Along with earning experience points in Final Fantasy 7 Remake, characters will gain Skill Points (SP) and Ability Points (AP). The former is gained every time you level up and can be spent on skills for different weapons. Such skills include additional health, more defense, more physical damage and so on. Meanwhile, Ability Points are accumulated by equipping and using different Materia – as they gain AP, Materia will go up in rank (denoted by stars) which increases their effectiveness.
Let’s start with farming SP. Head into Corneo’s Colosseum or the Shinra Combat Simulator to undertake some additional battles. These will dole out a good amount of experience for leveling up and earning more SP. If you want to speed up the process even more, equip the EXP Up Materia and play different chapters via Chapter Select on Hard Mode. Hard Mode provides triple the EXP and double the AP so it’s very good for gaining SP quickly.
Once you’ve hit the level cap, you must now find different Manuscripts for characters to earn more SP. Each character has their own specific Manuscript which is split into 14 volumes each – Cloud has “The Art of Swordplay”, Barret has “The Sharpshooter’s Companion”, Tifa has “The Way of the Fist” and Aerith has “Telluric Scriptures”. Make sure to farm some Moogle Medals and pick up one Manuscript for each character from the Moogle Emporium.
Interestingly enough, the first three volumes of each Manuscript are only available on the default difficulty. You’ll need to play Hard Mode and either complete challenges or defeat certain foes to earn the other volumes. But if you seek full game mastery of each weapon, then this is the way to do it.
Farming AP isn’t difficult, by comparison. First, make sure that you have a number of different Materia equipped so they can be leveled all at the same time. Fighting in Corneo’s Colosseum, particularly against the Slum Outlaws and Shinra Warriors, nets 45 AP and 51 AP respectively. You can also use the AP Up Materia to increase AP earned by 100 percent.
To get this Materia, you first need to get the Pedometer Materia. Look for the steel staircase in front of Aerith’s house in Chapter 14 to find it. After equipping it, you need to walk or run 5,000 Steps. Complete this and you’ll receive the AP Up Materia. Finally, Hard Mode will provide double AP gain so you can keep playing different chapters on that difficulty to max out each Materia.