Walkthrough:Final Fantasy VII/BlueHighwind/Part 14
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Hi Space Monkies:
- All work and no play makes BlueHighwind a dull boy.
- All work and no play makes BlueHighwind a dull boy.
- All work and no play makes BlueHighwind a dull boy.
[edit] Cosmo Canyon
Well Sephiroth was a no-show again at Gongaga, so there' no place to go left but West. Grab your Buggy and drive directly West, then cross the river North into a series of red canyons and cliffs. This area of the Planet happens to be special in that it is the only place to experience dawn, but unfortunately that also means there's stuck in that time of day for all eternity. As you're going past a settlement, your Buggy with break down in an incredibly contrived manner. Looks like we have to deal with this Contrivance of the Plot by entering the town and finishing the plot point there. As soon as that's finished, the Buggy will be fixed. How convenient.
Cosmo Canyon is a conclave of Hippie losers out to get close to Mother Nature (or the Planet in this case), and get really high while doing it, naturally. Turns out Red XIII (remember him?) is from this town, and his real name is "Nanaki". Red XIII is a far cooler name. He runs off leaving the party, but gets a free stay at Woodstock. Go up the stairs to talk to Red XIII, who happens to have a backstory like everybody else. He is the last of a tribe of wolf-cats who guarded this canyon. However his dad was a "wastrel" (a real word, look it up!) and left him and his mother alone. His mother just spontaneously dropped dead as a doornail afterwards.
Well our party has once again broken up into a divided group wandering around the town so that means we can shop and hunt for treasure in the meantime. Enter the house right here to find another Turtle's Paradise Letter, a Weapon Shop, and a Save Point. Now go outside, and head down to campfire. Go to the building to the North of the campfire to find another Turtle's Paradise Letter. There sure a lot of those here. Stay at the Inn and check the safe for an Elixir. As for shopping the Weapons Shop gives lots of nice strong weapons that you'll want to buy. The Item Shop sells Ethers now, buy a few if you're in need. The Materia Shop has HP Plus and MP Plus Materias, which are pretty self-explanatory - they increase your HP or MP. When you're all finished down here, we have to go upstairs to get the plot moving. Head all the way up the stairs, then take the ladder to the observatory.
In here is Red XIII and his grandpa Bugenhagen. Bugenhagen is a floating old man with no legs who has the sick habit of screwing wolf-cat creatures and having children with them. The old man tells us that at 48, Red XIII is still but a teenager to his species. Since he's the floating old Sage here, Bugenhagen has to show off his super wisdom by rambling a bit and making long-winded speeches with complex metaphors. He's also a prophit of doom, flying around the room warning of the death of the Planet. Being a crazy old man, he's invented a machine that allows us to hear the slow moans of our dieing world. That's the kind of sound that can help you sleep at night, like whale sounds. But in order for the floating old guy to continue his story, we have to grab a party member from below. Go down and get Tifa and whoever else you like best. They won't like you more, however I do like eye candy by my side.
Now Bugenhagen will show us his laboratory, home to a great a telescope and a holographic 3D imaging system. Half he uses it to gaze at the endless wonders of the universe, the other half he uses it to try to read that little text on the inside of lightbulbs, to limited success. Bugenhagen now gives us a crash course on his Study of Planet Life ideas. All life comes from the Planet, and all life returns to it once they die. Thus we are all interconnected. For those sad souls who have seen Spirits Within, you'll probably recognize this idea as Dr. Sid's Gaia Theory. Yup, they stole this plot point almost verbatim for that crappy movie. Well, by sucking Mako energy out of the ground, we're killing off the Spirit Energy required by life to continue, thus killing the Planet.
Now that the laser light show is over, go back downstairs for a fire-side chat with the party. Yuffie is bored, Cait Sith is stupid as usual, Aeris is lonely, Tifa wants to know if Cloud is really Cloud (probably important, so we just forget about it), and Barret misses Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie. Well, I'm as bored as Yuffie after talking to these guys. I feel like some dungeon crawling! Talk to Red XIII to get things going. Years ago the Gi Tribe attacked, and his dad was a coward. That story has a hole in it that Bugenhagen wants to fill up, so we have to descend into a cave underneath Cosmo Canyon to find the truth. He's up at the top of the town, and is going to open the iron door near the ladder to his observatory. Though he joins together with us, Bugenhagen is not going to be a member of the party.
[edit] Cave of the Gi
This is the one of two times in the game that you have to use Red XIII. The first was back in the Shinra HQ. If you haven't been using him, don't worry. Your other characters level up even while not in the party, so he won't be that far behind.
Climb down all the ladders and ropes to make the Cosmo Canyon music slowly fade away, then run through the door. Ut-oh, sinister music. There are a lot of caves inside this room, but only one of them is the right one. The others will cause you a random battle. The ugly brown monster with big nostrils and speaks is the Sneaky Step and it can teach you the Enemy Skill "Death Sentence". It kills enemy after 60 seconds. Too bad the darn thing doesn't work against anything strong enough to survive sixty seconds of battle! Worthless. Run past the first two caves and go up into the third one. Break the rock inside to make a door appear. As you try to leave the door, Bugenhagen will break the party for a group huddle. Turns out this cave is filled with the malevolent spirits of the Gi Tribe, all killed trying to destroy the Hippies of Cosmo Canyon. But they're angry, and want revenge. That's bad.
Go up into the next room, but then head left. As you approach the left side of the screen, you'll see some slime on the floor. Walk, don't run, over this stuff. If you run, you'll get caught in a trap that badly depletes your HP. Go South into another party of the last room to find an Added Effect Materia. I don't actually know what this Materia does, as I never touched it. Sorry about that little gap. [ed: It's just what it sounds like; it adds the effect of a paired Materia to your weapon or armor. Most useful when paried with Poison on your weapon, as you can poison enemies with a physical attack.] Now go back over the slime and to right side of the screen. Head North up to another place where you can go left, and do that. Go down the stairs, then around to a cave below the path to find an Ether. Now head South from the stairs and run below the lower path to find a Black M-Phone. It's a Cait Sith weapon, so ignore it. Go directly North up the stairs and forward to the edge of the screen to make Bugenhagen give us another pep-talk.
Continue on to the next screen. Here you'll find five separate tunnels here, but many of these don't lead any where. Go to the one second from the right (or fourth from the left in Backwards Land) and run into the spider web. This will start a battle with a giant daddy-long legs called Stinger. It has a lot of HP (2500) and an attack called "Sting Bomb" that hits for a heavy percentage of your HP. But it can't actually kill you, all it really does is charge your Limit gauge. Go up to find an X-Potion. Save this puppy for an easy win against the Boss coming up. Now return that tunnel grouping and take the one second from the left (fourth from the right in Backwards Land). Go up, kill a Stinger, then go left, then down to a ledge where there is a chest nearby. Go into the tunnel and go right to get that Chest. It holds a Fairy Ring, a boring Accessory that gives immunity to Blindness and Poison. Yawn. Now return to where you killed that Stinger and go North to fight another one. Before leaving this area, go left behind some rocks to reach the Chest containing a Turbo Ether.
Head up to next screen to see a face in the wall. Then, like a bad Halloween effect, it starts to twitch. The Gi are attacking! We got Boss Time!!!
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Strategy: This Boss is really a joke. In each Final Fantasy game, there is at least one undead Boss. Here's the man right now. Like all undead Bosses, this one can be easily beaten by a simple strategy. Use an X-Potion, and it will take 5500 damage rather than be healed by it. I guess since it's dead that healing makes it hurt... or something. But doing normal damage still hurts it normally... If it's already dead, what will re-killing it do? Won't it come back as an UN-undead. Would killing a dead thing bring it back to life? ...I don't know... The only thing you have to worry about is accidentally using that X-Potion on the flying fire-balls instead of the Boss. Pay attention and you'll win ultra-easily. | ||||||||||||||||||
For winning, Bugenhagen thanks you for saving his life. No reward, of course. Not even a tip. After the monster falls, a green Materia lands. This is the Gravity Materia, it teaches the Demi spells. They take out a percentage of your enemy's HP, but it doesn't work against Bosses or strong enemies. So it's pretty much completely worthless. And yet, you should still level it up anyway, because there is one Hard Boss coming up that isn't immune to "Demi". And having "Demi 2" will make things easier.
Continue on to the final location inside this cavern. Here is the corpse of Red XIII's father, now turned to stone. Turns out he wasn't a wastrel, he was a valiant warrior who fought and died against the Gi Tribe. Then he got really "stoned"! ...Heh? Come on! You know that was gold! Inspired by his father, Red XIII wants to fight and become a statue as well. So he's still going to be our forgotten superfluous member of the party.
Back on our spontainously repaired Buggy, we need to continue the journey. We've run out of West thanks to the ocean, so it's time to go North. Our next location is a blast from the past. Guess which one, and turn the page.
