1.10 - Chapter 10: Escape

Four years have passed since the Nibelheim incident. After the scenes, check the KO'd scientist for a key. Go through the wooden door north and grab •10000 GIL from the chest. Head back and go through the other door, and Zack will automatically help Cloud. Move out of the underground caves, and into the mansion.

Inside the mansion, grab the •FIRAGA (M) from the chest in the room on the northwest. In the southwest room, grab •5000 GIL from the right cabinet. Check the left cabinet to find some SOLDIER Clothes for later. On the first floor of the mansion, a •SHINRA BETA is waiting to be found in the chest. Exit the place.

Check your map. You can now do the 7th Wonder, if you did the 6 previous. Head to the northeast area of the Nibelheim outskirts, and check the fence near the south of the houses to find the •Wall (M). Head to Nibelheim.

Here you'll be assaulted by Shinra troops who will try to drag Cloud away.

• Battle #1: 2258cm away from entrance, defeat 10 Shinra Soldiers
• Battle #2: 2047cm away from entrance, defeat 12 Shinra Soldiers
• Battle #3: 2210cm away from entrance, defeat 16 Shinra Soldiers

Afterwards, you're going back to the Shinra Mansion. Check back in the room on the southwest and look in the left closet to find SOLDIER's clothes. Put them on Cloud. After the scene, fight a few Shinra Soldiers and exit the town.

Now another minigame commences. It's basically a game using a sniper rifle to hit robots in the distance. The better you do, the more items you'll end up with in the end. These are your enemies:

You can hurt the robots less or more on different parts:

You can also upgrade your gun through the following options:

Walk across the path and look for robots to shoot whenever there's a sniper rifle lying around. The more you kill, the more points you get for upgrades.

You may have noticed that you ran into an encounter right before you reached the third sniper rifle. This encounter can consist out of either 2, 3, or 4x Alert Head. If you kill them, they will get added to your KILL counter. With KILL points, you can upgrade the sniper rifle. Backtrack a few steps, approach the third sniper rifle again by walking in the middle of the path, and continue to spawn the encounter. This way you can fully upgrade the sniper gun and have a chance VS difficult bots like BIGGS and WEDGE, that have high HP (9999 and 7777 respectively). Especially since it's been a while since you could've saved.

With a Maxed-out Gun, things become much easier. At the 4th Gun, take out the right first, then the left, and the middle last. At the 5th Gun, simply shoot the barrel. At the 6th Gun, you'll face BIGGS and WEDGE, which have a lot of HP. Buy a Smart Bomb and try to have a Maxed-out Gun. Headshot the left x3, and fire the Smart Bomb at the right. At the 7th Gun, simply be very quick or they will spot you and get away. Smart Bomb if you wish. At the 8th Gun, don't shoot the barrels, they're too far from the bots. Simply use headshots or Smart Bomb.

The rewards are like this, put in chests at the end of the road:

At the end, grab the items from the chests and save your game. Walk over the beach to meet Cissnei. More scenes will happen, until you have to fight the next boss...

Strategy

This guy's easy. He's fairly slow, although his attacks are decently powerful. Basically just a strong regular enemy. Put up Barrier and Magic Barrier if you wish, then hack away or spam strong magic attacks.

After the scenes, you'll be at the blown up Gongaga reactor. Head to the northeast part and talk to the man. Now you can smack things up (with the first option) to get treasure, but two times you'll have to fight a Griffon, which has 17840 HP and indeed comes out of that tiny puny chest. You can get a •HYPNO CROWN, •6000 GIL, •OSMOGA (M) and a •ZEIO NUT from here. Head south to the Gongaga outskirts. Grab a Remedy from the chest, then meet Cissnei again. After the scene, check around for a Headband and an •Research Dept. QMC+ (Shop List).

Proceed to the next area. The chest near the cliff holds a •REMEDY and a Save Point. The next chest you encounter holds an •ELIXIR. At the end of the path, you'll get another scene followed by a fight with a Genesis Slayer (27590 HP, 200 SP, 830 Gil) and a Genesis Predator (12460 HP, 232 SP, 146 Gil). A few critical slashes finishes them off.. no real need to classify this as a boss fight..

When you're done, you can get a minigame at the waterfall, but you must fight 7 battles in this area first. You can accomplish this by walking the path up and down over and over. When you have 7 or more fights, try to exit the area and you can choose the first option(!!) to do the minigame. The goal is to grab all the chests, the more the better. The start is the hardest right away, grab that chest and back out for the enemies or you'll get poisoned. You must tap O if that happens.

This pattern repeats itself about 3.5 times.

Depending on how many chests you grabbed, here's your reward:

10+ Treasure Chests: Hi-Potion, X-Potion, Elixir, Goblin Punch (M) 8-9 Treasure Chests: Hi-Potion, X-Potion, Elixir 5-7 Treasure Chests: Hi-Potion, X-Potion 1-4 Treasure Chests: Hi-Potion No Treasure Chests: ---

You also get 300 Gil per Chest. At 11 chests (the max), you'll get 3300 Gil.

If you fail to get the Goblin Punch, you can exit the area and re-enter. Fight the 7 encounters again to get another shot at the minigame. You can only get the Goblin Punch Materia once, though.

• Note: Now that you have Goblin Punch, you can very easily creaty Costly Punch, one of the best Materia in the game. Go into the Shop Research Dept. QMC+ which you should've found recently, and buy any of the DMW boosting Materia. The great thing about these Materia is that their Grade is 8, the max grade. So while Goblin Punch's Grade is only 1, fuse it with any of these DMW Materia and you'll get a 8th Grade Materia, thus you get Costly Punch!

The Costly Punch is great, but there are a few things you need to know about it so here goes. First of all, it costs 1/128th of your HP to use. Don't worry, that is a very, very small amount which you won't even notice. Second, if your Current HP is above 1.11 times your Max HP (in other words, Break), then Costly Punch will do 0 damage, that's right, zero. Other than that, enjoy it! It's base Materia Attack Power is 32, which is a LOT.

Tip: If you're doing Max damage (9999 for now) with Costly Punch, un-equip any Strength boosting accessories and replace them with defense boosting ones.

Head back to the reactor, and save your game on the way there. At the reactor, you'll fight Hollander (that SOAB, my apologies for the abbreviation).

Strategy

Hollander, the cheap Hojo ripoff he is, should really get his ass spanked. Don't worry, what his mommy apparently lacked, you'll now make up. Start the battle with Barrier and Magic Barrier. Try to avoid his Deathly Breath at all costs, simply because it's so darn annoying to have those status effects, plus the good effects negated. Massive spam your magic attacks on him (and his worms, if he summons them), use Vital Slash or Costly Punch. You can also get behind him and hit him with physical attacks, it all depends on if you see room for a certain action. When he is invincible, kill off any remaining worms or heal yourself up. When he starts healing, quickly finish him off with a series of attacks if you can.

End of Chapter 10 Picture: Zack & Cloud in on the road.