Maxx Power's FF7 Challenge - Place Your Bets!

[ReloadPsi]

Fantastic, you definitely aren't going to try challenge the weapons, though?

There's an FAQ on GameFAQs where someone did. And succeeded.

Go through the game as normal, but spend absolutely no money at all except when the game absolutely forces you to do so (the only time I can think of that does is the two occasions on which you're forced to visit the Gold Saucer, at which point you spend your minimum on day passes, no Gold Tickets).

Doable I would say, but only if you didn't impose other sanctions such as no materia (which you can still work around with potion drops from enemies) or heaven forbid low level (can't even farm potions!).

Seeing as you ain't chosen to do it, I'm gonna try it once I'm done with my initial equipment thing. Schizo keeps kicking my ass though *_*

[Captain Maxx Power]

Fantastic, you definitely aren't going to try challenge the weapons, though?

Ultima will be the easiest of the optional ones, but since I won't get anything out of it then it's more to novelty. At least if I defeat Ruby I get a Gold Chocobo out of it and can go to the materia caves...and then trash them. Ruby is in theory defeatable, if only because the battle is designed to be done with one character. Emerald, well, we all know how much of a pain he is. Since his Aire Tam Storm will do no damage because of the lack of materia I could simply heal with X-potions every turn until Cloud gets a limit and use that, if I shove him on the back row with Hyper it'll speed up the process. But really right now I'm more worried about just getting through the central game before I start thinking about the weapons.

[Captain Maxx Power]

UPDATE!!!!!

I've gotten as far as the battle past Raps. Right now the general boss strategy (indeed, battle strategy in general) is to keep healing myself with potions until I get a Limit Break. For now my physical damage won't be hugely affected by the Initial Equipment handicap due to the Buster Sword being the only sword available until the Shinra building for drops, and Kalm for buying. However as the game goes on I'll start to feel it more. Certainly the biggest problem right now is physical attacks. Magical attacks it doesn't really matter what armour you have as due to a bug you're armour MDef is ignored and only your Spirit stat is used. I can cut down the damage done by physical attacks by a quarter by shoving myself in the back row and using the defend command. Against the harder hitting bosses this may be my best strategy.

Now I'm worried about taking on Rude. The main reason for this is that his pyramid attack when applied to a character considers them dead (not to mention the fact that it can't be removed unless another character attacks it). As such I'll most likely keep Barret alive (he's automatically revived when you reach the top of the tower) for this battle only, and use him to remove the pyramid only should Cloud come under its effects, only using Cloud to deal damage. That's about as close I can come to a single-character battle. I'll have to do the same against Bottomswell in Junno as well since his bubble attack also considers the target "Dead".

Apart from that I'm just going to have to spend a lot of time killing stuff to get a bunch of Hi Potions for most of the game until I get the Tiny Bronco, at which point I'll probably spend hours farming in Wutai for X-Potions/Swift Bolts/Fire Veils. Once I have them then the rest of the game should be compartively a breeze until I get to the Northern Crater.

[aquatius]

I looked at a solo cloud guide and the only way to get around the pyramid thing is intense powerlevelling.

[Captain Maxx Power]

I looked at a solo cloud guide and the only way to get around the pyramid thing is intense powerlevelling.

For reasons of sanity I simply kept Barret alive during the fight. Cloud was the only one who did any damage to Rude however. For the record I'm just up to the point where you go up to Shinra. I need to spend more time fighting for two reasons; one money to buy the batteries needed to get up there in the first place, and second to gain Meteor Rain before I reach Shinra (I currently have Blade Beam and Climhazzard). My plan for normal battles is to use Finishing Touch since it's a cheap, instant-death attack to all monsters that doesn't rely on weapon damage to do it's work. Now my thoughts are focused on the Shinra building, specifically the non-Cloud battle between the two "robots". Now obviously since I've not be levelling my other characters their levels are going to be low come this battle. Added to the fact that I normally have problems with these things playing the game normally I'm thinking it may cause problems. To keep in with the theme of a solo character I'll only be using one character for this battle, most likely RedXIII, using Grenades to do the damage (yet another reason I need to grind enemies for money). After that I'm "in the clear" for the majority of the game, with a distinct drop once I have access to the Wutai area.

[aquatius]

When you don't have cloud, it can become a low level challenge for the characters you do have.

[Twilight Edge]

I vote no-materia.