Part 104: North Crater, Part II

Chapter 103 - North Crater, Part II





Here we get another [Mystile], one of the best armor pieces in the game, and also one of the duplicate items we get. Since we already had one from Midgar we're conveniently gonna have exactly 3 with the duplicate.



The thing about Mystile is that not only it gives you 50% chance to dodge attacks, it also gives you an additional 50% to hit because for some strange reason your dodge chance is also used in the calculation to hit the enemy. Yes that's right, the To Hit formula literally has "(Your Dodge) - (Enemy's Dodge)" in it.



The [Tetra Elemental] is a super useful accessory that allows you to absorb Fire, Ice, Lightning and Earth elemental damage. It can only be found in the field here, but you can Morph it from Cactuars in a secret island to the south of Cosmo Canyon. We've done that back in Chapter 70.



Look at the size of them eggs.



No one likes these Joker-type enemies. They always have an instant Death ability. These douches here have two.



They do drop the [Kiss of Death] item which can only be acquired by defeating them. It's one of those items that inflict status ailments to the enemies.



In this case, well, 'Death'. Too bad Death almost never works in the enemies that matter (I'm looking at you Master Tonberry) and we have the command [Flash] from the [Slash-All] Materia which does the same thing.



Getting down to the bottom...



And we've reached the end again. There's still one fork remaining.



This time we're going up.



We reach this... place.



You can cross over swimming/diving, it's really strange. It's not immediately obvious where you should go.



So it takes some exploration in order to get to some of these platforms, even though you'd think you could just walk right to them.



This place has Magic Pots, which are the most important enemies in the game.



They start off immune until you give them an Elixir. However, once that's out of the way, they're super weak.



At the end they reward you an obscene amount of Experience and more importantly, AP. That's like 6000 AP with a Triple-Growth Weapon.



So what happens is that if you want to get some Master Materias rolling, you farm the hell out of these pots.



The [Shield] Materia is the last Magic Materia left for us to collect. It gives you the Invincible status for some turns, like the one created by Aeris' limits.



Man this place is really weird.



Another screen with materias hidden in the background. At the center you find a [Counter] Materia, which is one of the two most important materias for FFVII's end-game abuse (the other being Mime). Combining Counter with Mime makes you repeat the previous action every time you're attacked. I don't think I need to go in detail about how incredibly overpowered that is.

At the top, that tiny pink dot is the [W-Magic] Materia, which is the same as [W-Item] but with Magic. If you combine [W-Magic] with [Quadra Magic] you can cast eight consecutive spells with one command.



And back to this screen again. We're 100% done with looting, so let's move on.





Yup.



Mythril refers to the Mystile armor, but you know, this game's translation, etc.



So you basically go around collecting tributes. When you're done, if you go down the crater you'll basically enter the Point-Of-No-Return, so this is as far as you go before you decide you're done with the game.



Like a boss.



Hahaha.



Having two unleveled [Counter] materias is super useful if you intend to have eight of them, since you can level them up simultaneously.



You still can't level up two [Mimes] at the same time, unfortunately.



Ain't you a touching fella.



Now that we're done with looting the Crater we can go back to the surface. We have some unfinished business.



First of all, let's go to the Bone Village, as the shopkeeper has something useful.



Namely the [Rune Armlet], which has Double Growth. If we don't get some of our Materias mastered we wouldn't be playing FFVII properly.



We combine it with the Apocalypse, which has Triple Growth. Cid's Scimitar also has Triple Growth, but only two slots. It's still advantageous though, since we don't have that many materias we want to master.



Back to the place of ponies, magic pots and these weird glowing balls that also give a shitload of AP in order to get ready for the real villain of the game - side quests. And eventually Sephiroth.


Next Time:

We're gonna be 100% done with side quests, I swear!