How to unlock and master Crisis Core Reunion's Materia Fusion system

If you’ve played Final Fantasy VII or the Remake, you’ll instantly be familiar with a lot of the mechanics in Crisis Core Reunion. Chief among these is the iconic Materia system, as Zack can equip a wealth of different gems that let him use magic, special attacks, boost stats, and more. While you’ll get a decent amount of Materia simply by playing through the story and going on side missions, early on you’ll unlock a system called Materia Fusion, which is how you can get the really powerful stuff. There are a few different nuances to Materia Fusion in Crisis Core Reunion that can be difficult to wrap your head around, so we’ll break down everything step-by-step.

Who would you rather date: Cloud or Zack? Let us know!

How to unlock Materia Fusion in Crisis Core Reunion

You’ll have access to Materia for most of Crisis Core Reunion, as all you need to do is simply get to Chapter 3. At the start of the chapter, a Shinra researcher will tell you about the mechanic, and you’ll get a quick tutorial on how everything works. Keep in mind that you can open your messages and go to tips at any time to re-read all of the tutorials. You’ll unlock an additional feature for Materia Fusion later in the game, which we’ll talk about in a bit.

How Materia Fusion works in Crisis Core Reunion

Materia Fusion serves two core purposes, creating brand new Mataria and strengthening existing ones. You can combine two Materia each time you use fusion, and there are no limits on what can be fused, but you’ll always want to be thoughtful of what the outcome will be, before moving forward. When fusing two Materia, the one with the higher parameter value or higher level will carry over as the base for the new Materia. Meaning, if you fuse a Fire (+5 Mag) and a Blizzard (+2 Mag) the Fire will carry over.

Fusing Materia like this is a great way to raise the stat boosts on your Materia, and especially as you get into the late-game you’ll need to make liberal use of the system. There are a few other rules you’ll want to keep in mind as well.

Fusing Mastered Materia can result in a Materia of a higher value, which means you’ll have stronger spells or moves. For example, fusing two mastered Firas will create a Firaga.

Fusing Materia with Libra is a good way to strengthen stats, as Libra will never change the other Materia’s type, while other fusions might. At the same time, fusing any Materia with a DMW Materia (I.e. Octaslash, Rush Assault, etc) is a good way to unlock higher-level Materia, such as upgrading a Thunder to Thundaga. Later in the game, you’ll unlock access to shops where you can purchase DMW Materia.

Finally, always keep in mind that Materia Fusion requires SP in order to execute, which is a passive resource you gain from defeating enemies and using DMW slots and summons. If you find yourself running low on SP you can open the main menu and go to “Materia,” then press triangle (Y on Xbox) in order to switch to “SP Convert.” Here you can turn any Materia you don’t want into SP and mastered Materia are worth significantly more.

Those are the core essentials of Materia Fusion, now later in the game you’ll unlock a new feature that lets you fuse items with Materia as well.

How to Unlock Items for fusion and use Stat Stones

In order to unlock the Item option on Materia Fusion, you need to progress until at least Chapter 5, which is when Zack meets Aerith in the Slums. At this point, you’ll unlock mission “7-2-1: Search and Destroy.” Simply play through this mission and you’ll get the Item Fusion Tome, which unlocks the option.

Now, when you head into the Materia Fusion menu you can select an item on top of two Materia, which is entirely for boosting stats. While you can use any accessory or consumable in fusion, you’re much better off using Stat Stones, which are items you likely have quite a few of already, but the game didn’t tell you how to use them. These are items like Zeio Nut, Hero Drink, HP Stone, and many more.

When you’re fusing Materia click on the item option then navigate to the “Fusion Items” tab. You can only select one stat-boosting item at a time, but if you have multiple of the same item you can use them all at once. So if you want to boost your ATK on a Materia and you have 20 Hero Drinks, you can raise the Materia’s ATK by 20.

While you will find plenty of stat-boosting items you don’t want to use them willy-nilly as they start to get harder to come by as you play through more missions and get near the end.

What are the best Materia in Crisis Core Reunion?

There are dozens of different Materia in Crisis Core Reunion, and your loadout will likely switch quite a few times depending on what’s available. As you get to the end-game, however, there are a few Materia that really start to stand out as the best, and we’ve compiled short list of ones you’ll likely want as part of your loadout.

Before getting to that, however, there’s a bit of an exploit that was present in the original Crisis Core, that you can still use in the remaster. This revolves around a Materia called Costly Punch, a slower punch attack that drains your HP to cause damage. What’s really neat, though, is that you can essentially guarantee that each attack with Costly Punch will cause 99,999 damage. This makes it, by far, the best attack in the entire game.

First off, you’ll want accessories that let you break the damage limit and the HP limit. The accessory “Brutal” gained by completing mission 7-4-6 will do that, or the Genji Gloves, which are found in a chest in mission 9-6-4. Now get an Adaman Bangle by completing mission 7-3-6.

Now equip at least one maxed-out HP Up Materia, preferably a maxed-out HP UP++. You want your HP to be around at least 15,000.

Finally, you need to actually get Costly Punch, and there are three ways to do that. First off you can complete 55% of missions to get it automatically or find it in mission 9-5-4 in the Southeast corner of the map. Finally, you can craft Costly Punch from Materia Fusion by combining any of the punch Materia and a DMW Materia. The easiest way to get DMW Materia is by unlocking the Junon Souvenirs shop, which is done by opening chests in mission 2-4-1.

Now simply equip everything and you should be set to cause some absolutely massive damage, making even the final boss a cinch. If you want to keep things simpler, however, here are some other Materia recommendations.

Magic Materia

• Hell Firaga (Dark Fire + Octaslash) - High damage Firaga that also causes Poison, Silence, Stop, and Death.
• Electrocute (Tri-Fire + Libra) - Fires off four lightning bolts that cause huge damage and can hit multiple enemies.
• Energy (Flare + Libra) - Fires off four magic blasts that cause non-elemental damage.
• Ultima (Tri-Thundaga + Octaslash) - The strongest spell in the game, causes huge damage to all enemies in a small area.

Ability Materia

• Mug (Steal + Electrocute) - Works just like steal but causes damage at the same time.
• Death Blade (Power Attack + Death) - A quick two-hit ability that can instantly kill enemies. Hugely useful for big crowds.
• Aerial Drain (Drainga + ATK Up) - A jump that heals Zack for the amount of damage he causes. Because jump hits an area, this is easily the most effective drain ability.