Ace Combat 8 Mission 8, Retaking of Theve II, is one of the campaign’s big moments. It is a night battle over the FCU capital where bombers and stalled friendly tanks all demand your attention at once. This guide covers the full walkthrough, how to unlock the hidden ace TESSERA, how to save Jackpot 9, and how to S-rank the mission. I also added a short story section at the end. So stick around until the end.
Spoiler Alert: This article contains spoilers for Mission 8’s story events. Proceed with caution!
What You’ll Read:
Ace Combat 8 Mission 8 Overview
Mission 8 is the second battle for Theve, and it throws naval, ground and air targets at you all at once. Friendly progress drives everything here, so your kill count matters less than keeping the landing force and tanks moving.
| Detail | Info |
|---|---|
| Mission | Retaking of Theve II |
| Operation | Gut Shot |
| Date | December 24, 2029 |
| Location | FCU Capital: Theve |
| Time of Day | Night |
| Objectives | 1. Escort the landing force to the landing point 2. Support the friendly ground force 3. Destroy the TGT forces defending the enemy HQ |
Best Aircraft and Loadout for Mission 8
Bring a multirole jet with air-to-ground special weapons. Mission 8 swaps between tanks, ships and fighters nonstop, so a balanced setup beats a narrow one.
Ammo is the real problem. The starter F/A-18 runs out of both special weapons and standard missiles here. A missile-capacity part helps. I finished with about 30 missiles left, but don’t count on that.
If you bring an EW wingman like the Growler, turn on Special-Weapons Permission. One player assigned Tasha a Growler and saw no ECM or ESM until that command was on. Assigning the aircraft alone isn’t enough.
Ace Combat 8 Mission 8 Walkthrough
This diabolical mission happens in these four tasks:
Escort the Landing Force
Your first job is getting the friendly landing craft to the landing point. Escort missions can fail if the protected units die, so don’t go hunting kills for fun. Target whatever is actually attacking the ships first, usually enemy aircraft. Everything else can wait.
Clear the Blockers for Stalled Ground Units
Once the troops land, stop counting enemies and watch your allies. When a friendly unit radios that it can’t advance, destroy the vehicles and weapons directly in front of it. Once it starts moving, that blocker is solved, so jump to the next stalled group.
Three artillery groups are also shelling your landed troops while APCs and tanks roll down the roads. One route is to kill one armor wave, then use the gap before the next one to wipe out a full howitzer group. Repeat.
Fuel trucks sit near a lot of these groups. Shoot them. The chain reaction clears clustered targets and saves missiles, and you’ll want those after the ammo trouble I mentioned.
Don’t clear every ground unit yet. That only matters for TESSERA, covered below.
Bombers First, Then the Shadows
Partway through, TU-160 bombers and Shadow aircraft arrive from the south. Drop whatever ground group you’re hitting and go for the bombers. Their escorts will happily keep you busy while the bombers fly on toward your troops, so don’t get pulled into those dogfights.
The Shadows come next. They fly under Lux Lunae’s 77th Unit, and they’re fast and twitchy, so plain missiles will frustrate you. Use special weapons to help secure locks and finish kills.
Try to put the Shadows down before a second bomber wave shows up. Handling both at once is where this mission gets ugly.
The Final Push on the Enemy HQ
Once the bombers and Shadows are down, clean up whatever targets are left. You can save Coster’s life next, then beat a new Shadow unit. So stay sharp and keep your missiles in reserve.
Then destroy every TGT force defending the enemy headquarters. Do that, and your ground forces take the HQ and raise their flag. Theve is back in FCU hands.
How to Save Jackpot 9 in Mission 8
Jackpot 9 can survive this mission, but the game never tells you. You need to clear the inland ground targets quickly, before she gets herself into trouble. Destroy the ground target where she is operating, and she won’t be shot down. She then joins the attack on the land battleship.
It pays off later. One player saw her again in Mission 28 with three aircraft instead of two, and she actually spoke. Another player jumped into Mission 28 through Free Mission after losing her, and she never showed up. So the save probably has to carry through your campaign run.
How to Unlock TESSERA (Hidden Ace)
TESSERA is the hidden ace of Mission 8, flying a MiG-21bis Fishbed. He only appears on Veteran difficulty or higher, so Rookie and Pilot players are out of luck.
To trigger him, destroy every non-TGT surface weapon on the map. That’s every ground weapon that isn’t a marked mission target. The cleanup takes roughly five minutes near the start of the mission. That’s a route estimate, though.
Once the last one dies, TESSERA spawns in the southeast and flies north up the coast toward the city. Shoot him down, then finish the remaining TGTs to advance the mission. Downing a conditional ace also unlocks a unique paint scheme for that aircraft type.
All Lux Lunae Units in Mission 8
Three Lux Lunae units show up in Mission 8, and all of them appear automatically on any difficulty. That makes 12 named pilots in total. Each one has its own Assault Record.
| Unit | Aircraft | Pilots |
|---|---|---|
| 77th Unit | F-15E Strike Eagle | Novacula, Talus |
| 150th Unit | F-16C Fighting Falcon | Aranea, Luscinia, Vespa, Cerambyx, Lucanus, Locusta, Libellula, Gallus |
| 180th Unit | Mirage 2000-5 | Patriota, Tormentum |
The 77th Unit is the Shadow group from earlier. Missed a few pilots? The in-game Data Viewer keeps a log of the aces you’ve shot down, so you can check your victims there.
How to S-Rank Mission 8
There is no universal rule for this but it’s best to follow the same rhythm as the walkthrough: armor wave, howitzer group, repeat, then bombers and Shadows when they show up. Bring area-of-effect air-to-ground weapons for the dense ground clusters.
Three things move your score. Don’t restart from a checkpoint, because it cuts your evaluation points. Take no damage, since a clean run earns the full 5,000-point Damage Taken Bonus. And down TESSERA, because enemy aces are worth roughly 2,000 points each.
Save your flares for missile locks, then pull a hard high-G turn late in the lock to break it. Free Mission also lets you chase the S-rank later, so you don’t have to nail it on a first clear.
Mission 8 Rewards (Trophy and Medal)
Beating Mission 8 in campaign mode automatically unlocks the Bronze trophy/achievement “Retaking the Capital.” You don’t need to do anything special for it.
There is no mission-specific medal for Mission 8. You also won’t unlock any new aircraft or parts from this mission, so the trophy is your only reward, besides the dopamine rush of bombing people for half an hour!
Mission 8 Story Explained (Spoilers)
Mission 8 is a diversion. The FCU waits for the Land Battleship Xanthos to move out of Theve’s range, then tricks it into attacking White Valley. While it’s busy there, your side retakes the capital.
Purple Magic Flight has the job of slowing Xanthos down. They engage it head-on, and during the fight they discover it’s vulnerable at its secondary tracks. Then the whole flight is killed.
You can’t save them. These deaths are scripted, not your failure. Coster is hit hard by it, and it’s one of the game’s saddest moments. I’d say the radio chatter does most of the work here, since the mission keeps adding casualties while you’re still trying to win.
That’s everything you need to know about Ace Combat 8 Mission 8. Do you have any tips for fans I forgot to mention? Write them in the comments below, please.
FAQ
Why does Mission 8 crash on PC?
Steam players report crashes about halfway through, usually during scripted dialogue. Learn more about Ace Combat 8 crashing and its fixes.
