Final Fantasy 7 (VII) Rebirth Chapter 8: All That Glitters Walkthrough

Chapter 8: All That Glitters is the 8th story mission in Final Fantasy 7 (VII) Rebirth. This walkthrough will guide you through all objectives of the All That Glitters Main Mission.

Area: The Golden Saucer/Corel Desert
Objectives:

• Gilded Paradise
• Away from the Glitz and Glamour
• Tonberry Suite
• Rest Up
• Interlude: Episode 3
  • Aerith’s Bedroom
  • Elmyra and Marlene
• A Visitor
• Paint the Town Red
  • Wonderment Square
  • Event Square
  • Speed Square
  • Battle Square
  • Chocobo Square
  • Skywheel Square
• Tragedy
  • Guide Moogle
• Proof of Innocence
• Cold Reception
• Meeting Your Mount
• Gearing up for the Race
  • Desert Rush
  • Stalkers?
  • Peculiar Card Players
  • The Bartender’s Untended Garden
  • Swindling Seminar
  • Beast Battleground
• Chocobo Racing
• Bug Boy
  • Practice Makes Perfect
• Finish in First
• Slippery Sidewinder
• Be a Good Tourist
• Prisoner
• Old Friends
• Shinra Arrives
• Interlude: Episode 4
  • Manhunt
  • Explosion

Gilded Paradise

At the start of the chapter, you will be just off the ropeway in the Golden Saucer. Follow the path ahead and you’ll go past a round staff room where you pick up a Healing Materia.

Follow the path out to the main area of the park, then follow after Yuffie and the others toward the marked objective. After a long scene, you’ll automatically be pulled into a tutorial for the 3D Brawler minigame which you can play more of later on. You aren’t required to win the fight at the end of the tutorial, but doing so increases your relationship with Red.

Once the next scene is done, you can follow the others into the main area of the saucer.

Away from the Glitz and Glamour

The others run off, while Cloud and Barret head to book hotel rooms. Follow him nearby to the Ghost Square area.

After meeting Cait for the first time, follow Barret into the hotel building and then go up to the reception desk.

Tonberry Suite

After sorting out the rooms, head into the marked elevator and up to your room.

Rest Up

Interact with the bed in the room to continue.

Interlude: Episode 3

Aerith’s Bedroom

Another short scene playing as Zack, walk to the left and interact with the door to leave the room.

Elmyra and Marlene

Go downstairs for an automatic scene to complete this section.

A Visitor

After returning to playing as Cloud, head over and interact with the door to the room. The person who greets you here in your initial playthrough is dependent on who you have the highest relationship status with up to this point, between all of the party members.

Paint the Town Red

You now have the opportunity to go to each of the areas of the Gold Saucer and try out most of the activities. There are a lot of minigames here, with many rewards you can trade for with GP that is earned from the activities. As you go to each area for the first time you can then use the Moogle Guide spots to quickly move between the locations so you aren’t walking through the entire Saucer every time.

To progress the story you are required to go to each of the locations at least once which completes each of the main objectives.

On the way back through Park Central the first time you can stop and grab a materia. From Park Central, go up the stairs in the middle that have a sign pointing to Speed Square, then go across the bridge to the right to find a Steadfast Block Materia on the ground.

Wonderment Square

Wonderment Square is effectively an arcade, containing two unique smaller-scale minigames, along with a Queen’s Blood-related activity.

Minigame: G-Bike

G-Bike has you driving a motorcycle while being chased by enemies. To steer you can press to brake, and to accelerate hold . When enemies approach you must drive close to them and use to hit them. Use for a special spinning slash that destroys all enemies around you (best timed when enemies approach behind you). Drive through the glowing blue and yellow icons to fill your energy and gain extra points, remember to use L2 to brake and steer.

Minigame: 3D Brawler

This is a boxing minigame. Evade all enemy attacks by tilting the left/right stick in the correct direction. When the enemy glows blue you must attack with . Figuring out the opponent’s moves is the tricky part. It’s best to just watch the opponent’s attacks for a few rounds (just get beaten up and restart to learn the pattern). This is all about pattern recognition. In the 3D Brawler select it shows what attacks each opponent has and what dodges are relevant. If the opponent attacks from the left you must always dodge with the left stick, if he attacks from the right you must dodge with right stick. When the opponent pulls back his arm you can pause to guess what his next attack will be. If he puts his hand down he’ll do an uppercut, dodge with / – if he puts his hand up he’ll do a straight punch which you dodge with / – if he puts his hand in the middle or slightly to the side he’ll do a hook which you dodge with   / .

Each opponent will take some practice to learn their attack pattern. Some will start burning red, then they use many quick attacks in a row but the order of those red attacks is scripted and always the same. If you dodge all red attacks the enemy gets groggy and you are guaranteed to land a strike.

Pause buffering makes this a lot easier (pausing whenever the opponent pulls back his arm). This way you don’t need such fast reaction time.

Minigame: Gold Saucer Queen’s Blood

This is a special variant of regular Queen’s Blood with unique rules in each match. If you played all Queen’s Blood matches so far you’ll have a good understanding of this already. If not, refer to Queen’s Blood Guide – Tips & Best Decks.

Event Square

Event Square is where performances of Loveless occur, but you aren’t able to view one right now. You can go look in the theater though, which allows you to pick up an HP Up Materia near the stage.

Speed Square

Speed Square only includes one minigame, the space shooter Galactic Saviors.

Minigame: Galactic Saviors

This is a 2D space shooter where you fly a spaceship. Shoot the approaching spaceships while dodging their bullets. You can also heal (you have 5 health kits), and shoot powerful Proton Bombs with . Use the Proton Bombs against strong enemies, they need time to recharge.

Battle Square

Battle Square houses the Musclehead Colosseum, similar to the Corneo Colosseum in Remake.

Minigame: Musclehead Museum

Musclehead Museum is a series of arena fights, similar to combat simulator. This is particularly good for farming XP & AP. More challenges unlock gradually from story progress. The initial fights aren’t too difficult, but you can always lower it to easy difficulty in the game settings if needed.

Chocobo Square

Chocobo Square is where at a later point you will be able to participate in Chocobo Racing. You can’t participate now, but still need to go over and speak with the receptionist to complete the objective.

Skywheel Square

Skywheel Square is currently closed and you cannot enter, but going near the entrance counts the objective as complete if you go here early.

After going to all other locations you will be tasked with going back to Skywheel Square which will now be open. Don’t do this if you are still wanting to do activities around the Saucer right now, as this will lock you into progressing the story.

Tragedy

Guide Moogle

Before you can ride the wheel, something occurs and Cait directs you to head to Battle Square. Use the nearby Guide Moogle to travel over there. Once there follow the objective over into the nearby room past the Colosseum reception desk.

Proof of Innocence

You now need to head below the Saucer and find the true perpetrator of the crime. Follow Cait to the elevator nearby.

Cold Reception

Follow the linear path nearby out to the Dustbowl.

Meeting Your Mount

Cloud is going to win in Chocobo Racing to get information about the perpetrator of the crime in the Saucer. The rest of the party is locked up while you do this, so follow the man nearby to meet the bird you’ll be riding. On the way, you’ll spot a purple chest that contains the Umbral Blade weapon for Cloud.

Gearing up for the Race

Turns out you’re going to be racing Piko (the bird you caught for Billy in Chapter 2) but he’s very weak and you need to feed it with Greens to regain his strength. There are a total of 6 activities here you can participate in to earn Greens, with you needing at least 3 to continue. The extra 3 items can be traded for an extra set of Chocobo accessories.

Desert Rush

Desert Rush is a box-breaker minigame, similar to Whack-a-Box and Shinra Box Buster from Remake. You can play it by interacting with the Desert Rush vendor, and if you score high enough on the initial course you receive some Greens.

Minigame: Desert Rush

Desert Rush requires you to destroy boxes within a time limit. There will be gear boxes blocking your path. Destroy the Shock Boxes that have a yellow lightning icon on them, then you can destroy the Gear Boxes. Hold to do a spinning attack that destroys all small boxes in a radius around you. For big boxes use Cloud’s Braver ability to destroy them in one hit.

Stalkers?

Near the notice board, there are a group of 3 men standing around who call out to Cloud when you go near them.

Walk down the path to their right, where you can find a chest containing 1,500 Gil.

After grabbing this, continue down the path and through the small gap into an open area, where they’ll follow behind and attack you. They’re all pretty weak and like most humans weak to Fire, so put them in their place and you’ll be awarded some Greens for your trouble.

Peculiar Card Players

Speak with the Card Collector who operates the Queen’s Blood card store in the Dustbowl. He tasks you with defeating three characters in his casino nearby. Once all three are defeated you can return to him and he’ll award you with some Greens.

Queen’s Blood:

• Queen’s Blood Booster Pack: Heavy Hitters (044 Landworm, 045 Sandspitter, 046 Chimera, 054 Grandhorn) – purchasable at Queen’s Blood Vendor in The Dustbowl for 500 gil (contains 4 cards).
   
• Queen’s Blood Card: 042 Thug – Won from Dax in Card Casino.
   
• Queen’s Blood Card: 047 Joker – Won from Pietro in Card Casino.
• Queen’s Blood Card: 043 Death Claw – Won from Mary in Card Casino.
• Accessory: Noble Thief’s Gloves – Reward from Beast Battleground – “Prison Tourney: Subterranean Terrors” (go down the ladder in Dustbowl)
   

The Bartender’s Untended Garden

Go into the bar near the notice board and speak with the Bartender. He’ll tell you about his nearby garden where you can likely find some Greens and give you the key to enter it.

Head to the marked gate, then follow the path ahead. There will be some minor enemies to deal with early on, but nothing you’ve not seen before. When you reach the garden the Greens will be stolen by a Cactuar, which you need to chase after. Keep following the path after the Cactaur until it splits, where you can take a left into a dead end for a chest that contains 2 x Mega-potions.

Head back and follow after the Cactuar and you’ll encounter a new enemy, called a Cyclone Drake. These can be annoying due to the tornadoes they let off while you attack them. You can more quickly stagger them and dispel the aura around them by using Wind attacks which they are weak to.

When the Drake is defeated keep following after the Cactaur, where you will need to swing around the path with the grapple hook. Keep going through a couple more enemy groups, then after the group of Sandhog Pies, the path splits again. Go down the path to the southeast instead of the objective where you can find a Poison Materia.

Continue following the objective to finally catch up with the now large group of Cactuar. These enemies can be somewhat annoying as they constantly run around avoiding your attacks. One of the easier ways to deal with them is to continually attack whichever you can to build ATB, then use Triple Slash which tracks after them and pressures any that it hits.

Once all the Cactuar are defeated you can pick up the stolen Greens from the ground nearby, then follow the path back into the Dustbowl.

Swindling Seminar

On the southeastern path of the Dustbowl you can find a man giving a seminar to some people about lying. Speak with him and agree to participate, then you need to pick the correct person to receive some Greens. You are given a sheet with locations for where the info you need is located, then each try randomizes which person is lying. Each guess costs 500 Gil so you do it properly or you can just brute force it by continually picking the same person over and over until they are the person who is lying that round.

Beast Battleground

Beast Battleground is another arena like the Musclehead Colosseum in the Saucer. It can be reached from the same path as the Swindling Seminar. Complete the first three arenas to receive some Greens.

 

When you’ve gotten enough Greens and are ready to continue, head back to where Piko is and interact with the feed trough 3 times to place in the Greens.

You can speak with Esther in the same spot after to trade in the extra Greens for pieces of the Gi chocobo set. She will also tell you about any possible Greens you missed if you didn’t complete all the objectives above.

When you are finished in the Dustbowl and are ready to progress the story, speak with Garth near the Chocobo Pen and agree to go to the race.

Chocobo Racing

Follow Esther over to the elevator nearby.

Bug Boy

Back in the Saucer, continue through to the Jockey Lounge.

Practice Makes Perfect

Interact with the practice spot nearby to start. Here you have the opportunity to practice the Chocobo Racing mechanics and before the main race.

Finish in First

Once you’re finished practicing and are ready to race, go near the door and confirm with Esther. You’ll then receive a tutorial on Chocobo attributes (which are affected by the cosmetics you may have been collecting already) then participate in the race which you need to win to continue the story.

Slippery Sidewinder

Back in the Dustbowl, Gus opens a nearby gate for you which will allow you to make your way out to the desert. Follow the linear path through the tunnel dealing with the few enemies in the way and you will exit in the desert part of the Corel Region.

Be a Good Tourist

As you exit the tunnel a bird will start playing away. Keep following this bird to reach the objective. You can choose to fight or ignore the enemies along the way if you want, you’re not required to deal with them to progress here. After following for long enough you’ll be reunited with Barret.

Prisoner

Head toward the structure ahead, but just before dropping into the area with the enemies you can open a purple chest to the right that contains the Vulcan Cannon weapon for Barret.

Deal with the group of enemies ahead, then jump up to the rest point.

Old Friends

You’ll switch to playing as Barret by himself, so this is your opportunity to get set up as the boss fight that occurs next is a solo Barret fight. When you’re ready head through the hole in the fence and go up to the shack.

Boss Fight: Dyne

• Weaknesses / Status Ailments: Fire
• Lesser Resistances:
• Greater Resistances:
• Immunities: Proportional Damage, Slow, Silence, Stone, Petrify, Morphable Items
• Absorbed Elements: —
• Items Dropped: —
• Rare Items Dropped: —
• Stealable Items: —
• Assess Info: Inflicting enough damage will pressure him. When his HP is reduced, he will fuse with scrap metal to perform powerful attacks. During this time, he will be difficult to pressure. However, destroying a discreet part will interrupt his attacks and make him more susceptible to being staggered.

For this fight, you will only have Barret so the difficulty may vary depending on how comfortable you are using him. Make sure you equip him with a levelled up Fire Materia to make pressuring Dyne easier. The main rule for this fight is to not get close to Dyne as he will just use his Point Blank ability and melee you for a lot of damage. Play this fight almost like a TPS, using the scrap metal around the arena as cover, waiting for him to reload before popping out and unleashing an Overcharge or an ability (Fire spell, Maximum Fury or Focused Shot if Dyne is pressured). Note that the metal does not stop his Paralysing Shot attack so you will need to dodge roll with to avoid that (and the Paralysing Wave ability which does the same thing except in larger circles than a straight line towards you) otherwise you will be paralysed for a short time.

After whittling down his health, Dyne will start using Blast Mines so you need to balance keeping away from him and not rolling into the mines. At about half health he will start fusing with scrap metal and start using a variety of attacks from range, such as sending it under the sand like a snake towards you and coming up out of the ground to hurt you, and as a large club to hit you with and as individual guns to fire bullets at you. All the while, you can cripple these pieces of scrap metal to put a lot of pressure on him and disable these attacks until they regenerate. When he is pressured, try to use Focused Shot to get him Staggered then unleash your Limit Break to do significant damage. Keep your health topped up and prioritise dodging over shooting, only firing at him when he reloads, and you’ll eventually emerge victorious.

Hard Tips: This will be the hardest boss so far on Hard difficulty. As you are solo fighting with Barret, you will be very limited with MP and ATB. Equip Elemental-Fire in Barret’s weapon and Elemental-Lightning in his armour. Dyne will regularly stun you and unfortunately this status effect can’t be protected against, so it may be worth using an Otherwordly Crystal to reduce the stun time. Equip Poison and use it on him twice to envenom him for extra damage. Use Chakra as your main source of healing so you’re not quickly depleting your MP with Curaga, however you can still have Curaga for larger heals if needed.
At the start of the battle use Steelskin and Lifesaver to both lower the damage you take and increase your maximum HP. Always stay behind cover when he’s shooting and use this as a chance to charge your weapon with . During the second phase always stay near cover as he’ll regularly do two Repentance attacks that deal heavy damage and destroy cover. For the final phase, save your Overcharge and ATB to use Maximum Fury when he does the attacks with multiple tentacles so you can quickly destroy them all to pressure him, and hopefully stagger him for extra damage.

Shinra Arrives

After the fight with Dyne, you switch back to Cloud and the rest of the group. Walk back around to the rest point and make sure your current party is set up how you like, as you will have another boss fight immediately.

Boss Fight: Anuran Suppressor

• Weaknesses / Status Ailments: Lightning
• Lesser Resistances: Fixed Damage
• Greater Resistances:
• Immunities: Proportional Damage, Berserk, Slow, Stop, Poison, Silence, Sleep, Stone, Petrify, Morphable Items
• Absorbed Elements: —
• Items Dropped: —
• Rare Items Dropped: —
• Stealable Items: —
• Assess Info: Landing limit attacks or synergy abilities will flip it over. Attacking the cockpit while in this overturned state will deal significant damage. Landing several powerful offensive abilities while Palmer is taunting will pressure it.

Anuran Suppressor shouldn’t cause too much trouble. It’s most damaging move, Eradication Ray, needs a little time to charge up and it only fires straight in front of it, so it is very easy to roll around and dodge. Occasionally, Palmer will emerge from the hatch and taunt you. You can actually Assess him but it reveals no tactical information and even though he has a health bar, it will just knock him back into the tank and you can’t ‘kill’ him. However, this will cause a huge amount of stagger so it’s worth saving your Synergy Abilities or even Limit Breaks for when he does emerge, then target him.

Almost all of Anuran’s attacks can be easily dodged by rolling, so just keep chipping away while using as many ATB charges as you can in order to build synergy attacks as this will flip it over. Attack the cockpit for big damage and to build stagger. After half of its health as gone, the tank will become electrocuted and start using a Leapfrog attack, meaning it will bounce around the arena and it will be quite difficult to dodge this, so make sure to keep an eye on your health. At this point, it will also have two extra targets, Left Leg and Right Leg, so focus on these individually as when you take one out, the tank will be crippled for a while and unable to attack. By the time you’ve taken them out, the tank should be nearly destroyed if not already, so use everything a your disposal (Summons, Limits, Synergy Abilities etc.) to finish it.

Hard Tips: After the last fight, this should be a lot easier. Use Elemental-Lightning in your weapons to exploit his weakness. Use synergy abilities to flip it over which makes it more vulnerable, and use Arcane Ward combined with Thunder spells with Aerith to deal massive damage.

After the boss is defeated, you will be escaping in the buggy. This is a rail shooter section similar to riding the mine cart in Chapter 7.

Interlude: Episode 4

Manhunt

In the second Zack section of the chapter, you are walking through the Sector 5 slums looking for Biggs. You can interact with characters to show them the picture you have, but to progress you just need to keep walking along the path until an explosion occurs.

Explosion

Follow the path nearby to the source of the explosion. After this scene you will complete the chapter.

This finishes Chapter 8: All That Glitters in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.

Next Up: Chapter 9: The Planet Stirs

For all other Mission Walkthroughs, check out our complete Final Fantasy 7 (VII) Rebirth Walkthrough.