This Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Hard Difficulty Guide will provide you with tips, tricks and best character builds for hard mode. You must beat the game on hard for the Of Hardy Stock trophy.
Hard difficulty is unlocked after you complete the game once on any difficulty. You can complete the chapters in any order via chapter select as long as you finish them all, but it makes sense to do them in order. If skipping all side content you can rush through hard mode in 20 hours.
What’s changed in Hard Difficulty?
Hard Mode not only includes enemies that hit much harder and have higher HP, but it has certain caveats too. You can’t use items at all and benches only restore HP (not MP). You still recover MP during combat over time and can use a Cushion at Chocobo Stops to recover MP. However, after finishing the game once you do gain increased EXP and AP, meaning you should hit Level 70 quickly and improve Materia faster.
What this means is that the Magnify-Healing and Prayer will become your main source of healing throughout Hard Mode. However, you’ll also need to manage your MP because if you use it all earlier in a chapter, then you’ll have none left against the bosses at the end of the chapter and will likely have to start again.
You can also skip the Zack’s Story sections by going to System > Extra Settings > Skip Zack’s Story (Interlude: A World Apart). These have no combat anyway, but it makes completing chapters faster.
Hard Difficulty Recommended Loadout
Useful Links for all Item Locations:
Before starting Hard, it is recommended that you acquire 7 copies of the following Materia to equip onto your whole party:
- Healing
- Revival
- Prayer
- HP Up
- MP Up
- Steadfast Block
- Precision Defense Focus
Equip “HP <> MP Materia” (found in Chapter 11) to a member you don’t use in battle and you have a healing battery with several thousand MP to heal out of combat. But don’t forget to take it off for that character’s story sections.
You will also want to get 3 copies of Magnify and Elemental. There are 3 of each of these in the game, and obtaining all of them will allow you to have a Magnify-Healing and Elemental linked to the appropriate element on each member in your current party.
Other good materia that you can use to fill in the extra slots are Barrier, Time, ATB Assist, ATB Stagger, First Strike, Skill Master and Warding.
Good armors that you can get include:
- Cetran Bracer
- Cetran Armlet
- Valkyrian Bangle
- Celestial Bangle
- Enhanced Varvados Bracelet
The first three you can only ever get one copy of, but you can get as many Celestial Bangles and Enhanced Varvados Bracelets as you like to fill up the remaining party’s armor.
Lastly, the following are some good accessories that you can use for various different purposes:
- Genji Ring (reduces damage taken by 15%, but also reduces damage dealt by 15%)
- Fortitude Ring (increases vitality and spirit by 50)
- Enhanced Karmic Cowl (increases vitality and spirit by 50, grants immunity to Slow and Instant Death)
- Ribbon (prevents detrimental status effects, makes it harder to be interrupted while casting magic)
- Enhanced Psychic’s Charm (increase max MP and magic power by 8%, grants immunity to Silence)
- Enhanced Expeditionary Medal (increases limit level to maximum at the start of battle)
- Healing Carcanet (increases the effectiveness of healing items, spells and abilities during battle)
- Gotterdammerung (completely fills the limit break gauge at the start of battle, gradually fills the limit break gauge during battle) – see below note
If prior to starting Hard Difficulty you have already completed Brutal Challenge 6: Rulers of the Outer Worlds and unlocked the Gotterdammerung accessory, then a good method that you can use to trivialise a lot of boss fights in Hard is to equip Enhanced Expeditionary Medal and Limit Siphon on your main fighter (usually Cloud), then Gotterdammerung on a second party member, so that you can immediately start every fight by siphoning a full Level 3 limit break.
» Also see Materia Locations & Armor Locations & Accessory Locations if you’re unsure where to get any of these.
Magnify-Healing and Prayer will be your main sources of restoring HP throughout Hard. Prayer costs 2 ATB but no MP, so is good to heal when you’re not in a rush and can take some time to build ATB, or already have a full ATB bar, whereas Magnify-Healing can be used as more of an emergency to heal your entire party with Curaga.
Elemental will be the second most important part of your materia arsenal. There are three of these in the game. When placed on weapons, it gives your attacks elemental damage (8%, 15% or 23% depending on Materia level), whilst on armor it gives you resistance (of 50%, 100% and then absorption). Just like Magnify, it only works when you place it next to a Magic Materia (Fire/Ice/Lightning/Wind) in a “linked” Materia slot (a line between Materia slots that connects them). This is particularly beneficial when linked with the Fire and Ice Materia or Wind and Lightning Materia, as it will provide the benefits of both elements in one.
Hopefully during your first playthrough, you Assessed every enemy and boss you came across. If not, consult our All Enemies & Weaknesses List and Boss Guide, because on your second run, you know which enemies and bosses are coming up and what their elemental weakness is. You can then plan accordingly and change the element linked to Elemental Materia to give your attacks an edge.
On rare occasions, it’s more beneficial to have Elemental on armor instead, thus becoming immune to the linked element. Some enemies only use elemental attacks so they can’t kill you if you have the corresponding element, making them super easy.
Reprieve is an ability you can unlock for certain characters that will allow you to survive a fatal attack with 1 HP once per battle, which makes it extremely helpful for Hard difficulty. Unfortunately not every character has access to Reprieve. Cloud and Aerith will have it available as Weapon Skills on multiple of their weapons (Buster Sword and Umbral Blade for Cloud, Timeless Rod, Ceremonial Staff and Gambanteinn for Aerith), whereas Tifa and Cait Sith will be able to unlock Reprieve in their Folios with SP. Red XIII, Barret and Yuffie will not be able to unlock Reprieve.
Other than Reprieve, some good Weapon Skills that you will want to put on your weapons increase pure stat increases like Max HP +200, Max MP +3, Defense +50, Attack Power +20 and Magic Attack Power +20. ATB skills like ATB Charge Rate Up, Opening ATB Bonus and Weapon Ability ATB Recovery are good for generating ATB faster, while MP Recovery Rate Up can be helpful to get extra MP over the course of a chapter during battles.
Hard Difficulty Combat Tactics
For most regular battles, you can skip these entirely either by avoiding them or fleeing if you get into combat. There are very few regular fights that are required to progress, and if you have already leveled up a lot of your Materia in post-game before starting Hard difficulty, then it is best to avoid unnecessary fights. When you do fight, a lot of them can be quickly dealt with by having First Strike on your characters and using abilities like Cloud’s Triple Slash or Red XIII’s Stardust Ray to kill enemies quickly.
For boss fights, each character will have different strengths. Most boss fights will force you to use particular parties, but for a select few you will be able to choose who you want to fight with. Cloud and Red XIII are good damage dealers, while Red also has various support abilities such as Supernal Fervor to cast Haste on your whole team, Watcher’s Respite for a good source of healing without using MP, and Watcher’s Spirit to give ATB boosts to your party members. Tifa and Cait Sith specialize in Stagger Damage %, as they both have abilities that will allow you to increase the Stagger Damage on staggered enemies above the default of 160%. Tifa will have her 
abilities that can be increased with Unbridled Strength, as well as True Strike, while Cait Sith will have the Moogle Knuckle ability.
Aerith is very magic focused with multiple support abilities to help your team like her various wards, whilst Barret is the tank of the team who can increase his defenses with Steelskin and take damage meant for others with Lifesaver. Lastly there is Yuffie, who specializes in exploiting elemental weaknesses with her Ninjutsu abilities, which make her good for both physical and magical damage, as well as melee and ranged attacks.
If you have Assessed the many bosses and enemies during your first playthrough, you will be able to easily check what can be used to pressure and stagger each enemy. Many can be pressured by exploiting their elemental weaknesses (making Yuffie a fantastic all-rounder thanks to her elemental Ninjutsu), while others can be pressured by blocking or dodging attacks, inflicting certain detrimental status effects or interrupting certain attacks.
The hardest part are the boss fights. As you play through, follow the Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Boss Guide. It includes hard difficulty strategies for every boss in the game.
Other Tips for Hard Difficulty
Other tips for Hard mode include:
- Equip “HP <> MP Materia” (found in Chapter 11) to a member you don’t use in battle and you have a healing battery with several thousand MP to heal out of combat. But don’t forget to take it off for that character’s story sections.
- Make sure you fully leveled up the recommended materia. See Fastest AP Farming Method.
- Always smash crates! There’s a decent chance they will contain Mako shards which replenish your MP. This is the only way outside of combat you can regenerate MP in Hard Mode.
- If you’re unsure what element an enemy or boss is weak to, use Assess and then press
and ‘Restart from Last Battle’. This will place you just before said enemy/boss and allow you to adjust your Elemental Materia accordingly. Or you can use our Boss Guide that includes all weaknesses. - Obtain the manuscripts. There are 112 manuscripts total. 50 can be obtained on easy/normal, and another 62 can be obtained on hard difficulty from beating story bosses, side quest enemies and confidential intel bosses. These can allow you to unlock extra abilities and traits through Folios.
- Save regularly! It goes without saying, but if you get into a fight and things go badly and you’ve used up a ton of MP, it’s often best to try again rather than attempt to go on with limited curing capabilities.
- You can regain MP by using a Cushion at a Chocobo Stop to rest. Unlike benches this does recover MP.
Can you think of any more Hard Difficulty Tips? Feel free to share your tactics in the comments below.
For more guides check out Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Wiki.
Makoto says
One more useful tip. U can break boxes, save game, reload save and boxes will respawn, so u can easily refill MP. This worked in Remake and i tested it in DEMO (works for world map resourses too in DEMO), still need confirm for full version of the game.
Yue says
Very helpful strategy guide，appreciate your hard work. Two more question to ask.The first one is, you mentioned when you finish the whole story once, the gaining speed of EXP and AP will increase, does that mean it is recommended to not finish all the playable contents in the first playthrough, for the reason of time saving? The second question is, using chapter select, do we have to finish the chapter we’re playing to take away the items or skill books?cuz it is the case in remake. Thx!!!
Archavia says
The extra EXP/AP isn’t hugely impactful, as there’s so much content you’ll hit level 70 and max out most relevant materia without it anyway. I did all optional content on my first playthrough up until Chapter 12, at which point I focused on finishing the story before continuing, and I was Level 70 before I even got around to starting Hard or the hard VR missions, and by the time I got plat I was about 4M EXP past Level 70. So feel free to play it however you want, it won’t really change much. As for manuscripts, they’ll save as soon as you get them, so for the Side Quest manuscripts on Hard for instance, you can just load up Chapter 13 and do as many as you want, then load up another chapter whenever and have those manuscripts.
SquareEnixAficionado says
Game8.co said it works in rebirth without finishing chapters.
that would be dope so you could focus on getting the manuskripts etc and restart the chapter again on hard only to focus on finishing asap.
can somebody confirm?
Sharius says
doesn’t the new feature about save everywhere of this game make hard mode way easier than part 1? you can just find a crate that recover MP, smash it, save then reload, smash it again, then save and reload until your party get full MP?
Leonhart says
I believe you could also save anywhere too in Part 1
Austin says
The third magnify is in the past Nibelheim story, so that shouldnt count toward the amount available since you cant keep it beyond Chapter 1 when you return to the present
Archavia says
There’s 3 in the present story: one from a Brutal VR mission, one from a Chapter 12 side quest in Cosmo Canyon, and one equipped on Cait Sith when you get him.
Dunny says
Can you still do the trick like in part 1 where you resave at a smash a crate and if it is a mako one save and reload it and keep doing it untill full mana again?
Itachi says
Where do you get more than one Celestial Bangle? I can’t find but 1!
Rdoom says
You can do any battles you want. Just equip the HPMP materia to a member you don’t use in battle and you have a healing battery with several thousand MP to heal out of combat (like my Barret has 9k MP). But don’t forget to take it off for that characters story sections, luckily they start with benches almost always so you can recover the HP right away