Final Fantasy VII
Final Fantasy VII completion tracker Tick things off as you go. Progress is saved in this browser only — there is no account and nothing is sent anywhere, so clearing your browser data clears your progress.
27 of 27 areas catalogued so far. Areas still being worked through are listed below so you can see what is coming, and what is not finished yet.
Point of no return: Riding out of Midgar at the end of the Shinra Building escape. But one district closes permanently long before that and cannot be reached again by any means, so treat every area here as a single visit and clear it before the story moves on.
Sector 1 and the No. 1 Reactor Cloud Strife character Starting character. The game lets you rename every party member as they join, so the names used across this site are the game's defaults and yours may read differently. Long-range weapons do full damage from the back row; Cloud's sword does not. Barret Wallace character Joins at the reactor entrance. His gun-arm is a long-range weapon, so put him in the back row and he loses nothing — there is no reason ever to have him in front. Potion x2 (station platform)Missable item Examine both downed guards after the tutorial fight. Lost after: Leaving the station platform for the reactor. You never return. Phoenix Down (No. 1 Reactor)Missable item Chest in the room off to the side of the entrance, past the first gate. Lost after: Escaping the No. 1 Reactor. Potion (No. 1 Reactor piping)Missable item On the floor at the far end of the upper pipe run, near where Jessie is standing. Lost after: Escaping the No. 1 Reactor. Restore MateriaCopy missable materia Sitting on the walkway immediately before the core. The first Materia in the game, and you cannot equip it until Barret's tutorial back in Sector 7. Lost after: Escaping the No. 1 Reactor. Get another: The Sector 7 slums Materia shop sells Restore for 750 gil, and it is on sale in most towns for the rest of the game. Missing this copy costs you gil, not a playthrough. Assault Gun (Barret) weapon Guard Scorpion always drops it — a 100% drop, not a chance. A straight upgrade on the Gatling Gun on every axis: 17 attack to 14, 98 accuracy to 97, and two linked slots where the Gatling Gun has one unlinked. Guard Scorpion defeated achievement 800 HP, Lv12. Takes DOUBLE damage from Lightning and nullifies Gravity; no other affinity. Always drops the Assault Gun. When the tail comes up it is in counter stance — attacking then triggers a party-wide laser. The game's own tutorial text tells you to attack while the tail is raised, and it is wrong. Free Jessie during the escapeConfirmed in game achievement Not optional, whatever the guides say. Her leg is caught in the bridge grating, the reactor exit will not open without her, and Biggs tells you she is not back yet — you go down and get her or you do not leave. This is why no guide can name a reward for "choosing" to free her: there is no choice to make. The timer is a flat ten minutes and it keeps running at all times, battles and menus included. Sector 8 The train home Sector 7 slums The train to the No. 5 Reactor Sector 4 and the No. 5 Reactor Sector 5 church and slums Aerith Gainsborough character Starts the date counter fifty points ahead of everyone else. Drop the correct barrel in the churchMissable achievement Choose to stay and fight rather than run. The right barrel is one point toward Aerith; the wrong one costs three. Lost after: The chase scene ending. Cover Materia (Aerith's garden) materia Settled: it is in the garden. The pickup lives in the garden map's own script, not in any slums house — the guide that put it upstairs in the slums had conflated it with the Turtle's Paradise flyer. Get another: Wall Market sells Cover for 1,000 gil once you come back through, and the whole area reopens later on Disc 2 with the Key to Sector 5. Ether (Aerith's garden) item Potion and Phoenix Down (upstairs package) item The white package on the bedroom floor. You have to sneak out past Aerith's door to get up there, and you must walk — running wakes her and restarts the attempt. Turtle's Paradise Flyer No. 1Copy missable Sources disagree collectible One of six flyers scattered across the world; hand all six in at Wutai much later for a set of stat Sources and a Megalixir. You have to read the sign, not just enter the room. Lost after: Leaving Midgar at the end of Disc 1. Get another: The Key to Sector 5, excavated at Bone Village on Disc 2, reopens the Sector 5 slums and lets you read it then. Note this is a DIFFERENT return trip from the parachute raid on Midgar — that one does not reach these slums at all. Sources disagree: Settled: it is upstairs in the Sector 5 slums house — the same room as the boy and his drawer, which rules out the guides that put it in a different building. Which side of the slums that house sits on is a question about screen layout that the data cannot answer; check it when you play. 5 gil or a Turbo Ether (the boy's drawer) item Settled: the same room holds a 5 gil pickup and a Turbo Ether pickup, and they are mutually exclusive. Take the 5 gil now, or leave it and the Turbo Ether is there on a later visit. The flyer is on the wall in this room too. The girlfriend questionMissable achievement "No way!" is one point toward Aerith. "Yeah, that's right" costs five — the heaviest single penalty in Midgar. Lost after: The conversation ending. Sector 6 and Wall Market Sense Materia (Sector 6 playground)Sources disagree materia Get another: Red XIII joins with a Sense Materia equipped. Sources disagree: The pickup is in a Sector 6 map, which is settled. Whether it can be taken on the first pass through or only on the way back after the plate falls depends on a script condition we have not decoded, so that half is still open. Member's CardMissable Sources disagree key-item Required to get into the Honey Bee Inn at all. Lost after: The Don Corneo sequence beginning. Sources disagree: Sources put the man who hands this over in the south-west, the south-east and the lower right of Wall Market. He is in the lower part of the market; the compass direction is not agreed. Silk DressMissable key-item The dress shop sends you to the owner's father in the bar. Answer "soft" and then "shimmers" for the best of the three dresses. Lost after: The Don Corneo sequence beginning. Blonde WigMissable Sources disagree key-item Beat Big Bro at the gym. Thirty seconds, three buttons in rhythm — squat, up, back to ready — and mashing loses. Win for the Blonde Wig, tie for the Dyed Wig, lose for the plain one, and the result stands. Lost after: The squat contest being decided. Win, tie or lose, the result stands — you cannot rematch for a better wig. Sources disagree: Settled, and every guide has this wrong: there is NO fixed number of squats to hit. The contest runs 30 seconds and you simply need more than your opponent, whose count varies. The reported thresholds of 14, 17 and 21 are all artefacts of somebody's single run. Diamond TiaraMissable key-item Stay at the inn, buy the 200 gil item from its vending machine, and trade it to the man slumped at the Materia shop counter. The 100 and 50 gil items give you the lesser tiaras. Lost after: The Don Corneo sequence beginning. Sexy CologneMissable key-item Eat at the diner, answer "It was all right" for the pharmacy coupon, redeem it for the Digestive, and give that to the man in the bar's back room. Lost after: The Don Corneo sequence beginning. Lingerie or Bikini BriefsMissable Sources disagree key-item Two of the Honey Bee Inn rooms give one each. Requires the Member's Card. Lost after: The Don Corneo sequence beginning. Sources disagree: Most sources say the two are interchangeable and neither is better. One lists a Bikini Briefs combination as producing the best outcome while another scores both at zero, so the point is unsettled — but no source claims one is worse than the other. MakeupMissable Sources disagree key-item Applied by one of the girls in the Honey Bee Inn's dressing room. Lost after: The Don Corneo sequence beginning. Sources disagree: One account has this applying a random bonus signalled by a sound cue; another says it does not affect the outcome at all. Don Corneo picks CloudMissable Sources disagree achievement The payoff for the full best-item set. It also removes two forced fights that only happen if he picks someone else. Lost after: The selection scene. Sources disagree: One guide publishes an exact point table with a hard threshold, which would make a full set deterministic. Another insists selection is still not guaranteed even with everything and tells you to save. We have not been able to settle this. Ether (mansion basement)Missable item Lost after: Leaving Don Corneo's mansion. Hyper (behind Corneo's bed)Missable item Lost after: Leaving Don Corneo's mansion. Phoenix Down (henchmen's room)Missable item Only reachable if Corneo does NOT pick Cloud. It is mutually exclusive with the perfect-disguise outcome, so a single playthrough cannot have both — worth knowing before you decide the disguise is a completion target. Lost after: Leaving Don Corneo's mansion. "Yes, his name's Barret…"Missable achievement Five points toward Barret. Lost after: The bedroom conversation ending. The sewers and the Train Graveyard Steal Materia (sewers)Missable materia In plain sight on the walkway past the boss. Equip it before the Train Graveyard — there is a weapon there you can only get by stealing. Lost after: Leaving the sewers. Sewer consumable sweepMissable item Potions and a Phoenix Down from the barrels and the Aps drop. Treated as one sweep because they all vanish at the same moment. Lost after: Leaving the sewers. Aps defeated achievement 1,800 HP, Lv18. Settled: it takes DOUBLE damage from FIRE. It has no Lightning affinity at all, so the guides recommending Bolt here are simply wrong. It also nullifies Gravity and its back-attack multiplier is 4.0. Always drops a Phoenix Down. Striking Staff (steal from Eligor)Missable Sources disagree weapon Settled: a steal from Eligor at 12.7% — it is not a drop, and Eligor's actual drop is an Echo Screen at 3.2%, so killing one is four times less likely to give you anything than robbing it. Requires the Steal Materia from the sewers on a fast character. Eligor also morphs into a Mute Mask. The staff is 32 attack at 100 accuracy with four slots, one pair linked. Lost after: Leaving the Train Graveyard. Once the pillar sequence is done you can never fight these enemies again. Sources disagree: Whether the weapon can be bought later is still open — shop inventories are not in the field data we can read, so the three guides that disagree about this are still unresolved. Train Graveyard consumable sweepMissable item Nine pickups across the two screens — Potions, Hi-Potions, an Echo Screen and an Ether, on the carriage roofs and in the barrels. Lost after: Leaving the Train Graveyard. Talk to Aerith or Tifa first in the sewersMissable achievement Three points toward whichever one you approach first. Lost after: The scene ending. The Sector 7 pillar Ether (Reno)Missable item Settled: a 100% DROP, not a steal. This formation of Reno has no steal at all — the Touph Ring people remember robbing him for belongs to his much later appearances. He is 1,000 HP here, HALVES Lightning and nullifies Gravity, so the widely repeated "weak to Gravity and Bolt" is wrong in both halves. Lost after: The pillar sequence ending. Everything left in Sector 7Missable item Shops, the bar, the hidden basement, the Beginner's Hall, every NPC conversation. Treat a last walk through the slums as a real step, not housekeeping. Lost after: The plate collapse. Sector 7 is the only part of Midgar that is never reachable again by any route, on any disc, by any means. The Shinra Building Turtle's Paradise Flyer No. 2Copy missable Sources disagree collectible Bulletin board at the back of the lobby, behind the stairs. Lost after: Getting into the lift up to the 60th floor. The lobby is behind you from that point on. Get another: The lobby is on the route of the parachute raid on Midgar late in Disc 2, which is the last chance at it. This is a different trip from the Key to Sector 5, which is what recovers Flyer No. 1. Sources disagree: Settled: the flyer is in the ground-floor lobby map, and it is readable on this visit. The guide placing it on the second floor and the one claiming it is only readable during the Disc 2 raid are both wrong. Elixir (emergency stairwell)Missable item The only reward for taking the stairs instead of the front door. Sixty flights across nine screens, and no random encounters the whole way. Lost after: Reaching the 59th floor. Keycards 60, 62, 65, 66 and 68 key-item Story-gated, one per floor puzzle. You cannot progress without them, so they are not really collectibles — they are here so the floor count reads correctly. Elemental Materia (Mayor Domino)Copy missable Sources disagree materia The key card is handed over regardless of how many attempts you take, so only the first-attempt bonus is at stake. If you would rather buy the answer, the Deputy Mayor's hints escalate 500, 1,000, 2,000, 5,000 then 15,000 gil, and if you keep paying he eventually just hands over his own key card. Lost after: Your first guess at the password. Guess wrong once and this copy is gone for the rest of the game. Get another: Another Elemental Materia is available at Mount Nibel much later. Missing this one costs you the early copy, not the Materia. Sources disagree: Settled: the six words offered are BEST, KING, ORBS, BOMB, MAKO and HOJO, and the script has a correct-answer branch for only four of them — BEST, KING, BOMB and MAKO. ORBS and HOJO are never the answer. Wrong guesses DO award items: Elixir, Ether and Potion all have award lines, so the guide claiming wrong guesses give nothing but the key card is wrong, and the widely-copied single fixed answer appears nowhere in the game text. Which attempt gives which item is still open. Star Pendant (A Coupon)Missable accessory Prevents Poison. All three coupon prizes are obtainable in one run. Lost after: Leaving the 63rd floor. Four Slots (B Coupon)Missable armour Four unlinked Materia slots, 12 defence and 10 magic defence, normal growth. The magic defence is the part that matters: no other armour you can hold in Midgar has any at all above the Mythril Armlet's 8, and this has four slots to the Armlet's two. The armour table spells it "Four Slots", plural, so the guides correcting readers to a singular "Four Slot" have it backwards. Lost after: Leaving the 63rd floor. All Materia (C Coupon)Missable materia The second copy, if you took the Beginner's Hall one before the plate fell. Lost after: Leaving the 63rd floor. Phoenix Down and Ether (64th floor lockers)Missable item The third locker holds a weapon Cloud refuses to take — it belongs to a character you have not met yet, and it is still there on the Disc 2 raid. Lost after: Leaving the Shinra Building. Use the 64th floor vending machine (250 gil)Missable sidequest Settled: the Speed Source and Mind Source payouts live in the same 64th-floor map as the 250 gil drink that gives you nothing. It takes your money now and pays out on the Disc 2 raid, and only for a player it robbed here. Most missables lists do not carry this at all. Lost after: Leaving the Shinra Building. If you do not feed it now, the payout on the Disc 2 raid never appears. Poison Materia (67th floor)Copy missable materia Chest at the back of the laboratory. Lost after: The capture scene at the end of the 67th floor. Get another: Poison is on sale later for around 1,500 gil. Hardedge (steal from SOLDIER:3rd)Missable weapon Settled: a steal from SOLDIER:3rd at 12.7%. Worth the patience — 32 attack against the Buster Sword's 18, and four slots to the Buster Sword's two. SOLDIER:3rd's drop is a Loco weed, so the steal is the whole point of the encounter. It also takes DOUBLE damage from Fire and morphs into a Bolt Plume. Lost after: The capture scene. The 67th floor encounter pool does not come back. Carbon Bangle (steal from Moth Slasher)Missable armour Steal from Moth Slasher at 12.7%, repeatable while the encounters last. Moth Slasher has no drop at all, so stealing is the only thing it is worth fighting for. It also takes DOUBLE damage from Lightning. At 27 defence the Carbon Bangle nearly doubles the Titan Bangle and carries three slots, one pair of them linked. Lost after: The capture scene. Enemy Skill Materia (specimen tank)Missable materia In the tank on the 68th floor. This is the one genuinely unrecoverable Materia in the whole sequence and the strongest agreement across every source we checked. Take it the moment the cell opens, before you do anything else. Lost after: Going upstairs once the escape begins. It cannot be picked up during the escape, the 68th floor is not on the route of the Disc 2 raid, and there is no second copy anywhere in Midgar. Talisman (Sample:H0512)Missable accessory Settled: a 100% DROP from Sample:H0512, not a steal — the boss has no steal at all. It gives +10 Spirit and no status immunity. The boss absorbs Poison, halves Lightning and nullifies Gravity — it has no Fire or Ice weakness, so the guides recommending those are wrong. The smaller specimens in the same encounter are a separate 300 HP record that pays zero gil and drops a Tranquilizer, so there is nothing to gain by clearing them first. Lost after: The Sample:H0512 fight ending. Potion x4 (68th floor)Missable item Lost after: Going upstairs once the escape begins. Red XIII character Arrives with an All Materia and a Sense Materia already equipped. "Barret, take care of her!"Missable achievement Two points toward Barret. The other option costs two Tifa. Lost after: The escort choice. Who Cloud thinks about in the cellMissable achievement Three points to whoever you pick first, one to the second. Red XIII is worth nothing either way. Lost after: The scene ending. The escape Mythril Armlet armour Guaranteed Heli Gunner drop. Heli Gunner takes DOUBLE damage from Lightning AND from Wind, which no guide we read had both halves of. There is no menu between the two lift-shaft fights — go in with enough MP for both. Protect Vest accessory Guaranteed Rufus drop, and +10 Vitality once equipped. Rufus has no elemental weakness at all and is immune to Poison, Sleep, Stop, Paralysis and Darkness — the claim that he is susceptible to Poison is wrong. Dark Nation is only 140 HP and drops a Guard Source, also at 100%, so the dog you have to kill first pays a permanent stat item. Neither boss can be stolen from. Star Pendant (Motor Ball) accessory Guaranteed drop, and a second copy if you took the coupon one. Motor Ball is 2,600 HP and takes DOUBLE damage from Lightning — the one bestiary claiming it resists Lightning is wrong. It halves Fire and nullifies Gravity. The Pendant is the whole payout: 350 gil, and no steal. Finish the bike chase without losing anyoneMissable achievement Every rider that reaches the truck takes HP off a party member, and that damage carries straight into what comes next. There is no score and no prize — the reward for playing well is simply arriving healthy. Lost after: The chase ending. Kalm town Ether (house right of the inn)Unconfirmed item Through the small door under the staircase. Ether (middle house, upstairs)Unconfirmed item In the cabinet between the beds. Guard Source item Upstairs closet in the house with the little girl, on the same floor as the spiral stairs. PeacemakerSources disagree weapon Chest at the top of the winding staircase. It is a gun, and the character who uses guns is not in your party and will not be for a long time. Take it anyway; it will be waiting when he arrives. Sources disagree: One guide lists this among Kalm's missable items; another says the piano answer is the only missable thing in the whole town. The disagreement is really about whether Kalm can be revisited — see the note. Ether (far house)Unconfirmed item Under-stair door of the standalone house at the far side of town. Megalixir (inn, upstairs)Sources disagree item Only appears after the flashback. Examine the cabinet by the stairwell repeatedly — Cloud eventually kicks it loose rather than opening it. Sources disagree: Most sources say to examine the cabinet five times; one just says to keep trying. One source additionally claims Cloud, Tifa or Cid must be leading the party for it to work, which nobody else mentions. Kalm shopsSources disagree item First proper shops since Midgar. Mythril Saber, Cannon Ball, Mythril Claw and Full Metal Staff are real upgrades, and the Materia shop is where a Steal for the Mythril Mine comes from if you skipped the sewers. Sources disagree: Two walkthroughs list the Materia shop as stocking only Earth and Heal; three reference sources list five, adding Poison, Steal and Sense. The walkthroughs are probably recommending rather than enumerating, but they do not say so. The Nibelheim flashback Play Tifa's piano — answer "jammed on it"Missable sidequest The only genuinely missable thing in Kalm, and it is inside a flashback most players treat as a cutscene. Play the piano in Tifa's house and say you jammed on it. It gates an extra Elemental Materia much later in the game. Five independent sources agree it is the sole Kalm missable. Lost after: The flashback moving past Nibelheim town, when the party sleeps at the inn. The flashback is never replayable, so there is no second chance at this one. Orthopedic UnderwearMissable Sources disagree Unconfirmed item In the drawer in Tifa's house. Lost after: The flashback ending. Sources disagree: Sources document picking it up inside the flashback but none of them says whether it survives into your real inventory afterwards. Worth checking when you play. Dragon fought alongside Sephiroth (Mt. Nibel)Sources disagree achievement 3,500 HP, absorbs Fire, nullifies Gravity, and pays 900 exp, 110 AP and 1,400 gil on the sheet. You cannot lose it — Sephiroth is doing the work — but it is the first time the game shows you what a real damage dealer looks like, and that is the point of the scene. Its Gold Armlet is 46 defence and 28 magic defence, against 18 and 8 on the Mythril Armlet the Kalm shop sells. Sources disagree: The data settles the loot and cannot settle whether you can reach it. This Dragon carries a guaranteed Fire Fang drop and a 50.8% Gold Armlet steal — the identical record to the Dragon on the real Mt. Nibel later. What the tables do not say is what the flashback party is carrying, or whether a flashback pickup survives into your actual inventory, which is the same open question as the Orthopedic Underwear in the drawer. Check both when you play. Conversations that count The road out Chocobo Farm and the Marshes The farm Choco/Mog Materia materia Free. Talk to the chocobo in the outdoor pen and answer "Wark" — it dances, and hands it over. A summon for nothing, five minutes after you arrive. Chocobo Lure Materia (2,000 gil) materia Buy it from Choco Billy in the barn. Without it wild chocobos do not join battles at all, and the whole breeding sidequest — the one that ends in a gold chocobo and the best Materia in the game — starts here. Get another: A second Chocobo Lure sits free on the ground by the farm fence later in the game, so this is a purchase for convenience, not a one-off. GreensSources disagree item Gysahl are the cheap ones and all you need to catch a bird. The expensive greens hold a chocobo still for longer, which matters more later when you are catching specific ones than it does now. Sources disagree: The full price ladder comes from a single source, and its Curiel figure (1,000 gil) disagrees with the value that circulates elsewhere (1,500). The same source's table gives Sylkis and Mimett identical effects, which reads like an error in it. Rent a stable (10,000 gil)Sources disagree sidequest Only worth it when you start breeding. Without a stable a caught chocobo simply runs off the moment you dismount; with one it goes back to the farm and waits. Sources disagree: Sources give the capacity as six stables, six chocobos, or four chocobos — three different numbers across four guides. Catch your first chocobo achievement Fight on the chocobo tracks in the pale grass beside the farm with Lure equipped. Feed it greens to keep it busy, kill everything else, and do not touch the bird — hit it and it leaves. Avoid All-linked magic for the same reason. The bird itself is worth 10 exp, 1 AP and 1 gil and carries no drop, steal or morph, so there is never a reason to kill one. The marshes Cross the marshSources disagree achievement Ride, do not walk. A chocobo suppresses random encounters entirely and outruns the snake. Walking it is survivable and a lot of people have done it, but there is nothing to gain. Sources disagree: Sources disagree about whether the Zolom can still reach you while mounted. Two present riding as simply safe; one says it can still attack during the crossing; another says being caught is possible but unlikely. Beta (enemy skill, Midgar Zolom)Sources disagree enemy-skill One of the best enemy skills in the game and the reason people fight the snake at all. Two things kill attempts: killing it before it casts, and the Enemy Skill wearer dying after Beta lands but before the battle ends. If the wearer is not alive at victory you do not learn it. Get another: The Zolom keeps respawning in the marsh for the rest of the game. Come back at forty and take it in ninety seconds. Sources disagree: Level advice ranges from "doable at 20 with a specific setup" to "minimum late twenties, much easier at 40" to "do not try this now at all". Beat the Midgar Zolom achievement 4,000 HP at level 26, and here is the thing the guides do not say: it has no elemental weakness at all. Nothing you can bring is super-effective, which is why it feels like a wall rather than a puzzle.
It also pays nothing. No drop, no steal, 250 exp, 25 AP and 400 gil — less experience than the Dragon in the flashback and less gil than a chest in Midgar. The X-Potion morph is the only item it will ever give you, and it needs a Materia you will not hold for another thirty hours. Fight it for Beta and for the achievement of it, and for nothing else. Chocobuckle (enemy skill, wild chocobo) enemy-skill Feed a wild chocobo Mimett Greens, then hit it with L4 Suicide — the counter is the skill. L4 Suicide itself comes off a Mu in the same grassland, so both live in the same encounter zone. L4 Suicide (enemy skill, Mu) enemy-skill Mu are the small burrowing enemies in the grass around the farm. Lasan Nut (from Mandragora) item Mandragora both drop and steal them at 12.7%, so a fight has two independent chances at one. Worth knowing because the shop does not sell nuts until very late in the game, and a nut this early is a small head start on breeding. The impaled Zolom achievement At the far side of the marsh, by the mine entrance. It is not an item and there is nothing to do with it. It is the single most efficient piece of characterisation in the game and it is worth standing still for. Mythril Mine and Fort Condor The Mythril Mine Long Range Materia materia Climb the vines. This is the single most useful thing in the area and it is easy to walk past — it makes any weapon hit for full damage from the back row, which turns a melee character into someone who can sit at the back and take half damage for free. The very next boss hovers out of melee range, so the game is teaching and testing this in the same hour. It has one level and masters at 80,000 AP, so treat it as equipment rather than something you are levelling — it does the same job on the turn you equip it as it does at mastery. Mine consumable sweepSources disagree item An Ether, a Tent, a Mind Source, a Hi-Potion and an Elixir across the mine's chests and floor. The mine stays open all game, so none of this is urgent. Sources disagree: Two guides list the same six pickups but put the Elixir and the Hi-Potion on different screens from each other. Grand Glove (steal from Madouge) weapon Settled: a steal at 12.7%. Only one guide documents it, but the game's own tables confirm it. Madouge's ordinary drop is a Hi-Potion at the same rate, and it morphs into one as well, so the Glove is the only thing that makes the encounter worth more than a consumable. At 31 attack and 110 accuracy with four slots it is Tifa's best weapon by a distance this early. Flamethrower (enemy skill, Ark Dragon) enemy-skill Ark Dragons live here permanently. Worth taking now — it is the best damage an Enemy Skill Materia holds for a while, and the boss two areas from here has no elemental weakness for anything else to exploit. The dragon absorbs Fire, nullifies Earth and takes DOUBLE from Wind. It also carries an Ether steal at 50.8%, which is the highest-rate steal in the mine and the reason to keep Steal equipped while you farm the skill. Its drops are a Phoenix Down at 12.7% and a second Ether at 3.2%. The Turks in the mineMissable Sources disagree achievement Not a fight. Elena's first appearance, and she gives away where Sephiroth is going, which is the only reason the scene exists. Lost after: Leaving the mine's western section. Sources disagree: One guide says the player is given a dialogue choice here. No source documents any consequence to it — no points, no item, no changed encounter. Fort Condor Win the first Fort Condor battleMissable sidequest Available the moment you arrive. Wins the Magic Comb, a Red XIII weapon. This is also the only battle in the whole run where losing the tower-defence phase and then beating the commander still counts as a win. Lost after: The battle slot passing. Each numbered battle fires once and is gone; the unique prize for a given difficulty level is only available while battles at that level are still coming. The one-time Fort Condor prizesMissable Sources disagree sidequest Magic Comb, Peace Ring, Megalixir and Superball are each awarded once, at a different difficulty level. You reach the next level every three wins, so skipping battles costs you the higher prizes rather than just that battle's.
Two of them are better than their descriptions suggest and one is worse. The Magic Comb is 37 attack on DOUBLE growth with three unlinked slots. The Peace Ring blocks Sadness, Fury, Confusion and Berserk — four statuses on one accessory. The Superball is 68 attack, which reads enormous, but it has NO growth and NO Materia slots at all, so it pays no AP and carries no magic. Lost after: Running out of playable battles. The last ordinary one comes very late; after it only the mandatory final battle remains. Sources disagree: How many battles exist is genuinely contested: one source says seventeen, three say twenty plus a mandatory final. The reward-to-battle mapping is offset by one or two battles between the two fullest schedules. Nobody has published a reconciliation. Pay the fort to fight without youSources disagree sidequest Decline and the fort spends 3,000 of its own gil. If it has the money that scores as a win and advances your level, but pays no prize. It is how you climb the difficulty ladder cheaply — and how you quietly burn the prizes on the way up. Sources disagree: Three sources describe the 3,000-gil delegation; a fourth documents the minigame in detail and does not mention that it exists at all. Donate to the fort sidequest Every gil you donate is handed straight back to you immediately before the final battle, so this is a loan rather than a cost — the only thing it buys is the fort's ability to fight without you. The final Fort Condor battleMissable sidequest Mandatory, much later, and the one that matters. It cannot be delegated. Win it and you get the Phoenix Materia — which you have to walk up the mountain and collect, it is not handed to you — plus the Huge Materia. No prior wins are required: the whole sidequest is optional right up until this one fight. Lost after: Losing it. Lose and you are ejected, the fort closes permanently, and the Phoenix Materia is gone with it. There is no second attempt. Imperial GuardMissable armour Settled from the game's own tables. The commander comes in three versions — 2,000 HP dropping a Vagyrisk Claw, 4,000 HP dropping nothing at all, and 8,000 HP dropping the Imperial Guard every time. The gil scales with him too: 2,400, 4,800 and 9,600, so the hardest version pays four times the easiest. Beating him counts as winning the final battle, so deliberately losing the minigame and killing the big one is strictly better than a clean win: same reward, plus the armour, plus 9,600 gil, and you spend nothing on units.
The armour is why it matters. 82 defence, 74 magic defence and SIX slots in three linked pairs, against the Gold Armlet's 46, 28 and four. Lost after: Winning the final battle cleanly. It is a guaranteed drop from the toughest commander, and you only meet him by letting the tower-defence phase fail. Point of no return: The cargo ship departing. The parade and the send-off performance are one-time events and neither can be replayed.
Under Junon Bottomswell defeated achievement 2,500 HP. It hovers, so physical attacks mostly miss the point — this is the fight the Long Range Materia in the Mythril Mine exists for. Settled from the game data: it takes DOUBLE damage from Wind, nullifies Earth outright, and halves Gravity. Guides variously call the Earth interaction nullify, absorb or resist; it is nullify. Power Wrist accessory Settled: a guaranteed 100% drop from Bottomswell, not a steal. One guide lists it as stealable; the game's tables give Bottomswell no steal at all, so anyone burning turns on Steal here is burning them for nothing. The Wrist is +10 Strength and no status immunity. Free a character from Waterpolo achievement Bottomswell traps someone in a bubble that drains them. You break it by targeting the bubble, not the boss. Players who do not work this out watch a party member drown while attacking the wrong thing. Revive PriscillaSources disagree achievement Fill the gauge toward its maximum of ten and exhale; about five good breaths finishes it. Overfilling wastes the breath. Sources disagree: Two sources call the minigame unloseable and a third says mistimed breaths restart the sequence. Nobody documents a real failure state — no game over, no lost reward — so the worst case is repetition. Sources also disagree on which button it uses, probably a version difference they do not flag. Shiva Materia materia From Priscilla the morning after. Unmissable — she gives it to you. Whistle key-item Also from Priscilla. It calls the dolphin, which is the only way up to Junon on this visit. The dolphin jump achievement Two jumps. The trick nobody tells you: do not move Cloud between them. Stand still and blow the whistle twice — he and the dolphin align themselves, and the second jump connects. Mistimed jumps just drop you back in the water. Upper Junon The parade and the send-off The paradeMissable Sources disagree achievement Run straight down toward the camera to the back line rather than following the soldiers around — it is faster. Then stay in a perfectly straight line with them and press the button each time "Now" appears. Their step timing does not matter; your alignment does, and one guide says "Now" only appears at all when you are lined up. Top band pays 5,000 gil. Lost after: The march itself. One attempt, one reward band. Sources disagree: Eight sources put the reward bands at 30, 40 and 50 percent; one puts them at 22 and 51. One guide calls the rating points rather than a percentage. One account claims the starting rating is random and decays as you march, which nothing else corroborates. Force Stealer (send-off performance)Missable Sources disagree weapon Ten points per correct move, thirty for the finish, hundred maximum. Turns themselves score nothing and you must be facing the right way or a correct press counts for zero. The prize is 36 attack on DOUBLE Materia growth, with three unlinked slots — the growth is worth more than the damage for a long time, and only two weapons before it have it. The practice round uses a fixed order; the real one is random. Lost after: The send-off performance. One attempt, one reward, and the three prizes are mutually exclusive. Sources disagree: Most sources give the bands as 0-50, 60-90 and 100+, leaving 51-59 and 91-99 undefined; one closes the gaps at 51-99. One says the top prize needs exactly 100, others say 100 or more. Separately, one guide says Force Stealer is unobtainable after leaving Junon while another lists it in the town's own weapon shop. Around Junon Point of no return: Walking out of the engine room after the boss. The ship becomes an ordinary ferry later, but this interior with its chests never comes back.
After the boss The crossing Find everyone in disguiseMissable sidequest Everyone is a generic sailor sprite and you identify them by talking. Only Barret is required — he advances the plot. The rest are optional, and each one is a conversation that moves the hidden affection counter, so "optional" here means "quietly consequential". Lost after: Triggering the alarm by talking to Barret at the bow. Ether (cargo hold)Missable Sources disagree item Lost after: The ship docking. Sources disagree: Two sources put the chest on the left side of the opening cargo hold; a third puts it on the south-west of the main deck. All MateriaMissable Sources disagree materia Gated rather than hidden: Yuffie is standing in front of it and does not move until the alarm goes off. If you swept the hold early and found nothing, that is why — go back after the alarm. Lost after: The ship docking. Sources disagree: Sources disagree on whether it is a chest or a floor pickup, and on whether it is in the cargo hold or the engine room. Wind SlashMissable Sources disagree weapon Chest on the catwalk above the engine room, up the left-hand ladder. A Yuffie weapon, so worthless to you if you never recruited her — 30 attack, 103 accuracy, three unlinked slots, double growth. Against the Boomerang you steal outside Junon it is the same 30 attack with one fewer slot and no link, traded for twice the AP. The growth is the only reason to swap. Lost after: The ship docking. Sources disagree: Settled, and the disagreement turns out to be a wording problem rather than a factual one. A weapon record carries exactly one growth field and this one is set to DOUBLE. There is no separate AP-growth stat for the two sources to differ about — "double AP growth" and "double Materia growth" name the same field, and both descriptions are correct. Shinra Beta (steal from Marine)Copy missable armour A 12.7% steal. Encounters only exist between the alarm and the boss, so that stretch is the entire window. Marines also drop Eye drops every single time — a 100% drop, which is unusual on a random encounter — and morph into X-Potions. The armour is 30 defence with four slots and one linked pair, but ZERO magic defence, so it is a straight trade against anything you are already wearing rather than an upgrade. Lost after: The ship docking. The only other source in the game is a late enemy that stops appearing once its dungeon is finished. Get another: Submarine Crew drop it later, at the underwater reactor — but that window closes too, so this is a soft loss rather than a hard one. Turbo Ethers (morph Scrutin Eye)Missable item Scrutin Eyes carry an Ether steal at 50.8% and morph into Turbo Ethers. Their Ether DROP is only 3.2%, so robbing one is sixteen times likelier to pay than killing it. They take double damage from Wind and nullify Earth and Water. Lost after: The ship docking. After the boss Conversations that count Point of no return: None. Costa del Sol stays open for the rest of the game and the ship back to Junon keeps running.
On arrival In town Villa Cloud (300,000 gil) sidequest Settled from the game's own script text: the asking price is 300,000 gil, quoted verbatim, and the seller throws you out if you cannot pay. At this point in the game that is an absurd number — you will come back for it, if at all, much later. Motor Drive, Fire Ring and Power Source (villa interior)Sources disagree item Motor Drive is a Tifa weapon and the villa is the only place in the game it appears, which is usually given as the reason to care about the purchase. Look at the numbers before you accept that: 27 attack, 106 accuracy, three unlinked slots. The Grand Glove you steal from a Madouge in the Mythril Mine is 31 attack with four slots and a linked pair. What Motor Drive has that the Glove does not is DOUBLE growth, and that is the entire case for it.
Fire Ring's element and effect bytes are the two accessory fields this project has not pinned to a published value, so the "absorbs Fire" claim stays unconfirmed here rather than being upgraded. If you are reading this on a first visit you almost certainly cannot afford any of it yet. Sources disagree: The game's data ties all three to the villa's interior map. Sources disagree about the gate — whether you must own the villa to reach them, and whether they are there on this visit or only on a later one. Inn — 200 gil a night reference Settled from the script. Do the beach conversation first; sleeping is what closes it. Materia shop (reduced stock) reference The owner explains why the shelves are thin — the part-timer left with the money and the stock. It is a joke, not a bug, and the shop really is worse than Junon's. Ship back to Junon — 100 gil reference Settled from the script. The crossing is not one-way in either direction once you are here, which is worth knowing before you sell anything you might want. Enemy skills Corrections Mt. Corel and North Corel Point of no return: None on this visit. Mt. Corel can be walked again and North Corel stays on the map, though you will not have a reason to come back for a long time.
The tracks Enemies worth fighting Diamond Pin (steal from Bagnadrana) weapon 450 HP. Takes DOUBLE damage from Ice and nullifies Fire, so the Fire Materia you have been leaning on since Midgar is the wrong answer here. Diamond Pin is a 12.7% steal, and it is a WEAPON, not an accessory — attack 33, accuracy 102, four slots with one link, normal growth. Equip it, do not sell it. Turbo Ether (steal from Search Crown) item 150 HP, halves Fire, and carries a Turbo Ether at 12.7%. That is a serious item this early and the enemy is made of paper. Needle Kiss — nullifies Lightning and Earth, takes double from Wind reference 180 HP. Drops a Bolt Plume at 12.7% and carries a Soft at 50.8%. Note the Lightning immunity — it is the obvious spell to throw at a bird and it does nothing at all. Bomb — nullifies Fire and Earth reference 600 HP. Kill it fast or it self-destructs. Fire does literally nothing. It carries a Right arm at 12.7%, which is a throwable worth more than anything else you own right now, and drops a Shrapnel at the same rate. The mountain pays for its own Softs item Cokatolis is the thing up here that petrifies you, and it carries a Soft at 50.8%, drops one at 12.7% and morphs into one. Needle Kiss carries a Soft at 50.8% too, and Bloatfloat at 12.7%. Three of the six regular encounters up here carry the cure, including the one that inflicts it. Do not buy Softs in North Corel. The town at the bottom Point of no return: None. The Saucer stays open all game and you will be back. Nothing here is lost by leaving — but the first visit ends abruptly and not by your choice, so spend your GP before you go to Battle Square.
Getting in Entry: 3,000 gil once, or 30,000 gil forever reference Settled from the game's own script, quoted verbatim: "A single pass is 3000 gil, or you can purchase a lifetime pass for 30000 gil." There is a third route — the Gold Ticket, which is the lifetime pass as an item, sits on the Wonder Square prize counter for 300 GP. Three prices for the same thing, and the cheapest one is not paid in gil. GP: how it actually works reference Settled from the script. Most attractions take GP, not gil. An NPC states flatly that GP is not sold and comes only from Wonder Square games and the Chocobo Races — and then a man at the station will change gil into GP at 1 GP per 100 gil anyway, refusing once you hold more than 10,000. Your GP cap is 10,000. Saving at the Saucer's save point costs 5 GP a time. Wonder Square Wonder Square prize counterSources disagree item Settled from the script, exactly as the game prints it — Potion 1 GP, Ether 20 GP, X-Potion 80 GP, Turbo Ether 100 GP, Gold Ticket 300 GP, then three locked tiers shown as "???????????" at 500, 1000 and 2000 GP. The three hidden prizes are a Carob Nut, "Gil Plus" Materia and "EXP Plus" Materia. Sources disagree: The game's text does not print which hidden prize sits at which tier, and published guides disagree. We have not guessed. "EXP Plus" Materia materia The most valuable thing in the park. It raises EXP gain for whoever wears it and it is the single best reason to grind GP at all. It is one of the three hidden tiers on the prize counter. Two levels only: 60,000 AP to the second, 150,000 to master. "Gil Plus" Materia materia Raises gil gain. Pairs badly with EXP Plus in the sense that you only have so many slots, and well in the sense that the Saucer is where you spend both. Two levels, like EXP Plus, but slower: 80,000 AP to the second and 150,000 to master. Carob Nut item A chocobo breeding item, and the reason this counter matters long after you stop caring about the park. Carob Nuts are otherwise awkward to obtain. Wonder Catcher prize pool item 100 gil a go. The game's own prize strings for this machine include a Safety Bit, a Crystal Bangle, an All Materia, a Speed Source, a Cauldron, a Dragon Fang, Dragon Scales, Ink and a T/S Bomb — item names as the game's own table spells them. An All Materia out of a 100-gil crane game is the best-value thing in the building, and the Safety Bit blocks Death, Death-sentence, Petrify and Slow-numb, which is four of the statuses that end runs. "DOUBLE CHANCE" — read this before you accept reference The game's wording, verbatim: "Double your GP for the game, but if you lose, your GP will be 1." Not halved. Not reset to your stake. One. It offers to let you continue doubling after each success, which is exactly how people lose four thousand GP in a row. Reference: what each game costs reference Settled from the script. Fortune Telling 50 gil. Arm Wrestling, Mega Sumo, Mog House and Wonder Catcher 100 gil each. Basketball, 3D Battler, G Bike, the Snow Game and the Submarine Game 200 gil each. Cait Sith joins progression Not optional and not avoidable. He attaches himself to the party at Wonder Square and there is no dialogue option that declines. Battle Square Speed Square Chocobo Square Ghost Square Round Square Event Square Before you trigger the plot Point of no return: Winning the chocobo race. The prison is sealed the instant that race ends and no later part of the game returns to it.
Before the race In the prison Choosing who comes with youMissable achievement The party you assemble down here is itself an affection choice, and it is the largest single swing in this stretch of the game — taking Aerith is worth ten points on the hidden counter, more than any dialogue option in the segment. If you are steering the date at Gold Saucer, this is where it is decided. Lost after: Leaving the prison. Platinum Bangle (steal from Death Claw)Copy missable armour 400 HP and it carries a Platinum Bangle at 50.8%. Take it for the GROWTH, not the protection — it is defence 20 and magic defence 12 with two unlinked slots, which is worse armour than the Silver Armlet the boss down here hands you for free. What it has is DOUBLE materia growth, one of only two pieces of armour in the game with it. Put it on whoever is levelling Materia and accept the defence loss. Steal from every Death Claw you meet. Lost after: Winning the race. Death Claws only exist inside the prison and the prison closes. Get another: Platinum Bangles turn up in shops later. This is simply far earlier and free. X-Potions (steal from Bullmotor)Copy missable item 420 HP, carries an X-Potion at 50.8% and drops an Ether at 12.7%. Full-heal items you cannot buy anywhere yet, off a trash enemy. Take as many as you have patience for. Lost after: Winning the race. Get another: X-Potions are buyable later; not at this point in the game. Phoenix Downs (steal from 2-Faced)Copy missable item 330 HP, nullifies Earth, carries a Phoenix Down at 50.8% and drops a Hi-Potion at 12.7%. Bandits nearby drop Tents and carry X-Potions, both at 12.7% — a quarter of the rate Bullmotor gives you the same X-Potion at. Lost after: Winning the race. Get another: Phoenix Downs are sold everywhere. The desert The boss Dyne boss 1,200 HP, and fought by Barret alone — no party, no swapping, no support. Settled from the game's tables: he nullifies Gravity, and his Magic Defence is 125 against a Defence of 32, which is extraordinarily lopsided for this point in the game. Magic is close to useless against him. Hit him with the gun. He pays 600 EXP, 55 AP and 750 gil, and all of it lands on one character. Silver Armlet armour Settled: a guaranteed 100% drop from Dyne, not a steal and not a chance. Some sources list it as stealable; the game gives him no steal entry at all. Defence 34, magic defence 22, four slots with one link — better protection than the Platinum Bangle you spent the area stealing, and it costs you nothing. The race Point of no return: None, but the Turks fight happens once. Kill one of them before the other and half the reward leaves with him.
Getting there The reactor The Turks Knock both of them out at the same timeMissable item This is the mechanic people miss. It is not a rare drop and it is not a steal — both are guaranteed 100% drops, and you forfeit one of them by winning untidily. Bring both down close together, then finish them in quick succession. Lost after: Defeating one of the two before the other. The survivor leaves and takes his drop with him — the fight is over and the item is simply not awarded. Fairy Tale (Reno)Missable weapon Settled: a guaranteed 100% drop from this Reno, not a chance and not a steal. 2,000 HP, paying 660 EXP, 60 AP and 1,500 gil. The weapon is attack 37 with SEVEN slots, none of them linked, on normal growth. Seven unlinked slots is the point — it is a Materia rack, not a damage upgrade. Lost after: Defeating Rude first and letting Reno leave. X-Potion (Rude)Missable item Settled: a guaranteed 100% drop. Rude is also 2,000 HP — the two are evenly matched, which settles a discrepancy in the published tables — but his Magic Defence is 100 against Reno's 82, so he is the one to hit physically. He pays more too: 720 EXP, 70 AP and 2,000 gil against Reno's 660, 60 and 1,500. Lost after: Defeating Reno first and letting Rude leave. Conversations that count Enemies worth fighting Impaler (steal from Touch Me) item 300 HP, and it carries an Impaler at 50.8%. Drops a Maiden's Kiss at 12.7%, which you will want, because of what it does to you first. Phoenix Downs (steal from Heavy Tank) item 1,600 HP, nullifies Gravity, carries a Phoenix Down at 50.8% and pays 1,300 gil — the richest regular encounter in the area by a wide margin. Flower Prong — double damage from Fire AND Earth reference 550 HP in three stored variants. All three absorb Poison and take DOUBLE damage from both Fire and Earth — which is exactly what the Titan Materia you just picked up does. All three drop an Earth Drum at 12.7%. They are NOT otherwise identical: Magic Defence runs 100, 125 and 150, Magic runs 30, 38 and 46, and the payouts differ too — 200/220/240 EXP, 20/22/24 AP, 300/350/400 gil. The toughest one is also the one worth the most. Spider Web (steal from Kimara Bug) item 700 HP, Magic Defence 90, nullifies Gravity, carries a Spider Web at 50.8%. Spider Webs inflict Slow when thrown. Open threads Point of no return: Defeating the boss in the cave beneath the town. That cave closes permanently the moment the fight ends. The town above stays open all game.
The cave Take the Materia in the first chamber of the caveMissable materia Settled from the game's own data, and it is the only copy in the game. What it does is a whole category of character building you simply will not have access to if you leave it here. The cave closes behind you for good — sweep all four chambers before you go down. Lost after: Defeating the boss at the bottom of the cave. The cave seals permanently the moment that fight ends and nothing in the rest of the game reopens it. Gravity Materia (Cave of the Gi, third chamber)Missable materia Settled from the game's data. Demi and its upgrades — percentage damage, which makes it disproportionately good against the high-HP enemies coming up. Lost after: Defeating the boss at the bottom of the cave. Black M-phone and an Ether (Cave of the Gi, second chamber)Missable weapon Settled from the game's data. Another Cait Sith weapon, one area after the last one. Lost after: Defeating the boss at the bottom of the cave. Fairy Ring, X-Potion and Turbo Ether (Cave of the Gi, fourth chamber)Missable accessory Settled from the game's data. Fairy Ring blocks Poison and Darkness outright, which is worth having in a cave full of things that inflict both. Lost after: Defeating the boss at the bottom of the cave. Gi Nattak boss 5,500 HP, and settled from the game's tables in a way that resolves a four-way argument between published guides. It is UNDEAD — it absorbs Restorative, so healing items damage it. It takes DOUBLE damage from Holy. It nullifies Gravity, Earth and Water. It is NOT weak to Fire; that is Gi Spector, a different enemy in the same cave, and the two have been confused for decades. Sources report that a single X-Potion ends the fight outright. Wizer Staff weapon Settled: a guaranteed 100% drop from Gi Nattak. Not a steal — he has no steal entry at all. Soul Fire — absorbs Fire, takes double from Wind reference 1,300 HP. Guides routinely tell you to burn things in this cave; this one heals from it. It also nullifies Gravity, Earth, Water and Poison, takes double from Holy, and drops a Phoenix Down at 12.7%. The number that decides the fight is not on any published table: Defence 65, Magic Defence 5. Physicals bounce and spells do not. Ice or Lightning — anything that is not Fire — goes through it. Gi Spector — THIS is the Fire-weak one reference 450 HP, undead, takes DOUBLE damage from Fire and from Holy. Drops a Smoke Bomb at 12.7%. If a guide told you Fire is the answer in this cave, this is the enemy it was thinking of. Stinger — immune to everything except Paralysis and Manipulate reference 2,200 HP with no elemental weakness and a status immunity list that covers essentially the whole game — thirty entries, and the only two missing are Paralysis and Manipulate. Otherwise, hit it. It carries an Ether at 12.7%, which is the one reason to pick the fight rather than run. Heg — absorbs Poison, takes double from Ice reference 400 HP, Defence 15 and Magic Defence 32, so Ice lands hard on a body that has almost nothing behind it. Drops a Hi-Potion at 12.7% and nothing else. Corrections In town Nibelheim, the Shinra Mansion and Mt. Nibel Point of no return: None. Nothing here is sealed by story progress — the town, the mansion and the mountain all stay reachable. Several published guides say otherwise about individual items; the section below says what we could and could not confirm.
The Shinra Mansion The safe: Right 36, Left 10, Right 59, Right 97 progression Settled from the game's own script, hint by hint. You get twenty seconds — the game says so in as many words — and you cannot turn past a number on the way to it, so overshooting means going all the way round again. Confirm each number before moving to the next. Find the four hints first progression You do not need them if you have the numbers, but they are the puzzle. Two are written on the back of lids, one is a carving in a floor, and the fourth row is written in invisible ink. There is also a creaking floorboard by a chair on the second floor, and the game gives the walk exactly — left five steps, up nine, left two, up six. Lost Number boss 7,000 HP, and the game stores it as three separate records. Intact it is Defence 60 / Magic Defence 140. It then splits, and the surviving half is either Defence 20 with Magic Defence 220, or Defence 200 with Magic Defence 100. One is a wall against magic, the other a wall against physicals; whichever you get, attack with the other thing. The halves are NOT otherwise identical, which is the part that gets published wrong — the physical-wall half also has Strength 140 against the other half's 80, so the form you cannot punch is also the form that hits hardest. The magic-wall half has Magic 55 against the physical half's 5. It nullifies Gravity. Cosmo Memory limit-break Settled: a guaranteed 100% drop from Lost Number, and the boss has no steal entry at all. It is a final Limit Break manual, so it is worth the safe on its own. Odin Materia materia In the safe room with the boss. Settled from the game's data as a Shinra Mansion item. The coffin in the basementSources disagree character Open the safe first — the basement key is inside it. Then talk to the coffin, twice, taking the conversational option each time. Nothing about this is timed and nothing punishes you for coming back later. Sources disagree: One major guide states this is unrecoverable if skipped. Four independent sources — including two direct player accounts and the standard missables FAQ — say it can be done at any later point in the game, up to the final disc, with no change in outcome. The weight of evidence is against the outlier. Nibelheim Mt. Nibel Corrections Mt. Nibel Trine (Enemy Skill from Materia Keeper)Copy missable enemy-skill Guides flag this as urgent because it is easy to lose here and because Trine is excellent. Both are true. "Last chance" is not. Lost after: Winning the fight without an Enemy Skill Materia equipped on a living character when it casts. Get another: Two more enemies teach Trine later — a boss in Wutai and an enemy on Gaea's Cliff. It is only permanently gone if all three windows are missed. Rune Blade and Plus Barrette weapon Settled from the game's data as Mt. Nibel pickups on the outdoor mountainside. The pipe room — take more than oneSources disagree item Two pipes drop you next to something and the rest are shortcuts. Since nobody can agree on the numbering, just take them all — you can climb back every time. Between them they lead to a Tifa weapon and an All Materia. Sources disagree: Guides agree two of the five pipes lead somewhere worth going and disagree about which numbers those are, because they do not agree on which end to count from. Gold Armlet (steal from Dragon) armour 3,500 HP and it carries a Gold Armlet at 50.8% — defence 46, magic defence 28, four slots with two links, free, from a regular encounter. It absorbs Fire and nullifies Gravity, has Magic Defence 150, and drops a Fire Fang at 100%. It also pays 900 EXP, 110 AP and 1,400 gil, which makes it the best encounter on the mountain on every axis at once. Zuu — takes double from Wind, nullifies Earth and Gravity reference 1,200 HP, carries a Bird Wing at 50.8%, drops one at 12.7% and morphs into one. Three routes to the same item and no other item on its table. Sonic Speed and Kyuvilduns — the two Wind and Fire answers reference Sonic Speed (750 HP) nullifies Earth, takes double from Wind and carries an Ether at 12.7%. Kyuvilduns (800 HP) takes double from Fire. Twin Brain (400 HP) carries an Ether at 50.8% and drops one at 12.7% — the same item at four times the rate off a weaker enemy, so take your Ethers from Twin Brains. Screamer (800 HP) drops an Earth Drum at 12.7%. The Shinra Mansion Nibelheim Point of no return: Leaving on the Tiny Bronco, for most of what is here. Sources disagree on how hard that deadline is — see the corrections below.
In town Shops Shotgun (weapon shop, 3,100 gil)Copy missable Sources disagree weapon A Vincent weapon. If you recruited him in the mansion, buy it; if you have not yet, buy it anyway, because you will. Lost after: Unclear. Most sources say only that it is available "for a limited time." Get another: It is shop stock rather than a unique pickup, so this is a purchase window closing rather than an object being destroyed. Sources disagree: One source gives a specific and much later deadline — after the Whirlwind Maze — while every other source just says "limited time" without a trigger. Weapon shop stock reference Shotgun 3,100 · Gold Armlet 2,000 · Protect Vest 3,500 · Talisman 4,000 · Power Wrist 7,500 · Earring 7,500. Settled from the accessory table: Earring is Magic +10, Talisman is Spirit +10, Power Wrist is Strength +10. Ten points flat, no conditions and no status effects on any of the three. The Shotgun is attack 48, accuracy 112, four slots with two links. Materia shop: Barrier, Exit, Time materia Barrier 10,000 · Exit 10,000 · Time 6,000. Barrier is the one to buy, and it carries FOUR spells, not three — Barrier from the moment you equip it, MBarrier at 5,000 AP, Reflect at 15,000 and Wall at 30,000, mastering at 45,000. Wall is Barrier and MBarrier in one cast and it is the reason to keep the Materia on one character rather than spreading the AP. Time is Haste, Slow and Stop (8,000 and 20,000 AP, master at 42,000); Exit is Escape and Remove (10,000, master 30,000). If you only have 10,000 gil, it goes on Barrier rather than the Earring. Item shop stock reference Potion 50 · Hi-Potion 300 · Phoenix Down 300 · Ether 1,500 · Tent 500 · Hyper 100 · Tranquilizer 100. The boss Palmer boss 6,000 HP, settled — one widely cited enemy database lists 600, which is an order of magnitude out and does not match the game's table. Magic Defence 100, and it nullifies Gravity. It has no elemental weakness, but it also has no real offence: one attack, random element, and a lot of running away. It pays 1,800 EXP, 98 AP and 5,000 gil, which is half a Barrier Materia off one fight. Edincoat armour Settled: a guaranteed 100% drop from Palmer, and the only entry on its table. One source lists it as a steal; there is no steal. Defence 50, magic defence 33 — and SEVEN slots, none of them linked. The Gold Armlet on the shelf twenty paces away is defence 46 with four. Take the slots. The pilot joins character Automatic and permanent. One guide's Disc 2 page describes him joining a second time later; that is a misreading — it happens here. Corrections Point of no return: Not the next story dungeon, whatever the chapter ordering in other guides implies. The documented deadline is much later, on disc 2.
Getting in The theft She takes your Materia — this is scripted, not a disasterSources disagree progression Every source that describes the recovery agrees it is total — you get it all back for beating one boss. The real risk is not item loss, it is saving over your only file while stripped and then being unable to win. Keep a second save. Sources disagree: How much she takes is genuinely unsettled. Two sources say all of it; one says she has a carrying limit and takes your best; one states a specific figure of sixty pieces, most-recently-acquired first. Only that last account explains why some players report losing everything and others do not. Rapps boss 6,000 HP and Magic Defence 200, which is the practical fact — spells are close to worthless here, and you are probably fighting without your Materia anyway. Settled from the game's tables: it has NO elemental affinity of any kind, neither weakness nor resistance, so there is nothing to exploit. Pays 20,000 gil. Peace Ring accessory Settled: a guaranteed 100% drop from Rapps, not a steal. Two sources list it as stealable; the boss has no steal entry. Its immunity mask covers FOUR statuses, not the two normally printed — Sadness, Fury, Confusion and Berserk. Confusion and Berserk are the pair worth having, and neither gets written down. The Pagoda The Pagoda of the Five Mighty Gods sidequest Five floors, five duels, and Yuffie fights every one of them completely alone. No party, no swapping, no support. Bring her levelled or do not start. The first four masters: 3,000 / 4,000 / 5,000 / 6,000 HP boss Settled, and cleaner than any published table. Gorkii 3,000, Shake 4,000, Chekhov 5,000, Staniv 6,000. All four have Magic Defence 140 and all four pay zero gil. Each drops its item at 100% — X-Potion, Turbo Ether, Ice Ring, Elixir in that order. Gorkii is the only one with an elemental profile at all: he nullifies Earth and Gravity and takes DOUBLE damage from Wind. Godo — level 41, and the one you can actually cast at boss 10,000 HP and 1,000 MP. Settled at level 41 — one source lists 36, which is the level of the master on the floor below. The useful finding is his defences: Magic Defence 50, against 140 on all four masters beneath him. He is the only fight in the building where magic is the right answer. Pays 40,000 gil. All Creation limit-break Settled: a guaranteed 100% drop from Godo, and the only entry on his table. Yuffie's final Limit Break. Leviathan Materia materia Settled from the game's own Pagoda text, which resolves a disagreement — one source omits Leviathan from the reward entirely. It is there. Note that it is not on Godo's drop table, so it is awarded by script rather than dropped, which is probably why some accounts lose track of it. Clear a Materia slot before you finish: the Pagoda has its own "you have too much Materia" refusal. Oritsuru weapon Settled from the game's data as a Pagoda item, alongside the Dragoon Lance, MP Absorb and a Steal As Well Materia. None of the guides we read mention Oritsuru here at all. Attack 90 and eight Materia slots in two linked pairs — the strongest weapon Yuffie can hold outside her ultimate, which is attack 96. Steal As Well Materia materia Also in the Pagoda's item data, and also absent from every guide we read on this area. It links to a command Materia and makes that command steal at the same time — which is a great deal more interesting than it sounds. Settled cost: 200,000 AP to master, tied with Added Cut as the most expensive Support Materia in the game and double what the MP Absorb next to it in the same haul wants. Dragoon Lance weapon A Cid weapon. Most guides place it in a cave near the mountain rather than in the Pagoda; the game's data groups it with the Pagoda's items. Check both. Attack 66 across eight Materia slots, and settled: NONE of the eight are linked. It is a carrier, not a support frame — fill it with Materia that works alone. In town MP Absorb Materia materia In a shop chest, and then taken from you along with everything else — the game has a distinct "Stole MP Absorb Materia" string for exactly that. It comes back with the rest. Turtle's Paradise: claim the six-flyer reward here sidequest Settled from the game's data, and the payout is better than its reputation — one Megalixir plus ALL SIX Sources — Power, Guard, Magic, Mind, Speed and Luck. Six permanent stat points for reading six posters. Two of the flyers are in Cosmo Canyon, one in the Gold Saucer's Ghost Hotel, one in the Shinra Building, one in the Sector 5 slums, and the last in a basement in this town. Magic Shuriken and HairpinMissable weapon Behind a hidden door in one of the larger houses. Weapons for Yuffie and Red XIII. Lost after: The disc 2 parachute drop into Midgar. Enemies worth fighting Corrections The Temple of the Ancients Point of no return: Finishing the Temple. The building does not survive the end of the sequence, and anything left in it goes with it. There is no return trip.
Before you enter The labyrinth Sweep the whole maze before you reach the clockMissable materia There is a Materia in the maze that exists nowhere else in the game, and it unlocks a whole way of getting items that you have not had access to until now. Several things later in the game can ONLY be obtained through it, and one of them is in this building, on an enemy two rooms away. Walk every dead end down here before you go up to the clock. Lost after: Finishing the Temple. The building is gone afterwards and there is no way back into it. Luck Plus MateriaMissable Sources disagree materia Settled as far as data can settle it: whatever room number a guide gives it, it is stored with Morph, Ribbon, Trident and Rocket Punch rather than with the clock-room items. Sweep the labyrinth thoroughly and you will have all five. Settled cost, too: 15,000 AP for its first level and 100,000 to master, against 10,000 and 50,000 for Magic Plus. Luck is the expensive stat in this game. Lost after: Finishing the Temple. Sources disagree: Guides place this in three different spots, and the standard missables FAQ openly hedges — "in one of the Hour rooms at the clock puzzle (or in main area?)". The game's own data files it in the SAME map as the Morph Materia. RibbonCopy missable Sources disagree accessory Settled from the immunity mask: FOURTEEN statuses — Sleep, Poison, Sadness, Fury, Confusion, Silence, Frog, Small, Slow-numb, Petrify, Death-sentence, Berserk, Paralysis and Darkness. Across the whole accessory table there is exactly one it does not cover, and it is DEATH. Safety Bit is the only accessory that blocks that, and it is lying in the snowfield four areas from here. Take the Ribbon — but the "get it or suffer forever" framing is overstated, and it is not a substitute for the Safety Bit. Lost after: Finishing the Temple. Get another: More Ribbons exist later — a hidden chest on Gaea's Cliff, morphing a particular late enemy, and the Battle Square. This copy is lost; the item is not. Sources disagree: Every walkthrough places this in a numbered clock room and treats it as unique. The canonical missables FAQ does not list it among the permanently-lost items, and the game's data stores it with the labyrinth group. The clock Princess Guard, Trumpet Shell and a MegalixirMissable Sources disagree weapon Correction from the weapon table: Princess Guard does NOT have more Materia slots than anything else Aerith can hold. It has seven, and the Fairy Tale has seven too. What it has alone is LINKS — three linked pairs, against zero on the Fairy Tale and at most two on anything else of hers. Take it for the pairs, not the count. Its practical life is short either way; she has very little of the game left to use it in. The Trumpet Shell is buyable later in Junon, despite several guides calling it exclusive. Lost after: Finishing the Temple. Sources disagree: Published room tables spread these across rooms IV, VII and VIII. The game's data stores all three together in one field file. One file can serve more than one room, so this does not prove the tables wrong — but it does mean the grouping is real and the room numbers are the uncertain part. Nail Bat — let the second hand knock you offMissable Sources disagree weapon Falling is not a mistake. It drops you into a fight with two Ancient Dragons and the reward is the Nail Bat, which the game's data files in its own map. Lost after: Finishing the Temple. Sources disagree: One source frames being swept off the clock as failing the puzzle. Three others frame it as the intended route to a bonus fight and a weapon. Ancient Dragon — DOUBLE damage from Gravity and Wind reference 2,400 HP, and one of very few enemies in the game that takes double damage from Gravity — so Demi is at its best here, which is unusual enough to be worth swapping a Materia for. Also double from Wind; nullifies Earth and Water. One drop slot, a Turbo Ether at roughly one in eight, and nothing to steal or morph. It pays 800 gil and 80 AP, which is the better reason to take the fall. The doorway room is the only mandatory one progression Everything else on the clock is optional. The room where you have to catch someone by guessing which door they will come out of is the way forward, and failing a guess costs nothing — leave and re-enter and try again. Bosses Red Dragon boss 6,800 HP. Settled: it ABSORBS Fire, nullifies Gravity, and has NO elemental weakness at all. Magic Defence 130. Several guides call it weak to Poison — see the correction below; it is not. Dragon Armlet armour Settled: a guaranteed 100% drop from Red Dragon, and the only entry on its table. No steal. Defence 58, Magic Defence 47, six slots in three linked pairs, normal growth — it defends on both axes and still levels your Materia. Take the summon off the floor after the dragonMissable materia It is left lying on the ground after the fight rather than awarded. This is the third time the game has done this, and it is the most expensive one — a later and much stronger summon cannot be obtained at all unless you are holding this one, so missing it here quietly removes an end-game option many hours from now. Lost after: Leaving the room, and then the Temple. Demons Gate boss 10,000 HP and MAGIC DEFENCE 225, which is the highest you have faced and the single most useful thing to know about it — spells and summons land for very little. Settled from the tables, resolving a three-way argument: it NULLIFIES Poison, HALVES Earth, and nullifies Gravity. It is not weak to Earth and Poison does nothing. Gigas Armlet armour Settled: a guaranteed 100% drop, the only entry on its table, and not a steal despite one source listing it as one. Check the rest of the table before you equip it: Defence 59 and Strength +30, but Magic Defence ZERO and NO Materia growth at all on five slots. It is a damage piece that stops your Materia levelling — compare the Dragon Armlet the dragon gave you an hour ago, which is one point of Defence behind and grows normally. Enemies worth fighting Poison is an instant kill on two enemies here reference Settled, and it is the best tactical fact in the dungeon. Jemnezmy (800 HP) and 8 eye (500 HP, Defence 100 and Magic Defence 200) are both killed OUTRIGHT by Poison — not damaged, killed. 8 eye in particular is an armoured nuisance that one Bio removes. Read the next entry before you clear them all out, though: killing 8 eye is the wrong thing to do with it. 8 eye morphs into a Magic Source — and this is where you get MorphMissable item Settled, and nobody writes it down. 8 eye has NO drop and NO steal — its whole item table is one morph result, and that result is a Magic Source, a permanent +1 to Magic. Exactly two enemies in the game morph into one: this, at 500 HP, and an enemy in an optional late dungeon at 15,000 HP. The only Morph Materia in the game is in the labyrinth two rooms back, and this building stops existing when you leave it. Pick up Morph, then farm these before you go up. Note the item: Magic SOURCE, the permanent stat item, not the Magic Comb. Lost after: Finishing the Temple. Jemnezmy pays nothing but gil reference 800 HP with an entirely empty item table — no drop, no steal, no morph, in a dungeon where almost everything has at least one. It pays 400 gil and 50 AP and that is the complete return. If you are farming here with Morph equipped, it is the one enemy in the encounter pool worth skipping. Corrections Enemies worth fighting Corrections Bone Village and the Sleeping Forest Point of no return: None. Bone Village stays open for the rest of the game and its dig pool grows as the story advances. The Sleeping Forest stays walkable too.
The excavation How the dig actually works progression Settled from the game's own script. You are asked what to dig for, then you place staff around the site, then a bomb goes off and each member turns to face the buried item from where they stand. The game states the rule outright — "the dig point is where the staff's line of vision meets." You walk to that intersection and dig there. 100 gil per digger reference Settled — the prompt reads "Order a search (100 gil)", and there is a distinct refusal for being unable to afford one. Up to five, so 500 gil for a fully staffed dig. Several sources note you can skip hiring entirely and dig a known spot for nothing, which the interface allows. Three choices: Lunar Harp, Good treasure, Normal treasureSources disagree reference Verbatim from the script — "Other than the Lunar Harp, what else do you want us to dig for?" with Lunar Harp, Good treasure and Normal treasure as the options. Sources disagree: One source describes a two-way Good/Normal split with the Harp folded in. The game's own prompt is three-way. Results go in the box by the tent, overnight reference Settled, and it is the thing that confuses people — you do not receive what you dug up. The game says "the result will be placed in the treasure box overnight" and an NPC tells you separately that excavated treasure is stored in the box next to the tent. If you dug and got nothing, you are looking in the wrong place. You can BUY a Lunar Harp key-item Settled from the game's script, and absent from every guide we read — the foreman's menu includes "I want to buy something", and the item behind it is a Lunar Harp. A second NPC offers one too. Every published account says dig for it. The game will also sell you one. Lunar Harp key-item The gate to the forest. Without it the forest loops north forever and you cannot progress. Most sources put its dig spot on the upper level near the smoke from the tent, and disagree about which side of the smoke. What else is in the groundSources disagree item The block contains — Potion, Ether, Turbo Ether, Elixir, Megalixir, Mop, Buntline, Lunar Harp, Key to Sector 5, and the Phoenix, W-Item and Bahamut ZERO Materia. It also contains a Steal Materia and Catastrophe, which no published list mentions and which may belong to another map sharing the block. Flagged rather than claimed. Sources disagree: The game stores the dig results as one message block, which is shared with other maps, so we can read the list but cannot prove every entry belongs to this site. This is where missed Materia comes back materia Worth knowing if you have been reading missable lists with dread. The standard missables FAQ walks back its own earlier warnings on this point — Phoenix and W-Item, treated as lost elsewhere, can be dug up here later. The site's pool also grows as the story advances; the Key to Sector 5 only appears after a much later story beat. The forest The Sleeping Forest progression Short and linear with the Harp in hand. Without it, the screens loop and there is no way through at all. Kujata Materia — chase the moving lightMissable Sources disagree materia It is not in a chest — it moves, and you have to run it down. Clear a Materia slot before you go in and the disputed bug cannot bite you either way. Lost after: Picking it up with a full Materia list, according to one source, which reports the game skips its usual "cannot take on any more Materia" refusal here and silently drops it. Sources disagree: The silent-loss behaviour is stated by one source and corroborated by none. Every other pickup in the game we have checked does print the refusal. Water RingSources disagree accessory Settled as far as data can settle it — it belongs to this stretch, not the city after it. This matters more than a normal accessory: it nullifies Water, and the boss at the end of the next area does almost all of its damage with Water. Equip it before you go down. Sources disagree: One guide places the Water Ring inside the City of the Ancients. The game's data files it with the forest and valley group, alongside Kujata. Water Ring (steal from Acrophies) — and watch your back accessory 2,400 HP, absorbs Water, nullifies Gravity, and carries a Water Ring at roughly one in eight — a second copy, which is worth farming given what it does to the next boss. Steal it: the ring is its ONLY item, there is no drop and no morph, so killing one pays nothing but 1,200 gil. One unusual number: it takes EIGHT times damage from a back attack, against the normal two. If you get the drop on one, it evaporates — which is the last thing you want while you are still stealing. Also in this stretch item Settled from the game's data — Magic Plus Materia, Bolt Armlet, HypnoCrown, a Megalixir, a Power Source, an Aurora Armlet and a Viper Halberd are all filed with the forest and valley maps. The Magic Plus in particular is a Materia our Junon research went looking for and could not confirm existed anywhere. Enemies worth fighting Point of no return: Not what most guides say. The city itself is revisited later and missed chests remain collectable. The chapter ends for story reasons rather than because a door closes behind you.
Before you go Check who is carrying what before you set outMissable progression Equipment sitting on a character is not always returned to you. Materia is. Take a minute with the equip screen before you travel; it costs nothing and it is the one precaution that actually works here. Lost after: The party changing shape, which happens before you reach this area rather than inside it — back at the village after the Temple. What is returned and what is notSources disagree reference Strip weapon, armour AND accessory. Weapon and armour are certain losses, Materia is a certain return, and the accessory is the one genuinely contested point — and it costs nothing to be on the safe side of an argument. Sources disagree: Sources agree that Aerith's equipped weapon and armour are gone and that her Materia comes back. They disagree about the accessory — two say it is returned, two advise stripping it anyway, and one player account claims Materia was lost too, which other accounts in the same thread dispute. Correction: strip her gear after the Temple, not at the city gates reference At least one guide tells you to strip her equipment before the Demons Gate fight. That is a different, temporary removal — she rejoins after it. She leaves the party for good back at the village afterwards, which is the moment that matters, and by the time you arrive here she is already gone from your roster. Reference: the White Materia was never yours to lose reference It never appears in your Materia list, cannot be equipped, moved or removed, and is not an item the player ever holds. Advice that implies you should have protected it is well meant and meaningless. Nothing you could have done would have kept it. In the city The boss Jenova-LIFE boss 10,000 HP. Settled from the game's tables — it ABSORBS Water, nullifies Gravity, and takes DOUBLE DAMAGE FROM EARTH. Magic Defence 145. The Earth weakness is the answer and almost nobody states it: the Titan Materia from Gongaga, an optional village most players skip, is the single best thing you can throw at the last boss of the disc. Equip the Water Ring before you go down accessory The boss deals almost all of its damage with Water and the ring nullifies Water outright. With it equipped the fight stops being a threat. The ring is in the forest you just walked through, and a regular enemy there carries a second copy. Wizard Bracelet armour Settled: a guaranteed 100% drop, and the only entry on the boss's item table. One source lists it as stealable as well; there is no steal entry. "Almost no defence" is only half right — Defence 6, but MAGIC Defence 85, plus Magic +20. And the slots are the real prize: eight, arranged as FOUR linked pairs, which no other armour in the game matches. The only other eight-slot armour has none of them linked and defends nothing on either axis. Aqualung (Enemy Skill) enemy-skill Learnable here if someone living has Enemy Skill equipped. Worth taking, but the urgency some guides attach to it is misplaced. Get another: Two other enemies teach it — one near North Corel available much earlier, one in an optional dungeon later. Not a last chance. The boss reflects your magic back at you reference It casts Reflect on itself, which bounces ordinary offensive spells onto your own party. Summons and Comet are not reflected, and neither are physical attacks — which is convenient, given that Earth is its weakness and Titan is a summon. Point of no return: None. The town is reachable again later by airship, and every source describing a permanent loss here turns out to be describing the next area.
Corrections In town Shops Leaving The Great Glacier and Gaea's Cliff Point of no return: Leaving Gaea's Cliff. The cliff never reopens. The Great Glacier below it DOES — it is reachable again by airship, which makes several published "permanently missable" labels wrong.
The Great Glacier Corrections The Great Glacier Reference: ignore any guide's area numbers hereSources disagree reference The game's own data stores the whole snowfield's items as ONE shared block across every screen, which is consistent with what the guides cannot agree on — there is no per-screen filing to disagree about. Use the Glacier Map, walk it, and treat every published "Area 8" as a guess. Sources disagree: One guide counts fourteen numbered areas, two count thirteen, and a fourth uses a completely different seven-point scheme. The hot spring alone is placed in five different numbered locations across five sources. Everything in the snowfield materia Settled from the game's data as one Great Glacier group — Alexander Materia, Added Cut Materia, All Materia, a Safety Bit, a Mind Source, an Elixir and a Potion. Added Cut is the one people miss; it is near-invisible against the snow, and at 200,000 AP it is tied for the most expensive Support Materia in the game, so finding it late costs you more than the walk. The Safety Bit is the quiet one: it is the ONLY accessory in the game that grants immunity to Death, which is the single status a Ribbon does not cover. Get another: The Great Glacier is reachable again later by airship, so these are not the permanent losses several guides label them. Touch the hot spring before you look for the fight progression The spring gates the encounter that gives you the summon. Skip the spring and the fight either does not trigger or cannot be won, depending on whose account you read. It costs nothing, so touch it on your way past. Snow — absorbs Ice, takes DOUBLE damage from Fire boss 4,000 HP, and the elemental profile is the whole fight — bringing Ice to a snow boss heals it, and Fire does double. It carries a Circlet at roughly one in eight and drops an Ice Crystal at the same rate. Settled on the Circlet: MAGIC +30 and SPIRIT +30, which puts it in the top three accessories in the game for raw stat bonus. Keep trying the steal rather than ending the fight early. Gaea's Cliff The climb: keep the gauge above about 30Sources disagree progression An on-screen degree gauge, this time. It drains as you climb and you warm up at marked points. Let it bottom out and you wake back at the cabin. It does not move during battles, in menus, or indoors. Sources disagree: Reported thresholds vary — "26 to 38, stay above 30", "falls to 27 or 26 and you collapse, keep near 35, max 38", and "below 28". All agree on the shape. Ribbon and JavelinCopy missable accessory Settled from the game's data, and the useful part is that they are filed in the SAME map — the hidden room off the ice bridge that holds the Ribbon is in the same field file as the Javelin chest. If you found one, the other is close. The Javelin is a Cid spear with double Materia growth and has no second source. Lost after: Leaving Gaea's Cliff. The cliff does not reopen at any point in the game. Get another: More Ribbons exist — the Battle Square's prize list and a late morph — but they cost real effort. This is the free one. Protection RingMissable Sources disagree accessory Flagged rather than asserted — it is in the data, we cannot say what condition gates it, and it is on the playtest sheet. Lost after: Leaving Gaea's Cliff. Sources disagree: This appears in the game's own item text for the cliff's first exterior map and on none of the item lists we researched. We have not found a guide that mentions it here at all. The rest of the climbMissable item Settled from the game's data, map by map — an Enhance Sword, a Fire Armlet and an Elixir, a Speed Source and a second Elixir, a Megalixir and a second Fire Armlet. Two Fire Armlets and two Enhance Swords appear in separate files, which is worth knowing before you assume you have already got one. The Enhance Sword is the one to notice: attack 43 is poor, but its eight slots are FOUR linked pairs, all of them, which no other Cloud weapon before the endgame manages. Lost after: Leaving Gaea's Cliff. Dragon Armlet — a 100% drop from a regular encounter armour Blue Dragon, 8,800 HP, absorbs Ice, drops a Dragon Armlet EVERY time — the only entry on its table, no steal and no morph. Nobody lists this as a source and it is guaranteed. It also pays 200 AP, which matches the boss at the top of the cliff. Fight one before the boss, and fight it for both reasons. Malboro — absorbs Poison, takes DOUBLE damage from Water reference 4,400 HP and 900 MP. The Water weakness is not published anywhere we looked and it is the whole answer to an enemy most players simply run from. It drops M-Tentacles every time and has TWO steal slots at roughly one in two each — the M-Tentacles again, and an Echo Screen nobody lists. Bring status protection before you let it breathe on you. It pays 100 gil for 4,400 HP, and the only thing on the cliff that pays worse pays nothing at all — see the Icicle entry. Fight this one for the tentacles, not for the fight. Stilva — 2,000 HP, and the last easy Trine enemy-skill It teaches Magic Breath as a normal attack. Trine has to be forced out of it with Manipulate. If you already learned Trine from a boss earlier this is nothing; if you did not, this is the last practical window. Nothing to steal; a Tent at roughly one in eight on the drop, and a Holy Torch on morph. Icicle (the enemy, not the town) — 3,000 HP and it pays nothing at all reference Settled, and it is the only encounter of its kind we have found in the game. 3,000 HP, and the entire reward line reads 500 EXP, ZERO AP and ZERO GIL. No drop, no steal, no morph. Not a thin table — an empty one, attached to a fight with more HP than the Pagoda's first master. It shares a scene band with Blue Dragon and Evilhead, so you meet it on the climb, on a gauge that is draining. There is no reason to finish this fight. Run. Headbomber — a 100% steal reference 1,600 HP, and its Tranquilizer is a GUARANTEED steal, not a chance. Settled, and it is rarer than it sounds: exactly THREE enemies in the whole game have a 100% steal entry, and this is one of them. It morphs into a Tranquilizer as well. The drop is a Hyper at roughly one in thirty and is not worth waiting for. Schizo boss 18,000 HP per head, 36,000 total — and MAGIC DEFENCE 47, which is the finding. That is extraordinarily low for a boss this size, and it means magic is the correct answer to a fight almost every guide tells you to solve with physicals and Magic Hammer. Settled: the LEFT head absorbs ICE, the RIGHT head absorbs FIRE. Both nullify Gravity, so the widely repeated "weak to Gravity" is wrong. Steal from the right head, kill the left head lastSources disagree accessory Settled, and the guide is right — but only for one head. The RIGHT head carries a Protect Ring at roughly one in eight and has no drop. The LEFT head drops a Dragon Fang every time and has no steal. They are stored as two separate enemies with two separate item tables. Sources disagree: One guide says a Protect Ring is stealable from the right head; a boss FAQ says the fight has no steal at all. Point of no return: Yes, and a real one. Nothing in this area comes back. Everything on this page has to be picked up on the way through.
Before you go The maze The summon is lying on the ground on the first screenMissable materia Settled from the game's data as its own filed pickup on the maze's first map. Not a chest, not awarded — on the floor, on the screen you arrive on, while there is a great deal else going on. This is the fourth time the game has done exactly this, and it is the only copy in the game. Lost after: Walking past that screen. The area never reopens. Kaiser KnuckleMissable weapon Settled from the game's data as its own filed pickup. A Tifa weapon with eight Materia slots, in a chest set back from the wind corridor. Read the rest of the row before you equip it: attack 44, against 75 on the Crystal Glove, and only ONE of the eight slots is linked. It is a Materia frame, not a damage upgrade, and swapping to it costs her a great deal of physical output. Lost after: Leaving the area. Poison Ring and MP Turbo MateriaMissable accessory Settled from the game's data — both are filed with the final stretch. Worth stating because our own research flagged these two as "unverified and possibly misattributed" from a single guide; the game's files confirm them. The Poison Ring's immunity mask is settled as well: it blocks the Poison status outright, on top of the elemental absorb it is usually listed for. MP Turbo raises linked spell power at an MP cost, and wants 10,000 AP for its first level and 120,000 to master. Lost after: Leaving the area. Examine the figures off the pathMissable item There are cloaked figures slumped just off the main route. They are examinable and they hand over items. Almost everyone walks past them because they read as scenery in a scene that is trying hard to be atmospheric. Lost after: Leaving the area. Enemies worth fighting Gigas — steal the armlet, do not wait for the dropMissable armour 3,500 HP. It carries a Gigas Armlet at roughly one in two and drops an Earth Mallet at roughly one in eight. Since a successful steal cancels the drop, you are choosing — and the armlet at 50% beats the throwable at 12%. If you want both, use different encounters. Lost after: Leaving the area. Killbin — 150 AP from a regular encounter reference 3,200 HP and it pays 150 AP, which is enormous for a random fight at this point. It carries a Turbo Ether at roughly one in two and drops a plain Ether at roughly one in eight. The undocumented part is the morph: a MIND SOURCE, a permanent +1 to Spirit. Dragon Rider, 3,500 HP and in the same maze, morphs into one too — and the only other enemy in the game that does has 14,000 HP. Both easy copies are in an area that never reopens, so bring Morph. If you want to finish levelling Materia before the disc turns, this is also the enemy. Grenade — 100 AP, and a Right arm on every routeMissable reference 2,000 HP for 100 AP, which is a better rate per point of HP than the Killbin everybody grinds, and no published list we read mentions it. It also pays a Right arm on all three routes — roughly one in eight on both the drop and the steal, and guaranteed on morph. That is a throwable from the same block as the Earth Mallet and the M-Tentacles, and the area never reopens. Lost after: Leaving the area. White Wind (Enemy Skill from Wind Wing) enemy-skill 1,900 HP. Carries a Hi-Potion at roughly one in two, drops a Phoenix Down at roughly one in eight, and morphs into a Phoenix Down. If you somehow reached disc 2 without White Wind, here it is again. Get another: Zemzelett near Junon also teaches it, much earlier and much more easily. The boss The end of the sequence Corrections Point of no return: None that costs you anything. Junon stays visitable afterwards; only the disc 1 parade is gone, and that was gone already.
What to expect Corrections During the escape Enemies Corrections Afterwards Point of no return: The town closes permanently at a fixed story point. Two things in it are genuinely lost; most of the rest survives, despite what the missable lists say.
Before the story moves Walk the accessory shop's walkway until it creaksMissable key-item Settled from the game's data — the game's own name for it is a "Beat-up Useless Old Key". Walk the walkway until you hear the board creak, examine it, then use the key on the weapon shop's back door. It breaks. Tell the truth about it. Lost after: The attack on the town. Both routes to the ring close at the same moment. Curse RingCopy missable accessory Large boosts to every stat, at the cost of Death Sentence on you every battle. It is a real accessory for a real build, not a curiosity, and there are two chances at it in the same ten minutes. Lost after: The attack on the town. Get another: A second copy is stealable from the thing that attacks the town, in that same battle — but that window closes at the same moment, so there is no later route. Give the white chocobo Mimett Greens, then scratch behind its earsMissable Sources disagree materia The chocobo is in the weapon shop. Buy Mimett Greens at a chocobo stable, bring them here, feed it, then tickle it behind the ears. Do it on the first visit and the argument does not matter. Lost after: Unclear. One source says it stays available afterwards; nothing confirms that, and nothing confirms the opposite either. Sources disagree: Sources disagree on whether this survives the town's destruction, and the game's own message for it is just "Received Materia from the Chocobo!" — it does not name what you get. Shops Corrections Before the story moves The fight you cannot win Corrections The fight you cannot win The area outside Sea Worm — 5,000 gil and 200 AP from a regular encounter reference 9,000 HP at level 22, which is the mismatch that makes the Mideel coast famous for killing under-levelled parties that fly in early. It absorbs Earth, halves Fire, and takes DOUBLE damage from Ice — and Magic Defence 115 means Ice is the only magic worth casting at it. The Dragon Scales are a STEAL at roughly one in two, not a drop; it also morphs into Dragon Scales and drops a Turbo Ether at roughly one in eight. It pays 5,000 gil and 200 AP — an excellent farm once you can handle it. Head Hunter — Tranquilizer is the steal, Ether is the dropSources disagree reference Settled in favour of the split — 2,000 HP, Tranquilizer stealable at roughly one in two, Ether dropped at roughly one in eight. Hippogriff nearby is 3,000 HP and drops an Echo Screen at a strikingly low one in thirty. Sources disagree: One database lists the Tranquilizer as a drop. Another splits it into a steal with an Ether drop. Afterwards Corrections Point of no return: Each reactor closes on its own. Failing one costs you that Huge Materia and nothing else — the game continues either way and never mentions it again.
How this works Reactor 1 — North Corel North Corel: the coal trainMissable Sources disagree progression Roughly ten minutes. Catch the train with a button-mash, fight through five carriages, then alternate inputs on the brake lever until it stops. Failing crashes it and loses that Huge Materia. Lost after: The train reaching the town. Sources disagree: Sources agree on ten minutes overall; the catch-up phase is variously described as about thirty seconds. Warrior Bangle (steal from Eagle Gun)Missable Sources disagree armour 17,000 HP, takes DOUBLE damage from Lightning, nullifies Earth and Water. The Warrior Bangle is a STEAL at roughly one in two; the X-Potion is a separate 100% drop, so you can have both. Lightning ends it fast, which matters on a clock. Lost after: The train sequence ending. Sources disagree: Treat the deadline as real but not certain. The game stores a SECOND Eagle Gun record with identical stats and identical loot, filed in the block of encounters that also holds the Midgar raid's bosses. We cannot tell from the tables whether that formation is ever actually spawned, so steal it here and do not count on a second chance — but this is also the only Warrior Bangle any enemy carries, so it is worth knowing that a duplicate exists. Wolfmeister — 10,000 EXP from one train carriageMissable reference 10,000 HP and it pays TEN THOUSAND EXP, which is an extraordinary number for a non-boss and is published nowhere we looked. It takes double damage from Water. If you are under-levelled going into the back half of the game, this single carriage is worth more than an hour of grinding anywhere else. Its loot table is empty in every column — no drop, no steal, no morph, 100 AP and 600 gil. The EXP is the whole reward, so do not waste turns stealing from it. Lost after: The train sequence ending. CatastropheMissable limit-break Barret's final Limit Break manual, from a woman in a house near the inn. It is not part of the train sequence and it is easy to fly straight out of town without it. Lost after: Leaving North Corel after the train. Reactor 2 — Fort Condor Fort Condor: you want to lose the field battleMissable progression Not timed — this one is decided by the tower-defence minigame. Losing the field phase drops you into a direct fight with the commander, which counts as a win if you beat him, costs nothing in unit fees, and hands you the drop. Winning cleanly skips the drop entirely. Lost after: Finishing the Fort Condor sequence. CMD. Grand Horn — three versions, and neither guide is right about the lootMissable Sources disagree armour Settled, and both are wrong. There are THREE versions of this commander — 2,000 HP, 4,000 HP and 8,000 HP — and NONE of them has a steal entry. The Vagyrisk Claw is a guaranteed 100% DROP from the 2,000 HP version; the Imperial Guard is a guaranteed 100% drop from the 8,000 HP version; the middle one drops nothing at all. Which one you face depends on how far the story has moved. Lost after: Finishing the Fort Condor sequence. Sources disagree: One database lists a Vagyrisk Claw as a steal from this boss. Another says there is no steal at all. Look at the ground where the egg hatchesCopy missable materia There is a summon lying on the floor immediately after the commander fight. Not awarded, not announced — the fifth time this game has done exactly that. Lost after: Leaving Fort Condor after the sequence. One source says the area closes permanently at that point. Get another: It can be dug up at Bone Village later — the standard missables FAQ explicitly walked back its own warning about this on reader evidence. Reactor 3 — Junon Reactor 4 — Rocket Town Rocket Town: the code is Circle, Square, X, XMissable Sources disagree progression All sources agree on the code itself. On PC that is the OK, Switch, Cancel, Cancel inputs. Since the accounts of the timer disagree completely, the safe play is to know the code before you start. Lost after: The timer expiring. Sources disagree: Three incompatible accounts of the timing. One says the first attempt is untimed and a three-minute timer starts only after a wrong guess. Three others describe it as timed from the moment it begins. A fourth mentions no timer at all and says the scene ends identically either way. The Ziedrich steal here is the WORST of your three chancesSources disagree armour Settled, and it reverses the advice. The game stores three Rude encounters carrying a Ziedrich. This one — the 9,000 HP Rocket Town fight — offers it at roughly ONE IN EIGHT. The two later ones, at 20,000 and 28,000 HP, both offer it at roughly ONE IN TWO. Try here by all means, but this is the long shot, not the last chance. Sources disagree: Guides describe this as one of very few chances at the Ziedrich and urge you to take it here. Venus GospelMissable weapon Cid's ultimate weapon. Come back to Rocket Town after the sequence and speak to the man watching the rocket repeatedly — one source says three times. Settled from the game's data as a Rocket Town item. Lost after: Unclear; sources do not name a trigger. The payoff Point of no return: The dungeon itself never closes. One encounter inside it does — the Turks fight disappears once the story moves on.
Getting there The Research Room Weapons The Cargo Room The Research Room Why people come here Enemies The three Unknowns are the only enemy source of the three elemental armletsSources disagree armour Settled, and the database saying "absorbs" is right. Unknown (11,000 HP) ABSORBS FIRE and carries a Fire Armlet. Unknown 3 (15,000 HP) ABSORBS LIGHTNING and carries a Bolt Armlet. Unknown 2 (13,000 HP) breaks it — it ABSORBS POISON, and there is no poison armlet; what it carries is an Aurora Armlet. Two of three match, not three. All three armlets are STEALS at roughly ONE IN EIGHT, not drops, and no other enemy in the game carries any of them in any column — these three are the whole supply. The drops are separate and near-worthless: a Light Curtain, a Lunar Curtain and a Holy Torch at roughly one in thirty. Sources disagree: One database says Unknown 3 is WEAK to Lightning; another says it absorbs it. Our own earlier note here claimed each Unknown absorbs exactly the element its armlet protects against. The tables break that pattern on one of the three. Unknown 2 pays the most, despite the lowest HP of the threeSources disagree reference Settled, and the claim was right. Unknown 2 pays 3,000 EXP, 300 AP and 10,000 gil against Unknown 3's 2,000 EXP, 200 AP and 7,500 gil, even though Unknown 3 has 2,000 more HP. It beats the bigger one in every column. If you are farming, farm the middle one. Sources disagree: Our own research flagged this claim as implausible on the grounds that the HP ladder should track the reward ladder. Water Ring (steal from Serpent) — and Wind is the answer accessory 14,000 HP with Magic Defence 162, so most magic bounces — but it takes DOUBLE damage from Wind, absorbs Water and nullifies Earth and Gravity. The Water Ring is a STEAL at roughly ONE IN TWO; the drops are Dragon Scales at one in eight and Stardust at one in thirty. It also teaches Aqualung, which is not a last chance; a bird near North Corel teaches it far earlier. Turbo Ether (steal from Poodler) item 6,000 HP, with the Turbo Ether a STEAL at roughly one in two and an X-Potion dropped at roughly one in eight. Bad Rap (9,000 HP) absorbs Poison; its Ink is a steal at roughly one in eight, not the coin flip Poodler offers, and it drops Dazers at the same rate. Neither is worth stopping for — you are here to Morph them, and Poodler and Bad Rap are the ONLY enemies in the game that morph into a Speed Source and a Luck Source respectively. The boss Point of no return: For Midgar, yes — everything here closes when you leave. For the rest of the game, no: the airship comes back afterwards and every overworld sidequest is still open.
Before you go The Turks The Turks: each one absorbs a different elementMissable boss Settled from the game's tables, and published nowhere — Reno (25,000 HP) ABSORBS LIGHTNING, Rude (28,000 HP) ABSORBS FIRE, and Elena (30,000 HP) ABSORBS ICE. Three party members, three elements, and every obvious spell heals one of them. Reno and Rude each drop an Elixir. Lost after: The fight ending. This is the last time you meet any of them. Touph Ring, Ziedrich and Minerva Band — all at roughly one in twoMissable Sources disagree accessory Settled — all three steal at roughly ONE IN TWO. The Touph Ring is genuinely your last chance (only two exist in the game and both come from Reno). The Minerva Band is genuinely your only chance, because this is Elena's only fight in the game. The Ziedrich is the third of three. Lost after: The fight ending. Sources disagree: Guides describe this as the last chance at a Ziedrich. It is the last chance at this copy; three exist in total. The tunnels Almost everything in the tunnels takes double damage from Lightning reference Settled, and it makes the standard "bring Lightning" advice correct for the journey even though it is wrong for the boss. Cromwell (3,500 HP), Crazy Saw (3,900 HP) and Shadow Maker (2,000 HP) all take DOUBLE damage from Lightning. The exception is Behemoth (7,000 HP), which has no elemental relationship of any kind — it carries a Phoenix Down and a War Gong, both stealable at roughly one in two, and drops Stardust at one in eight. Crazy Saw is the other one worth a turn: a Mute Mask stealable at roughly one in two, and it morphs into a Turbo Ether. Cromwell drops an 8inch Cannon at roughly one in thirty. Graviball (steal from Shadow Maker) — guaranteed, not a chanceMissable item Settled, and better than published — the steal rate is 100%. Every attempt works. It also drops a Turbo Ether every single time. Guides list both as ordinary chance items. Only three enemies in the entire game have a 100% steal, and Shadow Maker is the only one whose guaranteed drop is a different, useful item on top of it. Lost after: Leaving Midgar. The Sector 8 undercity chestsMissable item Aegis Armlet, Starlight Phone (Cait Sith), Max Ray (Barret), and a W-Item Materia at the end of the south branch. There is a save point down here. Take the side branches — the route forward does not pass them. Lost after: Leaving Midgar. The building The Shinra Building, floor by floorMissable Sources disagree weapon Pile Banger and Master Fist on 2F, a Cid spear on 63F, a Mind Source and a Speed Source from the 64F vending machine if you bought from it on your first visit hours ago, HP Shout in a 64F locker, a Red XIII weapon in the stairwell, and a Mystile somewhere in here. Lost after: Leaving Midgar. Sources disagree: One source places the Mystile in the ruined train station; another puts it near the stairwell after the mech fight. They cannot both be the same chest. Open the lockers on the 64th floorMissable weapon One of the lockers holds the best weapon in the game for a character who has been carrying whatever he arrived with. One locker, one visit, gone forever — and it is one of only two best-in-game weapons that can be permanently lost. Lost after: Leaving the Shinra Building. The building is never entered again. Turtle's Paradise flyer No. 2 — last chanceMissable sidequest On the ground floor. If you never read it on your first visit, this is the only remaining opportunity, and without all six the Wutai reward — a Megalixir and all six Sources — cannot be claimed. Lost after: Leaving the Shinra Building. The bosses Proud ClodSources disagree boss 60,000 HP, Magic Defence 150, and settled — it NULLIFIES GRAVITY and has no other elemental relationship of any kind. No weaknesses. The Jamar Armor is a separate 20,000 HP target with its own Magic Defence of 165 and no items, and it pays 8,000 EXP and 1,500 AP in its own right. Sources disagree: One source says it is weak to Tornado, Flare and Ultima. Another says it has no elemental weaknesses at all. RagnarokMissable weapon Settled: a guaranteed 100% drop from Proud Clod, and the only entry on its table. A Cloud sword with eight Materia slots. Lost after: Leaving Midgar. Hojo has exactly three formsSources disagree boss Settled — there are THREE, at 13,000, 26,000 and 30,000 HP, and the last is named Lifeform-Hojo N. All three nullify Gravity and none has an elemental weakness. Only the final form pays anything at all — the first two award zero EXP, zero AP and zero gil, which is how you can tell the game treats them as one continuous fight. The middle form carries two limbs of 5,000 and 24,000 HP that also pay nothing and hold no items, so the 26,000 figure is the body only. Sources disagree: Sources describe three forms, four forms, and a differently-named final stage. One database calls the last one "Lifeform-Hojo NA". Power Source item Settled: a guaranteed 100% drop from the final form, and the only item on any of the three tables. The fight also pays 25,000 EXP, 2,500 AP and 6,000 gil. Corrections Reference: there is no Enemy Skill to learn here reference Nothing in this sequence teaches one. Worth stating because it is a long sequence with a lot of unusual enemies in it and a player carrying Enemy Skill Materia will spend it wondering. Correction: the Key to Sector 5 has nothing to do with this reference It is a separate earlier errand — dig it up at Bone Village once the party is whole again, and it opens the Sector 5 gate so you can reach Wall Market for Tifa's ultimate weapon. Nothing in the parachute sequence uses it. Correction: the Weapon outside is a separate, earlier battle reference Diamond Weapon is fought on the world map before the parachute drop, not during this sequence. Settled from the tables and worth knowing — it is a real fight with real rewards (30,000 HP, 35,000 EXP, 3,500 AP, 25,000 gil), it takes DOUBLE DAMAGE FROM LIGHTNING and halves Fire, and it carries a Rising Sun at roughly ONE IN TWO. It has no drop at all, so the steal is the only item in the fight and it is the game's only Rising Sun from an enemy. No guide we read mentions it. Point of no return: The confirmation prompt at the bottom, after the party regroups. Everything above that point is freely exitable — there is a climbable ledge back to the airship.
Getting oriented The descent Corrections Enemy Skills Enemies worth finding Mover — 30,000 gil and 800 AP from a 3,000 HP enemy reference Settled, and it is the best farm in the game by a wide margin. Three thousand HP, zero EXP, 800 AP and THIRTY THOUSAND GIL. It halves Fire, Ice, Earth and Lightning, and drops a Turbo Ether every single time on top, with a second Turbo Ether stealable at roughly one in two. It also MORPHS INTO A PROTECT RING, which makes it the only repeatable Protect Ring in the game — the one other enemy carrying one offers it as a one-in-eight steal. If you need money or Materia levels before the end, this is the answer. Magic Pot — 8,000 EXP and 1,000 AP reference 4,096 HP and it pays 8,000 EXP, 1,000 AP and 8,500 gil, plus a guaranteed Turbo Ether. It refuses to take damage until you give it an Elixir, which is the entire trick and the reason people walk away from it. It is not the game's biggest EXP payout — Iron Man in this same dungeon pays 10,000 — but its 1,000 AP is the most any regular enemy in the game pays, ahead of Mover's 800. It has no steal, so the Elixir buys the whole encounter or none of it. Master Tonberry — 44,444 HP, and a Ribbon if you Morph itSources disagree accessory It absorbs Gravity, carries an Elixir stealable at roughly one in two, and drops a Megalixir at roughly one in eight. The reason to bother is the morph, and it is a repeatable Ribbon — but it is not the only one. Ho-chu morphs into a Ribbon too, and at 4,300 HP against this one's 44,444 it is by far the cheaper farm. What is true is that these two are the only Ribbon morphs in the game. Sources disagree: Our own earlier note called this the game's only Ribbon morph. Iron Man — 10,000 EXP, and DOUBLE damage from Water reference 20,000 HP behind Defence 120 and Magic Defence 200, which is why it has a reputation as a wall. It takes DOUBLE damage from Water and halves Fire, Earth and Ice — so the one element nobody brings is the one that works. Morphs into an Escort Guard. Two things down here take double damage from Holy reference Dragon Zombie (13,000 HP, undead, absorbs healing) and Parasite (6,000 HP, nullifies Earth) both take DOUBLE damage from Holy — and Parasite takes double from Wind as well. Dragon Zombie's Cauldron is a steal at roughly one in two and also a drop at one in eight, and it morphs into a Vaccine; Death Dealer (7,000 HP) and Mover both carry Turbo Ethers at the steal rate, and Death Dealer drops a Kiss of Death at one in eight — the only enemy in the game that carries one. Dragon Armlet (steal from Dark Dragon) — and 350 AP armour 14,000 HP, nullifies Lightning, pays 350 AP, and carries a Dragon Armlet at roughly one in eight — worth a try while you are there, but not worth farming, because two dragons elsewhere in the game DROP the same armlet at 100%. It also drops an Elixir at one in eight and morphs into a Vaccine. King Behemoth (18,000 HP) halves Gravity, carries a Phoenix Down stealable at roughly one in two, and drops an X-Potion at the same rate — a one-in-two drop is rare enough in this game to be worth the note. The end How many parties you get for the last fight is decided in advance progression The game silently forms one, two or three teams based on hidden thresholds — roughly, how efficiently you handled the fight before, your weakest character's level, your average level, and whether you ever recruited both optional characters. There is no explanation on screen and no way to see which bracket you landed in. Only the team that lands the finishing blow goes on to the last fight, so concentrate your best gear on one team rather than spreading it. Jenova-SYNTHESIS: every published elemental note is backwardsSources disagree boss 60,000 HP, and settled — it NULLIFIES Gravity, NULLIFIES Earth and ABSORBS POISON. The first account is wrong on all three counts in the same direction, which is how a single error propagates. It pays 60,000 EXP and 500 AP — settling a second argument, where one source said 1,500 — and zero gil, with no drop and nothing stealable. Sources disagree: One wiki lists it as weak to Earth, Poison and Gravity. Another says it resists Earth and Gravity and absorbs Poison. A third says it has no weaknesses and is merely immune to Gravity. Safer-Sephiroth pays nothing, by designSources disagree boss 80,000 HP at level 87, nullifying Gravity and Earth with no weakness of any kind. Zero EXP, zero AP, zero gil, and an item table that is empty in every column — no drop, no steal, no morph. The same signature the game uses on every encounter it does not expect you to walk away from and keep playing, and it holds for the form before this one too: 60,000 HP, nothing paid, nothing carried. Shadow Flare is an Enemy Skill, not an item — there is nothing here to steal, and Dragon Zombie upstairs is the dependable place to learn it. Sources disagree: Our own earlier note said Shadow Flare is stealable from this fight. It is not an item and there is no steal entry here at all. Before you commit