Materia

One of the most fundamental aspects of Final Fantasy VII is how to equip Materia to characters properly and there are three important things to keep in mind about this:

Materia Stat Effects:
The first thing to notice about Materia is the affect on stats that equipping a Materia on a character has. In the bottom left corner of the screen each Materia will list a selection of stats that will either be improved or degraded as a result of equipping the Materia on the character. For example, let's take an in-depth look at Restore Materia. The stats effected by equipping Restore Materia are HP (-2%), Str (-1), MP (+2%) and Mag (+1).

These stats affect the health, strength, and magic power the character equipping it will have. So what should you aim towards when equipping Materia on a character?

The first, and most important thing to note, is that if you don't plan on using a certain Materia you probably shouldn't equip it unless the stats it affects will benefit the character. Throughout the game you'll receive many, many summon Materia; many of which you won't continue to use later on in the game (it's hard to find time to use Shiva and Choco/Mog when you've got summons like Bahamut-ZERO and Knights of the Round in your inventory).

The next important thing to plan out is a role for each of the members on your team. Chances are that you'll want to have one character loaded with Restore Materia (paired up with an All or Mega-All Materia) and plenty of bonus magic stats to improve their ability to heal. You'll also want to equip one of your stronger characters with health and strength improving Materia and set them up to take more of the hits. This can be done by equipping certain Materia (such as Cover) and placing characters in the front or back lines accordingly (Click here to read more about character placement on the battle field).

The most important lesson you can take out of this is that it can be highly detrimental to a character to load them up with Materia that you don't plan on utilizing on a fairly regular basis. If you plan to make physical attacks rather than magic attacks your primary means of dealing damage then you should probably avoid equipping most of the Materia in the game, including nearly all unessential Magic (green Materia) and summons (red Materia).

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Materia Pairing:
As you no doubt have noticed, some of the equipment in the game has paired Materia slots that look like this:

These paired slots are designed to be used with Support Materia or blue Materia (click here for a list of blue Materia and where to find them). You can activate special effects on your character by pairing certain Support Materia with certain Magic Materia. Each Support Materia has a different effect on your character, and some Support Materia only work with certain Magic Materia. It's also important to note that without being paired with some sort of Magic Materia that Support Materia is absolutely useless. Here is a short list of a few of them that describes what can and can't be equipped to each of them:

All Materia: Probably the most important Support Materia in the game. This Materia allows for quick and easy healing of allies with low health early in the game, and Restore Materia should always, always, always be paired with an All Materia (unless of course you have a Mega-All Materia, which you have access to much later in the game). All Materia also gives you the ability to attack every enemy in the battle with one use of a Magic Materia (as long as their paired together in the same slot of your armor). Because you're given access to quite a few All Materia in the game, equip one to a Restore Materia and use the rest for offensive spell casting. Just make sure to check that the Magic Materia you've paired the All with doesn't automatically hit every enemy on the field already (for example, Ultima hits every enemy on the field without the need for a paired All Materia).

All Materia can be paired with Barrier, Destruct, Earth, Fire, Gravity, Heal, Ice, Lightning, Master Magic, Mystify, Poison, Restore, Revive, Seal, Time and Transform

Counter Materia: Not to be confused with Counter Attack Materia. Counter works by attacking the enemy with the paired Materia after the character has been attacked. It starts off with a 30% chance to activate, and improves up to a 100% once the Materia has leveled to level 5. Read the fine print though, "Attacks with paired *Command* when damage is incurred". This indicates that you must use Command Materia, rather than Magic Materia in order to activate the effect. This includes the following Materia:

Deathblow, Master Command, Manipulate, Mime, Morph, Sense, Steal, Throw

Note: When paired with Master Command Materia, which gives you access to every Command in the game, a random Command will be chosen and used when the Counter Materia is activated.

Magic Counter Materia: Works exactly the same as Counter Materia (listed above) with the exception that the paired Materia must be green (Magic). Again, Master Magic Materia will cause a random spell to be used.

For more information on the other Support Materia click here.

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Materia Growth:
As you've no doubt noticed, Materia will grow and gain levels as your characters do. Rather than gaining experience points, however, they gain AP, which is one of the rewards you get every time you defeat an enemy.

Each piece of equipment has their rate of growth listed as a stat on the equipment screen. Growth will either be listed as normal, double, triple or none. Growth indicates the multiplayer that is applied to AP points after a battle has completed.

For example, if you receive 40 AP points after a battle:
Materia equipped on a weapon or armor slot with normal growth will receive 40 points, 80 points on double growth, 120 points on triple growth and 0 points on equipment with no growth listed

It's important to maintain and monitor the growth of your Materia throughout the game. Higher leveled Materia gives you access to the higher leveled spells, or a higher chance to cause intended effects (like Counter), or more damage, etc. Materia is listed as MASTERED once it reaches the highest level available to it, and not only becomes much more useful to your character, but also becomes worth much more gil. Leveling Materia is an incredibly effective method of making money (click here to read more on earning gil).

No Growth Armor:
The first time I played through (and according to what I've read it's a pretty common occurrence the first the people play through the game) I had no idea what growth had to do with armor. Now this normally isn't a problem, as Materia will just continue to grow as you play through the game without your intervention. The problem arises, however, when you get to the end of the game and you start to acquire each of the characters best weapons in the game. These weapons are:

Cloud: Ultimate Weapon
Barret: Missing Score
Tifa: Premium Heart
Aeris: Princess Guard
Red XIII: Limited Moon
Yuffie: Conformer
Cid: Venus Gospel
Vincent: Death Penalty
Cait Sith: HP Shout

All of these weapons have no growth. Once you equip them your Materia will not continue to grow. This typically isn't a problem if you're just headed straight towards Sephiroth to end the game, but if you plan on defeating a few more of the harder battles in the game (such as Emerald and Ruby Weapon) you might need to equip weapons that allow your Materia to continue to grow. In fact, you'll probably want to equip the Triple Growth weapons in the game, such as Apocalypse and Scimitar.

The last notable growth tidbit is one particular Materia which provides no ability until you allow it to grow a fair bit, and that's Ultima Materia. While equipping Materia that provides no notable effect on your character when you first get it may sound like a terrible idea, it's more than worth it! Ultima Materia is the best Magic Materia in the game. It has the strongest attack and it automatically hits all of the enemies on the screen.

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Front and Back Row

If you're not new to the game, but not familiar with the idea of the front and back row, it doesn't take much to understand, and it may clear up some potential issues and questions you have from earlier play-through.

Remember when Aeris first joins Cloud in the church down in the slums? Did you notice that her portrait picture on the menu screen seemed to appear to the right of Clouds and every one else she joined in a party? Aeris is automatically placed in the back row when she joins the game, and her portrait being slightly to the right of everyone else?s is used to show this (it can be hard to notice row formations during battles).

So what does this mean to you?

Two things: A characters attack power with their standard attack command is reduced when they are in the back row, but only if their attack is melee based. Characters with long ranged weapons will not be affected by this modifier. Vincent, Barret and Yuffie are all long ranged attackers who will not be affected by which row they are in, while Cloud, Tifa, Aeris, Red XIII, Cait Sith, and Cid will all suffer a loss in strength if you move them to the back row.

So then what are the benefits? Accompanying the reduction in attack power is a reduction in the amount of damage the character takes. Weaker character should therefore be placed in the back row, along with any character whose primary purpose is magic based attacks and healing (Magic Materia reduces a characters strength and HP, click here to learn more about Materia's effects on a character).

You probably noticed when you first got Aeris on your team that her attack was incredibly weak. This is partially because she is in the back row, but Aeris' attack is quite weak no matter what.

So how do you move a character to the back row?
All you have to do to move a character to the front or back row is open up the menu screen and select "Order". Select the character you want to move and then select the exact same place they were already at in the group and their portrait will slide to the left or to the right to indicate a change row to the back or to the front.

Make sure that Vincent, Barret and Yuffie always stay in the back row to receive the damage reduction. They obtain no benefits from being in the front row. If you get the Long Range Materia equip it to a character with a melee, hand-to-hand combat attack and then move them to the back row. They will now receive the benefits of taking reduced damage in the back row and not suffer the penalty on their standard attack.

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