| How to Grow Materia Materia grows by being equipped to someone who is in a battle, whether they use the materia or not. After each battle you get EXP points (which help your character's level increase) and AP points (which are like experience points for your materia, the more points your materia have the stronger they are and the more capabilities they have). Be careful because some weapons do not permit materia growth, although most do. There are some weapons that double the AP points your materia receive and a few that even triple the AP points--check out the list of everyone's weapons on the Character Info page for more details. When your materia gather enough AP they become full or mastered (this is not thesame as MASTER MATERIA). A mastered materia is as strong as it can possibly get, it won't gain any more AP but it will cause a brand new version of itself to be "born" in your materia pack and you can keep using the mastered one or you can start growing the newly born one. So, for example, even though there is only one Contain materia in the whole game, if you keep growing it you can have as many as you want. Raising money, EXP, and AP This section contains info on some of the best places to get good AP for your battle time, it also includes such info for gaining EXP and gil. For a quick boost of gil sell off a mastered All materia, you get nearly 1 1/2 million gil for it! The best place to raise these things is outside of Mideel after it has been destroyed. It's true that the Crashed Gelnika raises these things faster, if you've got the sub to get down to it, but to refresh your HP and MP you need to use a tent at the save point in the entrance, and you don't have an infinite supply of tents. Of course if you have learned the White Wind and Magic Hammer enemy skills you can keep fighting, perhaps infinitely, without having to use any tents. If you got his route then you'll want to checkout the room to the right when you first get in the ship, it has the better EXP, AP gain. The other benefit of building at the Crashed Gelnika is that you can morph the creatures here and get as many sources (speed source, luck source, guard source, etc.) as you want. The other thing to do is go to Mideel. After Mideel has been destroyed you can always go back in and talk to the nurses up on the ledge, the nurse on the left will let you refresh your MP and HP for free as often as you like. (Of course this is only if you don't have a game shark; there are game shark codes to allow you to get 57,599 EXP and AP after every battle. There's also one to get infinite money. If you don't have a game shark you can still build up gil, EXP and AP, it just takessome patience!) If it's gil you're after stick to the beaches; there you'll fight the sea worm. He has somewhere between 8 and 10 thousand HP and likes to cast darkness, so equip your characters accordingly. If you kill him you get a fair amount of AP and EXP and 5000 gil, if you run up and down the beach and fight him 20 times you've got 100,000 gil. Be warned that Earth based attacks and summons are absorbed by the sea worm, so don't use them. If EXP and AP are what you're after then stick to the forest around Mideel. You'll often run into a trio of silk-worm like Crysaleses, they like to cast sleep on characters, so equip accordingly. If you kill them you get around 1600 EXP and 240 AP. The other creatures you'll find (usually in groups of 3 or 4) are ugly green things called 'headhunters'. Killing off a quartet of these guys yields about 1900 EXP and 320 AP--not too shabby. A third option (one of the favorites although it happens so late in the game that I have already used one of the two methods above and so have no use for it and in fact have never used it!) is to check out the Magic Pots in the crater. You'll need a lot of elixirs to do this, you'll probably need to use the W-item trick listed on the Items Info page). In the Northern Crater take the first left then go up. Go through the first room that you come to. Now in this room just walk around and you'll fight two great enemies. The first are magic pots which give you 8,000 EXP and 1,000 AP each. They usually come by themselves or with a partner. To kill these enemies you need to feed them an elixir. Also in this room you'll find a rare threesome. They're called Movers, they're small orange-red spheres, I think (I've never seen them, of course I've never tried) and they give you 2,400 AP for the three of them and 160,000 gil (240,000, at least, with gil plus materia--thanks to Andy Ellsworth with the correction on this one). The only bad part is they give you no EXP points. Here's a suggestion from Binky (I haven't tried this, let me know how it works for you if you try it). At some point when you're in Junon make your way to the underground area, when you get to the point right before where you'd get the sub you'll find a red alarm on a wall, hit the alarm on the wall and while wondering around Junon you will get into some battles with enemies that might not normally appear at that part of the game, they'll be some tough, but manageable battlesand you'll get a generous amount of AP and EXP for your trouble. Of course, whichever location you use you should check to see if you've kept some of your old weapons and armor (you didn't sell them, did you?) because some of them increase AP for the materia equipped in themat 2X and even 3X the normal rate. For armor it's the Platinum Bangle andthe Rune Armor--each of these doubles AP. MASTER materia MASTER materia come in three varieties; red, green, and yellow. The Red one allows you to cast any summon spell in the game. The green one allows you to cast any spell from the various green materia. And the yellow one allows youto cast most of the spells from the various yellow materia. To get MASTER materia what you have to do is have a mastered version of each materia of a specific color and then trade them in at Bugenhagen's lab. For example, to get the MASTER SUMMON materia you'll need to have a mastered version of every red materia in the game and then go to Bugenhagen'slab in Cosmo Canyon and examine the huge Red materia. When you do this all of your individual mastered materia will disappear and the MASTER SUMMONwill appear in its place. Use the same procedure for each of the other two colors--for the green one examine the huge green materia in the lab, for the yellow one examine the huge yellow materia. Of course it's great to shark in the three MASTER materia, red, yellow, and green. But be warned, you're not able to give up your quest for materia yet. It's a good idea to collect and multiply Revive materia-- you might want to hook these to your Final Attack materia later--you can link MASTER materia to Final Attack but you have no say over which spell it casts! The same reasoning applies to the argument for collecting and multiplying the Phoenix materia--sure, you've got Phoenix within your red MASTER materia, but you can't count on linking that to a Final Attack materia because you never know which summon it will cast. As for the warning about the yellow MASTER materia, well here goes. Unlike the green and red MASTER materia, the yellow MASTER materia DOES NOT give you every possible spell for that color. It only has Sense, Morph, Throw, Manipulate, Steal, Deathblow and Mime-- things like W-Item, W-Summon, Slash All, and Mug (which is what you get from a mastered version of Steal) will still have to be picked up separately if you want to use those spells. Where's the Final Attack materia? One of the most frequent questions I get is, "where do I find the final attack materia?" Well, you have to go back to battle square at the Gold Saucer when you're on disc 2 or 3. What you need is to have learned Cloud's level 4 limitbreak (Omnislash) and to have the W-Summon materia equipped to Cloud (both of these have to be won at battle square, you probably did this already-- Omnislash takes 32000BP and W-Summon takes 64000BP-- remember, you BP resets to zero when you leave battle square!). You also need to have Cloud carrying his ultimate weapon, which you get after defeating ULTIMATE WEAPON who shows over Lake Junon right after the shield on the crater has been destroyed. He has a tendency to run away after he gets hit a couple of times so you'll probably have to hunt him down and fight him several times-- eventually he'll settle over Cosmo Canyon-- at that point he's done running and is ready to fight to the finish. Take all three of these things (make sure Cloud is carrying the W-Summon and his Ultima Weapon and that his limit break is set to level 4) to battlesquare and talk to the woman at the registration desk, she'll ask you if you want to compete in some special battles--say yes and be prepared for 8 fights (much more difficult than previous ones) and there will again be handicaps. Just a note, I've had a number of people tell me that you only need the W-Summon materia and the Ultima Weapon to get into these battles--having just those two items has never worked for me, nor for several friends I know. Bahamut ZERO This great summon materia, which is part of the dragon Bahamut clan, I only found after replaying the game through. Simply open the safe type thing on the rocket when escaping. The code is Cirle, Square, Cross, Cross, and get the Huge Materia. When you go to Cosmo Canyon into Bugenhagen's hologram of the solar system, press square next to the blue materia and you'll get the Bahamut Zero summon materia. Before you do this make sure you've got Bahamut and Neo Bahamut. See the Summon Materia table to find these. Knights of the Round This Ultimate summon, in other words, the most powerful summon you can get can only be gained once you've successfully breed a Golden Chocobo. Once you've got a Golden Chocobo, then go to the top right corner of the world map, it's not shown as land on the world map map (when you press select) but theres a round Island where the Highwind can't land. See the Worldmap for location. Also see Chocobo Breeding Mime, Quadraand HP <-> MP I'm afraid its the same story for these materias. You need a green, blue, black and Golden Chocobo to get these materias, depending on the cave location (there in small caves around the world map). If you need more info go to the worldmap and Chocobo breeding. If you do have these then go to the western area near Wutai, and go south a bit, for mime. Look out for these caves around the world map. Full Cure You know that item shop in Cosmo Canyon, well in disc 1 theres a rope across the counter stopping you from passing, but if you go back later in the game the rope is gone so you can pass and get the FullCure materia. Contain To get this materia you have to get some mimett greens and feed them to those small chocobos in the shops in mideel. Then you scratch them behind the ears and it'll give contain to you. Ultima In north Corel, later on in the game, you need to stop that train which you take over from crashing into North Corel. If you succeed then you are given the awesome Ultima magic as a reward from the happy townsfolk. |
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