Call Shop

Call Shop is an ability in Final Fantasy VIII that allows the player to visit any shop they have visited throughout the game from the Ability menu. The Call Shop ability and CC Joker aboard Ragnarok are the only means of shopping during the endgame, as most locations are sealed off.
==Obtained==
Call Shop learned by the Guardian Force Tonberry. It requires the ability Familiar to be learned first, and 200 AP to master before it becomes available in the menu. Tonberry is recruited by defeating Tonberry King at Centra Ruins, who appears after great enough numbers of his subjects have been felled. If the player removes Call Shop with Amnesia Greens, there is no way to get it back.
==Mechanics==
Using Call Shop in the Ability menu brings up a list of shops the player has previously visited, and the player can purchase goods from them and have the items immediately in their inventory. If the player uses Call Shop with Laguna Loire's party, the only available shop is Winhill's general store. Junk shops are not available via Call Shop; the player would need to use Doomtrain's Junk Shop ability.
There is also a dummied out shop called "Trabia Shop". It is possible to get this entry to the Call Shop menu by hacking the game, but there is no shop in Trabia in the actual game. If the player hacks the Trabia Shop to their Call Shop menu, it will have the same items as every other generic shop, as most item shops in Final Fantasy VIII just have the same inventory.
All other mastered shop abilities are in effect when using Call Shop: Haggle, Sell-High, and Familiar.
==Use==
Call Shop is a good ability to have, especially in the endgame, cutting down the need to travel. Esthar City has the best endgame shops, especially with Familiar, but getting there in person can be cumbersome as the player would need to land on the air station and make their way on foot among random encounters, or land outside and then make their way through various walkways on the world map. In the endgame, towns are sealed off, and so the player can only ever shop inside the Ragnarok if they do not have Call Shop as the final dungeon lacks shopping facilities.
Call Shop makes menu grinding for stat up items faster; it would be best to also learn Haggle and Sell-High to make money for this system as well. Stat-grinding is unnecessary for a regular playthrough even against superbosses; the player can get high enough stats with simply using the junction system. If the player wanted to grind for the stat items anyway, this would be the method: Giant's Rings, Power Wrists, Force Armlets, and Hypno Crowns bought from Esthar's pet shop (with Familiar) refine with GFAbl Med-RF (Eden) into their next forms (Gaea's Ring, Hyper Wrist, Magic Armlet, and Royal Crown), and can be turned into stat ups with Forbid Med-RF (Doomtrain).
Category:Support abilities in Final Fantasy VIII