In Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion you can fight the super boss Minerva in Mission 9-6-6: The Reigning Deity. Beating Minerva will require some preparation to make it easy, however even without these preparations Minerva should still be pretty manageable. Defeating Minerva will reward you with the Divine Slayer accessory, as well as Divine Rule Broken 
.
Minerva has 10,000,000 HP (77,777,777 on Hard difficulty) and a variety of attacks that deal incredibly heavy damage, with the potential to hit 99,999 damage. Because of this, you will want to break your damage and HP cap, so that you can have 99,999 HP and be able to deal 99,999 damage yourself. You will also want your stats to be very high, preferably with VIT and SPR capped at 255.
For your accessories, you will want to have Genji Shield (or Protect Ring), Genji Armor, Genji Glove and Ziedrich. Genji Shield/Protect Ring will give you permanent Barrier/MBarrier, Genji Armor will break your HP limit and give you permanent Endure/Regen, Genji Glove will break your damage (and healing) limit and give you permanent Critical, and Ziedrich will give +100 to ATK, VIT, MAG and SPR, which will help immensely with damage mitigation. If you manage to max your VIT/SPR stats without this, you can substitute it for Genji Helm, which will make it so you won’t expend any MP, but this isn’t as beneficial as the stats (you can stock up from Ether at Shinra Shop and use that to restore MP during the fight). Ziedrich can be found in a chest in Mission 9-5-6: Even Deeper. For how to acquire each Genji item, please refer to How to Get All Genji Equipment.
For your materia, there are only 4 you really want: Curaga, Costly Punch, Dualcast and Mug. Curaga and Dualcast will let you double cast it to heal ~50,000 HP (more or less, depending on your MAG stat), Mug will let you steal 99 Phoenix Downs at the start of the battle which will allow you to constantly have Raise active so you don’t die, and Costly Punch will be what you use to deal all your damage. The other stat materia slots can be used purely to increase stats. I used a Drainga with HP +800% and Moogle Power with VIT +60 (Drainga HP +500% is a reward from Mission 6-5-5: Arms Development Dept. and Moogle Power VIT +60 is a reward for completing 70% of all missions).
You will want to have high stats on your main materia too, so that you can have 99,999 HP and cap out your VIT and SPR stats, which can be done with Materia Fusion. You can get your Curaga to HP +999% by using the Full Cure HP +200% that you receive from completing 80% of all missions, and then fusing it with any materia that creates Curaga (preferably one that boosts your HP % by a significant amount such as Lucky Stars or HP Up), then dumping a large amount of Fat Chocobo Feathers into it to reach 999%. If you run out of Chocobo Feathers you can keep fusing with HP Up which can be bought from shops. This will cost a very large amount of SP (close to 1,000,000), but if you’ve completed all missions by this point and looted the chests in missions that give large amounts of SP, you should have plenty. You can also convert materia you don’t use for extra SP, there should be plenty of SP to gain. You will also get more than 99 Fat Chocobo Feathers across all missions. Do this same process with the Drainga HP +500% until you are high enough to reach 99,999 HP, which for me was 800% at Level 76.
For Costly Punch, I created one with SPR +95 by fusing a Hammer/Magical/Goblin Punch with Rebirth Flame MAG +80 (reward from Mission 9-6-3: Weapons Gone Haywire), then using Mythril until you get high enough SPR to reach the 255 cap. For Mug, I created one with VIT +40 by fusing a Steal with any materia that creates Mug, then using enough Adamantite to reach the 255 cap. You cannot fuse Dualcast with anything, so cannot add stats to it.
To summarise, the gear I used to get VIT and SPR to 255 with a high MAG stat and 99,999 HP and damage are as follows. You can change this up as you desire, but this works well:
Materia:
- Curaga HP +999%
- Drainga HP +800%
- Costly Punch SPR +95
- Mug VIT +40
- Moogle Power VIT +60
- Dualcast
Accessories:
- Genji Shield
- Genji Armor
- Genji Glove
- Ziedrich
For the actual fight itself, make sure you use a Phoenix Down before the battle to have Raise. As soon as the battle starts, steal with Mug to get 99 Phoenix Downs. Now if you happen to die during the fight, you can immediately use another Phoenix Down to keep you going. Unload Costly Punches on Minerva, blocking attacks when necessary and healing with Curaga any time your health gets below 50%. With Barrier/MBarrier and 255 VIT/STR, most of the regular attacks won’t be too damaging.
The only attacks that you will have to worry about are Ultima and Judgment Arrow. Ultima will hit 99,999 damage if you don’t block it, and can potentially hit 70,000+ if you do block it. Whenever you see Minerva casting Ultima, heal up and block. Judgment Arrow will be Minerva’s special ability, which will deal heavy damage, drain all your MP and AP, and mostly notably remove your status effects – meaning it will remove Raise. When you see Minerva preparing her special ability, heal up to tank the damage, then immediately use a Phoenix Down to regain your Raise, and use an Elixir to restore your MP so you can continue casting Curaga (alternatively, you can just use X-Potions/Elixirs for healing as you will likely have a surplus of these if you weren’t using them excessively during missions). Use your limit breaks as you get them to add on significant damage, and continue using Costly Punches. This battle will take a few minutes due to her massive pool of health, but with 99 Phoenix Downs it’s very hard to die.
Related Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII Reunion Guides:
- Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII Reunion – Wiki & Strategy Guide
- Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII Reunion – All Collectible Locations (100% Trophies & Missables)
- Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII Reunion – All Mail Locations
- Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII Reunion – All Flower Wagon Part Locations
- Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII Reunion – All Shop Locations
- Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII Reunion – All Fan Club Locations
- Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII Reunion – All Nibelheim Seven Wonders Locations
- Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII Reunion – All Missions (Unlock Requirements & Rewards)
- Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII Reunion – DMW 100% Guide
- Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII Reunion – All Genji Equipment
- Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII Reunion – All Materia Locations
- Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII Reunion – All Accessories Locations
- Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII Reunion – Minerva Boss Guide
- Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII Reunion – Trophy Guide & Roadmap
Thank you for the guide, one thing I’m confused about is it says “You cannot fuse Dualcast with anything, so cannot add stats to it.” but in the video it has MP +60%. I know it’s not needed, but how do you even get that?
It has MP +60% by default.
U can dodge most of Minerva attacks using Aerial Drain materia. Especially useful against Ultima, just after animation starts use jump, really easy to do. Also works against Krysta, Flash Slash and Photon Feathers but for last can be tricky.
I just use a normal Dodge to not get hit by Ultima, i have found the right timing to dodge it so it won’t hit, no need for Arial Drain on that one, and no need to block it either, just one dodge at the right time is all you really need, just as the screen becomes white dodge and you avoide being hit by it.
The Guide says you can only use 9 feathers in Materia Fusion but you can actually use more/all when you move to the tens position.
Thanks for the guide as always.
You can actually use more than 9 Fat Chocobo Feathers at a time, you just have to press left on the d-pad and you can increment by 10.
Some things to say regarding hard mode. From the Video id guess youre fighting her on normal difficulty.
1. Flash Slash removes all status effects (Buffs) that arent permanently generated by the Genji Armor, that means your Raise is gone. Also apples to invincible, gone with the first hit.
2. Judgement Arrow does 1Mio damage and negates Raise while hitting you (instant death) you need to reduce it to 75% damage (remove the firts bar) and have 75k health left to survive it.
3. All her regular attacks do about twice the damage shown in your video.
4. Guessing by how often you have to hit her with costly punch and the amaount of damage one punch does (almost not visible) on hard mode her health is actually 80-100Mio HP.
Dont know the exact amount since im not able to count my attacks while fighting her but im pretty sure its 100Mio.
Hard mode’s Minerva HP is 77 million (or to be exact: 77,777,777)
Great guide but a few differences on hard mode not mentioned that I had to figure out:
1. 20,000,000 health is not true, this is PSP version only. She seems to have 77,777,777 on Hard.
2. Judgement Arrow hits at 99,999 at max. You have to reduce her ability gauge to 75%, this will hit for 75,000 so make sure you have the health to tank it. Using guide method, hit her twice then heal immediately. In the second half, you can get away with hitting her only once.
3. Flash Slash removes raise, alongside any other buffs you have. It’s best to avoid the hit entirely if you can, or block it if you have to. You will blow through all your phoenix downs if you let the move touch you and want to keep raise active. She does tend to move away from you slightly before she does it, so wait her out and get away if she uses it. In her second half, she will always use it after Photon Feather. If she uses it outside of that, she will use it twice in a row.
4. Ultima can be dodged very easily, I’d recommend doing this if you can, or save your phoenix downs for this. It will kill you whether you’re blocking or not, it hit me for 99,999 regardless.
5. You should try to block everything else. They don’t hit too hard with this build.
Hope this helps any crazy people like me who insisted on beating her on hard. It took over an hour!
Very useful info on lowering ability gauge to 75% for judgement arrow. Was wondering why i getting 1 shot even with max hp and stats.
Very usefull for me aswell. Also kept wondering why I was taking 99,999 damage with full stats. Figured out that I had to land 2 costly punch and then heal up with something fast above 75,000, just wanted to confirm this. The timing tough is hard to manage you have to be close to her and use 2 costly punch ASAP and then elixir (or whataver to heal up) At first i thought I had the wrong equipment even tough I had maxed out VIT and SPI How can you evade ultima tough? I have managed a few times but don’t know how.
How many times does she use Judgment arrow?
Thank you for clearing this up.
Or using SP master will reduce all damage taken, along with increasing damage dealt. This means no need to worry about reducing Judgement Arrow as even at 100% will deal less than 99,999 damage.
I tried doing it on Hard with the setup advised in this guide and ended up running out of phoenix downs about 3/4 of the way through (+ it took an age to get that far). This is how I did it, and it it only took about 20-25 mins:
Gear was the same is in this guide.
Max out ATK, VIT, SPR, HP (99,999) & AP (999)
You want to have a maxed out Assault Twister + (VIT +100) with SP Turbo (SPR +94) or SP Turbo Attack
(these 2 combined will stop Judgment arrow in 2 attacks)
High Jump (to avoid Ultima mainly but can avoid other attacks as well)
Curaga (for healing! Also had +500%HP for me)
Fill up on Somas from the shop so you can refill AP when you need to.
I had Costly Punch (because it had +999%HP) equipped but it’s not required.
Last Materia was AP up++ (+970%HP – overkill to get to 999!)
Sword proficiency must be at 95% to get max damage from your attacks & for stance blocks to take 0 damage (I had already grinded to get it to 95% so I don’t know how viable this is without that), and all commands have to be used from stance.
With all of those things, its much more comfortable as you don’t need to worry about your health constantly from Costly punch & Judgment Arrow isn’t a threat anymore. You still need to be careful to not over extend (flash slash still takes off big chunks of health) but the main thing to watch out for is making sure you time your high jumps correctly to avoid Ultima.
I keep trying this fight, I get her about half health and when she downs me, I revive but before I can use another phoenix down. She kills me again….
I wish I knew this a long time ago
great guide, cleared platinum in 40 hours. A+
I got my mug materia to +84 MAG with dark matter.
I went to grind more. Im trying to fuse it up to +98 to that I can do the last point to change it to +100 SPR
No matter what I do now it won’t let mug stay mug in materia fusion. It keeps trying to make it gil toss.
My vitality is maxed but I can’t Max my spirit now. I keep trying to do this on hard mode but her magic is one shooting me.
I thought the genji shit was supposed to half and absorb elements?