Materia (Crisis Core equipment)

Crisis Core Materia equip menu.

Materia (マテリア, Materia?) are a type of equipment in Crisis Core -Final Fantasy VII-. They are equipped by Zack to grant him unique abilities or boosts to his stats. Unique to Crisis Core, the Materia Fusion system allows Zack to fuse two materia to create a new, more powerful one.

The number of materia slots depend on Zack's SOLDIER rank. Zack begins with four materia slots as a Second Class, then is promoted to First Class and gains the ability to equip six materia.

See also: Materia (Final Fantasy VII)

Mechanics

Stats boosts are regulated to a single kind assigned to its specific materia, but can be further boosted to a maximum of +99 for raw stats or +999% for point based stats; in addition, Materia Fusion allows for two materia and (with the right requirements) items as stat components to be fused to the player's intentions.

Materia levels up on the Digital Mind Wave rather than requiring AP. When the player gets two or three matching numbers between one and six during a Modulating Phase, the materia in the corresponding slot levels up: if the player gets two matching numbers, the materia grows one level, and if all three numbers match the materia grows two levels. The Moogle summon will level up all materia at once. The maximum level for a materia is five.

The differing levels of the same spells are no longer contained within the same materia (e.g. Fire and Fira are from two separate materia). The player's inventory can hold 256 Materia and if exceeding that limit, all future materia are discarded. In this case, surplus and excess materia can be converted into Soldier Points, essentially deconstructed back into mako energy.

Types

Color	Icon	Subset	Ability	Description
Dark Green		Magic	Offensive Magic	Used to cast offensive spells in battle.
Light Green		Magic	Curative Magic	Used to cast healing spells in battle.
Yellow-Green		Magic	Offensive Magic	Used to cast status spells in battle.
Dark Yellow		Command	Offensive Attacks	Used to perform attack commands in battle.
Pale Yellow		Command	Item Attacks	Used to perform item-related commands in battle.
Dark Purple		Independent	Stat-enhancing and modifying	Increases passive stats and grants different beneficial effects.
Light Purple		Independent	DMW	Increases probability of specified DMW attacks occurring.
Dark Blue		Support	SP	Are attached to various SP-related abilities.
Light Blue		Support	Status/Elemental	Are attached to elemental and status effects.
Red		Summon Materia	Summon	Adds associated Summon to DMW reels.

Behind the scenes

The battle system of Final Fantasy VII was used as the basis for the one in Crisis Core -Final Fantasy VII- with action elements added; the materia system was designed so that players could choose between "RPG-oriented enhancements" and "action-oriented enhancements", as well as to give the game balance.

Etymology

[view · edit · purge]Materia means "matter" or "substance" in Latin, Spanish, and Italian; it also means "subject" in Italian and Spanish, and is the root of Portuguese "Matéria".