Final Fantasy VII

Beating Weapons

Things You Need

W-Summon Materia. You can purchase W-Summon Materia using battle points in the Battle Arena at the Gold Saucer. You’ll have to battle for a while, which means you’ll need GP. The easiest way to earn these is by racing chocobos. You’ll need to race in order to get another needed materia anyway.
Knights of the Round Materia. You’ll need to capture, race, and breed chocobos to get this materia. Follow the instructions in the Chocobo Racing section for full instructions on acquiring this Summon Materia.
Underwater Materia. See the Junon Underwater Reactor section of Disc 2 for information on obtaining the Underwater Materia. Basically you just need to morph a Ghost Ship into a and take it to the guy in Kalm.
Final Attack Materia. You can get Final Attack Materia by competing in the special battle at the Gold Saucer. You will need to be ultra powerful and use Cloud’s best weapon, which you cannot get until after the underwater Junon area. See the Leveling Up section for info on how to max out your team’s stats, and the Gold Saucer section for information on getting through the battles.

General Strategy

My Weapon strategy is this: equip one character with W-Summon Materia, Knights of the Round Materia, and anything else you want leveled up. Then equip Mime Materia to each of your other characters and have them mime the Knights of the Round W-Summon.

You’ll want to get Knights of the Round Materia via the steps in the Chocobo Racing section, and you’ll want to level up your first Mime Materia to master level so it will “birth” a copy of itself.

This will allow you to have two characters who can Mime the Knights of the Round summon used by the third.

Ultimate Weapon

There is an opportunity to learn an amazingly powerful Enemy Skill here, but it can only be learned by the character who kills him off.

If you don’t have Knights of the Round Materia, refer to the Chocobo Racing section and go get it. This battle can be pretty frustrating without it, as Weapon will fly around to different areas and you’ll keep having to go find him and fight him. If you DO have Knights of the Round Materia, you’ll do enough damage in the first battle to know exactly where he’ll end up.
Equip one character with lots of HP Plus Materia, MP Plus Materia, Knights of the Round Materia, and all of the Enemy Skill Materia you have. Equip whichever armor gives you the best magic defense. Your other two characters should have the ability to steal and should have long-range weapons or Long Range Materia. For the main character, I like to use Yuffie with her weapon. Cloud and Cid make good secondary characters since their triple AP weapons can take extreme advantage of the AP you’ll get from this battle.
Fly the Highwind to Junon, and look east. You should see a river flowing out of a valley with waterfalls. You should see Weapon floating in the middle of the valley.
Land nearby to equip, , and save. Saving is important. You’ll have a limited number of rounds to steal and attack, and it’s nice to be able to reload if you miss either stealing or using your Knights of the Round summon. When you’re ready, approach him in the Highwind.
Steal a , then attack. If you’re using Knights of the Round, it should only take a single attack. Even if you’re not using Knights of the Round, you should beat him pretty quickly by this point, but the rest of the battle will be frustrating. When he flies off, you won’t get any XP or AP. Yet.
Follow him to the next continent and head toward the Ancient Forest, east and south of Cosmo Canyon. Again, land, , and save. Make sure your Knights of the Round character has as much HP as possible.
Take him out with a single Knights of the Round. He will retaliate against the character who killed him with the extremely painful Shadow Flare. As long as the character who killed him off has all the Enemy Skill Materia, they will all learn that skill. If Shadow Flare kills off that character they will still learn the Enemy Skill. They just won’t be able to take advantage of the massive amount of XP and AP you get from this battle.

When you’ve defeated him, you should receive . This is the most powerful weapon for Cloud.

If you’ve talked to the guy near the Battle Points exchanger at the Gold Saucer, you’ve probably learned that there’s a battle for only those with “the most powerful weapons.” is the key to participating in those battles. See the Gold Saucer section for more information on how to win Final Attack Materia. That’s a requirement for defeating Ruby Weapon.

Ruby Weapon

Quick bug note: if you don’t see a red tentacle thing in the desert around the Gold Saucer at this time, simply land and fight a random battle. If that doesn’t trigger it, go into a town, stay at an inn, and then return. That should fix it. Apparently the code for determining if this enemy appears does not get executed unless you do one or both of those.

OK. You’ll likely wanna read this whole section through a time or two in order to get the gist of it.

This guy cannot be hit if his tentacle-arms have not been submerged. The key is to wait until his arms disappear then wallop him. Unfortunately, he has an attack that will remove one or more of your characters from the battle permanently. He won’t use it if you have only one live character, though.

So you will want to go into this battle with two dead and one live character. Kill off two guys first, before you even start this battle, making sure the last guy, your most powerful character, has W-Summon Materia, Phoenix Materia, and Hades Materia equipped.

Link Knights of the Round Materia to MP Absorb Materia and, again, make sure to link Phoenix Materia to Final Attack Materia. The latter will automatically revive any downed characters in a single action. Your remaining, initially dead, characters should have Mime Materia.

Enemy Notes:

Do not use Counter Materia. Otherwise your guys can accidentally use Mime on a weak counterattack instead of the Knights of the Round summon. That would be bad.
Do not use Cover Materia. Ruby Weapon’s attacks can do 7,000+ damage even on a buffed up character. Cover will prevent you from being able to respond quickly enough to heal up your characters, likely with catastrophic results.
Slow down the battle speed and change ATB from Active to Wait. Since I usually come straight from a significant amount of level grinding, my battle speed is maxed out and ATB is active, which means Weapon is basically guaranteed an attack any time I have to choose an action. For most enemies, it just doesn’t matter if they get in an extra shot or two. When fighting Ruby Weapon, however, it can be seriously problematic.

When you’re ready, use a gold chocobo or the Highwind to ram him. He’s the little red thing poking out of the sand surrounding the Gold Saucer.

When the battle first begins, you may have to heal up a little from time to time, but mostly he should just start off by sticking his hands into the ground.

When this happens, use W-Summon Materia with Phoenix Materia and Hades Materia. Point Hades at HIM, not the tentacles. You must disable his ultima-counter for Knights of the Round by causing him to stop.

On your next action, use W-Summon with Knights of the Round and Knights of the Round. Have the other two characters mime this attack. Depending on how powerful your Knights of the Round attack is, you should be able to kill him off in 6-10 summons. My characters do 9,200 per knight for Cloud, 6,500 per knight for Cid, and 5,800 per knight for Tifa.

You may need to do a W-Summon of Hades and Knights of the Round if he unstops. It took nine attacks for my guys.

I got 45,000 XP and 50,000 AP. Pretty much all my materia leveled up on that one, heh heh.

You’ll get a for this battle.

Battle Play-by-play:

Cloud: W-Summon Phoenix, Hades.
Cloud: W-Summon Knights of the Round, Knights of the Round.
Tifa: Mime.
Cid: Mime.
He should be awake at the end of this, so use W-Summon Phoenix if people are dead and Hades to knock him out again.
Have Tifa or Cid use Megalixirs to heal people up.
If you don’t need to use Phoenix here, use Hades on both him and the tentacles.
After the kicks in, use W-Summon Hades and Knights of the Round, then mime with both characters.

You SHOULD find the battle over at this point. If not, level up and try again, or repeat the last few rounds if you have Knights of the Round summons left.

Since a dead character’s materia does not level up, I had to replay this five times to get my guys all alive at the end. You may not want to sink four hours into this battle, though.

Anyway, once you beat him satisfactorily and SAVE, head to Kalm and talk to the guy in the upstairs room of the house in the lower-right corner of the village square. You can trade the to him for a Golden Chocobo!!!!!!!

WOW!!! That’s awesome!!!

No wait, I already have one. And this one blows. He maxes out at 88 KM/H and 999 Stamina. That’s worse than almost ALL of my other chocobos.

sigh

Well, at least I got serious AP out of the battle.

Emerald Weapon

Let’s fight Emerald Weapon now. You don’t need the Hades part from the above, but everything else is pretty much the same. You’ll want to use the Underwater Materia, too.

You’ll get 50,000 XP and 50,000 AP from this battle.

Option 1

OK. I’ve got a Master Summon Materia and W-Summon Materia. Between that, Mime Materia on each of the others, and the fact that I have all my characters at level 99 by now, I think I’m OK.

I’m only partially joking about that last part. Cloud has 255 in Strength, Dexterity, Vitality, and Luck. His Magic is 205, his Spirit is 130. Tifa and Cid are both 255 in Strength and Luck. That’s pretty much all you need, I think.

I decided to use my W-Summon, Master Summon, and Knights of the Round stuff here. Cid gets Phoenix Materia connected to Final Attack Materia, but you only want to use that as a last resort.

Move your guys all to the back row. You’re not planning on using a regular attack, are you?!?

Use as little materia as possible. This Weapon casts Aire Tam Storm, which does 1,111 damage for every materia you have equipped. That means if you have 9 or more materia, it’s an instakill.

Anyway, some of you have asked for a blow-by-blow account of how to beat this guy. Here it is.

Battle:

Cloud: W-Summon Knights of the Round for average of 8,830 per smack.
Weapon: hit Cloud for zero.
Tifa: Mime for average of 6,447 per smack.
Cid: Mime for average of 6,996 per smack.
Weapon: Emerald Shoot hits Tifa for lots.
Cid: .
Weapon: Emerald Beam All for lots.
Cloud: Knights of the Round for average of 8,800 per smack.
Weapon: Revenge Stomp, Aire Tam Storm. 7,777 to Cid, who uses Phoenix Flame when he dies.
Cloud: Other ultimate end, second Knights of the Round, for average 8,822 per smack.
Weapon: Aire Tam Storm, hits Cloud for 7,777.
Tifa: W-Summon Knights of the Round for average 6,450 per smack.
Weapon: Aire Tam Storm, hits all. Cloud dies.
Cid: Knights of the Round.
Tifa: wastes turn.
Bring all back to life and heal up.
Cloud: Knights of the Round.
One attack. Weapon dies.

Option 2

Depending on how powerful your team is, it’s possible to beat Weapon without losing a single character. I went in with the following setup. All the materia I’ve listed below was master level.

Character	Setup
Yuffie	with Phoenix Materia linked to Final Attack Materia, Master Command Materia, Underwater Materia, HP Plus Materia. . .
Cid	Spirit Lance with Phoenix Materia linked to Final Attack Materia, Master Command Materia, HP Plus Materia. . .
Cloud	with MP Absorb Materia linked to Master Summon Materia, Phoenix Materia linked to Final Attack Materia, W-Summon Materia, HP Plus Materia. . .

With this team, all were at level 99 and had Strength, Dexterity, Vitality, and Luck maxed out at 255.

When the battle first started, Emerald Weapon got one hit on Cid for around 7,000 HP. After that, Cloud used W-Summon Knights of the Round, Yuffie mimed it, and Cid mimed it.

Emerald Weapon tried the stomp, but only hit Cloud for around 1,300 damage. Then Cloud did another W-Summon Knights of the Round and Yuffie mimed it.

That killed him off before a single Aire Tam Storm.

I didn’t get any XP or AP for the battle. Again, all my materia was master level and the characters were at level 99, so I used weapons that had no growth but good attack values. But it was fun to just totally crush Weapon. XD

You’ll get the for beating Weapon. Take the to Kalm and give it to the guy in the upper room for Master Summon Materia, Master Magic Materia, and Master Command Materia!!!

You can collect all three!

Of course, by the time I got these using my “Option 2” team, I already had three of each, so it was kind of anti-climactic.