Overall Midgar has nothing special to get. There are a few odds and ends but there is nothing you can do to raise your level considerably, so most of this section will be based on speed. In Reactor 1, make sure you fight every battle you encounter. The enemies here can be killed in one shot, with the exception of the machine-like enemy, however you can use Bolt to kill it in one shot. Make sure you don't forget the Cure materia, though you cannot equip it. The boss is very easy to beat. Cloud uses Bolt, Barret attacks, and you don't attack when its nervous (shakes violently). The ten minute timer at the end is no challenge, but don't forget Jessie on the way out. You will then proceed to Sector 7. Get your pay from Barret and use it to purchase TWO Cure materia and (I suggest) two Bolt materia. Make sure you don't forget to get the All Materia in the beginners hall. I suggest linking it to a Cure so you can cure all your characters at once in a round. Anyway, leave Sector 7, and head off to Reactor 5. The train scene is elementary, and there is no point to it. Watch out though, if you hear a chime, it means someone just stole some Gil, so take it back. Once you are in the tunnels, just follow the linear path into Reactor 5. In the reactor, go to the bomb set point and set the bomb like before. No boss this time, not yet. Head out of the reactor the same way you did in Reactor 1. Once you reach the save point however, jack up all three character's limit bars, but DON'T use their limits. Save and then move on to the next boss. Beat the Air Buster buy using the character's limits breaks. Use them when the Air Buster is facing AWAY from them in order to maximize damage. Once he's finished, Cloud will be separated from the party and replaced by Aeris. You must first escaoe from the church. You can use the barrels if ya like, but you can always send her running. Once you do escape, you'll be able to explore Sector 5. In the main town area, make sure you go to the second floor of the tall building and speak to the boy laying down. Then investigate the dresser, and search the middle drawer but don't take the 5 Gil. Also, check out the flier on the side. Leave and go to Aeris' house. After some BS, head out to Sector 6. The enemies there may be slightly difficult, but you should be able to muscle it out. Now, head into Wall Market.
You have two choices, you can whack out Wall Market quickly and easily, or you can try to get Cloud chosen. Text in Bold denotes optional points, but you must do all of them to get Cloud chosen. Now, go to Corneo's Mansion and speak to the guard. Then go to the clothing store and speak to the person. She will send you to the bar where the owner is at. Speak to the owner and select a dress that feels soft and shimmers. Then, head off to the "restaurant" and order the BBQ Plate, and say it was fine. You should get a Pharmacy Ticket. Take it and go to the Item Shop and trade it for a Digestive. Go back to the bar and give it to the person in the bathroom to get an item. Save. Now, go down and speak to the man with silver hair to get a Member Card. Go into the Honeybee Inn and go to the room where the girls are and keep speaking to them to get an item. Next, stay in one of the other rooms, and you should get another item. Then, head on over to the Materia Store. The guy will ask you to get an item from the regular Inn. Go to the Inn, sleep, and buy the most expensive item. Then return to the man in the materia store and you'll have all the optional items. Now, save again and go to the Clothing Store. You will need to get a wig, so go to the gym. Beat the guy in Squats to get the best wig. Then return to the clothing store to finish off Cloud's fag job. Then head up to Corneo's Mansion. Go get Tifa and then to the presentation. Corneo should choose Cloud, if so, skip this next part. Get the items on the lower right of the room and beat the cronies. Head back to Corneo's "office" and then to the back. Get the Hyper from the back and then you'll be sent to the sewers.
Get both characters (Tifa and Aeris) and then fight the Aps. Use Fire against the Aps as well as regular attacks as needed. You may need to Cure your party at times. Anyway, once you are done, head out of the sewer, make sure you get the Steal materia on the way. You will now be in the Train Graveyard and its time for some work. You can steal Ethers from Deenglows. An Ether sells for 750 Gil. Get 20 and you can have some major Gil early on. You can also face the Eligor, in which you can steal the Striking Staff from. Bear in mind that the Eligor is hard to get, but the weapon is hard to get at this point in the game. Finally, leave the graveyard and move on to Sector 7 Pillar. Go up the pillar to Barret. Make some preparation to fight Reno. In the fight, if Reno casts Pyramid on a character, attack the Pyramid to remove it and free the character. Reno has 1,000 HP so magic attacks are a good choice for the battle. You will eventually leave Sector 7 and be back in 6. Make sure you get the Sense Materia in the park. Then head to Aeris' house. Be sure to return to the room with the 5 Gil to get a Turbo Ether from the boy. After more BS, head to Wall Market Gun Shop. Buy the batteries from the man in the back, and then follow the kids at the top of the town. You will then climb the big pipe to the Shinra Building.
Choose to "Bust on in!" to save time. The guards here shouldn't pose too much difficulty. Regular attacks are enough to dispatch them. Be sure to check out the flier on the bulletin board of the place. Then, go to the Elevator to head up to the 59th Floor. On the way, if you happen upon a Moth Slasher, steal a Carbon Bangle off it, as it has the most materia slots of any armor to date. Now, on the 59th, you will have to fight three enemies to get the Level 60 card. Now, work your way up the building. On the 62nd, make sure you get the password right on the first try. Do so by going to the nearby library. Look at the panel then go in. Find a book (there are 6 different ones, two per shelf) that doesn 't match the topic on the panel. It has a number, count to the nth letter and take note of it. Do the same for the other three rooms, and you should be able to form a four letter word (not necessary, you just need three letters in reality). Then compare those letters to the different passwords and you should get a match. On the 63rd Floor, it is possible to get all three coupons. Do so by opening the rightmost door and the upper right one, and utilize the vents to navigate to the the other coupons. It is imperative that you get a Four Slots and the All materia here. Proceed until you get to the 67th Floor. Here, you can get a Poison materia and Save but don't go up just yet. You can fight Moth Slashers here and get Carbon Bangles. But, the main thing you want are SOLDIER: 3rds. Get one of them in a battle, and steal a Hardedge off of them (Hardedge is a powerful sword for Cloud). Now, go to the 68th floor, and fight the H-0512. Use Fire to kill it. You will gain an Enemy Skill materia after the battle (the materia is located in the capsule). Then, proceed with the game until you are able to move after the escape. Head up to the top floor and your party will split. With your party of three, head down the glass elevator to fight the Hundred Gunner and Heli Gunner. You must have materia to hit it (Barret can only physically attack it). The boss can be quite difficult if you don't know what you are doing, so make sure you Cure (should be linked to All) your party when you deem necessary. Eventually after a few minutes of Gas-Break-Honk you will beat him. The scene transfers over to Cloud. As Cloud you must fight Rufus (my hero!), who isn't powerful physically as his position in Shinra. Be sure to defeat Dark Nation to increase the final bonus as well. The battle should be rather easy. Once it is done, you will head out of Shinra HQ. Beat the motorcycle minigame, and defeat the Motorball by using Bolt magic
Midgar to Junon
You will end up in the Midgar Area. Well, it's finally time for some powering up. What you are about to do now will be imperative for an action later on. Look for random battles in the area very close to Midgar. You need to learn the Matra Magic enemy skill from the Custom Sweeper. You do not need to manipulate it, rather just wait for it to attack with the spell. Once you get it, head over to Kalm. Follow the storyline, and make sure you get the Megalixer in the cabinet. While you are here, make sure you have a set of three Fire materia, and that you have 30 or so Hypers. Go to the Chocobo Farm now, speak to the Chocobo in the pen (Say Kweh) to get the Choco/Mog Summon. Also buy the Chocobo Lure materia from Billy, you'll need it later on. Then head out to the swamplands. This is a very important time. Many who play FF7 still get the Chocobo and avoid the Midgar Zolem like hell until later on. You will fight him here and now. Time for some major preparation.
Midgar Zolem: You will not be fighting to just beat him, you will be fighting to get the Beta enemy skill, which has the power of a high level magic. Now, to prepare. First of all, you should have Red XIII in your party. Overall, he has the highest MaxHP in the party. I also suggest Barret but use who you are comfortable with. PUT ALL CHARACTERS IN THE BACK ROW. You are not going to physically attack the Zolem. Now then, for Red XIII's armament. He should have an armor with two linked slots (Carbon Bangle). Link Elemental and Fire in the bangle. Equip NO OTHER Magic Materia for Nanaki. Now, for Cloud. Equip Poison and Fire materias. I don't recommend any other. For Barret, equip a Fire and why not the Cover you have. All characters must have Cure but DO NOT link it with All. Finally, give a Hyper to each character to increase the speed of the limit meter. My suggestion to you is that you have your characters on Hyper all the time, it increases damage done by attacking and the miss rate is only negligible. Now then, go to a very low area of the marshe's edge, but not at the extreme bottom. Now, SAVE, and watch the snakes movements. Just for the hell of it, see if you can make it to the other side of the swamp. It is possible to beat the Zolem even w/o the chocobo. Remember, the snake can not make hard turns (yes its true!), he must hit the edge to make a turn so watch him. The second it hits the far edge to turn towards the other end (your end), make a bee-line to the other side. Depending on the snakes movement towards the other side, you have a good chance to reach the other side without a hitch. Doing this gives you an advantage because if you win the upcoming battle with the snake, you won't have to face him a second time. On the other side, SAVE and then go two inches into the coast to fight the Midgar Zolem. Here's the trick, the Zolem will always do 200 damage to your characters because they are in the back row. However, each attack will raise your limit bar to full. That means, you have another character Cure the hit character (he must do that), and THEN the character uses his limit. Meanwhile, Poison should be casted on the snake until it is in Poison status (saves time). KEEP TRACK OF THE DAMAGE YOU ARE DOING! After a certain amount, the snake will stand up. Once you reach approximately 2,500, Red XIII should NO LONGER ATTACK, regardless of his limit meter. Instead, he should be kept at his Max HP (I hope it is over 600), while another character attacks. Eventually the snake will reach a point where he will remove the character who lasts hits him out of battle. It will be no good if Red XIII with the Enemy Skill is knocked out. Once that character is gone, its game time. Let the snake attack. If he hits Red XIII, CURE RED XIII AND WAIT FOR THE NEXT ATTACK (Your ATBs should always be ready). If hit hits the other character, that character uses the Attack Command, and Red uses the Cure command on himself. This will cause the other character to attack, where the snake will immediately counter with Beta, killing the other character, but HOPEFULLY not killing Red. Beta causes Fire damage, but the damage is halved for Red due to Elemental+Fire. Now, why use Cure right after instead of Beta? Zolem has a bad habit. He may attack you real quick and it takes too long to get Beta. That's where the Cure comes in, it will be casted right after Beta, putting Red beyond the danger point. Now, the Zolem may knock out Red. That is unfortunate, and you will have to restart. If he just attacks, immediately use Beta and he'll be toast. Also, Poison comes in handy. While all this crap goes on, Poison is slowly killing the Zolem. If you are lucky, it will kill him right after he uses Beta. Whatever the case, you may need to retry the battle a few times, but it should work out. Now, if you did make it across the marsh, just go back to safety. If he caught you in the middle of the marsh and you were successful in getting Beta, OPEN the menu IMMEDIATELY. Revive dead characters and use a Tent. Then SAVE, even in this area. Then try to escape. If you get into the battle again, well, you can always kill him off with Beta which will do 1,000 damage.
Whew! What a work out. Enter the Mythril Mines. Make it through the area. You can learn Fire Breath from an Ark Dragon, but it don't hold anything to Beta. Leave the mines and you'll be in the Junon area. It is time to do two things at once. Go to the big forest in this area and save. You will now attempt to get Yuffie (Hope you remember the choices of answers cause I don't! :p) but while you are at it, you'll be jacking up your limit breaks. Let's use Cloud as an example. After the fight you had with the Midgar Zolem, Cloud should have definitely learned Cross Slash (1-2 limit). That means, once you kill approximately 80-100 enemies, you can obtain the 2-1 (Blade Beam) limit. Limits do not concern with AP or EXP, it only depends on enemies killed, no matter how wussy (or strong) they are. Note, this doesn't have a specific meter. You should be able to learn Blade Beam (you may have already did) fairly quickly. Why not? You've been killing enemies since the start of the game (Yes! They count even if you don't have L1-2, in fact you can learn 2-1 before 1-2, but it is NOT recommended. Learn them linearly). The best way to kill enemies is to fight the Capparwires in these very forests as they can appear in groups of 5. That's where Matra Magic comes in. Matra usually can kill one of these suckers, and it affects them all, allowing you to kill five enemies fairly quickly. You may also get fights with three Formulas or two Capparwires, nothing that Matra can't fix. Since you'll be doing a hell of a lot of fighting, you are bound to find Yuffie along the way. I highly suggest learning all the limits possible (up to 3-2) for your main three characters. They can do a hell of a lot of damage (note that Strength does affect the power of limit breaks, however, they are still considerably powerful) to the side. I highly recommend not doing this for Aeris (I really recommend not using her at all) as you will lose her at the end of Disc 1 (If I spoiled that for you, proceed to kick yourself in the ass ten times). Once you are done with your killing spree head on into Junon. You will eventually fight the Bottomswell. Well, unfortunately for him, you can use Beta to cause massive damage, 700-1000 a shot. Follow the BS at the end until you are able to explore Junon.
In Junon, you will only have control of Cloud. You will be forced to play a minigame, and if you do well, you get 10 Ethers, but doing well isn't necessary. Afterwards, you'll meet my favorite character, Heidegger. You will then be free to explore Junon. Make sure you visit the Intermediate Players Hall in order to get an Enemy Skill Materia. Proceed with the game until you get to the second minigame. In this game, DO NOT get more than 90 points. Try to get 70, 80 or 90 only (remember, the last maneuver is worth 30, so take your hands off the control pad the second you get 70). Why? For one, the Force Stealer is useless. For two, you get an HP Plus, ten thousand times more valuable. So get the HP Plus! Afterwards you will depart from the Eastern Continent.