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Leveling Up
General Info:
Best advice: Wait to really level up until you have acquired the sub. This allows you to get access to the
sunken ship, which allows you to get Yuffie's Conformer . That weapon will allow you to use the morph skill without
the normal damage penulty associated with morphing stuff. If you opt not to wait this long, it can take you a long
time to get your stats all maxed out. Also, if you wait until you get the Bahamut ZERO materia, you can maximize your
grinding to *also* net you a Master summon materia. For best results, wait until you have the mega all materia and
junction that to Yuffie as well. Don't foget to pick up the Leviathan materia in Wutai and the Hades materia in the
sub before you start seriously grinding. (See the materia page for more information.)
Best Equipment: I recommend Cloud, Cid, and Yuffie. Cloud should use the Apocalypse (3
tripple slots), Cid should use the Scimitar (2 tripple slots), and Yuffie should use the Conformer (best
morphing weapon. All three should start with Rune Armlet (4x double growth slots) equiped. Use the
tripple growth slots on your summon materia, then swap in other stuff later. If you went to golden saucer
and got a sneak attack materia, swap Yuffie's Rune Armlet for something with a connected slot and junction
your sneak attack materia to a morph materia. If you have the mega all materia, give her that, too. If
you have more than one sneak attack materia, you can use a tripple growth slot to rapidly level it up to
master level so you can put it in the Conformer , which should only really slot master level materia.
Why only master level materia? The Conformer has no growth, so it's best to only slot materia
there which won't grow anyway. If you have several master level HP plus materia and also have a master
level cover materia, consider having Yuffie be your tank ( Conformer is a ranged weapon, so you can put her
in the back without worrying about using a long range materia, too.) If Yuffie isn't killing everything
off in a single shot, you can also consider junctioning time materia and added effect materia together in
one of the connected slots on the Conformer to infect your enemies with slow/stop. Other good master
level materia for her: pre-emptive materia, speed plus materia, luck plus materia, enemy lure materia, etc.
If you outfit Yuffie the way I described above, you can literally start the battle with a
sneak attack that will do 9999 morph damage to all enemies before they get in a single attack. This makes
farming your stat-up items rediculously fast, but it *does* mean you're waiting to do any serious level
grinding until you're basically at the very end of the game. Since I like to play picture-in-picture
while I'm watching football, I'll do some leveling up sooner rather than later, and save the really
hardcore max-everyone-out grinding for the end of the game when I want to prep to go after Weapon.
But really, why stop there? I like to get 7 maxed morph materia and 7 maxed level sneak attack materia,
then junction them together on the Conformer and a wizard armor. By doing so, Yuffie can start the battle with
serveral attacks in a row. This makes grinding SO much easier. Start out by maxing out her strength, and eventually
she'll be doing two to three attacks of 9,999 damage each time. If you make sure there's a maxed mega all materia in
one of the remaining two slots, you can basically walk through nearly every non-boss battle in the entire game without
ever having to choose any actions for any of your characters. (The exception here is a magic pot - be sure to throw
them elixirs instead of repeat-morphing them!)
A question I get from time to time is, should I bother leveling up other characters, too?
That's up to you, but I usually do. I like to use Cid as my tank early in the game so he learns all his
limit breaks. Once I no longer have a bunch of summon materia to level up, I'll swap out Cid for someone
else and equip whatever weapon has the most double growth slots. I'll usually make that character my tank
and have them draw enemy attacks with cover, thus getting them all their best limit breaks, too.
As for which order to go after the status increase items, I recommend hitting these in the
order they are presented. Note that I really don't recommend you spend any significant time leveling up
until you first acquire the morph materia after visiting the Temple of the Ancients. There are certain
materia it's a really good idea to equip while you level up. enemy lure materia can seriously limit the
ammount of time you spend waiting to get into a battle. Knights of the Round materia can take a very long
time to level up.
Depending on what you are using to wear down your opponants, you may not want to have your
characters develop a limit break. You can give any character a tranquilizer to inflict sadness. This
will delay them from getting limit breaks. You may be asking, "Why the heck would I want to PREVENT a
limit break?" Well, if you are trying to morph your enemies into attribute increasing items, hitting for
too much damage can kill them off before you can morph them. If that doesn't make sense, just play around
with morphing enemies for a while; I'm sure you'll see why.
As you get lots of stat ups from level grinding enemies, you'll begin to apply them to your
characters. If you check in the STATUS item in the menu will show you the stats for your characters. If
you are using the various status up items, you'll notice that the stat never appears to go above 250ish.
You actually CAN; it just looks like you aren't. I think I was able to give an extra 75 points to one of
my characters, indicating you can actually get to 325.
Strength Up: Power Source :
Note: if you do this after Yuffie gets her Conformer weapon, it will go *very fast* for you. If
you don't want to wait that long...
Prep work: You are going to be getting a BUNCH of AP here (If you get 200 power sources, that's
9,000 AP (18,000 for materia in a double slot). Later on in the game, you are seriously going to want to
have one of each kind of materia at master level. For now, I recommend at least one of every yellow
materia you have in a double slot (except enemy skill materia).
Also, one of every summon (red materia). Once you start getting master level materia, you can
swap in your magic materia (green) until you have master levels for one of each.
Once you acquire the morph materia, feel free to get a ton of power sources (str up). Head to Gonga
Village, and take the first right at the fork in the road. Go a few screens up to the burned out reactor.
Equip sense materia to two characters, and morph materia to the third. Run around the reactor until you
find a heavy tank (HP: 1600 / MP:25). Have your characters attack him a few times to get his HP down,
then morph him.
You'll have to play with the numbers a few times, as your characters will do different damage
than mine did. Once you have him down low enough, use the morph and he'll turn into a Power Source
(str+1). If you're getting worked by him, consider using the mini magic on him to reduce the damage he
does to your guys to 1 or so. These enemies give you 340 XP and 45 AP. If you are using double-AP
weapons/armor, you can end up with 90 AP for each of these battles.
That's a pretty big number early on, but later in the game it's less appealing. I usually put
my summon materia into the double (or tripple, if I have the apocolypse and/or Scimitar ) slots to get them
up as fast as possible, but you may have a different strategy.
Vitality Up: Guard Source :
Again: if you do this after Yuffie gets her Conformer weapon, it will go *very fast* for you. If
you don't want to wait that long...
Head south and east to the Mideel area to smack around some spirals. You can hit them for pretty
good damage with Fire 3, then Cloud can morph them into guard sources. Oh, and did I forget to mention
that you can steal X-Potions from them? They have 2800 HP and give you 1400 XP, 160 AP and 2600 gil. If
you don't have fire, you can also use Demi-3 (plus mime works well) to make quick work of the.
Two shots of Demi 3 and you can usually morph them in a blow or two. If you have Gravity,
Morph, and Mime, this is an easy battle. Demi 3, Mime, Morph, Mime. If there are three enemies, one more
morph. You can get a LOT of vitality in a very short period of time with this.
Underwater Crash Site:
This is were you get the Conformer weapon for Yuffie. See the top of the page for strategy at this
point.
When you first get the submarine, head to the dock area just east of the Golden Saucer, and
then go to the souther area of the bay. Dive around here to see a sunken plane. Approach it with the sub
to get inside. The Disc 2 section of this walkthrough explains how to get cool stuff out of this plane,
so I'll concentrate on the level-up part in this section - but DON'T MISS THE Conformer .
Basically, any enemy you find around here can be morphed into one stat-up or another. You'll
be going through a LOT of HP/MP in this area, so I recommend you bring in 99 tents. You can use these at
the save point in the entrance hallway to restore all HP and MP. If you've come from fighting spiral
enemies, you may also have stolen an X-Potion or 90. Those are helpful. As you fight the Poodler enemies
you can steal a Turbo Ether from them.
There are a few things you can do here that make your guys work together well. For example,
you can have three characters, one with a morph materia, one with a master level gravity materia and one
with mime materia. Casting Demi 3, Mime, Morph, Mime is *really* effective against enemies that are
vulnerable to gravity damage. Strategies like this will let your non-Yuffie characters also morph
enemies. Depending on your level, that may or may not be necessary.
Be sure you understand how the HP<->MP materia works, too. A player who has 9999 HP and 999
MP can swap them to enable him/her to carry 999 HP and *9999 MP*. This makes Demi 3 go a LOT further. ;)
If you junction steal as well materia to your morph materia, you can rack up some additional cool items.
Another thing I like to do is get everyone ready for their level 4 limit breaks. Since this
has to do with how often someone is hit/uses their limit break, simply slot materia which ensures someone
will get attacked more often. For example, I like to junction a master cover materia and two or three
master HP plus materia. I'll also place that character in the back row, using a long range materia if
needed (e.g., Vincent doesn't need it, since most of his weapons are long range weapons anyway.) After a
character gets their limit breaks leveled up, I swap in someone else to draw all fire.
Here's a list of the sections of the plain, what you can find there, how to beat them, and
what you get:
Cargo Room & Research Room:
These are the room with the busted up helicopter and all the boxes (one screen up and one screen left from
the save point), and the room with the large reactor (one screen up from the save point).
Unknown (HP: 11,000 / MP: 110)
* Steal: Fire Armlet
* Counter: None
* Demi: Yes
* Morph: Power Source
* Gives: 1500 XP, 150 AP, 5000 Gil
* Strategy: Demi 3, Mime, Demi 3, (Morph, Mime until all gone).
Unknown 2 (HP: 13,000 / MP: 130)
* Steal: Aurora Armlet
* Counter: None
* Demi: Yes
* Morph: Guard Source
* Gives: 3000 XP, 300 AP, 10,000 Gil
* Strategy: Sleepl. Demi 3, Mime, Demi 3, (Morph, Mime until all gone).
Unknown 3 (HP: 15,000 / MP: 150)
* Steal: Bolt Armlet
* Counter: Creepy Touch (Inflicts Sadness)
* Demi: Yes
* Morph: Magic Source
* Gives: 2000 XP, 200 AP, 7500 Gil
* Strategy: Sleepl, Demi 3, Mime, Demi 3, (Morph, Mime until all gone).
Serpent (HP: 14,000 / MP: 290) (Weak against Wind)
* Steal: Water Ring
* Counter: None
* Demi: No
* Morph: Mind Source
* Gives: 1400 XP, 70 AP, 2500 Gil
* Strategy: Sleepl, Tornado, Tornado, (Morph, Mime until gone).
Hallway:
The hallway is located exactly one screen left of the save point. This is one of my favorite places to level up. You get great XP and AP, and the
morphables pile up quickly. As an added bonus, your guys get FASTER with time ( Speed Source ), so it takes even less time as you do it. If you have
sleepl-all junctioned, you can even make sure you almost never get hurt. :D
Bad Rap (HP: 9,000 / MP: 120)
* Steal: Ink (One enemy: Darkness)
* Counter: None
* Demi: Yes
* Morph: Luck Source
* Gives: 1,100 XP, 70 AP, 2,500 Gil
* Strategy: Demi 3, Mime, Demi 3, (Morph, Mime until all gone).
Poodler (HP: 6,000 / MP: 220))
* Steal: Turbo Ether
* Counter: Fire (unless you drain it's MP with Enemy Skill: Magic Hammer)
* Demi: Yes
* Morph: Speed Source
* Gives: 900 XP, 70 AP, 2500 Gil
* Strategy: Demi 3, Mime, (Morph, Mime until all gone).
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