North Cave
The disc starts off at North Cave and you can go any time. You should probably go down and when it asks you to commit, choose to prepare yourself. Go back up the ladder and take control of the Highwind.
Sidequests
You can do most of these sidequests (or at least start them) in disc 2. It’s just more convenient to do the majority of them now since you aren’t busy with storyline stuff.
Ultima Weapon
You may or may not have seen Ultima Weapon flying around after Diamond Weapon showed up. Well Ultima Weapon is southeast of Junon in that weird circular pool. Go up to it and battle it. It often uses Ultima Beam to start things off and that takes off around 1500-2000. Casting Haste is probably not worth it since Ultima Weapon flies off after a few turns. Just Cure3 and then keep curing because it’s attacks and Quake all take off a fair amount. Your Limits work best obviously as does Bahamut Zero and your best magic. Steal a Cursed Ring if you want.
After a few turns or after a certain amount of damage, Ultima Weapon will flee. He should be near you at first but could go in any number of directions, so try your best to find him right away because it may be difficult to find him if you lose him now.
Anyway, to initiate another battle with him you’ll need to ram the Highwind into him several times. You’ll notice how every few seconds he makes a turn – when he doesn’t make a turn and instead just goes straight to a location, this is when you know a fight is about to happen. After some battles with Ultima Weapon it’ll seem like he just disappears right away which can be frustrating. In his last battle he’ll be in Cosmo Canyon, and for the battles I had with him he was at Mideel, North Cave, Midgar, Gongaga Cave, Fort Condor, Corel Cave and then Cosmo Canyon. You may get screwed if you’re in disc 2 and the story is at Midgar, because Ultima Weapon will initiate a battle there and you’ll be forced into deserting that side quest until disc 3.
Rest up and prepare for each battle with him (this is a lot like the cumulative damage you need to do to Doom Gaze in Final Fantasy 6 ). He likely will start off with Ultima Beam again. In the final battle at Cosmo Canyon he’ll just start off there and only have a bit of HP left. At the very end, he’ll cast Shadow Flare to basically wipe a member out so make sure at least 2 members are alive when you deliver the final blow. Enjoy the 35000 EXP and 3500 AP, and Cloud’s final weapon, the Ultima Weapon.
Now that Ultima Weapon is defeated, Ruby Weapon appears near the Gold Saucer. Don’t just go and fight it though – you won’t win. This is one of the american-only bosses that are extremely difficult and require fine tuning of your materia and such, so that’ll be done later. Instead, get off the Highwind and walk to the Ancient Forest near Cosmo Canyon now that Ultima Weapon destroyed some plateaus and stuff.
Ancient Forest
An interesting environment here, to say the least. The enemies around here evade like nuts. To make your way east through this side scrolling action you’re going to need to throw insects and frogs into beehives and flytraps and other plant life.
To start off, move three of the four creatures closer to the east where you are blocked off. See that ledge with the Pitcher Flowers? Release the insects / frog into the Pitcher Flowers one by one and jump across. To get the Supershot ST in the middle of the Flytrap you’ll need to slowly walk and tap x so that you can get it as soon as possible. Jump across the Stamen to the east and go north for the Spring Gun Clip, a solid Red XIII weapon.
The second area is much trickier. Pick up an insect and go underneath the pink Stamen to jump up. Set the insect in the Pitcher Flower and then jump to the east. Pick up the frog and go on the ledge facing the left pitcher flower. Set the frog in there and then jump on it. Wait until the frog bursts out and you’ll be sent to the west ledge with the Beehive. Take this Beehive and release it right next to the mutant flytrap on the ground to the left. It’ll eat the Beehive and you can grab the Slash-All Materia, one of the quality Yellow Materia left. Now get the frog and put it in the right pitcher flower to get sprung east.
Get the two insects and put them in the pitcher flowers you see to the west. Jump on the stamen to get flung up. Now run west, up, and east until you reach a broken branch to the east – go to the end and Cloud will jump on three stamen to get over. Further east for the Typoon Summon Materia. Jump back to the west and go all the way to the west until you can take the southwest exit. Grab the Minerva Band and jump off the branch. Take a frog to the east and wait for it to burst so you can go back to the third area. Use the two insects to get back on top, but this time go east until you can go down in the middle. To get to the far east cave, you’re going to have to do some work. There are two insects on the right side and two on the left. Use the first one on the right (the side you’re on) for the far east pitcher flower. Jump on it and then up the next one until you reach the Beehive ledge. Grab the beehive, jump down, and place it so that the mutant flytrap eats it. Now take the second insect on the right and place it on the middle pitcher flower to get back to the left side. Now take the far insect here and put it right in front of the hollow tree. A frog comes out and eats it. Grab the other insect left and put it in the middle pitcher flower again. Now take the frog and jump across, and go to the far east pitcher flower to put the frog in. Since the frogs burst and push you, this one takes you east to the cave. Go east for the Apocalypse, a crazy triple AP sword for Cloud. North for an Elixir and northwest to exit.
Cosmo Canyon
You should drop in and visit Bugenhagen like the greeter guy says. Red XIII has a scene with him and Red gets the Limited Moon weapon.
Battle Arena
Since you probably have all of Cloud’s limits besides Omnislash, it’s probably time you get it. You already know the Battle Arena drill, but you basically fight up to 8 battles and the tougher the handicap, the more battle points you get. This is important to remember – it might be nice to try to get good at the slots and get Cure or Lucky 7 or some status ailment but you won’t get many Battle Points unless you destroy most of your materia. The rewards are W-Summon at 64000 Battle Points and Omnislash at 32000 Battle Points.
Unfortunately you can’t just do the Battle Arena. You need 10 GP to attempt it, so you’re going to need to gain around 200-300 GP (however confident you are that you’ll be picking up battle points each time). I found this to be really annoying and tedious to do but there are some efficient games at the Wonder Square that will ramp up your GP. I like to go to the submarine battles and do that for 20 GP each time. You have to do it 10-15 times but it’s better than getting 1GP or 2GP at a time. Again, try to get around 220-240 so that you have ample opportunity’s at the Battle Arena.
Back at the Arena, you’re probably going to want to use Cloud for this. Have Ultima Weapon, Escort Guard (armor doesn’t really matter), and Ribbon. It’s just better to equip a Ribbon otherwise the status ailments will kill you by the end. 2x or 4x Cut would work well, and have Mug so that you can attack if you are saving your Limit (saving Meteorain for the final enemy always is good). Counterattack Materia is important so that you can just defend and wait for the counterattack so you can potentially strike first in the next battle. As for attack magic, Ultima and the best summons that you can fit will suffice. Fill out the rest of his slots with HP Plus, Speed Plus, Magic Plus, etc.
Always cast Haste right away, and Regen and Wall when you want. It’s better to cast this kind of stuff early incase your materia gets broken. If you are leveled sufficiently the only real hard battles should be the last few, and even then a Meteorain can wipe them out pretty easily.
As for the spinning, you get three choices. The slots don’t go that fast so you can get the hang of manipulating it but it may give you a headache. Anyway, since you have a Ribbon on, the status ailments like Poison, Mini, Toad, etc won’t be a factor (or the Berserk / Paralyze Needle). So the best way to gain battle points (since that’s how we get Omnislash) is to get the materia broken (preferably all five at once). The others that aren’t status ailments (like level 5 down, time x30 damage, Speed reduced, Sword Broken, etc) will also contribute to your score. Getting 10000 + points is good and it probably means all of your materia was broken. At the same time you can win all of the battles and get Cure and Lucky 7 and get about 600 battle points. So get the toughest handicaps, you only have so much GP (and your battle points reset when you leave this arena!)
Chocobo Breeding / Chocobo Racing
Okay I don’t like this that much and this is why I do this now. I’d rather just do it all at once than have it ruining the fun throughout disc 2. Basically you’re going to need to spend lots of gil and race a hundred races with Chocobos so that you can breed them with a rare nut and create special chocobo’s.
Visit the Chocobo Sage via Highwind near the Icicle Inn. By about 50 Sylkis Greens here.
Let’s get the Nuts first. Having Steal As Well will help the stealing process along but it’s not that hard. You’re looking for 1 Zeio Nut from a Goblin on a northeast island. You also need 3 Carob Nuts from Vlakorados on the plains south of Bone Village (red dragon’s that have huge HP totals).
Now you need to start getting chocobo’s. Go to Choco Bill’s and rent 4 stables for 10000 gil each. The first two special chocobos you are after are the Mountain and River Chocobo. You need a Great and Good regular chocobo to get both of them. Great Chocobo’s are in Mideel and Good chocobo’s are near Gold Saucer. I’d go to Mideel an capture about 4 or 5 chocobo’s and then go back to Choco Bill’s and save. Enter and hopefully you have two Great Chocobo’s. Try to get a male and female and then release the rest. Go to the Gold Saucer and try to do the same thing, get a male and female Good Chocobo.
Now save and be prepared to mate one of the Good Chocobo’s with Great Chocobo’s. You don’t even have to race them at all, they can be class C, but do save as the likelihood of getting what you want is a little lower. Eventually you’ll get a Green Mountain Chocobo from mating the Great and Good Chocobo’s. Now you need a River Chocobo but you need to race the other two Great and Good Chocobo’s (after feeding each 10 Sylkis Greens) to class A to ensure better percentages in getting the River Chocobo. After you have these two Class A Great and Good Chocobo’s, save outside and mate the two and make sure you get a River Chocobo that is the opposite gender of the Mountain Chocobo.
Now you should have a Green Mountain Chocobo and Blue River Chocobo that are different sexes. These two need to be raced now to class A so that they have a good chance of having a Black Chocobo. Make note of the sex and then open up some space (like, get rid of all the chocobos except the Black) so that you can get a large amount of chocobo’s in the next area.
Fly west and a little north of the Icicle Inn to see some tracks in the snow. Get out of the Highwind a little south of them and go north. The rabbits are hard to hit and may result in a few missed opportunities but you only need one Wonderful Chocobo here. Again, save before you go and check so that you can reset if the gender is the same as the Black Chocobo. Save once you have opposite chocobo’s and then go to the island northeast of the Chocobo Farm. You will fight Goblins and you can steal a Zeio Nut from them (you only need one). Before you can breed the Black and Wonderful Chocobo you will need to give them 10+ Sylkis Greens and race them all the way to class S to be able to get the Gold Chocobo. Don’t worry, this is the end of the grinding you need to go through to get the Gold Chocobo. After all of this, save, and use the Zeio Nut to breed the Wonderful and Black Chocobo’s and you’ll finally get the Gold Chocobo. You can now travel anywhere and get some of the rare materia on the map.
Ride your Gold Chocobo east a little from the Chocobo Farm and then north a long distance until you reach a circular island that only the Gold Chocobo can reach. Enter and go towards the glowing red materia for Knights of the Round Summon. There isn’t a lot of fanfare after you get this summon but rest assured it is the best attack in the game and will be vital in your quest to defeat the american only Weapons.
Return with the Gold Chocobo to the Chocobo Farm and go due east and you’ll see a thin strip of land for an island, so get off and get the Quadra Magic, the most powerful Blue Materia.
Take the Highwind and Gold Chocobo to North Corel and run north. You’ll see a cave that you couldn’t land near so enter for Hp > MP Materia.
The final materia cave is east of Nibelheim and southeast of Wutai. Pick up the Mime Materia and there you go, those were your rewards.
Lucretia’s Cave
Now that you have the Gold Chocobo and are in the area (and on Disc 3), fly to Nibelheim and ride the Gold Chocobo east to Lucretia’s Cave. Put Vincent in your party and enter.
Walk in and Vincent will get the Death Penalty and his final summon, Chaos.
Nibelheim
Enter Nibelheim and go to Tifa’s room. You need to play a certain tune (the FF7 tune) on the piano in order to get Tifa’s Final Limit Break, Final Heaven. Remember you can use R1 too. Well, here is the answer.
X, Square, Triangle, R1 + Triangle, R1 + Square, X, Square, Triangle, R1 + X, Circle, X, Square, X.
Tifa will then find a note from Zangan and will get the Final Heaven limit break.
Ultimate Weapons – Ruby Weapon Emerald Weapon
Emerald Weapon
Emerald Weapon is the easier of the two ultimate monsters. First though, you need to Morph the Ghost Ship in the Underwater Reactor in Junon (go to the disc 2 walkthrough and search Ghost Ship). For Morphing the Ghost Ship you get a Guide Book. Take this Guidebook to the far east building in Kalm (east of Midgar). The guy in the second floor asks for it and gives you the Underwater Materia for giving it to him. What is this materia useful for now?
You’ve obviously seen the Green machine floating around as you travel with your submarine. Maybe you even bumped into it and got slaughtered. Well that’s Emerald Weapon. If you fought it, you noticed you had a 20 minute time limit. Well, the Underwater Materia allows you to breathe underwater and eliminate the time limit.
You’ll need to get more prepared than this though. Try to have a few mastered HP Plus’ so that your HP is 9999 for each. Also, have a Mastered Knight of the Round with HP Absorb. In addition, you must have three different Mime materias so that you can continually Mime the action in the previous sentence. These are the essentials, but Final Attack – Revive is very helpful if you happen to die, and having your party littered with Speed Plus / Magic Plus etc should help your stats. Haste All, Restore All, and Revive All are useful spell combos that you probably already use. I tend to always skip the Final Attack step since I just can’t stand to race Chocobo’s any longer than I have to and I always have issues getting the Final Attack Materia to appear as a victory spoil.
Save, and get in your sub. Look for the Green Weapon, Emerald Weapon, and keep resurfacing if you need to as it’ll respawn by Junon eventually. With the Underwater Materia equipped there is no longer a time limit.
The beginning of the battle may be hectic so be prepared to use Haste right away and then try to be at full health when you get the W Summon Knights of the Round off. If not the Revenge Stamp Emerald Weapon counters with may kill you. The character using the Knights of the Round will get his / her HP back with HP Absorb though. The goal is to get an endless chain of W-Summon Knights of the Round going until you get about 9 or 10 off and Emerald Weapon bites the dust. He’ll get some Emerald Beam attacks off and such but with the above strategy he won’t be able to do continual damage to you as the HP Absorb gives you full HP each time you use Knights of the Round. You get 50000 EXP and an absolutely ridiculous 50000 AP, along with 50000 Gold and the Earth Harp.
Return to the Kalm Traveler in the east part of Kalm and he awards you for defeating Emerald Weapon and bringing him back the Earth Harp. This is the best reward, really, and is better than what you get for Ruby Weapon by far. Anyway, the Kalm Traveler will give you Master Summon, Master Command and Master Magic for the Earth Harp.
Ruby Weapon
This is it, the hardest fight in the game. Yep, it requires more strategy than W-Summon / Knights of the Round / Mime.
As for equipment, you will need Knights of the Round but without W-Summon because it’s too risky with the Ruby Weapon’s counterattacks. In addition, have Mime on all three characters that you are using. Revive Materia should be on the character you plan on leaving alive from the beginning of the battle. Final Attack – Revive would be best to have but as you read above I don’t like chocobo racing so it’s hard to get Final Attack then. Instead you need to hinge your hope on a few Mystiles and an Aegis Armlet for your characters so that they can dodge Ruby Weapon’s Knights of the Round counterattack, Ultima. You’ll still get caught with it but you now have a good chance to dodge it. Also, to avoid some statuses have Ribbons equipped.
First of all, you need two characters dead right away. This is because Ruby Weapon will eliminate two of your characters randomly so it’s better you do it so that you can manipulate who dies. The person who survives you’ll want Life2 so that you can begin reviving the other characters immediately. Use Haste / All as soon as you can, and Regen to keep up with the little damage the hands do. When you are in comfortable health with all three characters (and hasted hopefully) use KotR with whomever has it. Ruby will counter with Ultima but hopefully you can dodge it, if not the Regen should start healing it and you may wish to use Elixir’s or Cure3 if it got a few characters. However Ruby always gets another shot in besides Ultima so you’ll have to tend to that too. Restore yourself to health and cast KotR again. However you can only cast it so many times so sometimes (when you’re fortunate with dodging Ultima) you’ll need to Mime the summon so that it doesn’t go against the amount of times you can use that summon. This is tough though because there will be times when Ultima connects on all of your characters and you have to heal. Hopefully you have a ton of MP Plus’ so that it only takes 6 or 7 Knights of the Round to kill Ruby Weapon, because it can be draining to keep your party up to shape after the Ultima and other counterattacks.
Your rewards are 45000 EXP, 50000 AP, 30000 Gil and the Desert Rose. As you go to deliver the Desert Rose to the Kalm Traveler, he offers you a chocobo. Accept his offer and up walks a Gold Chocobo. A very ironic and pointless gift, you’re better off just being happy you beat Ruby Weapon.
Final Cave
Once you’re done sidequesting, take the Highwind to the north part of the continent and land it at the North Cave. Climb down the rope and choose to run down.
Grab the Save Crystal. You can use this anywhere in this last area, but save it for towards the middle or end. The exit going north takes you back to the ship. Follow the path further down, taking the Guard Source, and soon you’ll be in a new area.
Take the left path going down and then up for a Power Source and Elixir. You can see a shining thing by the Power Source – go east behind the structure to get it, the Hp Absorb Materia. Continue this left path all the way down for a Magic Source and the exit. Also, if you take the right path going down from the beginning, you’ll get a Guard Source and further down a Mind Source and then the exit.
In this new area, go left and into the cave. Go southeast and try to enter the second black east cave you see for a Power Source. Further south for a Guard Source and then back north to return. In this initial area now, drop down to the east and then go left for a Mind Source. Drop down one more ledge and go through the nearby cave. Just jump down and you’ll be at a rest point where the remaining party members are.
This is a popular place to save. You can choose the left or right path, and you can choose which characters to send down which path. Take about 5 to either path and then the rest of them to the other way.
Left Path
The left path splits into the up and down part right away.
Choose the up path. In this area you can fight enemies called Movers that give you absurb amounts of AP and gil, not to mention they drop Turbo Ethers. This is the spot to level up your materia. Oh, not to mention here are Magic Pots who can be destroyed (if you give them an Elixir) for nearly the same AP as Movers and about 20000 EXP each. To get over the Elixir issue, use the W-Item Duplication trick to get 99 Elixirs (equip W-Item – choose to use an elixir, and then choose to use another elixir but cancel the command.
You gained an Elixir. Choose to use the second elixir again and then back out for another, and so on).
Anyway, go east and start working north for a Magic Source. To get to the other side, take the left path this time going north and Cloud will swim north to where the Remedy and exit are.
Take the north path going left right away for Vaccine and then just east of that for Shield Materia. You can also jump into the water just south of this materia and this will take you to the Imperial Guard you were probably confused about. More east in this area is a Hero Drink and north to leave.
Go west and look in the middle of the area to the north for a W-Magic Materia. South of this in the white light is a hard to see Counter Materia. Now take the west exit.
North for a Luck Source and then the party meets up. You’ll get all sorts of things (if you took this path above, you’ll get Last Elixir, Elixir, Speed Source, Guard Source, and Vaccine). If you choose to go down here, this is it.
If you want to return back and take the other ways to get to this point, you’ll get a Turbo Ether, MegaAll (time your jump perfectly), X Potion, Turbo Ether, X Potion, Remedy, Elixir for the left then down path. The right path has Mystile, Speed Source, Tetra Elemental, Megalixir.
End of North Cave
Where the party meets up, you get to choose your team again.
The Jenova music begins to play and the battles ahead are much harder, with Dragon Zombies (steal Cauldron) and other tough monsters around.
A boss battle is ahead against Jenova Synthesis so be rested up. It has three parts total so all magics and summons are your best bet. Cast Haste and Regen to stay ahead and you should have no issues if you’re built up well. 60000 EXP is the big reward here.
As Cloud floats up to Holy, Sephiroth intervenes. A huge battle looms and you must split your party into three. Obviously, try to split your party up as evenly as possible. You’ll fight two different Sephiroth versions here depending on the level you are on. Assuming you are of a higher level you’ll face up against Bizarro Sephiroth and his 5 part. The core is what you need to work on last and it has a high defense now anyway. Your best summons like Bahamut Zero and Knight of the Round are the best, as is Ultima and your limits.
The next and final battle is against Safer Sephiroth. He likes to put a Wall up and then start using powerful attacks like Shadow Flare and Pale Horse. Super Nova is the scary move that takes forever and will reduce you to critical status. Heartless Angel puts you down to 1. Having Haste and Regen on always means this shouldn’t be a problem, and Cure3 will get you back up if need be.
But wait. A battle with a shirtless human Sephiroth is about to begin, with just Cloud. There is only one thing you can do, so watch it.