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Hey Gamers! Doing something a little different this week, and covering a weird discovery I made this past week while playing old school Final Fantasy 7 on the Nintendo Switch.
This post is going to assume you have a lot of familiarity with the game, so if that’s not you, it might not make a lot of sense. This post also has nothing to do with Final Fantasy 7 Remake, or Rebirth.
Replaying the Classic
I watched a Youtuber try FFVII for the first time recently, and it was kinda fun. It was much more frustrating, though, because I wanted to make their decisions for them. So I started a new game of my own.
I’ve played FFVII several times through over the years. I got the Switch version in 2020, and got a little into stat maximization at endgame. That’s where you get to level 99, then start grinding for Power Sources, Mind Sources, etc to raise your stats incrementally. It’s kind of unnecessary when a single cast of Knights of the Round takes care of almost every enemy in the game.
This latest playthrough wasn’t anything special, but I did get a few things early, like the Beta spell, and wasn’t really ever challenged during the run.
Disc 2
I delayed Disc 2 as long as possible, mostly to play with Aeris (default name in this version) and get in some uses of her Level 4 Limit, which I’d never really bothered with before. When I got there I was pretty high level, had a lot of max Materia, and a ton of money.
At the first opportunity to raise Chocobos and race them, I did, and worked up to a Gold in the course of an afternoon. I went out and grabbed the big goodies, like the Knights, and Mime, and even Quadra Magic. And that other one.
What is HP<->MP Materia???
This is FFVII’s biggest WTF moment. The plot is full of twists and turns, and everything to do with Cait Sith is… time spent playing a classic RPG. But the weird purple Materia in the cycle of caves that include Knights and Mime and Quadra?
Raising and racing chocobos can be a real chore, and some players need to grind hard and grind long to get there. The reward for Mountain and River Chocobos are in caves that require riding those birds to get to. The first time reaching those caves, and getting Mime and Quadra Magic, feel great. Those are pretty juicy rewards, and they stoke you on what’s next.
Some players might even know what’s at the top of the quest chain, too, with Knights waiting as a reward for a Gold/Ocean Chocobo. So of course the penultimate reward must be great, right? At least good? At least usable?
The reward for the Black/Mountain-River Chocobo instead swaps your HP and MP, giving you a vast MP pool, but capping your HP at 999. Which is a real killer. It’s not practical for any boss battle, the battle arena, or any situation short of player attempts to raise limits quickly. My limits were all at 3 or higher when I got this Materia. It’s not good for that.
So what? Did the Devs just miss with this one? Try something and it didn’t work? If you search the Materia today, you’ll still find plenty of discussion threads trying to make sense of it.
Somehow, I did.
How I Stumbled on the Use for HP<->MP Materia.
Once you get the Highwind Airship, you can visit the village of Mideel in disc 2. The first time you do this, you won’t have Cloud, and will leave Tifa behind as the rest go out to search for Huge Materia.
This is a key stretch of the game, as you can start Chocobo racing (and get a Gold), pick up a few powerful Materia and items, and get to the best levelling spot in the game: the forest surrounding Mideel.
I’ve been going there for levels and AP for most of my playthroughs. The enemies are easy, die quickly, and provide a much better rate of return overall than anywhere in the inconsistent and tricky North Cave. Plus you can access it in disc 2. Once you get a solid one-hit kill for them, and can plow through them quick, you can push to level 99 and master Materia fairly quickly. Fairly.
That’s the big thing about grinding though: it’s slow. Anything that speeds it up is pretty amazing. I used to use Slash All/Flash to get it done, but that’s a disc 3 Materia, so in my current playthrough, I was just hacking and slashing my way through the Mideel forest, wishing there was some way to go faster.
Double Growth weapons and armour help a lot, but the ability to kill a lot of enemies at once isn’t that reliable. An ideal solution would be magic, maybe even paired with the Sneak Attack Materia I had won in the Gold Saucer while racing Chocobos.
But what magic? Not many are a reliable kill, and many also need to be paired with All Materia, which takes up a lot of slots.
If you venture a bit further in the game, and do the first Huge Materia quest, you can get Ultima. This is probably the best magic in the game, and would be a great choice for grinding, except it costs 130mp to cast. That would be a pain to have to constantly refill, except…
How to Use HP<-> MP Materia, For Real
Sneak Attack + Ultima, plus HP<->MP on that character, is an unparalleled grinding package.
You use minimum slots, you have literally dozens of casts of Ultima before needing to go to the Inn or use items, and your HP doesn’t matter because Sneak Attack ends most battles before the enemies can attack. The Mideel forest makes it easy, and there’s even a free Inn at the town.
I did Fort Condor and the Underwater Reactor so I could level up Phoenix Materia for later, and grabbed the Scimitar (3x Materia growth) for Cid, and in the course of a couple of hours, got most of the team to level 99 and made 4 copies of Phoenix. And a second Knights of the Round.
This is the best grinding I’ve ever experienced in this game by a wide margin.
How good? The last story thing I’d done was unlocking the Shinra Sub. I figured I’d take on Emerald Weapon. Just to see how I’d do.
Emerald Weapon in Disc 2
Spoiler alert, I took it down. It took 5 tries, with adjustments after each try, but it was totally doable. No cheats, no glitches, just clever setup and sequencing.
The main reason I’ve never done this before is because I assumed Final Attack Materia was essential. Pairing this with Phoenix will resurrect you on death, and make you hard to stop, but it’s a disc 3 Materia. You need Cloud’s Ultima Weapon, which you get from killing… Ultima Weapon, to unlock the extra Battle Arena gauntlet and get Final Attack.
Other than that, how do you stop the various one-hit kills that Emerald employs from ending your day? Phoenix is still essential, of course.
I think the easiest way to show you is to show my setup. I cleaned out the Sunken Gelnika as well, which you will probably notice right away.
Party
Cloud level 99, Yuffie level 95, Tifa level 99. Characters are based on what Ultimate weapons I had. I have done no Source farming.
Equip
Cloud – Heaven’s Cloud, Ziedrich, Sprint Shoes*
Yuffie – Conformer, Aurora Armlet, Sprint Shoes
Tifa – Premium Heart, Fourth Bracelet, Sprint Shoes
*Changed out for Protect Ring in the final run
Materia
Cloud – Mime (max), Knights of the Round (lv2), W-Summon (max), Phoenix (max), HP Plus (max), Speed Plus (max)
Yuffie – Mime (max), HP Absorb (max) paired with Phoenix (max), HP Plus (max), Speed Plus (max), Luck Plus x2 (both max), Underwater
Tifa – Mime (max), W-Summon (max), Phoenix (max), Knights of the Round (max) paired with Sneak Attack (max), HP Plus (max), Speed Plus (max), Luck Plus (max)
Strats and Sequencing
This battle is all about Knights, Phoenix and Mime. Anything else is pointless.
The reason why nobody has more than 8 Materia is because Emerald uses Aire Tam (Materia spelled backwards), which deals 1,111 damage for each equipped Materia. At less than 9 Materia, it’s survivable. Plus you really don’t need the rest.
Initially I tried using W-Summon to cast Knights followed by Phoenix, which seemed promising. The Sprint Shoes made it so we could Mime while the next character was starting to cast Knights, before the animations. It wasn’t going to wreck Emerald as fast as double Knights, but it was reliable damage, and we’d potentially survive any counter.
We didn’t. The counter came in the form of Emerald’s shoulder eyes. They would appear, then be destroyed by the Knights, which meant an Emerald counterattack (Stomp). This often killed the Knights caster, meaning no Phoenix followup, and subsequent Mimes only copied Knights. Emerald would then finish the job the next time it got a turn.
After a couple rounds of this, I realized Phoenix had to fire first. But a similar problem emerged immediately: damaging the eyes also prompted a counter from Emerald, and the 2 counters was a little much, wiping the whole group at once.
The Win
On the fifth run, I swapped out Cloud’s Sprint Shoes for Protect Ring, hoping to make the damage less symmetrical. Hopefully the characters wouldn’t all die at once.
I got the Sneak Attack – Knights to start. Cloud made the first move, using W-Summon to cast Phoenix, then Knights. Everyone after that used Mime as soon as possible. The Protect ring changed the damage math so that Cloud survived one attack, and the counterattack missed Yuffie in a key spot (2x Luck Plus?), and while I was probably dead the next time Emerald made a move, I squeaked out the win.
I’m sure this has been done before, and probably faster/better/smarter, but it felt good. And it’s something you can do too.
The real key to it all was HP<->MP Materia making the grind so bearable.
Conclusion
It’s almost 30 years after the 1996 release, and FFVII is still a great game, lots of fun, and full of surprises. Who knew I’d ever stumble on a use for HP<->MP Materia, of all the crazy jank.
What do you think? Is this a breakthrough, or has someone beat me to it? Are you going to give it a try the next time you play?
For me, it’s now a benchmark Materia to get, as it accelerates the grinding so much, that level 99 with multiple copies of Knights and Emerald dead, all in disc 2, is the new standard.
Thanks for reading!
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