FINAL FANTASY VII: How to Unlock Omnislash on the first disk.

Imo its actually a bit easier to get omnislash earlier because the enemies aren’t as strong in the battle arena. There’s only a few enemies you really need to watch out for which I’ll cover later.

There is some setup involved and you will need to level some materia and levels in the mideel area. You can get to the mideel area by playing up to the point where you get cids plane on the water. By navigating the shallow water south you can just barely get to the mideel continent and start grinding the green jumping bug things. These are worth a very good amount of xp throughout the whole game. The level isn’t really as important as the materia levels though.

It doesn’t take to much grinding to level these but you’ll also want to get a few enemy skills. They were very useful during the fights.

The enemy skills you will want are..

Beta – Midgar Zolem (clears out enemies way better than trine imo)
Big Guard – Beachplugs (near Costa Del Sol beaches, manipulate them with the manipulate materia and cast big guard on your party)
White Wind – Zemzelett (near Junion or Fort Condor same as Beachplugs just use manipulate, this one heals HP and status effects so it comes in very handy in the arena)

That’s about all the Enemy skills you’ll really need in there. You can pair a MP absorb with your enemy skill materia to save on MP, but its not essential.

Now for the other materia.

HP Plus – I used about 2 close to mastered, having 9999 or close hp will help a ton.
MP Plus – Not as essential as HP plus imo but it will help especially if you use the enemy skill magic a lot.
Elemental + Maxed Poison – The elemental materia should be at least level 3. Paired in armor not weapon. With this geared poison will actually heal you. This can be a big asset in the arena.
Added Effect + Odin – This will prevent instant death even those floating guys joker cards, which can be very annoying. Make sure your odin is at least lvl 3.

And this is all you need, all I needed to get 60k bp in no time.

Gear you will need is.
Weapon – Murasame
Armor – Gold Armlet
Accessory – White Cape

You will probably want to use cloud as his limit breaks finishing touch and meteorain will decimate. But at 9999 or close hp your limit won’t boost to often so don’t rely much on limits. Why I didn’t like aeris much when I tried her (altho some say she can be good in the arena I just stuck with cloud).

Once this is all setup, and you have cloud properly lvled, I think I had him around 50 or 60 but the levels not important more about the materia levels. You’ll want at least 2 hp materia around max level.

As for gear I used Murasame and Gold Amulet on cloud. Murasame you can get from Wutai after the yuffie side quest. Gold Armlet I don’t remember when I got it but there are alternatives, you really just need about 2 links in the armor which gold provides. So you can defend against death and poison (the poison absorb was surprisingly helpful). And last but not least you will need a White Cape which you can buy from Gongaga (the town of zacks parents and the downed core with the triceratop vehicle). With white cape and the poison/death defense you have from the materia you can defend against poison/small/frog/death which are the major debuffs you should be worried about at this point.

And one more thing you will need. Smoke bombs. You can steal these from all kinds of enemies but long as you got about 10 you’re good. The smoke bomb can allow you to skip the last fight and still get the BP for it. So if you run into an annoying last fight like yin and yang then just toss that smoke bomb and you still get the points from the previous penalty.

There are weird pink enemies who blow smoke in Junon near a bunch of troops getting drilled. You can hit a switch that will cause an alarm to summon random battles. Get into a fight with these weird pink ones and you can steal smoke bombs from them. As for other enemies, not sure.

Ok so this early on before you can race chocobos GP is gonna be a pain to acquire. You can get a pretty good bonus from the mog game, but after that aquiring its not gonna be as easy.

Some say chocobo betting but I could not figure this out. So what I did was just do the basketball game. Its tedious but not as tedious as the bike game, and the rock paper scissors boxing also doesn’t work well to me. The basketball game is constant just make sure you got a ton of gil which you should if you grinded mideel to max out those materias. Once you get the timing right you should be averaging 3-5 gp a game, sometimes more depending on how good you are. But the timing is weird and very in the middle you’ll get use to it. It is still a big grind.

Once you have anywhere around 150-160 gp its safe to try the arena. Some say you only need a bit over 100 and I did have some left over. But its always best to be safe in case you lose a few rounds. Of course with the setup I listed I didn’t lose any rounds.

Go ahead and sacrifice 5 gp near the gold saucer entrance for the save, you may need it and it’ll save time if things go south. But with the materia setup you should be fine, for the most part, the penalties sometimes can be unfair especially the command break and item break ones.

Now comes the battling phase which is the most crucial phase.

Each battle is 10 gp,

Now when you start out the fights shouldn’t be hard and you can just hack or use beta to clear out the enemies. The materia setup I listed should defend against frogs or death, if one of those weird big green lizard things casts the stone countdown on you immediately cast white wind, it will get rid of it. These guys can usually go down in one hit so be sure and take them out fast and always have white wind ready if you get the countdown. Its a fast countdown never ignore it.

Now I need to give a little explanation about the penalties. Bad penalties equal more points, the penalty that busts all materia boosts points a lot. Good penalties such as cure or lucky 7 don’t do anything really for your bp. So always consider that, beneficial penalties are not always profitable so try and get the penalties you want strategically. For example if you’re almost dead for some reason, maybe the loss of points might be worth that cure penalty. Also try and save the all materia broken penalty for the last enemy if you can. That way you can just throw down a smoke bomb and get outa there and keep your bonus.

The enemies that I found to be a problem were of course Yin and Yang (he’s a major pain), the Dragon which can cause some high damage, and the Blue gargoyle dudes, the jump kick and demi they can use hurt a lot. If you feel you need to use beta on them do so, but that’s not always an option cause of the MP penalties. The zuu is a good thing if you get it last, its not a very strong last enemy. If you get Yin and Yang at the end I would just suggest throwing down a smoke bomb he sucks.

Dragon not so much as it can boost your limit, then you can use meteor rain. Course if you got enough smoke bombs feel free to use them anytime on the last enemy you will still get your points. And save time (very exploitable).

Also some people say use counter attack but I found it took up a useful slot I could fill with an HP materia and it also can mess up the flow of battle. If I wanna boost with big guard or white wind, then the counter isn’t helping if it makes me kill a bunch of lesser enemies so I jump into the next fight unprepared.

Use big guard as often as your MP will allow it, not only does it cast protect and shell it also casts haste. You can use this to counter any slow debuffs that might get cast on you. White wind will also heal and clear you of status effects. Why I don’t recommend using any green magic besides poison for the defense and HP regeneration. With that setup poison is actually good.

Also BIO3 can be a great magic alternative if you don’t have enemy skill because they broke it. Can cause some big damage to most enemies.

With these strategies you should be able to get 60k bp in an hour or 2, and claim omnislash which should help through the whole game.

So Just wanna list some other useful stuff you can buy with BP if you have any left over.

Enemy Lure
Great for grinding power and gil, or leveling up materia. Comes in real handy in the crater at the end. This is a materia that you will probably multiply a lot by the end.

Pre-emptive
Great materia for speeding up random battles and exploration.

Speed Plus
Pretty much like above but with the atb gauge, coupled with pre you will get the jump on enemies before they even know what hit them. Great for grinding too.

ChampionShip Belt
A very strong armor early on, great for defense. If you feel up for it grinding out enough BP for this will make the game a lot easier.