How Weapon Upgrading Works in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth wouldn’t be an RPG if there weren’t copious amounts of customization mechanics. Weapon upgrading is one of the smaller but still important ways you can alter how combat flows, and knowing how it works will help you get the most out of your time in the game.

How to Upgrade Weapons in FF7 Rebirth

Weapon upgrading is a fairly simple system in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. As your characters level up or acquire special items called Manuscripts, they will earn Skill Points (SP). At certain SP thresholds, a character’s weapons will level up. Note that weapon SP is shared across all weapons, so swapping between one weapon and another and back again won’t ever affect its progression.

Additionally, the more SP you have and the higher your weapon level, the more of the Folio grid you can access. Folios is an entirely different customization system, but it is intrinsically tied to weapon level and vice versa. The highest levels of a character’s Folio won’t unlock until you reach specific weapon levels.

As you continue to improve your weapons, you’ll unlock weapon upgrade abilities and upgrade slots. You start with one slot and three available abilities, but by the end of the game (I was around weapon level 7), you’ll have three slots and eight abilities.

The abilities you can equip are generally unique to the weapon and its intended function. Cloud’s Buster Sword, for instance, can improve his Punisher Mode damage, give him some additional HP, or even let him revive one time per battle at one HP for free.

Not all of the weapon upgrades are unique, unfortunately, with some, like the Reprieve Revive ability shared across a few different of Cloud’s weapons, as well as those of his party members. HP and MP increases abound, as well, though when an upgrade is keyed to a specific character, it will never appear on another. No two kits in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth are nearly similar enough.

Which Weapon Upgrades Should You Use in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth?

The weapon upgrades you choose to equip will depend on where you are in the game. Early on, the modest amount of extra HP can be a godsend, saving you from being one or two-shot by a boss or tough enemy. In my experience, however, damage-increasing upgrades, or those that augment your abilities in other ways, are the way to go. The 200 extra hit points quickly become a moot point when enemies hit for 1,500 damage a pop.

Weapon upgrades like Reprieve are also just better than many of the starting options. While they’re not as effective as a Phoenix Down or the Revive Materia, they also don’t take an input and don’t cost you any ATB to use. A downed character will simply get back up at one health, ready to fight. Reprieve only works once per battle, however, so if you aren’t ready to immediately heal the character when they return to the fight and the enemy sneezes on them, it’s back to the old ways.

By the end of my playthrough, almost every character used red damage and ability augment weapon upgrades, with Reprieve when available. And to say the latter saved more than one boss fight is an understatement. That said, if you find that you enjoy using fewer stat stick upgrades, by all means go for it. There is no one best build, or if there is, there are probably still several others that are more than competitive.

And that’s about it for how weapon upgrades work in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. The system, like so many others, is simple but with plenty of nuance.

If you enjoyed this article, check out our Final Fantasy VII Rebirth guides hub for much more.