pistol-armed soldiers you faced in chapters three through five. These tough guys are armed with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades! The assault rifles fire a constant stream of bullets which can eat away at your health rapidly, and the RPG-toting troopers pack a nasty wallop. If you stand too close to the rifle-armed soldiers, they can stab with their bayonets. The key to fighting these soldiers is to close the distance rapidly and strike as quickly as you can. Don't waste time trying to rack up big combos--just kill quickly and move on to the next victim.

Kill all the soldiers in the monastery plaza, and when the gates open, make your way back to the drawbridge. Lower the bridge by hitting the switch nearby and you'll find two armored personnel carriers parked on the other side along with more tough soldiers. The area around the drawbridge is rough. The RPG troops will fire their rockets in close quarters, and the machine gun turrets on the APCs are nasty. You may want to consider just running and jumping through there, and making a quick exit via the door with the blue jewels on it. If you do fight, you may want to make use of your bow and any remaining arrows to pick off troops from afar before you make your advance.

Backflip up the wall twice to reach the top platform, in the back of the skull gate area.

Tairon alleys

Once you've made your escape through the blue jeweled door, you'll face up with another tough band of troops. You can skip this fight by hopping off the side and down to the moat road, or you can fight through to the cracked wall. If you have incendiary shuriken left, open it up and grab the Great Spirit Elixir from the other side. Make your way to the corridor where the skull gate is, just outside the military gate area. You should see it on your map marked as a yellow door to the southwest of the military gate. Kill the soldiers there, then enter the skull gate. Pick up the golden scarab to your right as you enter, and grab the Elixir of Spiritual Life in the chest to your left. You can also do some shopping at Muramasa's kiosk. By now you should have given Muramasa 20 scarabs, so he'll hand over the Dabilahro sword, which looks like it may have been wielded once by Cloud Strife.

From the top platform, you can wall run to the golden scarab.

Go to the back of this area and notice the two platforms above your head. You can use the opposite wall and do two successive wall run-backflips to get to the top level. Before you go inside though, look to your left from the top platform. There's a golden scarab in that niche! If you aim diagonally to the left, you should be able to wall run and jump to that scarab and get it. Get back to the top platform, and go inside the building. You'll find a window looking out across the military gate, and the strongbow on the wall. Grab the bow, and go out to the military gate area.

Military Gate

You'll be attacked by the two gun turrets. Whip out your bow, go into first-person aiming, and shoot the gunners off the turrets. You don't need to aim perfectly at the head. If your arrow goes through the turret it still counts as a hit. Listen for the sound of arrow piercing flesh and you know you've scored a hit. If you need more arrows, pull some off the dead ninja body next to the fence. Once they're dead, a helicopter gunship will show up. Immediately run to the fence area next to the dead ninja with arrows, and hide in the back corner. You can't take down this helicopter yet, so just hold down your block button and deflect the machine gun fire. The gunship shouldn't be able to fire missiles at you from this position. Eventually the chopper will leave.

Hit the small trigger in the back of the control tower to open the gate.

Once it's gone you have one more threat. Look at the top row of windows, opposite the military gate. You should find the broken window from earlier. An RPG soldier will eventually start shooting at you from there, so aim your bow at the window and take him out. Once he's dead, the doors will unlock. Fill up with arrows first, then make your way back to the skull gate area, and jump up the platforms again. Go to the window, and you'll be able to shoot from it with your bow. Aim at the center window of the control tower and break it with an arrow. You'll see a small, circular trigger in the back wall of the control tower. Hit that switch to open the gate. On your way back to the gate, tank up on elixirs as much as possible at Muramasa's kiosk, then go through the gate to end the chapter.