You should do some preparation before making your way directly to the Fire Cavern. Return to the previous page if you navigated to this section of the guide directly. Make sure you have leveled up your Guardian Forces and drawn some magic (especially Cure magic) before you arrive.

Quistis will give you two more tutorials when you approach the entrance to the Fire Cavern. The first will focus on how to junction magic to your characters and the second will provide you with an overview of how to use Squall’s gunblade.

You can skip the tutorials by pressing the button. Activating Squall’s gunblade is a pretty straightforward process, so no need to worry about that guide. As for the junction advice that Quistis provides, you can use the Magic Junction Guide on this site rather than the one in game if you choose.

Walk forward and approach the two Garden Faculty members standing out front. They will tell you about your objective and then allow you to select an amount of time that you wish to have to complete the mission.

It’s fairly hard to make a random, uneducated choice, so the game puts you in kind of a rough spot, as you have no idea how long the mission is (assuming this is your first time playing the game), but select the “10 min” option as you should have no trouble making it in time.

Selecting the lower time limit will give you a better SeeD Ranking at the conclusion of the mission. It is fairly easy to complete the mission in under 10 minutes, but that being said, obtaining a high SeeD Ranking is also not too important as there are other means of increasing your SeeD Ranking, and the ranking just increases the gil you earn from being a SeeD member (and there are a ton of alternatives methods for earning gil).

Select “10 min” just to challenge yourself and no big deal if you do not complete the mission in time. Note that you will receive a higher SeeD ranking if you beat Ifrit (and select its new GF name in the menu screen) with 30 seconds or fewer to spare.

Make your way straight to the end of the pathway once you get inside the Fire Cavern. There are a few paths that dart off to either side of the screen, including one that has a Draw Point for Fire magic, but run past it and back towards the end of the trail (you can come back for the Draw Point). Ignore what Quistis says and get through the battles as quickly as you can.

You will encounter Ifrit at the end of the trail.

You will gain a new Guardian Force (GF), Ifrit, at the conclusion of the battle.

You will also have received the Ifrit Card; a very powerful Triple Triad Card which makes it much easier to start playing and winning Triple Triad games, and to begin collecting some powerful cards.

Head back out of the Fire Cavern. Take your time as you no longer have a timer to worry about. You can pick up the Fire Draw Point that you ran past on your way out. Travel all the way back to Balamb Garden to continue to the next part of the game.