Like the original game, the Materia you use in Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth remains one of the main ways to customize how you play. And like in Remake, some of the most powerful Materia comes from a character named Chadley. In this guide, we’ll go over the best Materia you should develop first.
The Best Materia to Develop and Level in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth
Each region in FF7 Rebirth has a set of Materia you can develop by spending World Intel points with Chadley. You get 10 or 15 of these for each World Intel activity you complete, from activating remnawave towers to completing combat intel and any other golden icon on the map the towers reveal. Unless you fully clear a region, you won’t have enough points to develop every Materia, so choosing the right ones is paramount.
I’ll discuss the Materia available in each of the regions, but I will be updating this guide over the coming days as more players unlock more and progress through the game. Note that each region only has four or five unique Materia from Chadley, and there are more points available than it costs to acquire all of his Materia once. That said, you will want to have multiple copies of the best options, as having three or more max-level versions can make later parts of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth a much easier experience.
The Best Grasslands Materia to Develop with Chadley
The Grasslands is the first area you’ll explore in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, and befitting its place at the beginning of the game, you can get some of the most universally useful Materia from Chadley. There are two, in particular, I want to highlight, as they never left my active team’s Materia loadouts for the more than fifty hours I spent on my playthrough. They are:
- Auto-Cast Materia. With this blue Materia, your non-active characters will cast whatever green material magic it’s linked to. In other words, you can only use it with linked Materia slots, but if you pair Auto-Cast with healing magic and equip it to most or all of your party, I guarantee your survivability will skyrocket. So long as non-active characters have ATB charges, they’ll use Cure spells when you and your other party member are no lower than around two-thirds health. If you get the Time Materia through Chadley’s combat challenges, you can pair it with Auto-Cast for an increased ATB charge rate without even asking for it. The number of times I suddenly got a Haste cast I was immediately grateful for was too damn high.
- Auto-Unique Ability Materia. Every character in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth has a unique ability, like Barret’s Overcharge. This purple Materia ensures that non-active party members use those abilities when you aren’t controlling them. This can come in handy in the early game, as Barret or Tifa might use theirs at the perfect time to Pressure or even Stagger a boss without you needing to give the command. I like another Materia later in the game more than this one, but it can be clutch for your time in the Grasslands. Also, as a purple Materia, it can be effective in any open slot.
The other two Materia available from Chadley in the Grasslands are mostly nice-to-haves. Morph allows you to transform low-health mobs into useful items, and Fire and Ice gives you access to both Fire and Ice magic from a single-slot Materia. You don’t need either of them to have a fun time playing Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth, but they are great supplementary options if you enjoy the open-world content.
The Best Junon Materia to Develop with Chadley
The Materia Chadley can develop in Junon is almost as useful as what he offers in the Grasslands. I used one of the two options I’ll share below for my entire playthrough and only discovered how borderline-busted another was late in the game. If I’d spent more time leveling it, I don’t want to think about how much I’d have used it.
- Magic Efficiency Materia. This blue Materia’s effects are as simple as they are overwhelmingly useful: whatever green Materia magic it’s linked to costs a percentage less to cast, up to 50% less when you max it out. If you give it to your party buffer (I recommend Barret), they can cast the more expensive protection and enhancement spells for a fraction of their usually fairly expensive cost. The same is true of a healer. You’ll be able to cast a lot of Cure spells during a playthrough of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, and will need to spend fewer resources to keep everyone topped up. That’s just good strategy!
- Item Economizer Materia. This yellow Materia is absurdly powerful because it gives you a limited ability to bypass the ATB system, so long as it involves items. Depending on the level of Item Economizer, for every set number of ATB commands you use, you can use an item for free. At max level, this Materia lets you use an item for free whenever you use an ATB command. Without saying anything else on the matter, having access to a potion or Phoenix Down and a Cure spell for a single ATB charge would have made certain boss fights 1000% easier.
Also like the Grasslands, the remaining two Materia you can develop with Chadley in Junon are nice to haves, but aren’t strictly necessary for a comfortable Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth playthrough. Lightning and Wind gives you access to both magic types, and ATB Stagger is fantastic if you need a quick ATB gauge top-off to maximize damage during Stagger. I rarely found that necessary so long as I was keeping tabs on an enemy’s Stagger bar and managing my ATB accordingly.
Those are my recommendations for the Materia you should develop with Chadley in both the Grasslands and Junon. Expect additional regions to come to this guide in the next several days as you and other players progress through the game. In the meantime, for more Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth content, check out our guides hub for the game.
