Final Fantasy VII/Gongaga

The desert prison is a rough place, but mostly because there are enemies that either try to steal stuff from you or explode in your face. So be quick to dispatch the Bandit if you encounter one should you want to keep your stuff. You start here with whoever you picked to be with you in Gold Saucer, and Cait Sith.

Head to the larger area below. There is a pest for a person following you and laughing in your face, ignore him. A lot of people here seem to suggest that you can get back up if you win a Chocobo race. Also, this Boss person seems to be in charge. You meet Mr. Coates in the bottom of the area, but it turns out he's just an underling. There's a save point here, as well as a bar on the bottom right corner where you can buy some supplies.

Barret, who you misplaced temporarily, is in the bigger house on right side. Barret kills an eavesdropper behind a couch and then the rest of the folk come to hear about Barret and Dyne's story. In the end, you need to pick one character besides Barret to your group. You can grab the chance to rest for free in the cab of the Shin-Ra truck.

Head back up past the save point, through the gate. Go up again, you'll note a manhole with an empty chest in the bottom, through the gate on the left; into the desert. Go through the open gate on the right, into the area where a guy is walking in circles. Then, keep running to the right. You'll reach an area with a big crack in the ground. When you reach the area with the wandering man, stroll about until you get into a battle with Death Claw. You can learn the Enemy Skill Laser from him. This is the only point in the game where you can learn it until Disc 3, so use this opportunity while you have it. Now that you have the Manipulate materia, it should be a piece of cake. Just manipulate the Death Claw and have him cast it on whoever has Enemy Skill materia equipped. Also, you can learn Matra Magic (if you haven't already) from Bull Motor in the general Corel Prison area.

At this point, you should equip Barret pretty well, because the Boss person shows up here. He seems to be quite bitter and wants to kill Barret, and Barret fights him alone.

Dyne

If you haven't used Barret much since Midgar, you probably have him on a pretty low level (~18-20) when you meet Dyne. In this case, a good strategy is to attack and heal in turns. On higher levels, you may be able to attack for two turns and then heal - but in any case, you need a lot of healing, because Dyne has some pretty nasty attacks. You may not even need to use normal attacks, because in this fight Barret's limit bar tends to shine red hot every other turn anyway, even without Fury status. Aside from physical attacks, summons work well. The Flame Thrower Enemy Skill and Fire2 are good against him, and you'll see pretty good results with Ifrit as well.

There is also the cheap to way to win, but it takes a bit of work before combat. You will need Barret's second 3rd level limit break, Angermax. To build it up beforehand, just run around in the previous screen until you encounter the Death Claw enemy, which can be manipulated to use Laser on Barret. When Barret's limit bar is full, simply run away or kill off the enemies through non-Angermax means, and then enter battle with Dyne. Angermax delivers an one-turn kill under most circumstances, but make sure that Barret can survive at least one attack from Dyne. Also, if you want to minimize the amount of damage you take, change to the back row. You'll do less damage, but you'll also get hurt less.

Level	Hit Points	Magic	Weak against	Strong against	Absorbs
23	1200	20	None	Gravity	None

After beating Dyne, he throws a piece of jewelry to Barrett then jumps off the cliff to his death.

Chocobo race

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Rare item

Get the Ramuh materia in the Chocobo Jockey room.

Now Coates seem to be more eager to sign you up for a Chocobo race, and a woman called Ester shows up and becomes your manager. Ester gets you to the jockey room by elevator and explains how to control the Chocobos. In the jockey room, there's Ramuh materia which you should definitely pick up.

For specifics on racing, see the Chocobo section. A simple hint is to hold down +++ 1 + 3 , which reduces your Chocobo's stamina drain while racing. Actually, you can't mess anything up here; if you lose, you get to try again, and again. Once you win, Dio sends you a letter of congratulations, gives you the Buggy, your first vehicle in the game, and hints that Sephiroth went to Gongaga.

Enemy Skills

Early level up

If you head back to Junon's upper part of town, you can fight some tough enemies that give tons of experience at this point in the game. Head toward the middle section of the upper part that is just a long hallway with the elevator mechanic you met previously and a dead-end at this point. At the bottom end, there is something on the wall that looks like a red button. Press it and an alarm goes off. Now, in this area there will be tough enemies, Death Machine and Slalom, that may be a bit difficult for the casual player. Death Machines are the ones to look out for, as they deal heavy damage; whereas the Slaloms like to try to poison everyone so have Star Pendants on and you'll be fine. Once you've had enough, exit into town and you can rest at an inn, buy items, etc. This can be repeated. Aqualung is almost a necessity to survive here.

Now that you have the Buggy and the Manipulate materia, you can start learning some good Enemy Skills. Start by getting Aqualung from the Harpy monster. Harpy can be found by driving around in the desert area around the Gold Saucer. Just manipulate Harpy and make it cast Aqualung on your party to learn it. Next, drive around the beach close to Gongaga until you run into the Beach Plugs to learn Big Guard. This is one of the most useful enemy skills in the game.

At this point, it's theoretically (and practically, if you're patient) possible to drive back to Costa del Sol, take a ship back to Junon for 100 gil, and then find a green-and-white bird called Zemzelett from the Junon area. You can Manipulate it to learn the White Wind Enemy Skill, which is very useful. It's a long journey though, and it's not strictly necessary; you may want to wait until later for this. With that in mind, to reach the lower Junon area, use the freight elevator beside the save station in the hallway where you first trained for Rufus' parade.

If you do go back and get White Wind, you can head back inside Mythril Mine to get Flame Thrower from the Arkdragon if you missed it the first time or if you need it for a second Enemy Skill materia.

Then, you can battle Midgar Zolom and learn Beta, if you're really daring. He's still a very tough monster at this stage in the game, but Beta is a great skill to have as it causes heavy fire damage to all opponents. Make sure you have Big Guard before going into this battle. You'll also want to give each party member Tranquilizers before hand and put your Enemy Skill user in the back row.

Gongaga

To continue the game, head back to Gongaga - the big blown-up Mako reactor to the south, in middle of the woods. When you get to Gongaga, you hear Reno and Rude talking about the ladies. Elena shows up, alerts the others, and then you're fighting Reno and Rude.

Reno and Rude

Individually, the two Turks are not much of a worry, because if you manage to kill one of them, the other will flee soon after. Just remember to heal at times, as some of the attacks like Turk Light are fairly nasty. Focus your attacks on Rude, since he has the ability to heal himself and Reno. Ramuh summon is pretty useful. Defeat Reno first and receive Fairy Tale or defeat Rude first and receive an X-Potion.

Level	Hit Points	Magic	Weak against	Strong against	Absorbs
22/23	2000	230/135	None	Gravity	None

After the fight, head up to the reactor. When you get close, Scarlet and Tseng will show up in a helicopter, look into the reactor, say something about Huge Materias, and leave. Now look into the hole where Scarlet looked into, and reach for the thing in the bottom to get the Titan materia. Now head down and follow the path to left. You should find a Deathblow command materia somewhere here too. Head north, to the Gongaga Village.

People here will sell you stuff you've not seen before (for example, Mystify and Time materias, which are probably useful at some phase, and a Fury Ring), and talk about an explosion years ago. You also run into a few old people who want to know about some SOLDIER called Zack. Tifa and Aeris, if either or both of them are in your party, will react to this for some reason. Go to the inn in the far left corner where you can find a chest containing an X-Potion. In the Mayor's home in the far right corner, you can get a White M-Phone, which is a weapon for Cait Sith.

After you've stocked up, it's time to head down and left, to the world map, and head west.