Final Fantasy VII/Magic Materia

The magic materia is green. Usually, it has 3 to 5 levels (stars), and each time the materia gains a level it's possible to use a new spell. There are a few exceptions like Ultima. The first star filled at the beginning and the last star being filled means the materia is mastered, thus depending on the stars the materia can usually have 2 to 4 spells; in Ultima's case, only one.

In the various sections Materia are sorted by the AP necessary to master them. Free locations of materia are highlighted in bold.

Restore
The three Cure spells restore the health points of the target; they are associated to the "Holy" element: if cast on an undead enemy, it will be damaged instead. The Regen spell changes the status, and the status will progressively recover health during battle; this spell has not the "Holy" element.

Revive
These two spells will revide a knocked out ally. If linked to a Final Attack materia, the user will be revived automatically whenever he/she is knocked out. Life1 revives the target with minimal HP, while Life2 revives the target with full health. Both spells are Holy-elemental, and will instantly defeat an undead target.

Heal
Poisona cures the "poison" status, while Esuna cures all status ailments. Resist prevents any status alteration: i.e. it also prevents the character from losing any current status alteration.

Fullcure
The Fullcure spell does exactly what the name says: it is a stronger version of "Cure3".

Exit
The Escape spells has limited use: it allows the party to flee a battle, if the player made the mistake of entering an area infested by strong enemies without saving the game beforehand. It doesn't allow the party to escape from boss battles.

Remove is an attack spell that instantly defeats all enemies, including undead. The drawback is that the enemy's Gil are removed, too (the party will gain no Gil from the battle).

Time
Haste doubles the filling speed of the turn gauge of the target. Slow is its converse: it slows down the target. If Haste is cast on all heroes and Slow is cast on all opponents, the party will attack many times more than the enemies.

Stop prevents enemies from acting, until it wears off.

Barrier
Barrier and Magic Barrier cut by half, respectively, physical and magical damage suffered by the target. Wall grants both statuses at once.

Reflect bounces back most spells to the caster. It is great to cast it on all the party during a battle against a strong magic user: the enemy will defeat itself!

Shield
The Shield status is an upgrade to the "Wall" spell above: it prevents all physical damage and absorbs all elemental damage. The target will still suffer non-elemental magic damage, anyway.

Seal
Sleepel has a weaker effect than "Stop" : it wears off if the target is attacked physically. Silence prevents the target from casting any spell.

Transform
This materia inflicts or cures the said statuses, Mini and Toad. When a character or enemy is miniaturized, his/her physical attacks will deal 1 damage only; when a character or enemy is turned into a toad, not only his/her physical attacks deal 1 damage, but also he/she cannot use magic (except for the Toad spell).

Mystify
An enemy affected by the Confu spell will attack random targets, including itself and its allies.

Berserk can be cast on either enemies or allies. When cast on enemies, it has an effect similar to "Silence". When cast on the allies, they will fight automatically without any need to input commands from the menu; this is very useful when fighting weaker enemies or when grinding large amounts of Gil and/or experience points.

Destruct
De-Barrier removes four statuses: Barrier, Magic-Barrier, Reflect and Shield. De-Spell removes the previous four and six more statuses: death force (that prevents instant-death), Haste, Slow and Stop, Regen and Resist. Death is an attack spell that inflicts instant death (it is ineffective on undead targets and heals them to full health).

Attack materia
Base magic is computed by multiplying 6 times (your level + your MP). For example, a level 20 character with 30 MP has base magic damage of 300 (6 × (20 + 30)). To find the amount of damage you'll do with a given spell, use the multiplier given with your base magic damage. Using the previous example, if the character cast Comet, he would do 1 500 damage (300 × 5).

Pairing magic with an All materia drops the damage done to 67% (2/3rds) and using Quadra Magic drops it to 50% damage.

Poison
These spells not only deal damage, but they may also inflict the Poison status to the targets. A poisoned character will progressively lose HP.

Earth
Earth spells are ineffective on flying enemies.

Gravity
The Demi spell drop the target's health to a specific percentage of the maximum: Demi drops health down to 75%, Demi2 drops it to 50%, Demi3 drops it to 25%. If the target was already damaged beyond 75%/50%/25% of its maximum HP, the corresponding demi spell will deal no further damage. For this reason, casting a gravity spell twice on the same target has no effect.

If a target is weak against gravity, Demi2 and Demi3 will instantly defeat him/her.

Most bosses are nearly immune to Gravity element. Effective against Emerald Weapon when used with W-Magic or Quadra Magic.

Comet
Comet and Comet2 inflict non-elemental damage to either one or all enemies, respectively. The latter also hits multiple times.

Contain
Freeze deals ice damage and has a 25% chance to inflict "stop". Break deals earth damage and has a 12.5% chance of petrify the target (instant defeat). Tornado deals wind damage and has a 12.5% chance to inflict "confusion". Flare is probably the less useful of the four: it deals fire damage, but no status ailment at all.

Note that pairing Contain with "All" has no effect.

Ultima
The Ultima spell is the ultimate attack magic: it deals massive non-elemental damage to all enemies.

Spells effect list

 * Field spells: spells that can also be used outside battle.
 * Support spells: battle spells that target the allies.
 * Debuff spells: battle spells that target the enemies but deal no damage.
 * Attack spells: battle spells that deal damage or instantly kill the enemies.

Master Magic
The Master Magic materia basically gives you all the abilities of all the magic materias. It can be gotten either by defeating Emerald WEAPON and trading in the Earth Harp at Kalm, or by mastering all the magic materias and trading them for the Master Magic materia at Cosmo Canyon (if you managed to save that Huge materia anyway). The Master Magic materia can be linked to an "All" or a "Quadra Magic" materia to give all spells the effect of the support materia.

Materia locations
For players who want to master every materia, it may be useful to know how early any green materia can be obtained:

Disc 1, part 1 (Midgar): Disc 1, part 2 (land travels): Disc 1, part 3 (sea travels):  Disc 2:  Disc 3:
 * Lightning (on Cloud)
 * Ice (on Cloud)
 * Restore (Reactor N.1)
 * Fire (shop in Sector 7, or free on Red XIII)
 * [All (Beginner's Hall, Sector 7)]
 * Poison (floor 67, Shinra H.Q.)
 * Heal (shop, Kalm)
 * Earth (shop, Kalm)
 * Seal (shop, Junon)
 * Transform (train tracks, North Corel)
 * Revive (shop, Costa Del Sol)
 * Time (shops after visiting Gongaga)
 * Mystify (shops after visiting Gongaga)
 * Gravity (cave of the Gi, Cosmo Canyon)
 * Destruct (Shinra Mansion, Nibelheim)
 * Exit (shops after visiting Rocket Town)
 * Barrier (shops after visiting Rocket Town)
 * Comet (house, Forgotten Capital)
 * Fullcure (revisit Cosmo Canyon)
 * Contain (White Chocobo, Mideel)
 * Ultima (storyline, North Corel)
 * Shield (Northern Crater)
 * [W-magic (Northern Crater)]

The blue All materia and the yellow W-magic materia are included in this list because they only affect green Magic materia.