General Tips And Info

First, some beginner's tips:

Always carry plenty hi-potions and ether around for where there isn't a save point
Have at least 5 tents with you at all times
Save often
Place characters with long range weapons in the back row
If you are really just starting, set the battle timer to WAIT. This will allow you some much need time to make your decisions.
Once you get the chocobo lure, and start riding chocobos, rethink how far you are going to go. The fights that you encounter by walking will help you to gain levels for future battles ahead
Don't equip all attack materia, such as giving one character fire,ice,quake,lighting and so on. Equip a few of them, but also equip such things as restore and barrier. Barrier is probably the most useful materia right next to time. Barrier will cut any non-magical attack by 1/2. MBarrier will cut any magic attacks by 1/2 as well.
Remember to talk to everyone several times. Many people say different things when you talk to them 2 or 3 times.
Don't waste money buying excessive amounts of such items as Maiden's Kiss, Echo Screen, etc. because most battle effects (except sadness and hyper) only last until the end of the battle.
Remember that fire damages ice, lighting damages machines, and ice damages fire.
Push select while in a town or cave scene to help you navigate. This will pinpoint places such as ladders and openings
General Materia Combinations:

Now, for the advanced tips:

Listed below are some very useful materia combinations:

1. Final Attack + Revive = When the character that has this combination dies, he/she will cast revive and bring him/herself back from the dead.

2. Elemental + Most spells = Protection from that magic when equiped on the armor slots, and adds that effect to the attack when attached to the weapon slots

3. HP Absorb + Deathblow = Regain HP while dealing critical hits

4. Cover(mastered is preferred) + Counter attack, Counter attack, Counter attack, Count..... = The character that has these equiped will cover any attack that the enemy hits you with and then counter a good many times.

5. Mega All + Steal, Mug, Deathblow, Manipulate, Sense = Many neat combinations. Mega All is my favorite materia because of the combinations that you can have with it. Such as having mega all, deathblow + HP absorb. Hit all enemies with deathblow and gain hp while doing it

6. Quadra Magic + Ultima or Comet 2, W-magic = Cast the spell 8 times. Nuff said

7. Mp Turbo + Knights of Round = Knights of the round will do much more damage, over the course of 13 knights, this will add up tremendously

8. Mime + Limit Break = This only works when there is only one character fighting, such as the Ruby Weapon or battle arena. With Cloud's omnislash, you can just mime it over and over and over racking up 15 hits at a time for about 5000-7000 a hit.

Many times, when your materia goes up or gets mastered, it changes in it's actions. Such as deathblow, when mastered, will have a 100 % hit percentage unless you have mega-all equiped. Double cut will change to 4x Cut. Slash-all will change to Flash, and when materia gets mastered, it duplicates and forms another one of its kind (you will still have to level up this one).
Once you have gotten and mastered all the materia in a specific group, such as magic materia, go to cosmo canyone and up to Bugenhagen's Observatory. Turn on the machine, and go to the Huge Materia that corresponds to the color of the materia. In this case, it will be the green Huge Materia. If you have everything mastered in magic, and have all the materia for it. The huge materia will take all the mastered materia that you have, (You should have duplicates for all of them) and give you a new materia called master magic. This master magic cannot be leveled up, and it gives no attributes or penalties. It will allow you to cast every magic spell in the game however.
During the later part of the game, I've found that a party composed of Cloud, Cid, and Vincent work rather well. Cloud is the fighter/partial magic user in the party, While Cid is purely a fighter. Vincent can be interchanged with RedXIII if you wish, but they both should server the purpose of casting magic. Although RedXIII is a partially good fighter.
If you are going to build up limit breaks, and you need to use a particular limit break several times, then equip that person with a mastered cover, and give him/her a hyper item. This way, that character will take every hit and their limit meter will fill up quickly. That way, they can use a particular limit break many times in a battle, taking in that they don't kill all the enemies with one limit break.
There are 3 good places to level up in my opinion. For limit breaks, go to the forest in Mideel. There you will fight some green scorpion looking guys. These guys give a fair amount of exp and AP, but they usually come in groups of 3-4. This is helpful in building up limit breaks because their attacks can cause about 300 damage. With hyper and cover (mastered), they can help you out alot. Another good place is the sunken shinra plane, underwater, near the gold saucer. The monsters in here give about 10,000 gp per, and a fair amount of exp. Finally, the best place to level up materia, is in the crater. Go down the pathway until you have the choice of going left or right. Choose left, and then choose up when the decision comes again. Go up, and fight around there. You will eventually come across something called a magic pot. Unfortunately, the only way that I know to damage them, is to give them an elixer then attack them. They give, however 1000 AP per pot. This will surely build up your materia quickly. If you go up one more screen, and fight there, you will come across 3 small floating balls called movers. These don't give any exp, but they give 2400 AP for the entire group!.
Ok, here is how to defeat the two weapons:

Red Weapon (In the Gold Saucer Desert):

If you wish to have all 3 people when fighting the boss, just follow these simple steps. First, choose one person to have either the revive-all combination or the phoenix materia. Now, have that person kill of the other 2 characters in another battle besides the weapon one. You should now have one character with the revive-all etc.. combination. Equip everyone else with materia following the paragraph below's tips, and head into the weapon. Since you have only 1 character, it will almost always place it's arms underground at the beginning of the battle. Now, cast life 2 all or phoenix and revive everyone, and there you are!

First off, equip everyone with the necessities, such as barrier + all, time + all, and restore. If you have full cure(cosmo canyon, back of shop), equip that too. Equip your characters with the summon materia Bahamut ZERO(Cosmo Canyon, Huge materia) and Knights of the round(NE island). With the person who has Knights of the Round, equip with mime and a mystile if you have it. With the person who has Bahamut ZERO, equip a W-Summon.(battle arena, 64,000 BP)Equip any other characters with mystile as well, because this will give them a 60% chance of avoiding all of the weapons magic attacks, even ultima. Give HP pluses to those who need it, to try to get in the hp range of 7000-9999. equip any other materia that you think will help (shield <last crater>comes to mind). Also, equip as many people as you can with the final attack + revive materia. Now, fly into the weapon, and it will begin the attack. Your time meters start out as nothing, so to counter-act this, equip 2 people with sprint shoes. Equip the 3rd with a ribbon(Clock scene in ancient temple). If you don't have the ribbon, equip him with a sprint shoe as well. As soon as you start off, cast regen, wall, and haste. While you are casting these, the weapon is probably attacking you. Cast fullcure on those who need it, then just concentrate on keeping everyone's hp up and setting up defenses. Cast shield if you wish, because this will prevent anyone from taking damage from Big Swing. Attacking him at this point is useless, since his arms are protecting him from taking any damage. Just hold off for a little longer. Now, he may or may not have cast whirlsand, and if he did, he cast it twice. Reducing your party to one. If you were lucky, he did not take the character with the Bahamut ZERO or Knights of the Round. Keep holding off you attack until he throws his arms into the ground. Now is the time to attack. If you have Knights of the round, cast it, but be prepared, because he will counterattack with ultima. If you dodge the ultima, then he will attack with a ruby ray. This doesn't do too much to a person with wall on, about 1800 damage. If you are at a good amount of hp, then do the command MIME. This way, you can unlimitedly cast that summon, as long as you cast it the last round. Beware of the two spikes behind you however, they cannot kill you, but they reduce your HP very low, leaving you succeptible to other attacks by the weapon. If you have the hades materia (sunken shinra plane) equipped, cast it on the two spikes behind you. This will stop them and poison them, leaving you only with the weapon itself. Continue casting knights of the round and curing and casting wall. If he gets off a lucky hit, you should have final attack and revive to save you. If you have them both mastered, you should have no problem killing him. For undergoing this long ordeal, you get a desert rose. This can be trading in at Kalm, on the second floor of the house in the far right. The guy there will give you a Gold Chocobo.... Not too much of a prize eh? But you can brag about it to other people :)

Green Weapon (underwater):

This weapon I consider to be less of a threat than the Ruby Weapon. It still has about 500,000 hit points. Just be sure to read the part about the underwater materia.

Follow the same materia equiping strategy as listed above. There is one special materia that could come in helpful here however, called the underwater materia. This eliminates the 20:00 counter while fighting the weapon. The way to get this materia is to fight a monster called the ghost ship in the underwater reactor. Fight along the tunnels with all the little fishies outside. When you come across the ship, morph it into the Guide Book. Take it to the guy at Kalm in the second floor of the house on the far right, and he will give you the underwater materia. Now, it helps to have each of your characters HP at 8500-9999, but final attack + revive or phoenix (Condor Tower) can be substituded. Many of the weapon's attacks deal plenty of damage, in fact, it has an attack that deals 9999 to all of your characters. Since you have all 3 characters for the whole fight, he shouldn't be too hard. Try to cast a w-summon knights of the round, and then have someone mime it. Having 2 or 3 people miming it can help this battle end more quickly. Be sure you have wall, haste and regen cast on your characters, or else you won't stand a chance. For killing him, you get an Earth Harp. Give it to the guy at Kalm, and he will give you the master summon, master magic, and the master command materias!

AN ALTERNATE METHOD

Hey! I just found a(relatively) easy way to defeat Emerald Weapon! You need to have Knights of the Round and Mime Materia for this to work, though.What I did was to get Cloud down to about 6277 HP, then used 3 hi-potions on him out of battle. When I came into battle with Emerald Weapon, Cloud had All Lucky 7's and hit Emerald Weapon nonstop 64 times for 7777 hp each hit (this takes off nearly 500000 hp). Then Emerald Weapon used Emerald soot, and I had Cloud cast Knights of the Round with W-summon, which took off about another 220000 hp. The next step was to have Tifa Mime Cloud's W-summon, for yet another 220000. This brings Emerald Weapon down to just about 60000 hp. After this, I had Tifa Mime herself once more, and the fifth Knights of the Round finished him off. I spent hours trying this and that until I came up with the idea to enter battle with All Lucky 7's. Without it I would have been mashed yet again by that outrageously powerful American secret boss.

Get Cloud's Omnislash. This 15 hit attack is usually very harmful to all enemies. It is in my opinion the best limit break in the game. Refer to the Limit Break section on how to get it.

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