Empowerment materia is a Magic Materia in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. It provides spells that improve offensive attributes. These spells are Bravery, which boosts
Attack Power (improving physical damage), and Faith, which improves
Magic Attack (improving magic damage and healing).
The Warding Materia can be paired with empowerment materia to also grant resistance (or, at max level, immunity to)
Debrave and
Defaith. This pairing is identical to
Disempowerment Materia, which is used to cast spells to inflict said statuses.
Obtained[]
The first empowerment materia the player can find is in the prologue, "Fall of a Hero", on Mt. Nibel, in the cave with toxic mako gas following the river cutscene, leading to Gunnthra River Falls. However, nothing from this chapter carries on to chapter 2, as chapter 1 is purely a flashback.
Empowerment materia is sold for 2000 gil apiece in shops that sell materia from Costa del Sol onward.
An empowerment materia is found in the coal mines of the Corel Mountains when in control of Yuffie in chapter 7, "Those Left Behind". It is found in the third floor of the tower on a stack of lumber.
Cait Sith joins the party with an empowerment materia equipped.
Stats[]
Growth[]
Level | AP required | Effect |
---|---|---|
1 | 0 | Bravery |
2 | 300 | Faith |
Abilities[]
Magic | MP | Effect |
---|---|---|
Bravery | 7 | Applies the ![]() ![]() |
Faith | 7 | Applies the ![]() ![]() |
Use[]
The empowerment materia grants supportive spells that boost physical damage or magic damage respectively. This can be an effective way to boost the damage output of a party member, especially if said party member is the main source of damage. Even later in the game, with Genji Gloves, the damage potential is limitless and means that empowerment materia's spells can increase it further.
Empowerment materia can also be paired with warding materia to grant resistances to Debrave or
Defaith. This means it competes with disempowerment materia, which can cast the Debrave and Defaith spells. If a player wishes to protect against these statuses and is choosing which to go in the slot, it will depend on their preferred use case; a supportive use case to boost the party's damage output favors empowerment, while defensive cases where players need to reduce an enemy's damage output favor disempowerment.
Beyond this, empowerment materia also competes somewhat with Enervation Materia, which grants spells that reduce an enemy's defensive attributes. Against single enemies or bosses, targeting an enemy to reduce its defensive can in some cases be a more ATB-efficient means of improving a party's damage output as it improves all party member's damage at once. As such, the choice will come down to which kind of encounter the player expects, or if the player also needs to pair a materia with warding materia to provide resistance to certain effects.
Aside from warding materia, empowerment has a few other Support Materia pairings.
Magnify Materia allows the spells to be cast on the entire party to improve damage output; this can be useful, but there are often better pairings for the materia.
Magic Focus Materia can increase the effects' lengths, while
Magic Efficiency Materia can reduce their MP costs, though these are inefficient uses of these materia.
An alternative to empowerment materia is to use Sonic Boom from Enemy Skill Materia.