Get chocobuckle, flee a ton of times, and eventually you can use it for effectively infinite Lucky 7's, not necessarily early but it's still game-breaking
This! Beta at first chance possible. Risk v Reward but makes the game pretty much a cakewalk for rest of disk 1 and then some and it is not a bug/exploit. Would add once you got Manip picking up Big Guard and White Wind as soon as too.
There are so, so many ways to break this game, but I find it exceptionally funny that you can solo Emerald with Yuffie as soon as it becomes available without an insane grind. Getting three Master Materia that quickly is pretty broken, especially if you then go on to do the very recently discovered [materia duplication glitch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B-sgV5cHeQ).
This method works on all versions of the game!
All you need for gear is Yuffie's **Conformer**, a **Ziedrich**, and a **Tough Ring**, all of which you can conveniently get in the Gelnika.
For items, you'll want the one **Hero Drink** you found at Icicle Inn. You can farm for more through Chocobo racing but it's not necessary. You'll also want to steal a **Speed Drink** from the Vice enemy in the Sector 5 Slums, which you can do way back at the beginning of the game, or at this point if you go dig up the Sector 5 Key at Bone Village. Additionally, you might want to use a **Tranquilizer** on her before the battle to put her in the Sadness status, which reduces damage from most attacks by 30%.
You'll also want about **50 Elixirs**, which you can easily farm with the [infinite Elixir glitch](https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Infinite_Elixir_glitch) on the Great Glacier. Unfortunately you won't have W-Item to dupe Elixirs at this point, and if you're planning to dupe the Master Materia with the materia duplication glitch you need to beat Emerald before you get it.
Finally, the materia. What convoluted, broken, 1,000 IQ, one billion AP materia combination do you need in order to solo Emerald with a level 50-60-ish Yuffie?
**HP Plus, HP Plus, Underwater, Counter Attack, Counter Attack, Counter Attack**
That's it.
You can actually do it with two Counter Attack materia, but that's slightly more difficult and dangerous. The simplest version uses three.
**GRINDING ADVICE FOLLOWS, SKIP TO THE NEXT PART FOR THE IMPOSSIBLY COMPLEX PRO GAMER EMERALD STRAT**
No matter which option you choose, it's essential that all of the Counter Attack materia are mastered, so that's where your grind comes in. You can do this grind outside Mideel, a strategy that another commenter already mentioned, and with some advance planning and good use of Double and Triple growth equipment you could feasibly make this the only grind you do for the rest of the game.
You'll need 300,000 AP to max out the three materia (most likely less due to the first one having probably been in use for most of the game), so in a Triple growth weapon that's 100,000 AP maximum that you need to grind. And oh hey look at that, you get Cid's Scimitar just before this!
With three Rune Armlets, that's twelve materia slots that are going to absorb up to 200,000 AP. The Scimitar will have one free slot that will take in 300,000, and if you breed a green chocobo you can go do the Ancient Forest right now and get Cloud's Apocalypse, giving you three more Triple slots to work with.
Basically, if you have a good idea of your endgame materia setup at this point, you can grind most or all of it out right now. You could even go grab Knights of the Round through breeding, or at least use the [airship trick](https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Quadra_Magic_cave_glitch) to get Quadra Magic early if that's something you want to use. You'll also have just gotten Double Cut from the Gelnika, which takes 150,000 AP to master, so in a Triple growth slot you can get two mastered Double Cuts out of this.
Even if you have no idea what kind of materia you want to use later on, just having multiple Double and Triple materia slots full during this grind will give you several mastered materia.
**OKAY THAT'S ENOUGH ABOUT THE GRIND, BACK TO EMERALD**
And here we go!
1. Bring only Yuffie into the battle.
2. Yuffie starts by buffing herself with the Hero Drink and then the Speed Drink.
3. During Phase 1, throw an Elixir any time she takes damage.
4. **DO NOT ATTACK**. Ever. Yuffie will do all of her damage through counter attacks.
5. Eventually Emerald will transition to Phase 2 with Emerald Shoot. Be ready with an Elixir to heal the damage from this.
6. In Phase 2, Emerald will fire at Yuffie with each of its four lasers in turn. After each laser, she'll counter three times and kill it. This is why you need all three Counter Attack materia to be mastered, as you can't afford a failed counter. Continue to keep her alive with Elixirs. Be aware that Emerald Beam can't kill you, but it does leave you extremely vulnerable, so make sure to heal right after.
7. Because Yuffie kills each eye instantly as soon as it fires, Emerald never gets through its full Phase 2 attack script, which means that it transitions back to Phase 1 **without ever using Aire Tam Storm**.
8. Repeat Phase 1 and 2 until you win.
Just like that, you just got yourself all three Master Materia! And yet another reminder of why Yuffie is objectively the best FFVII character.
Yuffie's Conformer does damage based on an enemy's level, and with Emerald being level 99 she'll always do max damage against it. The laser eyes have something like 21,000 HP, so you need high damage output to kill each one with one set of counters. The Conformer can hit that damage threshold right out of the box with no other conditions met, so it makes for the perfect weapon if you want to take out Emerald as early in the game as possible.
The Conformer is an incredibly good weapon in general! I'm sure everyone knows about how good it is for Morphing, but another neat feature is that player characters don't have an enemy level, so if she attacks her allies for any reason she'll do 0 damage.
Getting Matra Magic enemy skill outside Midgar. Getting Yuffie and going to the Mythril mine. The average group of enemies is 4, and sometimes 5. They all (but the Arc Dragon) die to Matra Magic. This allows all the characters to get their kill count up and unlock their tier 2 and 3 limit breaks.
If you have a rereleased digital version, you can use the Super Power cheat and bust out the limits to get the 2nd tier limit on each limit tier as well!
Get the gold chocobo (without racing) as soon as you get the Highwind with Tifa leading the party. It means you can access those materias that are locked away behind different coloured Chocobos and also go to the Ancient Forest early, getting the goodies in there, with the frogs helping out of course.
I have had a habit of grinding out Cloud on the first screen of the game, all of the characters acquisition levels are based on Clouds level so if you grind cloud to level 25 before you even get Barret it makes the game run rather smoothly lol. This works best on consoles that go into sleep mode when you turn them off, I’ve done it on the psp I’m sure you could do it on the switch if you’re careful about console and software updates
Early game, you can slap Barret in the back row, give him cover-counter and pop Added Effect-Tine in his weapon. Physical attacks now counter attack at full power for half damage taken, and the enemy is slowed or stopped.
You can make this combo even more degenerate by hitting Barret with Tranquilizers to give him Sadness! He won't get his limits as often but he'll have a flat 30% reduction in all damage taken, which stacks with his back row buff.
I like putting my crew in the back row and tossing grenades till I leave midgar. Then I'll collect beta, then go load up on right arms. Once I leave corel prison, I'll grab aqualung. From there I use right arms, beta and aqualung till I get to mideel.
Open the tray and snap the disc in two.
On a serious note get to ancient temple. Get the morph materia. Go back to Zack's home town and farm power sources. I used cloud and his sword that increases str based on dead party members. You should be doing roughly 1300-1400 damage on the triceratops then morph him. He has a total of 1600 hp.
Immediately after getting the buggy, grind in the underwater tunnel in Juno till lv40. Then for the rest of the game I keep everyone equipped with double growth equipment, save for a few boss fights. Gives a little leg up on the tedious materia mastering at the end of the game and is only about a 60~90 min detour.
Oh, and always W-Item.
Once you get the tiny bronco go to the mideel continent, there's a little grass peninsula where enemies spawn. The green bug ones are in groups of 3 or 4, die with a Beta cast and give lots of XP and AP.
https://www.almarsguides.com/retro/walkthroughs/ps1/games/finalfantasyvii/misc/levelinglocations/disc1/mideelarea/
All the ultimate limit breaks on disc 1 you can get, tons of gil from selling mastered All materias from grinding, all the stuff from Gold Saucer arena, best armor and weapons I can get all the way.
Get chocobuckle, flee a ton of times, and eventually you can use it for effectively infinite Lucky 7's, not necessarily early but it's still game-breaking
Getting beta early the using mobs near the sub area to level up materia.
This! Beta at first chance possible. Risk v Reward but makes the game pretty much a cakewalk for rest of disk 1 and then some and it is not a bug/exploit. Would add once you got Manip picking up Big Guard and White Wind as soon as too.
There are so, so many ways to break this game, but I find it exceptionally funny that you can solo Emerald with Yuffie as soon as it becomes available without an insane grind. Getting three Master Materia that quickly is pretty broken, especially if you then go on to do the very recently discovered [materia duplication glitch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B-sgV5cHeQ). This method works on all versions of the game! All you need for gear is Yuffie's **Conformer**, a **Ziedrich**, and a **Tough Ring**, all of which you can conveniently get in the Gelnika. For items, you'll want the one **Hero Drink** you found at Icicle Inn. You can farm for more through Chocobo racing but it's not necessary. You'll also want to steal a **Speed Drink** from the Vice enemy in the Sector 5 Slums, which you can do way back at the beginning of the game, or at this point if you go dig up the Sector 5 Key at Bone Village. Additionally, you might want to use a **Tranquilizer** on her before the battle to put her in the Sadness status, which reduces damage from most attacks by 30%. You'll also want about **50 Elixirs**, which you can easily farm with the [infinite Elixir glitch](https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Infinite_Elixir_glitch) on the Great Glacier. Unfortunately you won't have W-Item to dupe Elixirs at this point, and if you're planning to dupe the Master Materia with the materia duplication glitch you need to beat Emerald before you get it. Finally, the materia. What convoluted, broken, 1,000 IQ, one billion AP materia combination do you need in order to solo Emerald with a level 50-60-ish Yuffie? **HP Plus, HP Plus, Underwater, Counter Attack, Counter Attack, Counter Attack** That's it. You can actually do it with two Counter Attack materia, but that's slightly more difficult and dangerous. The simplest version uses three. **GRINDING ADVICE FOLLOWS, SKIP TO THE NEXT PART FOR THE IMPOSSIBLY COMPLEX PRO GAMER EMERALD STRAT** No matter which option you choose, it's essential that all of the Counter Attack materia are mastered, so that's where your grind comes in. You can do this grind outside Mideel, a strategy that another commenter already mentioned, and with some advance planning and good use of Double and Triple growth equipment you could feasibly make this the only grind you do for the rest of the game. You'll need 300,000 AP to max out the three materia (most likely less due to the first one having probably been in use for most of the game), so in a Triple growth weapon that's 100,000 AP maximum that you need to grind. And oh hey look at that, you get Cid's Scimitar just before this! With three Rune Armlets, that's twelve materia slots that are going to absorb up to 200,000 AP. The Scimitar will have one free slot that will take in 300,000, and if you breed a green chocobo you can go do the Ancient Forest right now and get Cloud's Apocalypse, giving you three more Triple slots to work with. Basically, if you have a good idea of your endgame materia setup at this point, you can grind most or all of it out right now. You could even go grab Knights of the Round through breeding, or at least use the [airship trick](https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Quadra_Magic_cave_glitch) to get Quadra Magic early if that's something you want to use. You'll also have just gotten Double Cut from the Gelnika, which takes 150,000 AP to master, so in a Triple growth slot you can get two mastered Double Cuts out of this. Even if you have no idea what kind of materia you want to use later on, just having multiple Double and Triple materia slots full during this grind will give you several mastered materia. **OKAY THAT'S ENOUGH ABOUT THE GRIND, BACK TO EMERALD** And here we go! 1. Bring only Yuffie into the battle. 2. Yuffie starts by buffing herself with the Hero Drink and then the Speed Drink. 3. During Phase 1, throw an Elixir any time she takes damage. 4. **DO NOT ATTACK**. Ever. Yuffie will do all of her damage through counter attacks. 5. Eventually Emerald will transition to Phase 2 with Emerald Shoot. Be ready with an Elixir to heal the damage from this. 6. In Phase 2, Emerald will fire at Yuffie with each of its four lasers in turn. After each laser, she'll counter three times and kill it. This is why you need all three Counter Attack materia to be mastered, as you can't afford a failed counter. Continue to keep her alive with Elixirs. Be aware that Emerald Beam can't kill you, but it does leave you extremely vulnerable, so make sure to heal right after. 7. Because Yuffie kills each eye instantly as soon as it fires, Emerald never gets through its full Phase 2 attack script, which means that it transitions back to Phase 1 **without ever using Aire Tam Storm**. 8. Repeat Phase 1 and 2 until you win. Just like that, you just got yourself all three Master Materia! And yet another reminder of why Yuffie is objectively the best FFVII character.
Out of curiosity, why does this have to be done with Yuffir specifically?
Yuffie's Conformer does damage based on an enemy's level, and with Emerald being level 99 she'll always do max damage against it. The laser eyes have something like 21,000 HP, so you need high damage output to kill each one with one set of counters. The Conformer can hit that damage threshold right out of the box with no other conditions met, so it makes for the perfect weapon if you want to take out Emerald as early in the game as possible. The Conformer is an incredibly good weapon in general! I'm sure everyone knows about how good it is for Morphing, but another neat feature is that player characters don't have an enemy level, so if she attacks her allies for any reason she'll do 0 damage.
Huh, thats neat. I like finding out about hidden mechanics from old games. I'll have to look up what they all do, now
Getting Matra Magic enemy skill outside Midgar. Getting Yuffie and going to the Mythril mine. The average group of enemies is 4, and sometimes 5. They all (but the Arc Dragon) die to Matra Magic. This allows all the characters to get their kill count up and unlock their tier 2 and 3 limit breaks. If you have a rereleased digital version, you can use the Super Power cheat and bust out the limits to get the 2nd tier limit on each limit tier as well!
I do the same, but in the Juno forest areas
Get the gold chocobo (without racing) as soon as you get the Highwind with Tifa leading the party. It means you can access those materias that are locked away behind different coloured Chocobos and also go to the Ancient Forest early, getting the goodies in there, with the frogs helping out of course.
How do you get the gocobo without racing? Sounds useful cause I absolutely hate the grind of all that breeding
I always grind until I can cross the swamp without a chocobo. Snag beta. Snag Yuffie. Grind limits in the cave, then grind at Junon tunnel.
I have had a habit of grinding out Cloud on the first screen of the game, all of the characters acquisition levels are based on Clouds level so if you grind cloud to level 25 before you even get Barret it makes the game run rather smoothly lol. This works best on consoles that go into sleep mode when you turn them off, I’ve done it on the psp I’m sure you could do it on the switch if you’re careful about console and software updates
Early game, you can slap Barret in the back row, give him cover-counter and pop Added Effect-Tine in his weapon. Physical attacks now counter attack at full power for half damage taken, and the enemy is slowed or stopped.
You can make this combo even more degenerate by hitting Barret with Tranquilizers to give him Sadness! He won't get his limits as often but he'll have a flat 30% reduction in all damage taken, which stacks with his back row buff.
I like putting my crew in the back row and tossing grenades till I leave midgar. Then I'll collect beta, then go load up on right arms. Once I leave corel prison, I'll grab aqualung. From there I use right arms, beta and aqualung till I get to mideel.
Snot is running down his nose
What are "right arms?"
You steal them from bombs. Decent dmg (~1200) to all enemies. You can load up with them on the way to North corel
materia smuggling/duplication glitch, dupe as many mime & counter, use omnislash & win..
Gelinka source farming.
Open the tray and snap the disc in two. On a serious note get to ancient temple. Get the morph materia. Go back to Zack's home town and farm power sources. I used cloud and his sword that increases str based on dead party members. You should be doing roughly 1300-1400 damage on the triceratops then morph him. He has a total of 1600 hp.
Immediately after getting the buggy, grind in the underwater tunnel in Juno till lv40. Then for the rest of the game I keep everyone equipped with double growth equipment, save for a few boss fights. Gives a little leg up on the tedious materia mastering at the end of the game and is only about a 60~90 min detour. Oh, and always W-Item.
Mideel EXP farming.
What’s the Mideel Exp farm? I’m replaying the OG and haven’t heard of this.
Once you get the tiny bronco go to the mideel continent, there's a little grass peninsula where enemies spawn. The green bug ones are in groups of 3 or 4, die with a Beta cast and give lots of XP and AP. https://www.almarsguides.com/retro/walkthroughs/ps1/games/finalfantasyvii/misc/levelinglocations/disc1/mideelarea/
I gridded here for weeks as a kid, I had no idea I chose an effective spot
Had no idea that was accessible so early. I usually didn’t grind in that spot until the second disk. Thanks!!!
You can jump so many levels in an hour of grinding there it is insane
All the ultimate limit breaks on disc 1 you can get, tons of gil from selling mastered All materias from grinding, all the stuff from Gold Saucer arena, best armor and weapons I can get all the way.
Get all possible limit breaks disc 1 and as soon as I get a new character, grind to get all their limit breaks.