Materia is the backbone of spell casting and stat improvement in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, adding tons of customizability and strategy to your characters’ loadouts. Adding even another layer to the process, though, is link slots on your weapons and armor. These slots are merged together to allow you to combine the effects of two types of materia for a variety of unique and powerful outcomes. Here are our choices for some of the best materia to link together.
Healing/Fortification/Time + Magnify
Linking a Magnify materia to any other spell will cause that spell to hit additional targets or allies. The ability to hit every ally with a spell makes this one of the absolute best choices to pair with basically any healing or buff spell — especially Healing, Fortification, and Time.
Note that using Magnify with a materia will reduce the potency of the spell you’re casting, but you can reduce the penalty by leveling the Magnify materia. It’s not a bad idea to pair Magnify with a Level Boost materia (more on that below) as early as you can to get it ready to be paired with heal and buff materia later in the game.
Healing + Magic Efficiency
Magic Efficiency materia reduces the MP cost of whichever spell is linked to it. Because of this, there are few spells better suited to linking together than Healing and Magic Efficiency. When it reaches a 3-star level, you’ll be able to have someone casting Curaga at a 50% reduction, which can make a world of difference in some scenarios.
Binding + Warding
If you link a Warding materia to any debuff materia, you’ll be gain resistance to that debuff when enemies try to apply it to you. While this means you should likely swap in specific debuff materia before fighting enemies that use those attacks, one of the best options to regularly keep applied is Binding materia. This will ensure you stay protected from Sleep, Silence, and Berserk — all of which can be immensely detrimental, especially to your spell casters.
Any spell materia + HP Absorption
HP Absorption materia will grant you a small heal when casting whatever spell materia you have linked to it. This heal may not be massive, but it’s free HP that can be crucial to surviving tough encounters. This alone makes it worth linking to one of your offensive spells, especially if you plan to be using it frequently against an enemy who is weak to that element.
Any materia + AP Up
AP Up materia is extremely helpful because it improves the speed in which a linked materia levels up. As such, you’ll want to regularly keep important spell materia linked to this during the first half of the game. It’s also fantastic to link it to HP Up materia as much as possible considering how useful 30% extra HP can be at 5-stars.
Any materia + Level Boost
Linking a Level Boost materia with any other materia will grant you the ability to use the next tier of spell from that materia. For instance, if you use it with a 1-star Fire materia, you’ll be able to use Fira as long as it remains linked to the Level Boost materia. This can really come in handy during the first half of the game when you’re in the midst of leveling various materia, so don’t be scared to swap in certain spells to counter the elemental weaknesses of the enemies in the area you’re exploring.
