Final Fantasy 7 Tips & Tricks

• Manipulation! - This is an underrated materia. Cait Sith has it equipped when he first enters the party. The game says it controls the enemies. You may be thinking that it doesn't do much for you. If you think so, then you are wrong. This materia works great for using enemy MP to hurt themselves badly or even heal you, without consuming any MP! Whovever has done the manipulation will gain control of the enemy if the manipulation is successful. Then, whenever the manipulating character's time guage is filled, you have the choice of using up to three of the manipulated enemy's commands. If you want the manipulating ally to be able to use normal attacks again, have someone else use a regular attack on the manipulated enemy. The character that manipulated will be able to use his/her normal attacks, but the enemy will be back to normal. (Now read the paragraph again and see how many times I used a form of the word "Manipulate"! ^_^)
• Change the channel, the show's a repeat - Probably the best command materia in the game is Mime. It can be found in a cave on the western island if you have a Green, Black, or Gold Chocobo. This command can repeat whatever the last character done, without using any MP! So if you master it to give birth to a new one, you can create a chain effect with W-Summon and Knights of the Round without having to worry about renergizing much MP. Note: Don't have any of the Counter Materias equipped when using this! If your character counters an attack, the person who mimes will mimic the counter instead of what you want to mime (unless the counter is the attack/spell you want to mime).
• Strago's Lore command, now in materia - The Enemy Skill materia IMHO is the second best command materia in the game. If you know how to gain the skills, they can be very helpful. The attack skills are fairly easy to get, but there are also curative skills. You can get the curative skills by three ways, 1) Use Confu on the enemy so it may use the spell on you, 2) Cast Reflect on the enemy so when it casts the spell on itself it will bounce and hit you, or 3) Manipulate the enemy (see Manipulation!) and make it use the skill on you. #3 is the best choice. There are lots of Enemy Skills that may replace some of your magic materia. For example, the Big Guard skill casts Wall AND Haste on the entire party! For more Enemy Skills, click here. Note: You can't get an Enemy Skill by having an ally use an Enemy Skill on you. In other words, you can only learn them directly from enemies! You also can't learn them from the enemies in the Battle Square!
• All together now - The All materia can be considered the most vital materia of the game. But are you tired of equiping half of your slots with All materia? Well then fear no more! (Warning! I'm starting to sound like an infomercial!) The Mega-All independent materia! It is like equipping all of your materia with All. It even works on certain command materia. In addition it let's you use the Slash-All command. This is one of the best independent materia in the game!
• Double, double your refreshment - The W Materias can make you a very powerful fighter. The W-Item doesn't help much. The W-Magic is good for super recovery while healing, dealing double damage, or a combo of the two. The W-Summon is best used with the Knights of the Round Materia and the MP Turbo. The downside of the Ws is that you MUST use two items/spells/summons in one turn if you want to use a(n) item/spell/summon. So if you only want to use one item/spell/summon, you have to either waste a second on something you don't need or want, or not use the item/spell/summon at all.
• Back from the dead - Here's a great way to, at the most part, keep you from falling in battle. First, you need the Revive materia, which is pretty easy to find (you can buy it in Junon). Second, you need the Final Attack support materia. You can get it by defeating Daos in the special mode in the Battle Square (see Ultimate fighting champions). Equip the Final Attack and Revive in two link slots. Whatever is paired with the Final Attack gets cast when that person dies. So if you have Revive with it, you will be revived when you die! It has two minor flaws though. 1) You can only will be automatically revived the number of times equal to the number of stars of the Final Attack Materia and 2)if you don't have enough MP to cast the spell, you won't be revived. Note: Even if you have the Mega-All Materia equipped with them, the spell will only be targeted on the person who has the combo equipped when the person dies.
• Cheapskate notice - Two of the most valuable materias in the game are the Gil. Plus and the Exp. Plus materias. They both can be bought in exchange for GP at the Wonder Square. The Gil. Plus doubles the amount of Gil you get after battles. The Exp. Plus increases the amount of exp. gain to the character who has it equipped. The Exp. Plus is best used on low-level characters.
• Ultimate fighting - The Battle Square in the Gold Saucer can get you some really cool items. You can get the Enemy Lure Materia, which is good for building levels, the Speed Plus Materia, the W-Summon Materia, and even Cloud's Level 4 Limit Break, Omnislash! Ominislash can deal out more damage than Knights of the Round if it is equipped with the Ultima Weapon. To do good in these battles I suggest you use Cloud (you have to in the special mode). First, de-equip all of the All Materia because there will only be one ally fighting. Next, equip him/her with the most powerful weapon you have that has a decent amount of materia slots, materia growth doesn't matter. Now, I suggest equipping at least the following materias: Counter Attack, Slash-All, Restore, Barrier, Deathblow with the blue Counter, Contain with Added Effect in your weapon, Mime, and at least one powerful Summon (just in case you get in trouble). If you have the Master Magic Materia, equip it. And last of all, to prevent yourself from gettng a bad status effect, equip the Ribbon. Now the battles should be fairly easy. During the battles, if your Limit gauge get's filled, you should save it for the eighth battle if at all possible. Usually the Limit Break (usually Meteorian and Omnislash) will defeat the final enemy. After you buy Omnislash and the W-Summon, you can compete in the special battles (see Ultimate fighting champions).
• Utimate fighting champions- Now that you have gotten into the special battles, you can fight the really tough enemies. Of the above (see Ultimate fighting) you should de-equip the Added Effect-Contain combo (these enemies can't be effected by that) and you should equip Knights of the Round as the powerful summon. You may want to also de-equip the Counters, so your Mime doesn't get messed up. The first six enemies should be easy, as long as you don't recieve any bad handicaps, if you do, try it again. On the last battle you should use the W-Summon-Knights of the Round and keep miming that. You can also use Omnislash. Follow these rules, and the battle won't take long. If you are able to win, you will receive the Final Attack materia (see Back from the dead).
• Let's go home - The Key to the City is a good item to find. It gives you the ability to re-enter Midgar, although it is NOT neccesary to beat the game. When you get the airship, return to Midgar and there will be a guy outside that says he lost the Key. Now go to Bone Village. Ask them to dig for normal treasure. If you find the correct location, you should get it! Now in Midgar, in the Weapons Shop on Wall Street, you can find a guy selling a Sneak Glove for 129,000 Gil. The price may seem steep, but it increases your stealing rate.
• I need more power! - A great place to help level up your characters and materia is in the forest around Mideel. All the enemies give 200-320 AP, around 2000 exp, and quite a bit of gil. This is usually where I level up my characters. If you want to level up your materia even faster, read below. Note: You must have the airship to be able to do this.
• Living in a materia world - If you need to level up your materia faster than 200-320 AP per battle, you can find two enemies in the Northern Cave that give you lots of AP. When you get to the part where the path splits, go left, and then when it splits again, go up. Walk around that area to encounter an enemy (equip the Enemy Lure Materia to have better chances). One of the enemies that gives up a lot of AP looks like a floating red egg. If you beat the group of eggs (usually groups of three), you will get 0 exp., but you will get about 2000 AP. The second is the Magic Pot. In order to be able to damage it, you have to use an Elixir on it. Once you do that you should be able to beat it. It should not attack you at all. Each Magic Pot will give you about 8000 exp., 8500 gil., and 1000 AP. If you need more Elixirs, steal them from the Master Tonberries that appears randomly.
• What was that for?! - After you become familiar with the game, you should equip only materia that would make sense to equip, unless you are trying to level up the materia. For example, entering a boss battle with the Pre-Emptive and the Enemy Lure Materias equipped is silly unless you have regular fights immediately afterwards. Entering a battle against an ice creature with a Fire Ring equipped is also silly. Note: The above may be proved wrong if you have the materias equipped ONLY for leveling up materia.
• Try, try again - And last of all remember to save often. You never know when there will be a power surge and you lose an hour of gameplay, or there might be a REALLY tough boss behind the next corner. Remember the automatic reset code (which you may remember from the dog in the Beginners' Hall), for those times when you don't feel like pressing the reset button. It is L1+L2+R1+R2+Start+Select. Also, try playing the game in different ways to see if anything different happens.

1. Equip your characters with their best weapons and armor. Also equip accessories that you think will help you out.
2. Equip the Knights of the Round materia with the MP Turbo and either the W-Summon or the Mime Materia to make things easy for you. You can also use this to immediatly destroy Jenova-Synthesis. Bizarro-Sephiroth and Safer-Sephiroth can be beaten with two Knights of the Round spells, easily. For the person who has it equipped, you will also want to equip a Ribbon or cast Resist on him/her. If you don't, Safer-Sephiroth might use Pale Horse to make your character Mute right after you register the command, then the spell would be wasted!
3. If you don't have the Knights of the Round, Bizarro-Sephiroth can be a long battle. You should equip other summon materias to make up for it. Destroy the right and left magics first and just keep attacking. Bizarro-Sephiroth should be fairly easy then. If you have an Enemy Skill Materia equipped, you can learn Safer-Sephiroth's Shadow Flare (if you haven't learned it already) and use it against him. The W Materias are bound to help you out. Wall, Haste, and Regen are good spells to cast on your allies. Watch out for Safer-Sephiroth's lengthy, awesome-looking, and powerful summon spell, Super Nova! (It makes you wish you could use it!) Keep yourself alive and healthy, and the battle should be easy.

How to beat Ultimate Weapon:

1. The main part of beating Ultimate Weapon is finding it. Once you get to the 3rd disk, go to the eastern continent. Use the airship and go to the waterfall on the continent, (Note: This is waterfall is NOT Vincent's waterfall) you should find Ultimate Weapon hovering around there.
2. Equip yourself with the Barrier-All and Restore-All combos. Now bash your airship into it to enter battle. Prepare the battle by casting Regen and Wall. Now get in as many hits as you can on this beast. After awhile, it will fly away.
3. You still haven't beat it yet! Ultimate Weapon will now start flying around the map. Follow it and keep it in your sights. If you lose it, fly around until you find it. While it's moving, you can't engage in battle with it, but you can bash your airship against it several times to make it stop moving quicker. Once it stops moving, you may want to switch to inside the airship, so you can save and restore.
4. Keep repeating steps 2 and 3 until Ultimate Weapon flys straight to Cosmo Canyon (not Gongaga Village).
5. Now equip each of your characters with an Enemy Skill materia if they don't already have it equipped. Fight just the same like you have been fighting, this time though, it won't run away and it will have more HP. If you are able to beat it, it will use Shadow Flare, an Enemy Skill, as a final attack on one character (that's why I said to equip the Enemy Skills). Once you beat it, you will get Cloud's most powerful weapon, the Ultima Weapon.

My method of beating Ruby Weapon (read before you attack):

1. To find Ruby Weapon you must have already beaten Ultimate Weapon (see above). Fly your airship to the desert on the western continent. You should see a red "rose" in the desert. When you are ready, fly the airship as low as you can and fly into the rose. Ruby Weapon will pop out of the sand.
2. You should have the max of 9999 HP for Cloud before you enter this battle (you may need to equip HP Plus materia to get this) and at least 750 Max MP. Before you enter this battle you should equip Cloud with the Ribbon, a Mystile, the Final Attack-Revive combo, the HP Absorb-Knights of the Round combo, Enemy Skill (to learn Shadow Flare if you haven't already), W-Summon, W-Magic, Mime, Magic Plus (not MP Plus), the Elemental(2+ Stars)-Fire combo (or instead of Fire, you can put Irfit or Pheonix), and a Master Magic Materia if you have one (otherwise, just bring Restore and Barrier). Note: You may have to re-equip Cloud with the Enhance Sword to equip all of these materia.
3. The method I use to beat it may seem weird, but it works. Have someone cast Regen and Wall on Cloud ONLY. Now kill the other two members of YOUR party off. If you don't kill off the members, then Ruby Weapon will use Whirlpool, which removes a random person from the battle. Whirlpool will not remove a dead person and will not remove the last person from battle. If RW uses Whirlpool on Cloud, run away or reset and try again. Instead of killing both party members you can let RW Whirlpool one of them and then kill off the other. Now RW will dig it's claws in the sand, so now you can damage it. Note: If you let RW Whirlpool the two characters I said to kill, then it will cast Comet2 on you several times before it puts it's claws in the sand. That's why I said to kill off both of the characters. I don't know why it works this way, but it does.
4. Now cast Knights of the Round, twice (with W-Summon) on RW. Because of the HP-Absorb Materia, this should max out your hit points. After each summon, RW will counter with Ultima. If you have the Mystile equipped, the spell has about a 50-50 chance of missing you (it still shouldn't be too much problems if it hits you, unless your Spirit is low. The claws can do half damage to you, so you can't die from them, and they can do half MP loss to you, which shouldn't be too much of a problem. The Flame Thrower-like attack that Ruby Weapon uses shouldn't be a problem if you equipped the Elemental(2+ Stars)-Fire/Irfit/Pheonix combo in your armor. The Ribbon will keep you from getting multiple status effect by the claws. If by chance you die, you will be automatically revived providing you have the MP to cast Life(2) and enough Final Attack stars. Now, keep miming the Knights of the Round attack and you should keep doing ultimate damage while keeping your HP maxed out. After a few Mimes, you should win the battle. You will get 400,000 Exp (I think) and 50,000 AP for winning. You will also get the Desert Rose, which when traded with a guy in Kalm, you can get a Gold Chocobo (but if you had Knights of the Round, then you already had a Gold Chocobo, unless you used a Game Shark).

To do this you need to be EXTREMELY leveled up. How high? Well, I'll just say you need the Master Summon Materia. (To get it you need to master all the summon materia and bring it to the place where the Huge Materia is stored and check on the red one.) If you don't know where to find all of the summons, refer to a players' guide, a walkthru, or email me. Now here is what you need equipped:

1st Person - W Summon, Master Summon-MP Absorb (NOT Turbo), Final Attack(the more stars the better)-Phenoix(the more stars the better), Magic Plus(optional)
2nd Person - Mime, Magic Plus(optional), Underwater
3rd Person - Restore (3+ Stars)-All(the more stars the better), Enemy Skill ( w/ White Wind)

To get the Underwater Materia, go to the tubes in the Underwater Reactor via Junon. Wander around until you find a Ghost Ship. Sense it to see its HP. Fight it and make sure the final hit against it is Morph. It will change into a Guidebook. Trade that with a guy in Kalm to get a Underwater Materia. This materia will eliminate the 20min. time limit against EW.

Now use the submarine to submerge and engage in battle with EW. Have the first person cast Knights of the Round twice, the MP Absorb will keep his/her MP up. Then have the second person Mime that. If EW attacked then either have your 3rd person use White Wind if his/her HP is high, or Cure3-All if it is low. Now repeat the process. If EW uses its ultra-powerful Aire Tam Storm, then the 1st person should have no trouble reviving the party with Phenoix. You will never run out of Knights of the Round, since the Master Summon lets you cast the spells an infanite number of times. Keep doing this, and EW will eventually die. Trade the Earth Harp you get for all three master materia with the man in Kalm.