Final Fantasy VII owned by Square Enix.
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Part Twenty-Five: Fort Condor and North Corel

Underwater Reactor

- After saving Cloud from himself, fly over to Junon Harbor. Assuming you’ve not come back this way before, you can now reach upper Junon much more easily by bribing the guard on the east end of the village. (He only asks for 10 gil. You’d think someone risking his life over a bribe might ask for a little more.)

- Make your way to the streets of Junon and follow them past the first row of shops to an intersection. Head southwest, past the line of Shinra troops, and you’ll find a door nearby that leads to an elevator. Take out the soldiers aboard, then climb out at the bottom. More easy soldiers are waiting at the bottom, and past them the usual random encounters. The enemies down here are all quite easy, and not at all notable - save for one creature we’ll get to in a moment.


- Make your way down the Junon Path - very straightforward - until you reach an underwater path. Here, and only here, you’ll run into Ghost Ships. They’re moderately difficult enemies, nothing terribly special, but they have one interesting attribute: they can be Morphed into Guide Books. Do this now, assuming you have the Morph command, as a Guide Book will make one of Final Fantasy VII’s most difficult bosses a fair bit easier.

- The rest of the Underwater Reactor is nice and straightforward, and after a save point and a few rather simple battles you’ll be facing a boss.


Carry Armor

This is a tricky battle, and very fast-paced. Carry Armor begins the fight with Lapis Laser, an all-hitting strike that typically deals over 1,500 HP of damage. It then follows up with grabbing attacks which will immobilize your characters by picking them up with its two arms. Your two characters will be helpless while held, and will take damage until a) the arm holding them is destroyed or b) they faint. You want to shred this guy as quickly as possible, so heal away the damage inflicted by Lapis Laser and quickly use any Limits or all-hitting magic you have to wipe out the Armor’s arms. Electrical attacks are fantastic for shredding Carry Armor. With the arms gone you still have to worry about Lapis Laser every now and then, but the battle is a fair bit easier for all that. You can end it simply by targeting the body from the get go with your strongest attacks, but this can be risky depending on how long it takes for Carry Armor to grab one or two of your party members. MBarrier will help a great deal in surviving repeated Lapis Laser shots. You’ll receive a God’s Hand for defeating Carry Armor.


- Look down the dock to the left of the battle site for a Battle Trumpet, then head down to the second submarine on the dock and open the two chests beside the sub for a Scimitar and Leviathan Scales. It is absolutely essential you get these chests now, as you’ll never have the opportunity to return to this area. Climb aboard the sub once you have all three items, defeat the guards blocking your way, and hop inside. Kill more guards inside, save, and head into the sub’s control room. Some old friends are here; you can kill or spare ‘em as you see fit.

- Read the sub’s manual, then strap in. There’s a mini game coming up, and this one is quite important. You need to track down and annihilate an enemy sub before it can escape. Triangle speeds up the sub; x slows down the sub; square fires a torpedo. Take out the red Shinra sub to end the game. Though you’re in a large area befitting a Hunt for Red October-esque battle, you can quickly end this mini game by turning a little as soon as the game begins and unloading a bunch of torpedoes into the nearby red sub, your target. Piece of cake. (If you want a better shot at this game, you can play it at the Gold Saucer.)


- Winning or losing the mission will net you the sub as a form of transportation. The sub will allow you to dip beneath the waters and explore Final Fantasy VII’s underwater regions. BE WARNED! This area is populated by Emerald Weapon, a massive creature that is well outside your capacity to kill right now. Sometimes it’s stationary; sometimes it moves around. Be careful either way.

- Despite what the game says, slip back underwater and head roughly southeast from Junon Harbor. You’ll find the red submarine crashed against a wall, a short trip west from the (former) Temple of the Ancients. Snag the Huge Materia now before you forget about the thing. 

- At this point, you’re told to head to Junon Harbor and check out the airport. Before you do, though, you may want to have a look at a small, dangerous area located underwater…


Crashed Gelnika

- Sail your sub west of Junon Harbor. You’re looking for a thin passage through the surrounding cliffs, one that opens into a bay northeast of the Golden Saucer. Down here you’ll find the Crashed Gelnika, one of Shinra’s airplanes.

- The Crashed Gelnika is small, but very dangerous. The enemies here are incredibly powerful, combining strong physical attacks with a slew of painful status ailments. Strong, non-elemental attacks are preferable, and if you’ve come here during disc two you may just want to run / Escape from most battles. You should stick your characters in the back row, at any rate. You can Steal Fire, Aurora, and Bolt Armlets from the Unknowns, the Unknown 2s, and the Unknown 3s, and Water Rings from Serpents. With some work you can also Morph virtually every enemy here into Source items, a sure path to making your stats skyrocket to unfair levels.

- There’s a save point down the first hall, beside a chest containing a Heaven’s Cloud, and you’ll want to use it before entering the door to the left…


Reno and Rude

Turks, Turks, Turks. The pair’s tactics have barely changed, but they hit a hell of a lot harder than last time, to the tune of 1,500 HP for a normal attack. Ouch. Still, not that bad, since they usually hit your characters one-at-a-time, and Rude occasionally uses a weak Bolt 2 attack which just kinda sucks. Pick one of the Turks - Reno’s got less HP - and smack him with your most powerful single-hitting attacks. Anything that can stop an enemy, such as the Freeze spell, works fantastically for cutting down on their offensive capabilities. Once one of the Turks leaves, the other will follow. Note that you can Steal a Tough Ring from Reno and a Ziedrich from Rude, both good items.


- Save, then begin the hunt through the Gelnika. If you go through the door where you fought Reno and Rude you’ll find a cargo room. This is the most dangerous area in the Gelnika. The chest dead ahead from the entrance contains a Megalixir, and if you follow the catwalk all the way around the room you’ll find another chest containing a Spirit Lance. Go down the ladder and you’ll find Hades materia beside the trashed helicopter, and, in the south of the room, chests containing a Highwind and an Outsider.

- Return to the entrance and save again, then go through the door beside the save point. The next room contains an Escort Guard to the right of the entrance, a Megalixir north and to the right of the entrance, and a Double Cut materia on the lower floor and into the room’s top-right corner. If you check the two barrels in the top-left corner of the lower floor you’ll find a hidden Conformer, no less than Yuffie’s ultimate weapon. That’s all for the Gelnika.

BE SUPER CEREAL CAREFUL LEAVING THE GELNIKA. The freaking Emerald Weapon sometimes likes to float in front of the location, and though you won't automatically get into a fight when you leave, it's pretty easy to float forward into it if you hit the gas as soon as you appear on the map.

Part Twenty-Seven: Rocket Town and Diamond Weapon