If you rode to the Dollet Station, all you need to do is venture south to find a road bisecting the train tracks, then follow the road east to Dollet. If you got off the train prematurely just follow the winding tracks north from the East Academy Station until you reach the Dollet Station, then follow the aforementioned directions to get to Dollet. On the other hand, if you wish to return to Timber just follow the tracks south and they’ll get you there eventually.

Abolishing Random¶

Not going to lie, the first part of this can be pretty tedious. There’s a bit of Triple Triad to play in Dollet, but there’s one annoying barrier - the “Random” rule. Often mentioned and until yet not encountered, the Random rule automatically selects your hand from your entire card collection. Suffice to say this makes winning games far, far more difficult than simply picking any five cards you wish, and you should take great pains to abolish this rule wherever you find it.

You should have gotten the gist of this process when playing Watts for his Angelo Card earlier, but with Watts you really only had one player and one region’s rule set to work with. In that case, getting the “Open” rule to spread was one of the few options open to you, and honestly, the ideal one. Now, however, you have multiple rules you’ll want to abolish and spread, and two regions to work with. In case you don’t remember, any time you try to play cards with somebody while you’re carrying rules from a foreign region that aren’t found in the current region, they’ll ask to mix rules. If you decline enough times they’ll stop asking and you’ll adopt that region’s rules and play with them, but if you accept to mix rules and go to the Triple Triad screen there’s a chance that after exiting from said screen (either by quitting before the game starts or by winning a game) that a new rule you’re carrying will spread to the current region, or that one of the current region’s rules will be abolished.

This is highly influenced by RNG and things that can increment the RNG seem to be transitioning between areas, challenging somebody to cards and either declining before or after entering the Triple Triad screen, or actually playing a game of cards. At its core, changing rules is just as simple as finding a player, challenging them to a game, exiting before you actually start the game, and repeating until there’s a rules change, and reloading if it’s not what you want.

For a more specific example, assuming you have the Timber/Galbadia rules (Open/Same) from playing Watts earlier, enter Dollet and challenge the rental car woman (wearing a red dress). She should ask to mix rules (Elemental/Random), and if she does, accept. If not you may need to run back to Dollet and play cards there to ensure you’re carrying their rules. After you reach the Triple Triad screen, exit out before playing a game and if the rules change, cool. If not, try again. In order of priority you want to abolish “Random”, then “Elemental” and finally spread “Open”. If either of the aforementioned rules get abolished, exit Dollet and save your game, if either Open or Same spread, you may want to reload and try again, as the more rules in play at a time, the less chance you’ll have to abolish the rules you want.

If RNG isn’t being kind after repeated attempts (expect quite a few misses), go find another card player to try the same challenge/quit strategy with them, or worse case scenario try playing a game of cards.

Get any favorable rule abolished, then exit Dollet and save your game. Now for some running about; follow the road back west to the railroad tracks, then follow those south to return to Timber. Challenge a gate guard and if you want to be a real go-getter, try to abolish the “Same” rule from Timber using the same method you applied to abolish Random/Elemental. If you understandably can’t be bothered, challenge the gate guard to cards and when he asks to mix rules decline until he stops asking. This should get you to carry Timber’s rules again, at which point you can return to Dollet and try to abolish the second rule you want gone. Do this a third time to spread “Open” to Dollet after “Random” and “Elemental” are abolished and you’ll be in great shape to play cards.

All this is easy enough to say, but actually playing it out could take a while. It’s worth doing, however, as the gains you can get from cards are pretty stupendous, and taking pains to eradicate the “Random” rule every time you encounter it will make you life so much easier in the long run. If you got the Queen of Cards to move to Dollet, you can always pay her 30,000G to spread “Open” throughout the Dollet region, if you wish.

MiniMog Card¶

With that business done, you can now play cards freely throughout Dollet… not that there’s much incentive to play with most people, unless you just want to grind some cards for whatever purpose. From the gate to Dollet head down one screen, then left to another screen. This area should be familiar, as it’s the area with the Save Point next to the beach you stormed so recently.

Head up and left down a tunnel to reach the first familiar street area leading to the town square and note a boy in a hoodie standing near a door to the left. Ignore him for now but keep him in mind and continue up the street to the next area and enter the pub on the right. Go upstairs and you’ll find your old friend, the Queen of Cards. Talk to her and ask her about her father and she’ll tell you that she gave him your MiniMog Card, and inspired by it he created the Kiros Card, which is somewhere in Deling City. She also mentions that if she gets the Sacred Card her father will be able to create another card. All in good time, but at least you can see how this Queen of Cards quest works, eh?

Leave the pub and return to the previous street screen and approach the boy wearing the hoodie and he’ll slink inside the nearby house. Follow him and you’ll witness an old man complaining about the boy’s vandalism before storming out. There’s a quest tied to this boy’s graffiti, but the rewards will be better if you wait, so ignore it for now and instead play cards with the boy. He’s got an obnoxious habit of choosing his cards incredibly slowly, but he’s got your MiniMog Card, so you’ll need to put up with it if you want to win it back.

Siren Card¶

Now, time to win a new card. Return to the pub and head upstairs, then challenge the guy in a brown shirt standing near a table to the left. Pummel him with your superior cards and he’ll invite you to his secret room, after which you’ll find yourself on the bridge outside. Continue right to reach his card room - a real hardcore TCG player here - and talk to him to score five Geezard Cards, four Red Bat Cards, three Buel Cards, two Anacondaur Cards and a Cactuar Card. Is he really trying to reward you, or potentially soften up your deck with junk? Whatever, the Random rule is gone, so that won’t work.

With all that done, challenge the pub owner to a game of cards and play him until he puts up the Siren Card and win it for yourself. Siren refines into three Status Atk items, which will teach GFs the ST-Atk-J ability. Unlike Elem-Atk-J, this ability is much more uncommon, and you won’t have three GFs with it until early disc 2. On the other hand, you will rarely need that many characters with ST-Atk-J before then, and Siren is a pretty solid card in its own right. Somewhat tough call, but we’re coming down in favor of keeping the card intact.

Occult Fan II¶

Now that you have the card you came for - after some significant distractions - there are a few more things to do and see in Timber. First turn your attention to magazine piles on the floor, which, like the ones in Timber Maniacs, can yield prizes. The upper-most pile and right-most pile contain some notes that might be worth reading for lore purposes, but for a more practical gain search the pile near the door. This pile of magazines can drop a variety of goodies, including a variety of junk tickets, the odd Potion, Antidote, Soft, Phoenix Down, Geezard Card and most importantly the Occult Fan II magazine. If you don’t get what you want from the magazine pile, just transition screens, return and try again. While you can sit here and harvest curatives from this pile of magazine, there’s probably not a pressing need to do so.

Timber Maniacs 3, 7 & 8¶

Once you have Occult Fan II, return to the second floor of the pub and search the left-most game table to find an issue of Timber Maniacs 8. Generous little pub, eh?

This isn’t the only issue of Timber Maniacs in Dollet. To get the other one, leave the pub and head up the street until you reach the town square. Behind the fountain you’ll find Hotel Dollet, which you can rest at for 100G. Do so and when you’re in your room search the table to the right to find Timber Maniacs 7.

Finally return to Timber, visit the Timber Hotel and rent a room there for 100G, where you’ll find Timber Maniacs 3 on the table in the lower right corner of the screen.

Monsters Around Timber and Dollet¶

With all that done there’s only one more thing to do before you get on with your meandering trek to Galbadia Garden; fight some monsters! Remove Enc-None if you have it and be ready to Card or flee if you don’t want to gain EXP. In the Dollet region you’ll largely only fight Geezards (in the plains) and Funguars (in the forests), neither of which are terribly interesting. Around Timber you can find Thrustaevis monsters, Geezards and Funguars in the plains and Anacondaurs and Funguars in the forests. You can draw Float from the Thrustaevis, but these foes are otherwise uninteresting.

On the other hand, if you venture west from Timber you’ll find a desert, which is currently blocked off. If you wander around the cliffs here, however, you can encounter the Vysage enemy, which is relatively powerful. Not only does it come accompanied by the Lefty and Righty (both of which are immune to Card) but all three can attack autonomously. While they don’t do tremendous damage, three foes can add up, and they’re fond of using attacks that inflict Slow and Confusion, the latter of which is especially annoying. Fortunately you can draw Esuna from them, which will significantly help keep their status effects under control. Other interesting spells to be found from these foes include Shell, Protect, Drain and Haste, but it’s up to you to decide if it’s worth the trouble.

Anywho, when you’re done getting whatever magics you want, it’s time for you to get back to the task at hand - heading overland towards Galbadia Garden. That being the case, skip ahead to the Laguna Dream - Centra Excavation Site section.