A little background:

Final Fantasy 7 is my ABSOLUTE favorite game out of all the FF series. It is the first RPG I played back in the day and hella brings back great memories. I cannot wait for the remake!!!

Out of all the characters, Aerith is my favorite. She was so quirky and different. She also had a great sense of humor and had the funniest interactions with Cloud, mostly her just teasing him. I felt like I could relate to her.

I was SO sad when Aerith died 😢 but with my trusty GameShark, she was brought back to life and I put her right back into my party. I’m pretty sure that screwed up a lot of things in my game because she was supposed to be dead, hahaha!! I remember at some point the game wouldn’t continue because it couldn’t process how she was still in my party. That was hilarious!

Anyhow, back to the recent:

Mobius has been running an event called Fatal Calling, a reprint of the Final Fantasy 7 collaboration featuring the arrival of Sephiroth. The collaboration storyline continued to be engaging and was overall well made. I especially, surprisingly, enjoyed the tower ranking event, which is a first.

Through the event, I ended up farming myself to 1200+ crystals (yay, I can finally take a break from farming crystals now), maxed out my skillseeds twice (first from the event and second from trading materials in the MP shop), pulverized the 4* version of Sephiroth in multiplayer mode (REVENGE!!!), and ranked 13 in the Last Calling tower event. Very productive indeed!

RNGesus must’ve heard my FF7 prayers (🙏 THANK YOU!! 🙏) because the night the Sephiroth ultimate job came out, I pulled it on the first pull 😱😱. I also pulled Hero of Despair not long after. Then when the Aerith legendary job came out, I pulled the Aerith supreme on my first pull (😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱 WTF) and then the legendary job right after, back to back! It was INSANE the amount of luck I had with these jobs and the supreme. I’m just missing the Cloud ultimate job at this point, which I’m sure I’ll pull eventually (hint hint 🙏 RNGesus 🙏).

I quickly took my Aerith out on a 4* Sephiroth Multiplayer killing spree and called it Aerith’s Revenge, mwahhahhaa!!! With my set up,  Sazh (for snipe), boosting egg (for faith), and Aerith and Minwu supremes, I was able to kill Sephiroth with 2 ultimas on the first turn without buffs from anyone else. It was loads of fun demolishing Sephiroth over and over again.

Then came the tower event: Last Calling.

I don’t usually participate too much in tower ranking events. I’ve felt salty before after seeing hackers advance in previous towers so I didn’t feel the time and effort was worth it. As long as I get the regular prizes for completing the map, I’m fine. But seeing how this was a FF7 tower, armed with these new goodies, AND especially having pulled the Aerith supreme card, I felt like it was worth trying my luck in climbing the tower. So I gave it a whirl.

It was pretty fun using Aerith to pummel through everything. At some point I had to bring in Master Monk. Unfortunately not mastering or fully understanding the materia system had me stuck early around 40 boss kills. I started looking for inspiration on Youtube and found some videos that really helped.

The first person I found who helped the most was @SageZero. I LOVED his commentary, it was entertaining. He also generously included his materia set up in his videos, which was incredibly helpful for me. I was able to start learning how the materia worked with his builds. Following his videos, I was able to get much higher into the 80s. I didn’t want to have to switch over to another character as I very much enjoyed being able to slaughter Sephiroth with Aerith (REVENGE!!!), however, I started hitting a wall again as I didn’t have the right cards so I looked for other strategies.

I came upon @NevilleRico’s videos and noticed that I had all of the cards and jobs necessary for the build being shared: perma-[stun/sleep/slow]-lock with a Master Monk breaker + Lightning (Thief) ragnarok spammer. His strategy made a lot of sense: Sleep -> Stun + Slow -> Break -> Kill. However, his materia setup wasn’t shared like SageZero’s so I had to invest some time to figure it out. Thankfully, after some trial and error, I was able to piece together the materia used. Top row materia was used for breaking, second row was used for attacking (which I often saved for Sephiroth after he’s broken), and third row was used for debuffing (sleep) before having to apply slow and stun.

Using the techniques that I learned, I quickly made it to 100+ boss kills. I knew I didn’t have to worry for the rest of the tower climb, so I spent a bulk of Mobius day helping my hon get into the top 500 and concentrated on my own account afterwards. I was mostly focused on getting more ability tickets (7 per loop, woot!!) and less about ranking. However, the more ability tickets I got, the closer I was to the top.

Every morning thereafter I noticed my rank would barely fall from the night before, which meant others were hitting the same walls or felt safe enough to not climb higher. One of the following mornings, I woke up and was ranked even higher than the night before. Square Enix must’ve performed a hacker purge, which I then confirmed from Reddit. Seeing how high my number was, I realized I actually had a decent chance of getting into the top 10 so I decided to go for it.

I climbed as far as I could while keeping an eye on my hon’s account, which was slowly but steadily dropping in ranking as the tower event was coming to an end. I was jumping between the two accounts to make sure we were both in the top 500. It required a lot of concentration because the two accounts had two completely different builds. Not only that, on the last day of the tower, the website I was referencing videos from for my hon’s builds ended its service!!! What were the odds and WHYYYYYYYYYY 😭😭😭😭😭!? I ended up recording my own videos on that account to reference them later in case I forget the strategies.

The amount of work needed to climb the tower on both accounts was pretty intense. I don’t know if I’d want to climb another tower the way I did this one, mostly because I don’t know if I will have that much free time on my hands again. I do know that I invested so much time into this one because FF7 happens to be my favorite collaboration and to pass on the chance to slaughter Sephiroth over and over again was not an option!

Nonetheless, the experience was incredibly fun and learning from other players who generously shared their builds and gameplay on Youtube was extremely valuable. Also, using process of elimination and trial and error to figure out how others set up their materia was such a rewarding experience.

I had a ton of fun and am deeply appreciative for everyone whom I had learned from. I realized that learning from the top players (and having luck on my side) makes climbing the tower much easier, that if I apply myself I can get pretty far, and even though I didn’t make it to the top 10 I got pretty close. Oh and that it is important to boost more weapons for variety. Got some #LifeLessons in there!

Here’s a video of my last tower climb (floor 155):

Also, why does it sound like Lightning keeps saying, “S#!t the ground!” !?!?

– V