I stayed up all night with a friend after we got to the northen cave.
We leveled up by fighting magic pots and the red orb fellas, mastered a hell of a lot of materia.
However, we missed the save crystal item (don't ask, I have no idea) and we couldn't find the exit.
There was no way we were gonna continue to the final area, we hadn't beaten Ruby.
So we turned the console off.
The next day....we found the exit. :/

Oh. I also got excited once and bought a weapon for a certain someone on disc two, then I was like...oh.