FF7 Rebirth: WTF Is The Stat-Swapping Materia Good For?

Most of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth’s magical orbs, known as materia, are rather self-explanatory. Many give you access to a new attack spell, others heal or revive you, others buff your party, and many more debuff your opponents. But there’s a three materia orbs that might initially seem to be rather useless: The ones that swap two different stats on a character.

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Rebirth has three such materia, one that lets you swap hit points and magic points, another that swaps physical and magic attack values, and another that switches physical defense for magic defense. Let’s go over where you can find them and what some use cases are.

HP⇔MP Materia

Let’s start with perhaps the strangest materia in Rebirth. HP⇔MP Materia swaps your HP and MP values. Given that just about any character’s HP will reach the thousands and MP values will make it into the low hundreds if you spec your characters out right, why on earth would you use this?

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Perhaps the most direct use of this materia is to help with open world exploration and World Intel tasks. As you go about the world, the more fighting you do, the more you’re likely to eventually run low on MP and HP as you recover health from fights and burn MP to heal yourself (especially in Hard Mode where you can’t use items to heal). That’s where HP⇔Materia comes in. Equip this to a character you’re not using in your active battle party, preferably someone with a high amount of hit points in addition to healing materia.

If you’re late enough in the game, this will result in a character with an MP value in the thousands, so feel free to use them as the default healer outside of battles, saving you from having to take more frequent trips to rest stops.

You can find HP ⇔ MP Materia from:

The mako fountain in Mt. Nibel

Spot something wrong, Kupo?

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ATK⇔MATK

ATK⇔MATK materia swaps a character’s Attack and Magic Attack values. It’s a great way to make a character who’s otherwise strong in magic attacks more proficient in physical attacks. On the flip side, it can turn characters with high physical attack values into more competent and powerful spell casters.

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You can find ATK⇔MATK materia from:

The fourth floor of the Ventilation Control Room in Shinra Manor (whole playing as Cait Sith)

VIT⇔SPR Materia

VIT⇔SPR materia is a quick and dirty way to juice your physical defenses if your spirit is higher than vitality. Spirit governs magic defenses, so you’ll take a hit there, but you’ll raise your physical defenses as a result. If you’re trying to take down a particularly tough foe who prioritizes physical damage attacks, this isn’t a bad way to prepare. You can find VIT⇔SPR materia from:

Reward for “Nibel Battle Intel” Death Harbinger’s” in Chadley’s Combat Simulator

If you passed these orbs up upon first glance, I don’t blame you. If I’m being honest, with the exception of ATK ⇔ MATK, the other two stat-swapping materia orbs are only useful on a case-by-case basis. That said, one of the great advantages of FF7’s materia system is that you’re free to experiment and tailor materia loadouts to your desired playstyle. Feel free to mess around to see if you find any cool combinations.