The Wall Market. It's after you meet Aerith for the first time. It's confusing as hell. Here's the scoop: You find out that Tifa was taken there in that cart. You need to get in, but it's no go, because the guy in front is only letting ladies in... So what to do? You naturally, of course, are going to dress up as a lady (well, Cloud is, Aerith's to far gone down that path to worry). First off, go to the dress shop. They'll tell you to find the owner of the shop. He's in the bar farther up (not the ramen/sushi shop). Talk to him, and he'll meet you back at the dress shop. He gives you the cotten dress, but you need a wig or something else. The easiest path is the wig, which is at the boxer hall. Do the exercise faster than the other guy, and you'll get the wig. You can then go back to the Dress shop, go to the back, and Cloud will go into the dressing room. Flub it, and you'll have to get the tiara from the guy in the materia shop (he's lying on his side). That guy makes Aerith unhappy, though... You may also have to get the lingerie from the strip bar, though that may be optional (and I believe you get penalized for it, along with pissing off Aerith again). Once you've gotten Cloud into drag, head for the big bosses place....
Getting Pyramided by the guy on the platform. Slap the Pyramided characters, and they will be freed. Simple, but took me about 5 save-returns to figure it out...
Shin-ra's tower. If you go up the stairs, it'll take a while, but you will avoid several fights on the way to the 59th floor. Plus you can pick up a Hyper-potion or two. Otherwise, the fights take time, but you'll have more experience. Plus you won't have to listen Barett whine at every floor...
You should have picked up the Orb of Stealing earlier in the game, around the wall-market scenario. If you haven't, slap yourself and find a previous save game. You want this for Shin-ra's tower, because the tougher robots and soldiers have some definite must-have items. The robot with the spinning blades on the bottom has the Carbuncle armor, twice as strong as anything you can get in the next 2-3 hours. Very useful. And the higher level soldiers with the swords have the Hard-edge sword, which is the only new/different sword for Cloud in the entire city. It's also twice as powerful as anything you can get for a while. Nice. Also, earlier on in the train-tracks/wrecked trains, you get attacked by one particular character on a chariot. He's carrying the strike-rod, which Aerith can use. Once again, twice as possible, 2-3 hour wait minimum to recieve this weapon otherwise. This is after the Wall-market episode. Any large enemy that takes a while to steal from usually has something nice. But Bosses and Sub-Bosses generally have nothing to steal, or nothing that I've found yet (including my 38-hour game).
Chocobo farm. This one is confusing, because most people assume they are buying a chocobo itself. That's not it, you're buying a particular orb called the Chocoboyose, which means Chocobo-bait. When it's equipped, you can encounter Chocobo's outdoors in areas with Chocobo tracks. When you defeat the additional enemies with the Chocobo, you can then gain the Chocobo to ride on afterwards. I haven't verified it, but the first time you meet the Chocobo, you may need to feed it, which is what the chocobo farm is selling in addition to the Chocoboyose. Two, talk to the Chocobo's in the farm (well, chirp at them). They'll go into an extended dance and chirp sequence, and then you'll receive the Chocobo-materia, which will call a chocobo during fights for attacks on the enemy. You must be riding a Chocobo to outrun the snake in the swamp. Otherwise, it will catch up with you, and while it's not impossible to defeat, the first time you meet it, it practically is. Plus chocobo's are fun to ride, anyway.
The Golden Saucer's buggy. Unmentioned (in english ;) is the fact that you can cross shallow rivers with it. That's the point to the buggy, since you still get in random encounters with it.
The Rocket Ship. You will know this one when you get there, and boy, was it difficult. The Code is Circle, Square, X,X. If I remembered wrong, then it's Square, Circle, X,X. The last two are definitely the X button.
The Luna Harp (ie, bone village). Oh boy, one more time. The forest after the village is called the sleeping forest. While it's sleeping, you can never find the end, though you can go back. Also, one tip is to walk through it, there's a materia floating at the edges that doesn't show up if you're running (my usual default:). Anyway, if you go back to the village, one of the characters on the upper level tells you that you need the Luna Harp to wake up the forest, then you can go to the end. But, where's the Luna Harp, you ask? Well, it's buried in this Bone village somewhere. So you're character asks (top choice on list) "I want the Harp...". The reply is to go down and talk to the town's boss down in the tent below... The guy who sell's you items. After the talk with the upper level guy, his dialogue will change and you can ask him about the harp. He'll then offer to either 1. dig for the Harp, 2. dig for other misc. items, or 3., dig for special items (?). Take one, and then he'll explain the system for you, which consists of hiring his guys, one by one, to stand at different spots in the village and set off explosions. It costs 100gil per guy. After you place them, they set off depth-sensor explosions, and then read their meters. They will then be looking in the direction of where you need to indicate for them to dig for the night. The next day, the item that they dug up will be in the chest at the bottem of the village. If you got the location right, the Luna Harp will be there. If you didn't, you have to do it again....
The tiny Bronco. After you meet Cid, you'll end a sequence by crashing the Tiny Bronco plane in the sea. Cid repairs it, but can't get it to fly again. On the other hand, he converts it into a temporary boat. It will land anywhere there's a beach. It can only go into shallow water, also. Not deep sea. It can also go up rivers, which provides some handy short-cuts.
The Safe in Nevilheim. Please, somebody, come up with the combination! I'm stuck also! Rumor/Somebody else's information! Unverified, but what the heck! right 36,left 10 and right 59. the last code (4) is right 97 (this is pulled from different sources).
The Huge-materia run-away train. It was difficult to do this one. You move the train faster by moving the two-levers in sequence one after another, as fast as possible without mucking up. This will enable you to catch up with the train in front. I managed to do that in two-minutes the second time (8 the first time). You then need to fight to the front, and then muck around with buttons until you stop the train. If you fail, the train goes through the village. If you don't fail, it stops right in front of the village, and in exchange you get some additional materia (altima, a major spell that takes 5000 APB *before* you can use it) along with the huge-materia.
Falling through the train-tracks with stuff out where you can't reach it. I'm stumped. Anybody else reached this and figured it out?
Extra Characters. Red is easy to get, since you can't miss him. So's Cid. But what about the others? Going by the order that's in my book, you should be able to get Yufi after Red, then Caitlin in the Golden Saucer (you can't leave until you find him, so he's not hard either), and then Vincent. From what I've heard (but not directly experienced), Yufi's in the forests on the way to Red's hometown. Meeting her is a random encounter, and you can't find her if you've gone onto the 2nd cd (as far as I've tried). Make sure you find her before Red's town, or around that time. More rumors on Vincent. He's supposedly in Nevilheim, but behind a door that doesn't open. It may have to do with the aforementioned safe being opened. Yufi and Vincent are not necessary for finishing the game, it seems so far, but there's probably some more story/side-quests involved (especially in Yufi's village, which doesn't go anywhere without her, it seems).
FFVII Cd 2 Hints/tips/walkthrough (partial)
Some recently found information (below) and information on the 2nd CD.
From Jon y. I recently found your FF7 site, and it is truly amazing. I can't begin to go over the in depth coverage you have provided. But after reading your "spoils section" ( I curently am about 13 hours into the game myself) I just wanted to clear up that the monsters found in those test tanks were actually human beings just like Sephiroth created by ShinRa. Sephiroth got mad because he blamed the human race for conducting these experiments, and the esper he pulled out called Jenova, Sephiroth believes Jenova to be his mother. He goes ballistic, blaming human kind for doing this to his mother and himself. I got this from my translations, which is not very good at all, but I acquired the help of a japonese friend. hope this might clear some things up! Great work!!! If you happen to finish the game soon, Email me if you're not too busy how long it took you to finally beat the game and with at what level you were on. Thanks.....jon y. Email: kuku@juno.com
And some other information...
Yet again, *spoilers* below people. I warned you. If you complain, you will be ascii'ed to death... :)
After boarding down the hill behind the Snowy Mountain Town, your character's end up in a snowy wastelandish area. Lot's of white-out, very tough, since you don't know where to go next. I believe I headed left first, and then up, but that's very general since I wasn't paying much attention. If you wander around enough, you'll get to the big flat icy lakish area, where you keep getting turned around by the blowing wind. You can put down marker's though, so that you know where you were, and what direction you should be going. In the middle is a little cave with another materia in it. I believe if you then head left (or was it north?) you then start wandering down one of those endless, looks like the same area over and over again, except after about 3, you're character looks to reach the end, but falls down in exhaustion.
In general, the level above can be gotten through, it just takes a while, and you may have to retrace you're steps more than once (or twice). Save a lot, and stock up on tents. There's also probably more than a few secrets/materia, if you *do* go everywhere possible. And it's the only time you get to go through this level (thank god...).
You then wake up in a Cabin, and the cabin's owner explains (something), and also explains where to go next. After his speech, you can go outside, pick the character's you want in your party, and then get to climb up the mountainside. The trick to this is to follow the flags at each ledge, since they are the indicator to the next climbing path. And you also need to press the square button repeatedly to warm your character's up at each ledge. The number's on the right is your temperature. If it goes below 28, you freeze, get rescued, and have to start from the cabin again. Best strategy is to climb to a ledge, press square repeatedly (and fast) to get up to 36 again, and then go onto the next ledge. The various entrances lead to caverns, where you don't have to worry about freezing (since you're out of the wind.).
After clearing this level, you're on to the key event, which I won't spoil, since you'll generally make it through without much worry (other than the usual fight losses, etc...).
>>>Don't read below until finishing above<<<<
After that event, you'll lose Cloud, and be captured by ShinRa (well, you have to, otherwise the party would die...). You'll go through some scenes, and then Tifu will be gassed. You can't get her out with Barett. Run him to the airship with Caitsith.
The key to getting the key is to first push the foot button down until she slides her body all the way down. Just hold it down. Then, the hard part (to figure out) is to hold the foot button *and* the head button at the same time. After that, you get to slap the dickens out of scarlett... Talk about thing's that probably won't make it to the U.S....
Then, you've got the Airship. You can go find Cloud, which is fairly easy. Just search all the towns you can only reach with the airship....
You'll also get the option to raise/train Chocobo's at this point. It has to do with various purchases/options back at the original Chocobo farm, so realize that 1. It's expensive, and 2. It's complicated. You may want to wait until somebody really translates the options for this one, because you could just end up wasting your money, with no practical return.
After finding cloud, you've got to find the first 2 Huge Materia (hey, that's what it's called, don't hurt me). The first one (or second, doesn't matter) is in the Control Tower (eagle's nest). To get this one, you've got to win a big battle in the strategy area. After you've won, the egg will hatch, and the old Phoenix will die(big fmv scene. cool). You're character's can/will be able to run out the door on the top, and can find the Phoenix materia (useful). Then talk to the old man on the second level, and he'll give you the Huge Materia.
The second is in Corel, the mining town/entrance to the Golden Saucer. You have to run back along the tracks again, and then you'll get into a train-chase sequence. As written before: It was difficult to do this one. You move the train faster by moving the two-levers in sequence one after another, as fast as possible without mucking up. This will enable you to catch up with the train in front. I managed to do that in two-minutes the second time (8 the first time). You then need to fight to the front, and then muck around with buttons until you stop the train. If you fail, the train goes through the village. If you don't fail, it stops right in front of the village, and in exchange you get some additional materia (altima, a major spell that takes 5000 APB *before* you can use it) along with the huge-materia.
After that, you get Cloud back, and the *real* story about what happened in Nevilheim.... (no, I'm not saying. period.)
The next two huge materia are in sequence. The first one is back in the Cannon town... Leads to the sub (yes!) and an interesting sequence (cool arcade, by the way. Square's development teams are having fun, definitely).
Afterwards, you need to once again run up to the airport on the top of the cannon. Too late, though, and you need to next go back to Cid's home town, Rocket village.
Rocket sequence is hard to flub, except for the puzzle: This answer will be needed at a certain point: You will know this one when you get there, and boy, was it difficult. The Code is Circle, Square, X,X. If I remembered wrong, then it's Square, Circle, X,X. The last two are definitely the X button.
After this, (and another cool sequence) you need to head back to the Cosmo Canyon town (red's hometown). You'll get to make some materia from the huge materia (I only made one, there must be other combo's though). Then it's back to shell village, behind bone village (where you lost Aerith). You're trying to bring her back to life (I predicted this one would happen when she died...). You need to head to the left at the Shell village, and the old floating fart will explain that you need to items, a key and something else.
I stopped after this point, and restarted the game (I was getting close to the end, and I want to get the extra character's this time around). So don't ask me where things are after this point. You are going to have to earn it your'sef, grasshopper.
BTW, at this point (or earlier) if you go back to Midgard, there's a guy hanging around out front, talking about a key and/or getting lost from his tour group. I've got a feeling that one of the items are in Midgard (if not both) and my best hint/bet is that it's back in Aerith's church (it would fit in their standard plots). Otherwise, back at mom's place... I don't know, I haven't got in. Finding the key/entrance to Midgard is another thing entirely.
