FINAL FANTASY VII
31 Achievements
1,000
25-30h
Materia Mastermind
Raise a Materia to Lv. 5
15
11.08%
How to unlock the Materia Mastermind achievement in FINAL FANTASY VII - Definitive Guide
If you always use and hold your Materia in your Weapon or Armor Materia slots, this will definitely come on "Disc 2" or "Disc 3" by the nature of the game. You can also use Double growth weapons (and alter triple growth) to speed this up.
IF NOT:
The easiest and fastest way to obtain this is defeating the Magic Pot in the Northern Crater. You have to feed him an Elixir and then defeat him for a whooping 8000XP and 1000AP. Some times they come in two.
Another good spot for leveling and farming AP are the woods around Mideel.
To speed this up you can use double AP weapons for every character and also one tripple AP weapon for Cloud and/or for Cid. There are no armors with tripple AP but 2 and 4 slot Double AP armors.
Clouds Apocalypse can hold 3 Materias and have Tripple AP this weapon can be found in the Ancient Forest very late in the game.
Cids Scimitar can hold 2 Materias and have Tripple AP. The weapon can be found in Underwater Reactor, this is part of the Huge Materia Side Mission and the weapon is Missable.
The Platinum Bangle have 2 Slots and Double AP and can be bought in Costa del Sol for 1800Gil
The Rune Armlet have also Double AP and have 4 Slots it can be bought in Bone Village for 3700 GIl
I recommend to use the "All" Materia. Regular you will found one or two along the way. They can also be bought in Fort Condor later in the game for 20.000Gil. If you master a Materia they "Reborn". This will give you a new Level 1 Materia for free. The "All" Materias need 35.000AP to Master.
If you level up with Magic Pots i recommend to use the W-Item Materia. You can found this in the Sector 8 Tunnel raid on "Disc 2". You have to go the tunnel all the way to the south even if the characters say this is wrong. Alternative you can dig this later out in Bone Village. You can duplicate as many Elixir as you like, if you have a minimum of two. With W-Item equipped take one Elixir. Take another and with and push to "stop" using it push again and again and so on. Every time you duplicate one up to 99.
Here is a video solution for this.
Level 4 Limits are not needed and i highly recommend not to fight alone in the North Crater.
Edit: Added more detail.
Double Materia Growth Weapons - There are multiple weapons which grant you double materia growth:
You gain Force Stealer for Cloud from getting 100+ from the Rufus sendoff in Junon.
You get a double materia growth weapon for Aeris from falling down the holes in the tracks in Corel and falling to the side(I can't remember which side but you get 3 attempts at it so if you don't get a weapon fall to the other side next time).
You get the Plus Barette for RedXIII from before the bridge in Mt Nibel.
Triple Materia Growth - You gain the Scimitar for Cid from after the Carry Armor battle in the Junon Underwater Reactor. THIS CAN BE MISSED SO MAKE SURE YOU GET IT
Double Materia Growth Armor - From the moment you get the Tiny Bronco, take it all the way the northern continent and go to Bone Village. Buy 3 Rune Armlets and equip them.
The method:
Make sure you have 3 characters equipped with both double materia weapons and armor for the majority of the game. Okay, you lose the benefits of the all materia but make sure it is still equipped regardless. **Against Bosses you can change your Armor but don't change weapons**. You will level up materia throughout the game limiting the time you need to grind. When a materia(the 'All' materia for example) reaches Lv5(MASTER), the achievement will pop(contrary to what my TT account shows, I do have the trophy on the PS4 version, so I know when it pops). This will happen naturally through gameplay.
OPTIONAL:
I tend to use the far western continent to grind for limit breaks as the thunderbirds can do decent damage and can be manipulated(although they can only do Lightning 5 times a battle). They also appear in enemy groups of 4 or 5 so you can kill them to help you learn limits faster
If there are Thunderbirds in the battle - Use Aqualung
If there aren't any Thunderbirds in the battle - Use Trine
Save often.
**DO NOT TRAVEL TOO FAR NORTH**
Repeat until the All materia reaches Lv5(MASTER)
Materia will level as you win battles so long as it is slotted into your equipment (materia sitting in your inventory will not level up). Keep the same materia slotted long enough and it will eventually reach Level 5 (if it can, check the number of stars a materia has to see its maximum level). Materia uses AP, while your characters use XP. You'll see both values after winning battles. There are many specific enemies that give a large amount of AP, and a quick guide to that can be found here.
Simply raise a Materia to level 5. There are many Materia that can reach level 5, including the Restore Materia that is found early in Reactor #1. Simply keep a Materia equipped for long enough and the Materia will eventually reach level 5.