As a fantasy RPG, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth provides characters with all sorts of unique abilities. One of the main ways you gain new powers in Rebirth is through materia, magical orbs found throughout the game’s world that grant characters with spells, new powers, stat boosts, and the ability to summon powerful creatures to aid them in battle.
Read More: 16 Things To Know Before Starting Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
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Materia lets you exploit a character’s weaknesses or double down on their strengths. Though Rebirth offers many more non-materia abilities than Remake did, everyone’s favorite magical orbs are still very important for getting an edge on your opponent. This guide will break down how materia works, general best practices, advice for starting out, and the key pieces of materia you’ll want to equip ASAP.
Rebirth has five types of materia
Like previous FF7 games, materia is broken down into various categories. Rebirth has five of them, each color-coded.
- Green: Magic Materia (lets you cast offensive and defensive spells)
- Yellow: Command Materia (grants you new abilities)
- Purple: Complete Materia (boosts stats)
- Red: Summoning Materia (summon powerful creatures in combat)
- Blue: Support Materia (augments the abilities of other materia)
Each category has multiple kinds of materia in it. The name of any given materia orb more or less tells you what it does. By knowing the color, you can assume what it will do. Steal materia is a yellowCommand materia, and gives you the Steal ability. Meanwhile Fire materia is green Magic materia, and gives you the ability to cast fire spells.
Viewing and equipping your materia
You can view your materia in the Inventory section of the main menu, but it’s best to just go to the Materia and Equipment section first. By selecting a character and then hitting triangle, you can enter the materia slot section (each weapon and piece of armor lets you slot in materia in order to use it). Here, you’ll get a middle menu that shows you all the materia you own. You can tab through the different categories and even sort them by pressing R3.
Materia influences your stats
Materia unlocks spells and new abilities, and it also affects each character’s stats. This is key to getting the most out of equipping these magical orbs. Magic materia, for example, will boost your available MP and, sometimes, other stats (Time materia, for example, can boost a character’s Magic Attack, Defense, Magic, and Spirit stats).
But not all materia boosts stats. Command materia, for example, already grants you a new ability, so it doesn’t offer any stat changes.
Summon materia, notably, often has a drastic effect on stats, usually boosting HP as well as specific stats like attacks and defense. This is all the more reason you should try and get as much summon materia as you can.
Combining materia
Getting the most out of your materia is a balancing act between a character’s strengths and combining your orbs effectively. Some weapons and armor let you join Support materia to other kinds. You can find these by the infinity-looking linked slots in the materia equipment section.
Combining a Support materia like Magnify with Magic materia like Time will let you cast Haste on all your party members at once in combat. Conversely, if you join Magnify with Magic materia that lets you make a spell attack, your spell will multiply and attack multiple foes at once. Other kinds of Support materia will let you improve how a given piece of materia levels up (AP Up Materia). You’ll want to mix and match materia as it fits your needs and goals for character builds.
Assigning materia across all characters
Once you start gathering more materia, you may want to view the Materia loadouts for your entire team all at once. Enter the Materia and Equipment section of the main menu and hit the touchpad to get a bird’s eye view of what everyone has equipped.
This screen is good for making broad adjustments across the whole party. As it doesn’t show you individual stat changes, you’ll want to make final decisions in each character’s specific menu.
Early materia decisions and best practices
Rebirth doesn’t shower you with materia when you start the game. That’s okay—it’s a dense RPG so sometimes it’s best to take things in at bite-sized amounts. It does offer enough magical orbs and gil (the game’s in-world currency) however, to get you started.
Note that as time goes on, we will likely see more clear and overpowered meta builds around materia configurations. Regardless, one of the strengths of this system is that it lets you be creative with assigning spells and abilities to different characters.
At the beginning of the game, once you can roam around Kalm and visit shops, hitting up the item shop and grabbing one of each of the elemental Magic materias: Lightning, Ice, Fire, and Wind. Alternatively, you can grab an elemental spell or two and an orb of Healing materia, so multiple members in the party can heal via magic (making sure every character can heal, and eventually revive, was a go-to strategy for me).
Once you have those extra orbs, I recommend going into Materia and Equipment and unequipping every piece of materia your party already hasr to start from scratch. Then, take a look at each of the character’s stats. Notice how Aerith has the best Magic Attack, while Tifa’s Attack is strongest. Barret has the highest HP. You need to take those base stats into consideration as you equip materia.
For now, I recommend sticking with some of the game’s default options, but making a few key changes:
- Give Barret HP Up Materia to make him a better tank and Healing materia so he can heal himself and other party members.
- Give Cloud the Precision Defense Focus Materia as you’ll likely stick with him as the party lead and will do a lot of blocking (which is needed to pull off Synergy Skills). He should also hang on to Assess materia.
- Give Aerith one of each elemental Magic materia so she can deliver powerful attacks (made even better by the use of her Arcane Ward ability, which doubles attacks). She should keep a Prayer materia, too.
- Every active party member should have summon materia, equipped based on which boosts their most powerful stats most.
The materia system’s strengths lie in letting you either double down on a character’s inherent strengths, or conversely, you can improve areas where they’re lacking.
Where to find better materia and how to improve the ones you have
You’ll come across more materia as you continue to play the game. Materia shops are indicated on the map by an orb icon, but many item shops (indicated by a bag symbol) also have materia. As you complete quests and explore the world, you’ll find more materia. You can also have Chadley develop materia. As you complete World Intel tasks (activating towers, scanning lifesprings, completing summon puzzles), you can have him develop materia for you, and he has some good ones.
You should snag Fire and Ice materia from Chadley as soon as you can, as this will let a character cast both Lightning and Wind for the cost of just one materia slot. Summon materia can be earned by defeating summons in the battle arena—you can simplify those fights and get more powerful materia by completing the summoning puzzles found throughout the world.
Here are some other great pieces of materia to snag:
- Barrier materia: lets you cast a protective spell to mitigate different kinds of damage (purchasable at Costa Del Sol)
- Time materia: lets you speed up your party members ATB gauges or slow down enemies (earned in chapter 6 from the Pirates’ Rampage mini-game)
- Magnify materia: lets you target multiple enemies or party members with a joined spell (earned from Cait Sith and the final side quest in Cosmo Canyon)
- Revival materia: lets you revive a fallen party member (purchasable at Cosmo Canyon)
You will also come across AP Up materia. When joined with another piece of materia, it will improve the amount of AP it earns in each battle, thus leveling up materia even quicker and allowing you access to more powerful spells
A system that frees up characters from designated class roles, materia is about finding fun combinations as much as it is about making your characters even more powerful. There’s a reason Yuffie’s so eager to find more of it: The more materia you have, the stronger and more dynamic your party will be.
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