The Raid on Midgar

Story mode. Written for a first playthrough and kept free of spoilers — it will not tell you what happens here, only what the game is asking of you.

You go back to the city you started in, by parachute, with three characters you choose before you jump and cannot swap afterwards.

Two things to do before you go

Bring Barret. There is a weapon in here that does not exist unless he is standing in the party when you reach it. Not a chest you can come back for — a chest that is simply absent. It is the single most consequential party choice in the game.

Bring Steal, and status protection. There is a fight partway through with three opponents, each carrying something, and the odds are good. Two of those items you will never see again.

You get the airship back

Worth saying plainly, because a lot of guides imply otherwise: this is not your last chance to do things. The airship is taken away for this sequence and handed back afterwards. Everything optional you have been putting off is still there when you come out.

The real point of no return is much later and the game will ask you directly.

Take the side branches

The route forward through the undercity and the tunnels does not pass most of the chests. Every one of them is down a branch you have to choose to walk.

And in the building: every floor. There is a weapon in a locker, another in a stairwell, and a vending machine that gives you something only if you bought from it on your very first visit, many hours ago.

If you have been collecting pub flyers all game, the last one you might be missing is on the ground floor here, and this is the final opportunity.

The fights

The three in suits each absorb a different element, so any spell you pick will heal one of them. Physicals, or aim carefully.

The big mechanical thing has no weakness at all — do not waste turns hunting for one.

The last fight has three stages back to back. Nothing is awarded until all three are done.

Game Notes

Midgar in disc two is the game checking whether you were paying attention at the start.

The tunnels are the same tunnels. The building is the same building — the same floors, the same vending machine, the same lockers, and the game remembers whether you put 250 gil into a machine twenty-five hours ago and gives you something for it now.

It is also structured as a mirror of the opening. You came out of this city on a train, under pursuit, at the bottom. You come back into it by dropping from the sky, and you climb the same tower you fell out of.

Almost nothing about that is stated. It is just the same rooms, in the opposite order, with everything broken.

Completionist mode. Full spoilers, in play order, with every permanent loss called out before you reach it. 5 entries below are marked where our sources disagree with each other — we have not picked a winner for you.

Spoilers from here.

This is not the point of no return

Many guides frame this sequence as your last chance to do anything in the game. The dedicated point-of-no-return documentation does not list it at all.

The Highwind is taken away for the duration and given back afterwards. Wutai, chocobo breeding, the Weapon hunt, Battle Square, the Gelnika, the remaining Huge Materia — all still open when you come out. The genuine hard stop is in the crater, much later, and the game asks you directly before it happens.

The confusion is understandable: “last chance to visit Midgar” is true, and one word away from “last chance to do anything,” which is not. The cost of believing the second one is the entire back half of the game’s optional content.

Bring Barret

You pick three characters before the drop and cannot change them.

Missing Score — Barret’s ultimate weapon — sits in a chest in the stairwell after the mech fight, and the chest does not exist unless Barret is in the active party. Not locked. Not guarded. Absent.

One visit, one chest, no second attempt. Along with Cait Sith’s weapon four floors earlier, it is one of only two ultimate weapons in the game that can be permanently lost.

The Turks each absorb a different element

Settled from the game’s tables, and we have not found this published anywhere:

Three enemies, three elements, covering the three spells you are most likely to open with. Whatever you cast, you are healing one of them. Physical damage, or pick your targets by element deliberately.

All three steals are roughly one in two. Which of them are actually last chances:

• Touph Ring — genuinely your last. Only two exist in the game and both come from Reno.
• Minerva Band — genuinely your only. This is Elena’s only fight in the entire game.
• Ziedrich — the third of three. Guides call this the last chance; it is the last chance at this copy. The Gelnika offers the same steal at the same odds, and Rocket Town at a quarter of them.

The tunnels: bring Lightning, but not for the boss

Research flagged an apparent conflict here — one guide recommends Lightning for the journey, another says Proud Clod has no weaknesses. Both are right.

Settled: Cromwell (3,500 HP), Crazy Saw (3,900 HP) and Shadow Maker (2,000 HP) all take DOUBLE damage from Lightning. The boss is not.

One exception in the trash: Behemoth (7,000 HP) has no elemental relationship of any kind — not a weakness, not a resistance, nothing. Lightning is correct everywhere down here except on the one enemy with 7,000 HP, which is exactly the one you would most want it for.

The Graviball steal is guaranteed

Shadow Maker carries a Graviball at 100%. Every attempt works. It also drops a Turbo Ether at 100%.

Guides list both as ordinary chance items. They are not. Only three enemies in the whole game have a 100% steal, and Shadow Maker is the only one of the three that pairs it with a guaranteed drop of a different item worth having. Steal, kill, take both, every time.

Behemoth carries two steals, a Phoenix Down and a War Gong, both at roughly one in two, and drops Stardust at one in eight. Crazy Saw carries a Mute Mask at roughly one in two and morphs into a Turbo Ether — no guide we read lists either. Cromwell drops an 8inch Cannon at about one in thirty. SOLDIER:1st (5,000 HP) carries a Shinra Alpha at roughly one in eight.

What is in the city

Sector 8 undercity and tunnels: Aegis Armlet, Starlight Phone, Max Ray, and a W-Item Materia at the end of the south branch. Save point down here. The forward route does not pass any of them.

Shinra Building: Pile Banger and Master Fist on 2F, a Cid spear on 63F, HP Shout in a 64F locker, a Red XIII weapon in the stairwell, and a Mystile — one source places it in the ruined train station, another near the stairwell after the mech fight, and they cannot both be the same chest.

The 64F vending machine gives a Mind Source and a Speed Source, but only if you bought from it on your first visit to this building, roughly twenty-five hours of playtime ago. That is the longest-delayed consequence of a small decision anywhere in the game.

Turtle’s Paradise flyer No. 2 is on the ground floor, and this is the last opportunity. Without all six, the Wutai payout — a Megalixir and all six Sources — is unclaimable.

Proud Clod

60,000 HP. Magic Defence 150.

One source says it is weak to Tornado, Flare and Ultima; another says it has no elemental weaknesses. Settled: it nullifies Gravity and has no other elemental relationship of any kind. No weaknesses. The first source is listing non-elemental spells as though they were elements.

The Jamar Armor is a separate 20,000 HP target with Magic Defence 165 and no items — but it pays 8,000 EXP and 1,500 AP in its own right, which is more AP than the main body. Kill it rather than ignoring it.

Ragnarok is a guaranteed 100% drop and the only entry on Proud Clod’s table.

Hojo has exactly three forms

Sources describe three forms, four forms, and a differently-named final stage — one database calls the last one “Lifeform-Hojo NA.”

Settled: three.

All three nullify Gravity and none has an elemental weakness. The first two award zero EXP, zero AP and zero gil — the same signature we found on Ultimate Weapon at Mideel, and the clearest possible evidence that the game treats all three as one continuous fight rather than three bosses.

The 26,000 figure is the body only: the middle form carries two limbs of 5,000 and 24,000 HP, which between them nearly double the fight’s real health bar and which also pay nothing and hold no items.

Power Source is a guaranteed 100% drop from the final form and the only item on any of the three tables.

Three corrections

No Enemy Skill is learnable in this sequence. Nothing here teaches one. Worth stating, because it is a long stretch full of unusual enemies and a player carrying Enemy Skill Materia will spend it waiting.

The Key to Sector 5 is not part of this. It is a separate earlier errand — dug up at Bone Village once the party is whole, opening the Sector 5 gate so you can reach Wall Market for Premium Heart, Tifa’s ultimate weapon. Nothing in the parachute sequence uses it.

The Weapon outside is a separate, earlier battle. Diamond Weapon is fought on the world map before the drop, not during this. And it is worth its own line, because the data turned up something nobody publishes: it has 30,000 HP, takes DOUBLE damage from Lightning, halves Fire, pays 35,000 EXP, 3,500 AP and 25,000 gil — and carries a Rising Sun at roughly one in two. It has no drop, so the steal is the only item in the fight, and it is the only Rising Sun any enemy in the game carries. Not one guide we read mentions that steal exists.

Game Notes

The vending machine is the best joke in Final Fantasy VII and almost nobody gets it.

On the 64th floor of the Shinra Building, on your first visit, hours into disc one, there is a machine that sells you nothing useful for 250 gil. It is set dressing. You buy from it because it is there.

Twenty-five hours later you come back to the same floor — through a hole in the world, with a different party, in a different act, in a building that is being torn apart — and the machine remembers. It gives you two permanent stat items, for a decision you made before you knew there was a decision, in a game that never once mentioned it.

There is no prompt. No dialogue acknowledging it. No entry in any menu. If you did not put the gil in, the machine is just a machine, and you will never learn that it could have been anything else.

That is the whole design philosophy of this game compressed into one prop: rewards for curiosity, delivered so far after the fact that only a player who was paying attention the first time will ever connect the two.