About Ruby Weapon

Ruby WEAPON is the second WEAPON creature added to the American version of Final Fantasy VII and one of the hardest bosses in the game, possibly even tougher than his ccounterpart, Emerald WEAPON. He can be found in the desert surrounding the Gold Saucer after Ultimate WEAPON is destroyed. You'll see his head, a little red thing sticking out of the sand, somewhere in the desert. Fly into the head in the Highwind to initiate combat.

What To Equip

To stand any chance at all in this battle, you will need to have all of your characters equipped with enough HP Plus and MP Plus Materia to have all of their HP at 9999 and MP at 999. These Materia can be bought in Cosmo Canyon. They raise more HP and MP as they grow levels, so may need to get every one to grow a couple of levels or equip each character with more than one of each Materia.

This next part may sound weird, but it is the most important part of pre-battle preparations. You must kill off two of your characters. Why? Well, Ruby WEAPON cannot be hurt unless his claws are buried in the sand. However, he will not bury his claws until he uses his Whirlsand attack twice. This attack removes one character from combat, so you will be left with only one character to fight with. But, if two of your characters are already dead, Ruby WEAPON will automatically bury his claws and you can still revive these dead characters.

You also must have the Knights of the Round summon Materia (if you don't know how to get this, see my section on Gold Chocobos) and the Hades summon Materia, or the Master summon Materia. Equip all of these Materia on one of the characters you killed earlier. In addition, you will need three Mime Materia (again, see my section on Gold Chocobos). However, you can only get one from the Materia caves, so you will need to master it in order to get another one, and then master that one to have a third one born. I found that the best place to gain AP for these Materia is in the jungle around Mideel. Equipping the materia you want to master on either Cloud's or Cid's triple growth weapon will help speed up the process. Equip one Mime Materia on everyone.

Another absolutely necessary Materia for this battle is W Summon. You can get it from the Battle Arena in the Gold Saucer after you get 64 000 BP. It takes a while to get, but if you equip Ribbon on your fighter, you will have a much better chance and will get this amount of BP much faster. Equip this Materia on the same person who has Knights of the Round and Hades equipped.

Before going into battle, be certain that the person you kept alive is equipped with the Revive-All Materia combination, so he or she can resurrect your other party members

Lastly, you'll probably want to have everyone equipped with double or triple growth weapons to take full advantage of the AP gained at the end of battle. Also, you may want to equip your characters with things that protect them from Frog and Small status effects, such as the Transform-Added Effect combination in their armour or the White Cape accessory.

The Battle

Immediately after combat begins, have your one character resurrect all of your other characters. As you soon as your person who has W Summon on them gets a turn, have them summon Hades and Knights of the Round at the same time, in that order. This is necessary because Knights of the Round usually causes Ruby WEAPON to hit your party with Ultima, practically wiping them out. However, Hades casts stop on Ruby WEAPON, so he can't cast Ultima. Have all of your characters mime this combination until Ruby dies. It may take a while, but keep at it and you'll soon reap the benefits of killing Ruby WEAPON.

After you win, you will receive an item called the Desert Rose. Take this item to the Kalm Traveller, a man who can be found in the upstairs room in one of the houses in Kalm. He will trade you the Desert Rose for a gold Chocobo (a pretty good trade, if you ask me!).