The five colours
🟢 Magic (green)
Fire, Ice, Lightning, Wind, Healing, Cleansing, Time, Barrier and the rest. Levels with AP; a level-3 Fire is Firaga. The spells are the party's answer to weaknesses, which is what pressure is made of.
🟡 Command (yellow)
Abilities that are not tied to a weapon: Assess, Steal, Enemy Skill, Chakra, Prayer. Assess and Enemy Skill are the two nobody should skip.
🔵 Support (blue)
Only works in a linked slot next to another orb: Magnify, Elemental, Warding, Synergy, MP Absorption, Auto-Cast. This is where the actual builds live.
🟣 Complete (purple)
Passive: HP Up, MP Up, First Strike, ATB Boost, Steadfast Block, Precision Defense Focus, Auto-Weapon Ability, and the stat swaps. Boring names, most of the difference between a party that dies and one that does not.
🔴 Summon (red)
One slot per character. The six Divine Intel summons — Titan, Phoenix, Alexander, Kujata, Odin, Bahamut Arisen — come from finding a region's crystals and beating the summon in Chadley's simulator. Leviathan comes from a Remake save and Ramuh from an INTERmission save; Magic Pot is a Digital Deluxe and Collector's Edition bonus, the Moogle Trio a digital pre-order bonus and the Posh Chocobo a physical pre-order bonus in Asia.
The pairings
- Magnify + Healing on the party's caster. One orb, the whole party healed. The single most useful link in the game, and the first Magnify you keep comes with Cait Sith when he joins at the start of chapter 9.
- Elemental + a spell in a weapon slot adds that element to attacks; the same pair in an armour slot resists or absorbs it. The armour version turns fire bosses into a rest.
- Warding + Petrify, Silence or Sleep on the armour of whoever you cannot afford to lose. Gigatrice and half the Nibel fiends exist to teach this.
- Synergy + a spell lets the characters you are not controlling cast it when you use an ability. It is how the AI party stops being furniture.
- First Strike and ATB Boost on the character you start fights with; Steadfast Block and Precision Defense on the one who blocks.
- Enemy Skill on someone who fights a lot: learned skills stay, and a couple of them outclass the spells they imitate.
Where new orbs come from
Chadley, with Regional Data
Every piece of world intel is 10 points; Chadley develops new materia from them, region by region. The Materia Completionist trophy is developing everything he offers, which means finishing the intel.
Shops and chests
Town shops sell the basics and an extra orb of the good ones; the open world hides the rest. The region's tower marks the caches.
AP, and the second copy
Materia levels with AP from fights. A second copy of Healing or Magnify is worth more than a new colour, because it goes on a second character.
What Chadley develops, region by region
| Region | Materia developed with its regional data |
|---|---|
| Grasslands | Fire & Ice · Morph · Auto-Cast · Auto-Unique Ability |
| Junon | Lightning & Wind · Item Economizer · Magic Efficiency · ATB Stagger |
| Corel | Gravity · HP Absorption · ATB Boost · Auto-Weapon Ability |
| Gongaga | Petrify · Limit Siphon · Magic Focus · Synergy Support |
| Cosmo Canyon | Poison & Petrify · Jump · Synergy · Skill Master |
| Nibel | Comet · MP Absorption · ATB Assist · Darkside |
| Meridian Ocean | Spare Change · Swiftcast · Reraise · Limit Support |
The summons
13 by PowerPyx’s count, 16 by Game8’s.
- Chocobo & Moogle: Cloud’s starter materia, in the inventory from the start of chapter 2.
- Ifrit and Shiva: already in hand from the start of chapter 2, not won in the simulator.
- Titan (Grasslands), Phoenix (Junon), Alexander (Corel), Kujata (Gongaga), Bahamut Arisen (Cosmo Canyon) and Odin (Nibel): find the region’s three crystals, then beat the summon in the simulator.
- Gilgamesh: the island, after everything else.
- Leviathan from a Remake save and Ramuh from an Intermission save; Magic Pot, the Moogle Trio and the Posh Chocobo from the editions.
Still to verify
Cross-checked on 16 September 2026 and re-checked on 1 October 2026 against Square Enix’s edition notices, the trophy list and the guides of PowerPyx, RPG Site, Game8, Vandal, EliteGuias and Fextralife. What is still unverified is the only thing reading cannot settle — nobody here has played it.