To unlock a New Game+ option, beat the game once through and save after the ending and credits have concluded. You can then play through the game again with your items, gear, Materia, and more from your previous quest.

To unlock the Item Fusion Tome, complete mission 8-2-1.

Acquiring the Genji Armor requires you to complete your DMW gallery and to achieve 100% for each piece of the gallery. Genji Armor allows your max HP to reach 99,999, adding permanent Endure and Regen to Zack for as long as the gear is equipped.

The Genji Shield is an extremely powerful piece of gear that’s located in Mission 7-6-6. You have to fight the Magic Pot using the following attacks in this order: Gil Toss, Costly Punch, 99,999 Damage and Octaslash. The Genji Shield, when equipped, gives you permanent Omni Status Guard, absorbs elemental damage and keeps permanently active Barrier and MBarrier.

Most battles in missions can actually be avoided, if you know what to do. Simply hug walls while you're running through areas and battles should be easily avoided. This trick will always work in round-shaped rooms, though it has less of a chance of working in other situations.

At the very beginning of the game, after you fight Behemoth, you will be quickly brought to the second chapter. You'll have a scene with a character named Kunsel, who will brief you about all sorts of important stuff. He'll then tell you to check out the nearby supply pod, where you'll find a Bronze Bangle. However, if you check the pod again, and again, and again (twenty more times, in fact), you will find an item called the Cursed Ring.

The Cursed Ring is a statistical powerhouse, raising your HP, MP and SP by 10%, as well as increasing all stats by ten points. However, you can't use limit breaks, you can't level up, and you can't access the DWMs during battle, meaning it's both a blessing and a curse!

There are hundreds of optional missions in the game, and each and every one of them are worth your time. You'll get lots of special items, gear and materia for completing them, not to mention Gil and "experience" that will go towards leveling up. However, you may notice that there are difficulty levels affixed to each mission. Keep in mind that these fluctuate depending on your level, so if a mission is listed as "very hard" and you don't want to undertake it at the present time, it will become "hard" and then "normal" (and so on) as the difficulty level adjusts to your ever-raising level. This ultimately makes every mission in the game manageable at one point or another.

If you're in need of SP, here's a good way to convert your materia to massive amounts of it. Take any status-raising materia (such as HP Up), and fuse it with a Chocobo Feather or another item that will raise the materia's attributes. Have the attribute added high (which shouldn't take too much SP), keeping in mind that the better-leveled the materia, the better this will work. Once you get the materia, convert it into SP.

By converting a materia like SP++ (30+) fully mastered, I got 150,000 SP. The rarer the materia converted, the more SP you will get from it.

If you want 9,999 HP, try the following. Fuse together two fully-leveled HP Up materias together, and fuse into the materia twenty-five Elixirs (you have to have the item-materia fusion skill to do this). The end result will be an HP Up+ materia with +360% HP (or around there). Elixirs are fairly rare items, but you can get the Elixirs you need by doing missions.

Early in the game, you'll reach a town called Banora. Near the end of the mission there, you'll encounter a weird little minigame where missiles will be shot towards you and you'll have to cut them down out of midair. This seems like a useless exercise, but in fact how many missiles you manage to halt will give you more time when you have to get back to Angeal's mom's house. What's more, you'll get items and other rewards for cutting the missiles down. If you use the added time to scour the town for more items and grab them all, you'll get an additional substantial reward, including an Ether, a Soma, an X-Potion, an Elixir and a Phoenix Down.

There comes a time in the game where you need to follow Aerith around Midgar. If you're getting lost or are just feeling lazy, you can stand in front of her and she'll literally push you to where you need to go. Just be sure to steady yourself in front of her so that she doesn't walk past you.

After leveling-up to a fairly high level (around the time you get the DMW called Lucky Stars), you’re in a good position to master your equipped Materia rather easily. Head to the game’s very first mission, which should be extremely easy for you to complete by this point. Because of the parameter breaks, dying there is unlikely. You can master your equipped Materia rather easily by hitting this mission up over and over again.

At a certain point in the game, you will arrive with a very ill Cloud at Shinra Manor and will have to find new clothes for him. There are four rooms in the manor that you will find are locked as you explore, and if you look through the keyholes of the locked doors, you will see certain items that when counted will give you a combination to a safe which holds Vital Slash Materia. Here’s how to find the digits (From the Editor: this submitter gave us a combination, but in fact the combination is randomly generated on each game, hence you’ll have to find it on your own by doing the following).

First Digit - Knowledge Overflowing (In the room nearest Cloud, you will find a room full of bookshelves. Count the books on the shelves for this number.)

Second Digit - Unfamiliar Faces (In a room on the first floor you will find eerie apparitions floating in a room. Count them for this digit.)

Third Digit - Tasty Reminders From Home (The second locked room on the second floor will hold dumbapples and cans of juice. Count them.)

Fourth Digit - On All Four Legs (The other locked room on the first floor holds a bunch of chairs. Count them up for the final number.)