The Northern Crater

Final Fantasy VII Guide - Walkthrough

The Northern Crater

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|| Treasure:| Save Crystal, Guard Source, Guard Source, Mind Source,          ||
||          | Magic Source, Elixir, Power Source, HP Absorb Materia,          ||
||          | Power Source, Mind Source, Megalixir, Hero Drink, Guard Source, ||
||          | Power Source, Remedy, Elixir, X-Potion, Turbo Ether, Vaccine,   ||
||          | Magic Counter Materia, X-Potion, Turbo Ether, Mega All Materia, ||
||          | Speed Source, Mystile, Elixir, Tetra Elemental, Speed Source,   ||
||          | Megalixir, Megalixir, Magic Source, Remedy, Shield Materia,     ||
||          | Imperial Guard, Vaccine, Hero Drink, (Command) Counter Materia, ||
||          | W-Magic Materia, Luck Source.                                   ||
||----------|                                                                 ||
||          | Best Combination Duplicates of Items: Mystile, Shield Materia,  ||
||          | Vaccine, (Command) Counter Materia, Imperial Guard.             ||
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Right now, you can go either through the Northern Crater, picking up many valuable treasure (and go back out the crater afterwards, which is possible), or you can do many optional things now. If you wish to do the optional things, refer to section {40}.
Climb down the ladder and walk down the rocky steps. Select that you want to go and Cloud will walk down the crater. Note: I advise you to equip at least one character with the Safety Bit accessory, as many creatures can cast death spells, some of which can kill all your characters if you're unlucky. Ribbons DON'T protect against Death.

You'll now be in the crater. If you want to go back out for any reason, you can just enter the first cave doorway and then climb up. Grab the Save Crystal from the chest nearby. This item allows you to create a Save Point anywhere in the Crater. There is only ONE of this item, and there are no Save Points in the Crater other than the one you create. Choose your point very, very carefully. I will also give tips on where to place the Save Point, and where NOT to place it.

Note: There's something called the 'Not-getting-the-Save-Crystal' glitch. This occurs if you open the chest with the Save Crystal while the animation of rocks falling down happens simultaneously. Then the text of 'Received Save Crystal!' will appear, but you can also still move around. If you exit the crater through the cave doorway, you will not get the Save Crystal in your inventory. Once you 'confirm' the text box, you receive the Save Crystal, but if you exit the screen (with the text box still displayed on your screen) then you never will. This glitch doesn't happen too often, fortunately.

Walk down the spiral path, and grab a Guard Source from the second chest. You can also learn the Dragon Force enemy skill from Dark Dragons. When you get to the next screen, you can choose to go down on the left or right side. First go down by the right side, and grab a Guard Source from the chest. Jump down, and go back on the right to grab a Mind Source from the lonely chest. Now go back up by the left side, and grab the Magic Source from the first chest. Climb up more to grab an Elixir from the next chest you pass by. The chest on the upper left holds a Power Source, and if you walk to the right from this ledge you can also grab the shiny HP Absorb Materia. Go down again by the right side, and proceed to the next screen.. can you feel the excitement? ;)

The next area looks like a little maze, but is fairly easy to navigate. Jump off the small ledge. Note: From here, you can actually go left or right again; left leads to more treasure, right leads to the next areas, eventually.

Go right first, and Cloud will drop down. Grab a Mind Source from the chest on your left. Now stand on the right end of the ledge, facing left, and jump up.  Walk to the other side, and enter the cave. Grab the Megalixir from the chest, and go back out of the cave.

Now walk a bit to the left and you'll drop down to a lower level. The chest on the left can be gotten from here, and it holds a Hero Drink. Enter the cave again. Walk up, and grab the Guard Source from the chest. The other chest can be accessed by going through the tunnel of which the entrance can be found a bit under the chest. It holds a Power Source. Exit the cave by the top, and walk right again to drop down.

This time, drop down more, and enter the cave. Walk through the 'connecting' path, and drop down more, staying on the right side of the screen. When you're all the way below, close to the exit, take your time and consider whether this is a good spot for the Save Point. I think it is. It's at about the middle of the crater, which makes it useful for getting anywhere: The world map, and the rest of the crater. Now go down the next screen..

Whatever you do, DON'T put the Save Point in this screen. There have been many people that did, and who weren't able to climb back up at all. So just don't do it and save yourself the screwed up game you'll get. Climb down and meet up with your party members.

NOTE!: Depending on who you send down which path, you can get additional items of some very useful and rare equipment. I highly suggest you follow the directions written in this walkthrough.

(Perfect Game Note 26:)
You MUST follow the directions in order to get the very special duplicates of:
Mystile, Imperial Guard, Shield Materia and (Command) Counter Materia.

• The first question that's asked is about Cloud. Send him, and everyone else to the left, EXCEPT TIFA. Send TIFA to the RIGHT.
• Head down(left) with Cloud. Here, you'll get to another intersection. Again, the first question is about Cloud. Send Cloud down, send Barret up, send Red XIII up, send Yuffie up, send Cait Sith down, send Vincent down, and send Cid up. Now take Cloud down through the down path.

You may (or may not) have a crappy party right now, so be extra careful. It could be wise to equip Vincent and Cait Sith with the Ziedrich, if you didn't use them often before. This armor will cut down most damage in half, plus it's basically very good on defenses.

You could also give them an additional Tough Ring.

Walk down the steps, and grab a Remedy from the chest on the left. Head to the right section and walk to the chest holding an Elixir. Head down more, and grab an X-Potion from the chest on your way, a bit on the left side. Exit down to the next area.

Here, walk the path until you can to jump down (twice). If you jump off from the left, just make sure you grab the chests. The chest nearby holds a Turbo Ether.  From here, head to the right and grab a Vaccine from the chest on your way. Walk to the left from here, past/behind the other path. In the 'Mako flow' you can grab the Magic Counter Materia, which is located on the nearly very left.

In the next screen, jump down to grab the X-Potion from the chest. Follow the fairly linear path down until you get to the second chest, which holds a Turbo Ether. From here, go to the left. Cloud will jump quickly to the next platform so quickly tap circle and you'll receive the Mega All Materia. This may require several more attempts. The chest on the left holds a Speed Source. Jump down below, and exit the screen. In the next screen, you'll be at the bottom of the crater. Here, DON'T go anywhere except back where you just came from again.

Backtrack all the way you came, until you are at the screen where your party members met up with each other at first, and where I advised you not to place the save point. Head to the right path now (which you sent Tifa to).

(Perfect Game Note 27:)
It's wise to equip one character (for example Cloud) with all 4 Enemy Skill Materia during this part. You could encounter a Dragon Zombie, which uses the Enemy Skill 'Pandora's Box' as a Final Attack. However, once it uses this Final Attack, any other Dragon Zombies will never perform this attack again due to a certain variable. I won't get technical here, but if you have all Enemy Skill Materias on (say) Cloud, all the Materia will get the skill at once. After that you'll never have to worry about missing any enemy skill again as all others can still be gotten (unless you already missed Trine from Godo..).

Walk down the spiral path and climb down at the end. Grab the Mystile armor from the chest (hooray!), and the Elixir on the ground. Walk down the last spiral to the next screen (which looks the same to me, oh well). The chest on the right holds a Tetra Elemental (of which you can get infinite through Cactuer morphing anyways). The other chest, on the left, holds a Speed Source. Go up more, and walk to the very left part of the screen to find a chest with a Megalixir. The other chest also holds a Megalixir, so be happily confused (or not) and exit the screen up north.

You'll be walking on a large skeleton of some sorts. There are no items here, so just walk down until you reach the next screen again, which is the bottom of the crater (again). Here, DON'T do anything again except exit back through the path you fist went through, which is also the exit closest by to you. Backtrack all the way until the screen where the 'Left Path' splits into an upper and lower path, and take the upper path now.

You'll now be in a swampy area. Get used to it, as you may spend alot more time here, because it's well known to be the best training area for Exp/AP. First walk the lower/right path to reach the chest holding a Magic Source, then take the upper/left path and Cloud will go through the swamp. From here, grab the Remedy from the other chest and exit the screen by the north. Note: The Magic Pot enemies in this area can only be damaged if you feed them an Elixir first.  It's worth it beating them. If you encounter 3 jumping balls, try and morph them, but definitely defeat them. They give alot of AP.

Here, take the left/upper path first and walk your way to the green materia, which is the Shield Materia. From that spot, walk more down to the left and Cloud will go through the swamp again, reaching the chest with an Imperial Guard. (Note: going south from this chest will lead to the right side of the screen). The other chest on the upper left holds a Vaccine. Now walk all the way to the right of the screen to grab a Hero Drink from the chest. All that's left now is to exit the screen by the right.

In the next room, grab the Counter Materia from the bright light. (Note: This is not the same as the 'Counter attack' Materia. This Counter Materia is a support materia which will counter with any paired command (yellow) materia. Also grab the W-Magic Materia, which is slightly difficult to spot, but is to the north of the bright light. Look for a little orb (as usual, duh). Exit the screen by the left.

You'll be back in the bottom of the crater. You can now finally grab the Luck Source from the chest here. Then move to the left and your party members will meet you here. Talk to them and if you followed all above instructions, you should get the following:

You'll receive the following items if you followed this guide.]

Tifa: 'Mythril' (this is a typo = Mystile)
Cid: Imperial Guard
Barret: Vaccine
Red XIII: Shield Materia
Yuffie: (Command) Counter

First of all, castrate Barret since he decided to pick up a junky Vaccine instead of the W-Magic Materia, then decide whether you want to go ahead (and castrate Sephiroth too), or climb back out of the crater to do a whopping load of awesome stuff. I suggest you do the latter. I wouldn't put the save game here personally, because you can't really get around the crater easily from here.