Flying High: Optional things with the Highwind

Final Fantasy VII Guide - Walkthrough

Flying High: Optional things with the Highwind

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|| Treasure:| Elemental Materia, Fullcure Materia, Elixir, Magic Source,      ||
||          | Fourth Bracelet, Guard Source, Enemy Skill Materia,             ||
||          | Quadra Magic Materia, Chocobo Lure Materia.                     ||
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Since you've got the Highwind now, I really suggest you go do some fun stuff now.. I mean, why wouldn't you? You've got FREEDOM! The Highwind can fly around the whole world, but can only land on green, grassy areas. That means no dirt, no forest, and no desert. You can go to many places, just not everything.. yet!

(Fort Condor Note 15:)
This is the last optional battle to do here.. they'll say you've missed 5 battles but that's due to sleepyhead Tifa who slept for 7 days. The prize for this last optional 14th battle is again 3 Elixirs, if you did everything else.

First of all, many shops have re-stocked their shops with different or new items. Many shops at Fort Condor, Junon, and Costa Del Sol sell different things than they did on disc 1. Also, if you've got the 300000 gil, you may as well buy the villa in Costa Del Sol and turn it into 'Villa Cloud'. This will likely require you to sell a Mastered All Materia for 1.4 million gold.

Now fly over to Nibelheim and head to Tifa's Piano. Inspect the Piano. If you chose to play the piano in the flashback and you said you 'jammed on it', then you'll now receive the Elemental Materia. That's all there is to do in Nibelheim now.

Now head to Cosmo Canyon. Enter the Item Shop on the far right, and go behind the back. This was blocked off at first. Now you can grab the Fullcure Materia, along with the Elixir and Magic Source.

Fly your boobs over to Rocket Town now. Note how the music changed from the 'Wall Market theme' into this music now. Anyway, that's not what you came for.  Head into the weapon store and grab a Fourth Bracelet from the chest in the other room. This is a rather good armor, although the Magic Defense from armor is NEVER used from any armor. So ignore that.. your Mdef will always be based on just your Spirit Stat. It's still a good armor for now. Now go to the Item Shop (with the Old Man outside) and grab a Guard Source from the room behind. Both shops have changed what they sell somewhat, by the way.

Now fly over to the northern continent. From the exit of the Corral Valley Cave check out the house on the northwest from here, which is surrounded by mountains. Lucky for you it's possible to land here. Talk to the Green(!) Chocobo there who'll give you an Enemy Skill Materia, which should be the fourth and last one. You can also talk to the guy who is the 'Chocobo Sage'. This guy has the worst memory ever (although he certainly does remember to keep his prices SKY HIGH for greens/nuts!). If you come back after having fought between 3 and 6 battles, he'll be able to tell you another chunk of info. This is useful for later on, if you're interested in Chocobo Breeding.

From Cosmo Canyon, fly to the south from there, and you should be able to locate an island called Cactus Island. You can land on the grass, and fight Cactuers in the desert. The reason to come here is that they can be morphed into a Tetra Elemental, an accessory that absorbs Fire, Ice, Earth and Lightning. The Cactuers pack a punch with their 1000 Needles attack that always does 1000 damage, and their normal 'Mystery Kick' that can do around 750 damage. They are also very hard to hit, in fact you only have 1/8th chance you can hit them normally with physical attacks. Fortunately, there are ways to morph them easily. The Cactuers are level 40, so if you cast the Enemy Skill Level 4 Suicide on them they'll instantly have very low HP. You can now do two things:

You can manipulate them, making them an easy target for morphing, or you can paralyze them using the item Dazers (gotten from Boundfat enemies in the Corral Valley, just north from the Sleeping Forest). Either way works just fine. I suggest you get 3 of them, for whenever you want one for any party member.

Now fly pretty much to the other side of the world map, to the islands on the northeast of the eastern continent. In the forests here you can encounter Goblin enemies. You can learn the enemy skill Goblin Punch from them (which costs no MP to cast, and does alot of damage if your Lvl and the enemies' Lvl are close to each other). You can also get the Zeio Nut from them, which may be of good use to you later during chocobo breeding.

(Perfect Game Note 20:)
Now is also a good time to go to Wutai and defeat Godo. Make SURE you've got all Enemy Skill Materia's that DON'T HAVE Trine equipped on Yuffie, to make sure you learn Trine from him. It's your last chance to learn it.. now all 4 Enemy Skill Materia should have Trine!

There's another optional thing to do, and it involves exploiting a glitch of some sorts. I never have any problem with doing this, but if you do, just skip the next paragraph.

Fly with the Highwind to the east of the Chocobo Ranch and spot the Cave. Follow the dirt path from the cave until you see a cliff that leads to a grass area.  This is the spot you need to be at. The trick is to fly/land the highwind near the cliff so that when you land, you'll actually be on the dirt area leading to the Cave that's normally still unreachable. To do this, face the Highwind south, and use Square Directional buttons to move it around. When nearby the ledge, press X to land, and also hold the Up/Left buttons along with L1. If done correctly, you'll be next to the ledge on the dirt area. It's kinda tricky, but give it a few tries and I'm sure you'll be able to pull it off.

It's glitch time! I'm sure you'd like the Quadra Magic Materia for free, in just a mere minute, wouldn't you? Well, you can, actually. Check out this video.

You can go to the Chocobo Ranch and grab the Chocobo Lure Materia if you walk a bit to the right of the fence. You can even start catching Chocobo's now, but I won't go in-depth here. If you want more info, head to the chocobo section.  While you're here, make sure to buy at least one Mimett Greens for soon.

This is all you can do for now. The Gold Saucer's closed off, so there's not much else to do than to continue with the story.