Where's the Final Attack materia?

I've added this section to this page because before you even think about fighting Emerald or Ruby you had better get this and then take the time to grow it to master level at least 3 times--so that everyone in your party has a master level Final Attack materia. One of the most frequent questions I get is, "where do I find the final attack materia?" Well, you have to go back to battle square at the Gold Saucer when you're on disc 2 or 3. What you need is to have learned Cloud's level 4 limit break (Omnislash) and to have the W-Summon materia equipped to Cloud (both of these have to be won at battle square, you probably did this already--Omnislash takes 32000BP and W-Summon takes 64000BP--remember, you BP resets to zero when you leave battle square!). You also need to have Cloud carrying his ultimate weapon, which you get after defeating ULTIMATE WEAPON who shows over Lake Junon right after the shield on the crater has been destroyed. He has a tendency to run away after he gets hit a couple of times so you'll probably have to hunt him down and fight him several times--eventually he'll settle over Cosmo Canyon--at that point he's done running and is ready to fight to the finish. Take all three of these things (make sure Cloud is carrying the W-Summon and his Ultima Weapon and that his limit break is set to level 4) to battle square and talk to the woman at the registration desk, she'll ask you if you want to compete in some special battles--say yes and be prepared for 8 fights (much more difficult than previous ones) and there will again be handicaps. Just a note, I've had a number of people tell me that you only need the W-Summon materia and the Ultima Weapon to get into these battles--having just those two items has never worked for me, nor for several friends I know.

The Kalm Traveler and the 3 items he wants from you

The Kalm traveler is the old man on the top floor of the house on the far right, lower level, of Kalm. If you go and talk to him before Meteor shows up he thinks life is pretty nice. After Meteor shows up he's a bit grim and talks about going to visit friends and needing three things for the journey. What he wants from you is to get these items for him--the Earth Harp, the Desert Rose and the GuideBook. This subquest is totally optional, but it really is the most challenging part of the game since the battles in the final dungeon are all relatively easy. You should get the Guidebook first and trade it to the old guy--for this he'll give you an Underwater materia which helps you to get the Earth Harp. See the section below on getting the Guidebook. The next thing to get is the Earth Harp, for this the old man will give you a MASTER SPELL, SUMMON, and COMMAND materia (Green, Red, and Yellow, respectively--see the materia page to find out details about these three materia). You have to defeat an enemy called Emerald Weapon (or Emmy for short) to get the Earth Harp. There is a section below on how to fight Emerald Weapon. The other foe is Ruby Weapon--I believe she won't appear until after you've defeated Ultimate Weapon (see the section above on finding the Final Attack Materia for more details). You'll find her sticking out of the sand a little around Gold Saucer (note that she is not always there so if you can't find her after you've defeated ULTIMATE just go do some other parts of the game and check back later)--fly the Highwind over her and she'll pop out of the sand to attack. If you defeat her you get the Desert Rose which the old guy will take from you and give you a Gold Chocobo in return (there doesn't really seem to be anything special about this Gold Chocobo compared to the ones you breed). There is a section below on how to beat Ruby Weapon.

Getting the Guidebook

The guidebook can be obtained by morphing the ghostship creature. This creature is found in the underwater tunnel beneath Junon. That's the neat little glass tunnel (the one where you can see the fish and dolphins swimming around you) that you have to go through when you're crawling around under Junon to get the sub. Don't worry if you didn't get the guidebook when you went through to get the sub--you can always go back to Junon and go back down. There are about 4 different creatures that you may encounter in the tunnel so keep running around until you find the ghostship and then keep using morph on him until he dies and he'll turn into the guidebook which can be traded for the underwater materia back in Kalm--talk to the old guy upstairs in the house that's on the lower level of Kalm, all the way to the right. The underwater materia is only used for taking away the 20 minute timer when you face EMERALD weapon--it DOES NOT let you walk around underwater, nor does it help you revive Aeris. One thing you might notice about the ghostship is his nifty little move called the gonnai where he picks up a player with his oar and flings him/her out of the picture--this player is lost until the battle is over--often the ghostship will do this to two players. If you go to the underwater tunnel with only one morph materia the ghostship will almost certainly pick that character to fling out of the picture--the solution, make sure you have each character equipped with a morph materia, then even if he flings two players out you'll still have a morph materia left in the battle. This is the only tricky thing about fighting the ghostship (although don't use any holy based attacks, they're worthless)--he only has about 6 or 7 thousand HP so he's not too tough to kill.

Fighting Ruby Weapon with all three members

Of all three subquests for the Kalm Traveler this one appears to be the most worthless--all you get from Ruby is the Desert Rose and if you give that to the old man you'll get a Gold Chocobo. By now you probably already have a Gold Chocobo (or at least you should, if you've followed the chocobo breeding guide on page 1) so it isn't clear why you'd need another one. It's very likely that you've tried to fight Ruby already and found that she is very tough (she has 1 million HP, I'm not exaggerating) and she has a nasty habit of casting that whirling sand attack twice and cutting your party down to one member, and it's tough to defeat her with one member--the solution....fight her with all three members! Can this be done? Sure--all you have to do is make sure two party members are dead when you start the battle--Ruby thinks that dead people are not a threat to her (and she doesn't seem to count on you using a revive spell or Phoenix summon) so she doesn't ever bother using that whirling sand attack, she immediately sinks her claws in the sand. Be careful, though, you must wait for her to put her claws in the sand before you revive anyone or she will cast her whirling sand attack! Just cast a Phoenix summon as your FIRST move and then begin attacking her. She will never use her whirling sand unless you make the mistake of attacking her tentacles sticking out of the sand behind you--if you do she will then cast the whirling sand attacks and knock your party down to one! Because of this it is a bad idea to put Phoenix and Final Attack together because you can't control where the Final Attack spell goes--to Ruby's body or her tentacles, if it hits the tentacles you've just given her the opportunity to cast the whirling sand attack!

Here are the materia I take, all at mastered level, to the battle with EACH player: Final Attack linked with Revive Phoenix W-Summon Knights of the Round linked with MP Absorb HP Plus MP Plus (if you don't want to take the time to grow 3 KORs to master level then skip to the Alternate Tactics section a few paragraphs down).

and make sure the one person who is alive when the battle starts is wearing the Ribbon! And try to have all your characters advanced enough so that the HP plus gives them over 9000 HP and the MP plus gives them 999 MP!

The first thing to do is to use a W-Summon, cast Phoenix first and the KOR at Ruby second. After this, unless a character dies and doesn't have enough MP to revive themselves stay away from Phoenix, it costs a whole lot of MP just to revive someone--reviving is all it's good for since it doesn't do any damage to Ruby. Actually she absorbs the Phoenix's attack! From here on out all you have to do is be patient and alert. Once in a while it might happen that someone has too few MPs to cast KOR the first time, all you can do is use up that turn with a turbo ether. Thereafter you should be ok since every time you cast KOR you will absorb over 1000 MPs (and the max you can have is 999 so your MPs will always be safe). It has never happened to me that all 3 players were dead at the same time and that a turn was wasted with 3 consecutive castings of Final Attack-Revive, so it was always the case that at least one person was casting KOR at Ruby at any given time. Stay away from Mime materia--since your KOR is linked to an MP absorb the real benefit of Mime (casting spells without losing MPs) is totally worthless here--and if you accidentally Mime after someone has done Final Attack-Revive you've just wasted a turn). Just be patient and every time a player gets a turn cast KOR twice via your W-Summon materia. Don't worry about guarding your HP since each player will be able to revive themselves 4 or 5 times if your Final Attack materia are mastered. If you've got them you could also link three mastered KORs to HP absorbs, then every time a character casts KOR he/she will get both MP and HP back. You didn't know you could do this? Check out the "materia stuff" section below for more details! It's not a bad idea to use the the HP absorb thing too, if you've got enough KORs, because each casting of KOR will cause Ruby to respond with Ultima, unless you try the two tactics in the following paragraph. You might also be able to nullify this problem by putting Added Effect-Ultima on each player's armor--if you've got the room (this suggestion by Matt Davignon)! If you steal Dazers from the creatures know as Boundfats (they're in the area between the Sleeping Forest and the City of the Ancients, they're small yellow beasts) you can, I've been told by several people, cast stop on Ruby and get a few free shots in. It is also the case, several people have told me, that casting Hades Summon will freeze her for 4 or 5 turns, giving you a lot of free hits!

Alternate Tactics So say you don't want to take the time to grow 3 KORs to master level (that's understandable, it takes a great deal of time). What you should do then is at least have one mastered KOR and two mastered Mimes. Make sure the character that's still alive when the battle starts is wearing the Ribbon and make sure not to waste your time or MP attacking Ruby's tentacles sticking out of the ground behind you (some people recommend doing this but I haven't found it to be worthwhile so I just ignore them). Follow the same tactics from above except that you should probably link your KOR to the HP Absorb materia rather than the MP Absorb materia. Begin the battle by casting Phoenix so that everyone comes back to life and then cast KOR, make sure the two characters who don't have KOR are the ones who have Mime equipped. Mime the casting of KOR and you'll have hit Ruby for three KORs (this will be roughly one third of her HP). When you get back to the character that originally cast KOR you'll have to cast it again (if you've got enough MP) and then have the next two characters Mime again. If, however, your character with KOR doesn't have enough MP to re-cast then you have to waste a turn with an Ether or Turbo Ether and you ruin the chain (because now if the other two characters Mime they'll be Miming an Ether not KOR). If you've got 3 mastered Mimes (one for each character) then this isn't a problem, since after KOR is cast once all 3 characters can just Mime thereafter. Remember that if someone gets killed and casts Final Attack-Revive then if you do a Mime next you'll have wasted your turn because you'll be miming Final Attack-Revive. If you pay attention to what is happening in the battle you can do it with one KOR and two mimes, it's a little easier with one KOR and 3 mimes--but it's a lot less confusion to just take the time and master 3 KORs--the benefit of spending the time building up your KORs is that you also build up your characters' levels simultaneously--and that never hurts!

Beating Emerald Weapon

When going after Emmy I use the same strategy as I do for Ruby, except of course that you don't have to start fighting Emmy with two players already dead and it is a good idea to get the Underwater Materia (you get this from the Kalm Traveler in exchange for the Guide Book, see the section on getting the guide book above). It usually doesn't take 20 minutes to beat Emmy--I usually kill her off with over 2 minutes to spare but it really doesn't hurt to have the Underwater materia equipped to someone so as to eliminate this timer just in case something goes wrong and you need a little time to get things back on track. Emerald, like Ruby, has 1 million HP so it will take you a little time to finish her off! Usually what takes up so much time in the battle is how long it takes for KOR to cast.