Could anyone explain Materia to a noob?

[DeafMeat]

Just the basics. I've tried searching online but there seems to be too many spoilers, and I don't want to 'cheat', but I don't really understand them. I understand you can 'levell' them up, but I'm not 100% sure I understand that part of it, but the bit I really don't understand is combining them. I've just arrived at Cloud's hometown and seen the Sephiroth backstory. Just something to point me in the right direction please :)

Also, should they all just do magic attacks really? Their physical attacks seem so weak in comparrison.

[LilG]

There's several types of materia in the game.
Green-Magic
Red-Summon
Yellow-Command
Purple-Indepedent
Blue-Support.

The green, red, yellow & purple ones will adjust your stats depending on which one you equip.
Magic/summon materia usually lowers your max hp/str while boosting your magic/max mp.

When you lvup a materia you unlock higher tiers of spells for example, the Restore materia you start with cure then once it levels up you unlock cure2>regen>cure3. Once the materia is mastered you get another one which starts off at lv1.

Summon materia when you lv that up you can use that summon more than once.

Yellow materia you can unlock new commands, steal becomes mug so you do damage as well as try & steal from a target.

Purple materia just raises a stat like hp, magic, speed,luck or xp increases/decreases random encounters.

Blue materia works best when combined with others. Added effect is a good one.

Combining materia you basically slot it into your weapon or armor for various effects. Here's a few examples. ffwiki or Gamefaqs has some info too & possible spoilers.

Weapon-Added effect+Poison: Your character has a chance of poisoning a target.
Elemental materia+Fire: Your attacks will have the fire element on it, good against targets weak vs fire.

Armor-Added effect+poison: You're immune to being poisoned. Works with any materia that inflicts a status effect.

Depending on your setup, I wouldn't give physical fighters like Cloud, too many magic materia since that reduces his str/hp so his attacks get weaker. I usually gave him a couple of magic materia, 1 summon & combination of yellow/purple/blue.
Try to divide your materia evenly between your group giving them a mix.

[Delta0175]

I'm probably over explaining, but I'll start off with the basics of Materias.

There are 5 types of Materia, Magic, Command, Summon, Independent, and Support.

Magic like the name implies allows you do to magic attacks at the cost of a set amount of MP which range from Offensive (Bolt), Defensive (Barrier), Healing (Cure), or Status (Confu).

Command adds more commands to your command menu (Steal)

Summon adds a powerful summon you can use that usually costs a lot of MP.

Independent like the name implies is a materia that is an individual which doesn't need linking and doesn't need to be 'selected' in battle for it to be used.

Lastly, Support materia like the name implies are the materias that need to be linked with certain materia for it to do anything.

Materia gain levels by AP which you obtain from every random battle or boss battle, this is indicated on the first screen after you win at the top above the characters.

Gaining levels does several things either unlocking more powerful spells, for example leveling Bolt to Star level 2 unlocks Bolt 2, makes it do better things, Elemental upon leveling it to level 2 takes upon the elemental properties of the linked materia for example you link Fire + Elemental on your weapon, it'll do bonus fire damage while linking it in your armor nullifies the damage and upon leveling it to 3 it'll absorb the damage meaning whatever damage you were supposed to take will actually heal you.

So say an enemy uses Fire on your character and it normally does 100 damage, if you have Fire + Elemental (Level 2) on your armor it'll heal your character by 100. Also note that it does not tell you what it does when you level up in-game, this goes for other materias like this, you'd have to look it up yourself to see what certain materias do when they level up if they do not outright say it like Bolt.

Additional Note:

Independent is the primary example of this where you will need to look up what it does when you level them up, though they aren't too complicated. For example Cover at level 1 has a 20% chance of the character equipped with it of taking an enemy's attack directed at another character while at max level it's 100%. I believe only certain Independent Materia actually tells you what it does when leveling up.

Finally there's Summon materia which when you level up it increases the amount you can use it as there are a set number of uses for them regardless if you have the required MP for it, starting out summons can only be used once per battle at level 1, the amount you can use it is indicated by the x(number) next to the amount of MP you need to use the summon.

Linking them is pretty simple, let's take Cloud's starting weapon for example, the Buster Sword. You notice how it's slots looks like this: O=O? That means you can link materia in those slots while slots that look like this: O, O O O. Are not linked and will not benefit from each other if they can.

The only materia that needs linking is Support Materia, an example of a support materia (besides Elemental) is All which can be used with nearly all Materia and like Summon materia leveling it up increases the amount you can use.

Further explaining it what All does is literally it's name, it makes it so that a materia can do All to what it does, so for example linking All with Cure can allow you to use Cure in battle to all your party members, you can also use this outside of battle in the menu screen but All MUST be equipped for you to do that and it can be used an infinite amount of times this way. One of the special exceptions to All is it won't work with Summon materia or rather it's redundant as Summons target all enemies regardless.

As for characters doing Magic attacks it depends, magic can be good or not so good, it can be good especially for certain bosses as they're weak to certain magic, but not so good when you learn that physical attacks eventually becomes so much more better than magic and there's only really a couple of magic materia that are good.

Getting back to leveling Materias you remember the Star levels I mentioned? When fully leveling them you'll 'Master' them which will then give you a 'baby' of the Materia you mastered.

Special Note:

E-Skill is a special type of Command Materia which allows you to copy certain Enemy Skills by having the character equipped with it be attacked by the certain Enemy Skill. Like Summon Materia, E-skill is a special exception where All does not work with it and only certain E-Skills can target multiple enemies. I'm not going to say where to get all the E-Skills in respect for no spoilers, but you may have to look some up, esepecially 2 particular ones, it is also needed for the Materia Overlord achievement, though you only need 1 E-Skill 'Mastered'.

[DeafMeat]

Thanks guys, great replies :)

So, at around level 15 how do most people have Cloud and Tifa equipped? I've been mostly using Bolt+All for Cloud and Cure with Tifa and Steal, so a support roll. Is this totally wrong?

[Delta0175]

The thing is with this game there is really no right or wrong way to play it, like previous FFs assigning roles to your party was probably a must (or any other type of RPG in general), but in this you can pretty much assign anyone to anything.

Optimal wise you'll learn certain characters are better at certain things, like Cloud and Tifa are better off being the physical attackers of the group, however honestly you can just throw whatever materia you feel like on everyone, just make sure of course that you have at least one healer, or 2 if you really need the extra healing.

[LilG]

The setup you're using is fine, like Delta said the characters can be assigned to any kind of role here since they don't have a fixed job like other FF games.

But I'd say physical fighters like Cloud/Tifa/Barret you can give them some magic materia but since they rely mainly on physical hits you'll want to equip them with materia that won't weaken them.

I preferred giving my physical attackers materia combinations to make them more effective against certain enemies. e.g Bolt+elemental materia vs mechanical enemies or Added effect+time/choco/mog/hades/destruct. I usualy gave them the enemy skill , counter or deathblow materia since that doesn't affect their stats in a negative way.

Characters like Aerith or Cait Sith I gave them more of a mage role , gave them lots of magic materia & stuck them in the back row. Made a kind of physical, magical & support party when I play.

[gattawesome]

Early in the game, you'll want to load Barret and Aeris with magic materia since Barret can do the same damage from the back row and Aeris has very high stats in magic ability and, as a crappy attacker, is better off in the back row. You can play however you want, but you don't want to make Cloud or Tifa weak physical attackers since that's primarily how they deal damage. Later on, most people agree that the best party is made up on Cloud, Tifa, and Cid due to Cloud and Cid's level 4 Limits and Tifa's physial attacks being flat out awesome (don't use Premium Heart like ever though).

As far as leveling materia, there's little reason to level grind materia growth since if you don't run away from battles, your materia grows at a fairly ideal rate. Plus, FF7 is kind of an easy game and doesn't require a lot of strategy in most boss fights. Most bosses resist status ailments so you end up using brute force on a lot of bosses (which can make the final boss either very easy or very hard depending on how you've prepared).