2021 good materia combos

[cavy]

I'm incredibly late to the party, having had no idea it was on steam for a very long time. Now I'm looking for some good tips on materia combinations and enemy skills to use in a Tifa, Barret, Cloud or Tifa, Barret, Aeris lineup. I'm trying to train them all to their level three Limit Breaks before visiting Niblehiem.
Unfortunately, my default playstyle seem to be great for Cloud and Red XIII, not so much everyone else.
Anyone got any advice where to train them and what setups work best for the party?

[SinonSnipe]

2021?

[Xengre]

Forest outside of Fort Condor has 3-5 mobs on average and you can heal at bed inside the Fort. Use Beta from the giant snake in marsh to get your kills. Use cover on Aeris and teach her the limit break (think it was level 2-b, to lazy to look right now) that trades her limit break to two other people so you get 2 limits for price of one. Also use hyper on her and stuff as much summon/magic materia on her as possible to reduce her HP as much as possible. Limit bar gain = basically % max HP dmg taken. Limit level X-a is gained from certain number of kills on that character. Limit level X-b is gained from using X-a a certain number of times. Thus more enemies and casting more frequently = fastest limit growth.

Best E.Skills (Google if you dk how to get):
Beta (easy with big guard or fire reduction dmg materia combo elemental + fire)
Big Guard
White Wind (a bit more limited use but a nice aoe cleanse but decent heal late game if you know what you are doing, granted Megaelixer W-item trick trumps it... cause "feature")
Magic Breath (superior to Beta as long as enemy isn't able to heal from one of its several elements... else use Beta... and if it heals from Fire element aqualung/trine... or melee... these typically beat summons/magic materia rendering them moot most of the game).
Others can have oddball uses but honestly don't matter a lot.

Best materias:
E.Skill
HP Plus (cosmo canyon = easy early 9999 HP)
Mega-All
Final Attack
Life (not phoenix, life is superior for several reasons)
Master Command (works with a lot of materia pairs that don't work with their individual command materias due to bugs... also superb with MP Absorb which feeds your unkillable Life Final Attack setup)
Cut
Mime
Kotor (for a single fight, Ruby Weapon... actually not that good vs alternatives for Emerald/Sephiroth)
Destruct (just for sephiroth tbh... not really useful for others, and only makes it easier esp if at max level due to scaling but not necessary just longer fight)
The various counter materias/added effect combos.
W-Item (best materia for its *ahem* "feature")
All materia (but not for battle so much as sells for dat sweet $$$ late game to get infinite moola)

Some materia only stack to like 200% and stuff but some can have like silly setups like 8x counter. For example; multiple Counter + Mime materia than one say... 4x Cut materia. You can Cut, then proceed to do nothing and get hit and then counter will mime 7 * 4x Cut for 28 hits (basically two Omnislash worth of hits in a single turn). You can spice various setups up like this if you want. I've never tried it (cause 1 character is already ridiculous enough) but I imagine if you cut it down to like 6 pairs, added some HP Absorb on Master Command and did this setup for three sets of characters you could get 24 * 3 for 72 attacks from all three characters if they all got hit by an AoE. Then go afk and auto beat basically any boss. Maybe cut it down to like 5 pairs and toss MP Absorb/final attack/life combos on some of the characters so it really can't fail even against bosses like Emerald. You can do other silly stuff with Quadra and odd combinations with mime/counters.

[Daenoxiis]

For early game, the best level grinding areas in Part 1 are in Junon and a little later after you get the Tiny Bronco around the Mideel area.

I favor the Junon area though.
Purely because it's just a little more manageable for me, a little more predictable, and dipping out to the left of the hallway, there's an inn with a save point in it, so you don't have to run all the way through Junon again just to get back there.

The Mideel area is effectively better for AP grinding, and perhaps better for EXP grinding as well, but I favor the Junon area still, idk why. I guess because I'm just used to it.

Early game Part 1 Materia Combos and Ideas I can think of off of the top of my head:

Cover + Counter Attack
- The best part about this is that if you have another 2 or 3 Counter Attack materia mastered, you'll basically slice your way through Part 1 and Part 2, and probably through the pizza you'll be eating while enjoying your casual stroll in the park. Plus, since Counter Attack materias stack, later when you get to the Gold Saucer you can still grind out to get Omnislash for Cloud in Part 1. Note that if you don't get it for 64,000 BP at the Gold Saucer in Part 1, you will have to wait until Part 3 and get it for 32,000 BP at the Gold Saucer. --This is true for a small handful of things that can be won there....

Elemental + either Fire, Ice, Earth, Poison, Lightning, or Gravity
- A lot of Part 1 is pretty Elemental-based. If you're looking to sweep through it with the quickness, using Elemental with the appropriate materia on either your weapon or your armor will either add the element of your enemies weakness to your attack, or add absorb of that element that your enemy casts at you if the combination is on your armor. Of course, this is null/void of a strategy if you're power leveling and grinding. --Level 56 and up during Part 1 of the game, and straight damage will be enough to basically let you mosey through all of Part 1 and all of Part 2 without much of a struggle.

All
- All goes everywhere. Every-f-ing-where. And if you master an All, it even goes to the materia shop for 1,400,000 Gil, pretty much clearing up any of your money problems. Master and sell a dozen of them, and you can pretty much afford to fund all of Fort Condors war yourself without it ever being a noticeable issue. By the time you get to Junon, the game will present you with the opportunity to have found 4 or 5 All materia, making them easy to grind up and sell off if need be. They also work really well in combination with Restore, Revive, Time, and Heal materias.



Enemy Skills:
For Enemy Skills, I nominate the following: for Part 1:

Big Guard - Adds Barrier/MBarrier and Haste to every Ally. --Although it depletes fast due to the Haste effect, basically, it's Wall for 2 MP cheaper, and you get Haste, which even though Haste makes it deplete faster, it Big Guard targets the whole party with Haste, giving it to your attackers as well. So, Wall with a Haste, for 2 MP cheaper than Wall itself.

White Wind - Restores HP and Status to every Ally. --Massively helpful in conjunction with Restore and Revive, gives you extra healing on a party member in battle who isn't already your resident White Mage type.

Mantra Magic - Non-Elemental damage to all enemies, for 008 MP. Not the greatest, but if you wanna juggle your MP with Aerith, it'll probably do more damage than that Striking Staff of hers, it's Non-Elemental, and since a lot of Part 1 is pretty Elemental-heavy, this helps a bit if you wanna do some damage without burning through all of your MP on the offensive.

Beta - Big fire damage to all enemies learned from a snake you can't miss.

???? - Does damage equal to users max HP/MP --Particularly useful in combination with mastered HP Plus and MP Plus materias.

Chocobuckle - Don't forget to get Chocobuckle earlier on, as getting it when you're higher level can be a pain in the butt. That's literally the only reason it's listed here.


It is true that the best materia combos come later in the game in Part 2 and Part 3. My personal favorite combination is:

Counter + Mime
-I'm sure everyone has seen the videos of limit break loops, and honestly? It's just fun. Counter is a Blue Materia, not to be confused with Counter Attack, which is purple. Counter is not available until Part 3 and is found in the last cave. Mime, if I remember correctly you need a Gold Chocobo for. 8 Mastered Counter Materia, combined with 8 Mastered Mime Materia, a Limit break, and a little bit of patience, will make Emerald Weapon into a joke. ....and also an hour and a half loop if you use Cid's Highwind. I would know, because I did it on PSX years ago. Me and my friend went to Wal-Mart for Mountain Dew and pretzels, we came back and the limit break was still looping. Barrels of laughs. Emerald deserves it.

[cavy]

thanks for the advice everyone. Xengre, your training forest was incredibly helpful, thank you.
I'll try out your suggestions, the Elemental strategies have already worked out pretty well. Next I'll work on getting the omnislash with Daenoxiis' counter attack+cover strategy; and definitely keep an eye out for counter and mime. Also thank you both for the tips on Enemy Skills- since the remake came out it keeps cluttering up my searches and making it hard to find good information.

[SaN]

Barret is da best :p

More seriously, the advices given by Xengre and Daenoxiis are very good.

What I can say to give your more good advice?

Aqualung is also a great Ennemy Skill to have and its a lot easier and faster to get than Beta. https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Aqualung_(Final_Fantasy_VII)

Aqualung is water damage this is rare and precious.

Frog Song can be very useful too. https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Frog_Song_(Final_Fantasy_VII)

About leveling materias, Fire 2, Ice 2, Poison 2, Restore 2 are enough, I think Lighting 3 is the only important one.

The purple materia called Magic Plus is great. We can find it on Corel Valley. https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Magic_Plus_(Final_Fantasy_VII)

Unleveled Exit materia is useful to avoid uninteristing encounters or game over screen.

Unleveled Restore materia to cure allies outside of battles.

More strong materias combos:
Deathblow + Added Cut
Choco/Mog + Added Effect on weapons to inflict stop a status effecitve againt a lot of bosses.

[solidap]

If you need to get kills for Limit Breaks, my favorite place has always been in the Mithril Caves. If you go in the entrance by Fort Condor, go into the room at the top of the screen (where there's a big glowing crystal). All encounters have at least 4 enemies and you should be able to kill them quickly at your level with Matra Magic.

Deathblow + Added Cut is also one of my favorite combos you can get early. It's especially great with Tifa and Vincent because they get a few high accuracy weapons and their deathblows will land often.

[KaveMan]

Another good way to see which combo's work, You can view the status screen of the character, Element (Attack, Halved, Invalid, Absorb) and Effect (Attack, Defend) will have highlighted text.