How should I use my enemy skill materia?

[SS2 Vegeto]

I'm doing my first ever playthrough of Final Fantasy VII and would like to know who it makes sense to teach which skills to, basically. I was going to pick up matra magic on the way to Kalm, but as I deliberated over whether to teach it to Cloud, Tifa, or Aerith (my current party), it occurred to me that I actually had no idea what I was aiming for.

So, is there a best way to manage this materia? And if so, what is it? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Rostum]

Well, learning enemy skills is not character-specific but matera-specific. So once it's learnt on one enemy skill materia, you can equip it to anyone and they can use the ability. Just for future reference, there are four of the materia in the entire game and it is possible to learn every one on all of them, but you most likely won't be able to on your first play through.

[Flying Arrow]

Yeah, there's not a whole lot when it comes to the individual characters. They are more or less blank slates onto which you equip Materia. The Materias gain experience too and contain all the learned abilities, so all the skills are fully transferable from character to character. The fun (for me at least) comes from experimenting with different combinations and team builds. I always stick the Enemy Skills on Tifa because she's a martial artists and she should be able to pick up new techniques along the adventure (it makes sense to me okay?). In your case there's no reason to be tentative - just collect everything and sort it out as you see fit.

[Jiro]

Employ the Pokémon technique.

[SS2 Vegeto]

Thanks guys. I'll just teach each skill to as many characters as I feasibly can without excessive backtracking.


Employ the Pokémon technique.

Uh...catch 'em all...?

...

Breed them for different moves?

[Rostum]

I... don't think you quite grasped what we said.

[Jiro]

Uh...catch 'em all...?


Got it in one ;)

But yeah, this is what happens: When an enemy uses a skill that can be learned via the the Enemy Skill materia, it is learned by the character who has it equipped (and is hit by the move). When you transfer that materia to another character, they will still have that ability in the materia, even if they haven't been hit by that move previously. It's all about the materia, not the character!

[SS2 Vegeto]

Yeah, my mistake. I actually DID understand upon first reading your replies, but responded hours later without re-reading anything and was totally misguided in what I said. Sorry for the confusion, and thank you once more for your help.

[Jiro]

That's coo' brah. Good luck!

[Sylvie]

Right off the bat, you can fight a Sweeper enemy on the world map. They'll use Matra Magic, a non-elemental projectile attack that targets all enemies. I found this to be one of the most useful skills in the game for at least half of it. You can target any element with it, and it targets everything for a significant amount of damage. Great for sweeping random encounters.

Big Guard is one of the most useful and game-nerfing Enemy Skills to get in the game. Once you have access to the world map and the Manipulate Materia, when you get Cait Sith, he comes with it go to the Costa del Sol region and get in an encounter on the beach with the Beach Plug enemies, they look like weird tentacle things. Use Manipulate on them and cast Big Guard.

When you fight the Materia Keeper in Mt. Nibel, make sure you let him cast Trine on you. It's one of the more powerful lightning skills.

There's an enemy that looks just like the Materia Keeper in the ice caves, they're called something like Silva's or something. You can get them to cast Magic Breath which isa multi-elemental skill and by far one of the most powerful in the game.

The Midgar Zolom has the skill Beta, basically the fire equivalent of Trine.

Harpies, I believe they're around the Gongonga area (correct me if I'm wrong), have the extremely powerful Aqualung skill, the water-equivalent to Beta and Trine, only I've found it to be more powerful. Be careful getting this, it could very well nearly kill your entire party if you're weak enough.

Other than getting Flamethrower from the enemies in the Mithril Mines, I'm fresh out of tips, at least from the top of my head.

Really, the best way to approach E.Skill is to collect the right skills at the right time and use them as reliable magic throughout the game. It's like the ultimate Blue Magic / Ninja component to any character. Especially when you get more than one.

[Rostum]

Yeah, my mistake. I actually DID understand upon first reading your replies, but responded hours later without re-reading anything and was totally misguided in what I said. Sorry for the confusion, and thank you once more for your help.

No worries! I actually found it really fun and rewarding to collect all the enemy skills in this game. :) So good luck.

[SS2 Vegeto]

Thank you, Sylvie. I'm following a walkthrough which addresses all of that, so finding the skills shouldn't be a problem.

[Mirage]

Aqualung can be acquired as soon as you get to North Corel but walking around on a *tiny* patch of desert that won't get you sucked into the quicksand (you don't have to wait until after the gold saucer, if your guide tells you this). This skill is almost exactly as strong as Beta when cast by you, but on your first playthrough, it is unlikely that you've got Beta at this point in the game. The monster that teaches you aqualung doesn't have enough magic power to deal more than 600 damage with it, while the monster that teaches Beta has enough magic power to make Beta hit for up to 1500 damage.

You can get Beta the very first time you meet Midgar Zolom, but it will require a bit of grinding, a specific gear setup, and a lot of luck. You will need at least 700 HP one one person, and this person will need to use Elemental+fire materia in two linked armor slots (this will halve fire damage taken), as well as the Enemy Skill materia and a Talisman for additional magic defence. You're now just barely able to survive Beta with one character, which is required in order to learn it. After that, you need to kill it with the Beta you just learned, and before it kills you with a follow-up attack.

If you choose to get Beta later, you can make the battle relatively simple if you go back after getting to costa del sol. You can find a Fire Ring here, which completely nullifies fire damage for one of your characters.

Beta and Aqualung are both significantly stronger than Trine, even if Trine is the one you're able to learn last.

Another interesting thing about Enemy Skill materia. You will get more than one of these materia thorough the game. If you don't miss any of them, you can get a total of 4. If one character has two E. Skill materias equipped, and one of them (for example) knows Flamethrower, you will not learn Flamethrower on the other E.Skill if you get hit by it again. If you put the E.skill lacking Flamethrower on a separate character, you can however learn it. Thirdly, if you have two E.skill on one character and *neither* of them has for example flame thrower, both e.skills will learn the attack at the same time when hit by it.

One utilisation for this is for example when killing Ultima Weapon. When it receives its killing blow, it will cast Shadow Flare on the person who killed it, and if you make this person be someone with multiple E.skills, you'll learn it on all of them. There aren't too many places you can get this skill. The next opportunity will either be Ruby Weapon (a much much harder boss), and an enemy deep into the final dungeon.

Enemy Skill is perhaps the most overpowered materia in the entire game, except KotR

[Bolivar]

They just about summed it up. Personally I wouldn't worry about Beta until later on in Disc 1 at the earliest, as you definitely don't need it, it's just not worth the time you lose hoping to get the right situation with Midgarzolom to get it. But definitely go for Matra Magic, Flame Thrower, and Trine early on. I think you can also get Frog Song early on, from frogs either in the forest between Gongonga and Cosmo Canyon or in the Temple of the Ancients (I definitely know it's there). You might also wanna grab White Wind from the big owl dudes around the Junon area once you get the Manipulate materia.

As for me, I like to give Enemy Skill to Barrett - why shouldn't his GUNARM be a multi-purpose weapons system? Matra Magic and Flamethrower both make sense to me on there, although some of the more "magey" spells don't quite... But it makes sense for a while! Also, Barrett's magic stats are some of the weakest in the game, so it's good to give him some abilities (and something to spend MP on) that aren't necessarily tied to stats.

[VeloZer0]

This skill is almost exactly as strong as Beta when cast by you, but on your first playthrough,
*ahem* I believe Beta is a whole 8% stronger. :p

[Mirage]

That's "almost", at least relative to Trine which is probably 20-25% weaker. :p

Aqualung is still much better than Trine, and can still be gotten much earlier than Trine. Trine is actually one of those I use the least. Only when I'm up against a target weak against lightning, or when I don't need the amount of damage Betalung offers.

Enemy skill is most definitely tied to the person's magic power stat, though, as evident by Earrings/circlet increasing damage on these three main AoE nukes significantly.

[Big D]

Pandora's Box is a fun enemy skill, especially since you only ever get one chance to learn it. Miss it that opportunity, and you can never get it again.

[Mercen-X]

Don't use them... apparently the game's more "fun" without them.

[Jiro]

That depends on definitions of fun. Slaughtering enemies is pretty fun imo.

[VeloZer0]

I agree. You have to balance the enjoyment you get out of applying yourself to a challenging experience to the joy you get out of nuking everything in your path.