An in-depth guide to materia in Final Fantasy 7: Ever Crisis. This guide covers an overview of the materia system, and goes into additional details around materia synthesis, materia enhancement, and using materia in combat.

The knowledge and wisdom of the Ancients is held in the materia. Anyone with this knowledge can freely use the powers of the Land and the Planet. That knowledge interacts between ourselves and the planet calling up magic... or so they say.
Sephiroth

Materia returns in Final Fantasy 7: Ever Crisis as a key gameplay component. Materia is used in the battle system to provide commands for your characters to use, it provides modifiers known as sub-stats that improve your stats, and materia is created using an in-depth crafting system.

The materia system can be a bit confusing when starting out. Reading this guide should make it easier to understand what is going on and what you need to do to set yourself up for success.

Materia Characteristics
It's not particularly easy to categorise materia in Ever Crisis in a way that makes each materia fit into a nice box. Instead, we can look at the characteristics of materia to understand how the various systems interact.

Physical vs Magical
A big distinction between materia is whether it deals physical or magical damage. This is an important difference as your characters will tend to favour physical vs magical attacks based on their physical attack (PATK) and magical attack (MATK) stats, and enemies will have different physical defence (PDEF) and magical defence (MDEF) values themselves. Choosing the right physical or magical materia is important in ensuring success.

Physical materia is yellow, and ends with the word "Blow", for example "Ruin Blow", "Thunder Blow", etc. Magical materia is green, and has no suffix, for example "Ruin" and "Thunder".



Elements
Materia can have one of six elements available in the game (or none at all).

The elements and their materia are:
🔥 Fire (Fire, Fire Blow)
❄️ Ice (Blizzard, Blizzard Blow)
⚡ Lightning (Thunder, Thunder Blow)
🪨 Earth (Quake, Quake Blow)
💧 Water (Water, Blizzard Blow)
💨 Wind (Aero, Aero Blow)

Sigils
Non-elemental materia can have an associated sigil that is used for breaking enemies. This materia is known as "Ruin materia".

There are three sigils that are available for ruin materia:
🔺 Triangle
⭕ Circle
❌ Cross


Debuffs
Materia can also be used to debuff enemies, either by making them deal less damage or receive more damage.

• Debrave - reduces enemy PATK
• Defaith - reduces enemy MATK
• Breach - reduces enemy PDEF
• Mana Breach - reduces enemy MDEF
• Elemental Breach - reduces enemy elemental resistance when already weak to that element

Buffs and Healing
The final use of materia is for buffing and healing your party.

• Barrier - Increases character PDEF
• Manaward - Increases character MDEF
• Cure - restores character HP
• Healing Esuna - removes status effect (poison / fog / fatigue) with small cure effect

Materia Synthesis
The system for crafting materia in Ever Crisis is called synthesis. Synthesis requires recipes, materials, and time to produce materia. Synthesis time can be reduced in 60 minute intervals by using a special item known as a bookmark.

Materia Synthesis - Recipes
Materia synthesis requires the recipe for the materia you wish to synthesise. Some recipes are included by default when unlocking synthesis, whereas others need to be unlocked through completing quests and obtaining certain ranks in crisis dungeons.

You can see how to unlock a recipe by clicking on the recipe book icon in the synthesis menu.

A list of all recipes and their locations can be found below.


Material Synthesis - Materials
Materia can be created using a combination of required and additional materials. The required materials are necessary to craft the base materia, whereas additional materials can be added to increase the synthesis level of individual crafts. All materials can be obtained from "synthesis quests".

Required materials are crystals, ores, and chips. Crystals and ores are split by element, whilst chips can be physical or magical.



The additional materials are catalysts, which come as slivers (⭐⭐⭐), pieces (⭐⭐⭐⭐), and whole (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐). These are split by type, into "🌅 Dawn", "☀️ Day", "🌇 Evening", and "🌙 Night". These types have nothing to do with the materia they're used to synthesise, and no relation to the time of day that synthesis happens.

Synthesis levels require a certain number of synthesis points to reach, which differs based on the materia being synthesised. Slivers provide 1 point, pieces provide 5 points, and whole catalysts provide 25 points.



Synthesis levels require a certain number of synthesis points to reach, which differs based on the materia being synthesised. Slivers provide 1 point, pieces provide 5 points, and whole catalysts provide 25 points.


Synthesis levels provide certain guarantees about the results of the synthesis, which are listed below:





Materia Synthesis - Times
Materia also requires time to synthesise. Different materia types require different amounts of time to craft. Better materia (higher rarity / more sub-stats) requires longer to craft. You can use the below table as a rule of thumb for the expected rarity of a specific materia. Times provided are base times without any time reductions from boost passes.

Credit for the below table to _Zgod_.




Materia Synthesis - Sub Stats


A ⭐ Ruin materia with one revealed flat sub stat, vs a ⭐⭐⭐ Ruin with three revealed sub stats, one of which is a percent increase

Sub-stats are one of the most important parts of the endless grind that is materia synthesis. Sub-stats help to elevate your characters stats by providing bonuses when materia is equiped to that character.

Sub-stats can either be a flat increase (e.g. +3), or a percentage increase (e.g. +3.2%). Percentage increases are much more powerful than flat increases, as they will have a much larger effect on the final value. Given an HP value of 1000, a +3 flat increase will end up with 1003 HP, whilst +3% will end up with 1030. Given that stats can be in the multiples of thousands and percentage increases can be double digits, this makes a vast difference which will only get bigger as your characters get stronger.

PDEF and MDEF are the only stats that can only roll flat stats. This is not as bad as it seems, as PDEF and MDEF hover around 100~ anyway, so a +3 flat increase is going to be roughly the same as +3% would be anyway. This may change in the future, but for now it's not a big deal.

Sub-stats are revealed or increased every 2 levels starting from level 2. Priority is given to revealing hidden sub-stats first. After all sub-stats are revealed, a random sub-stat will be improved on the next stat increase.

Higher rarity materia rolls better stat increases, and having more sub-stats revealed at the beginning ensures more sub-stat increases go towards improving the sub-stats rather than revealing hidden ones.

You can use additional materials when synthesising materia to increase the minimum rarity and number of revealed sub stats, which will increase the quality of the stat gains you receive from the materia.

Materia Enhancement


Materia has it's own levelling system distinct from the levelling of characters and weapons. Unlike the original Final Fantasy 7, materia does not gain any AP (or XP) from battle, and instead is levelled up solely through the "Materia Enhancement" functionality in Ever Crisis.

Materia can be "enhanced" or "upgraded" via Materia Enhancement. Enhancing materia levels it up, whilst upgrading materia unlocks more levels to enhance and upgrades the materia ability to the next level.

Enhance Materia
Materia can be levelled up using other materia, or materia enhancement items called materia boosters.


Materia boosters cannot be reliably farmed in any great number, so you'll be relying on using reject materia to feed your other materia levels. The XP you gain depends on the rarity of the materia you are using as enhancement material.




Materia Upgrades
All materia is only able to be levelled up to Lv.5 to begin with. Most materia can then be upgraded, which enhances the materia ability and unlocks levels 6-10 for enhancement. The notable exceptions to this are debuffs, buffs, and esunas. These can only be levelled up to Lv.5 and are not able to be upgraded.



In this example, our "Ruin Blow" is being upgraded to "Ruinra Blow", which will have a better ability modifier. We are also unlocked levels 6-10 for enhancement, allowing our materia to gain better sub-stats.

When upgrading materia there is a rare chance that you can trigger a "Rarity Upgrade", which will increase the rarity of your materia at the same time. The rarity upgrade can be for one or more rarity levels, so a 2* materia can be upgraded to a 3* or above materia. Materia upgraded in this way will not be as strong as materia that started out at the final rarity level, as the first batch of sub-stat rolls will be using the lower rarity modifiers, with only the second batch using the new, higher rarity modifiers.

Upgrading materia requires materials known as "crystals" and "tumbles". Tumbles can be physical or magical, and can be obtained in specific synthesis or co-op content. Crystals are elemental based and can be obtained from the specific synthesis quests for that element.