How to upgrade materia in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth

While melee attacks and abilities are the core of the combat in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, you won’t be able to succeed without equipping your party members with the best Materia for each encounter. Magic can make quick work of most enemies, and upgrading Materia will unlock stronger spells.

You can purchase base-level Materia from most vendors in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and you’ll receive many different kinds of Materia from quest rewards and Chadley’s research, but unlocking the true potential of these Materia requires you to put in a little bit of work. If you want to upgrade your Fire spell to Fira and then Firaga, for example, there’s some grinding in your future.

How to Raise Materia Levels in FF7 Rebirth

To upgrade Materia in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, all you have to do is have it equipped during combat. When you finish a fight, all of your equipped Materia earns AP, which are Materia-specific experience points. After reaching certain AP milestones, your Materia will gain a star and increase in level.

You can see how much AP a piece of Materia has accumulated in the Materia menu when managing your characters’ gear. If a Materia says “MAX,” then it cannot be leveled up any further. Each new star added to a Materia will unlock a stronger variant of its magical spell, such as Cura and Regen for Healing Materia.

Swapping out Materia

Since Materia only gains AP when it’s equipped on a character during battle, make sure to constantly swap out your Materia if you’re trying to level up spells for other characters in your backline. Remember, you don’t have to cast the spells to gain AP, they just have to be slotted into your characters’ gear.

If you’re only using Fire and Ice Materia with Cloud and you have some extra slots in his sword, for example, you can add a Lightning Materia to gain AP for it even if you don’t want to use that type of magic. This is a great way to level up Materia for the rest of your party members, especially ones that join the party late in the game like Cait Sith.

If you’re trying to power level as much Materia as possible, keep an eye out for blue AP Up Materia. This will boost the growth rate of any Materia in a linked slot. Weapons with linked Materia slots start showing up very early in the game, and you can even craft a few accessories with linked Materia slots within the first few hours of your adventure. If you want to tackle Dynamic difficulty or the optional boss fights in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, your Materia loadout matters a lot.