- You'll need two items and one materia that will make finishing "Very Hard" missions infinitely easier. We consider these three gems absolutely essential. Let's break it down.

Adaman Bangle -- This item lifts the hit point limit of 9,999 and raises it to 99,999. It's your reward for beating mission 7-3-6.

Brutal -- This item lifts the damage limit of 9,999 and raises it to 99,999. It's your reward for beating mission 7-4-6.

Costly Punch -- This materia takes a small portion of your hit points and allows you to hit for 99,999, regardless of your opponent's Vitality. The quickest way to get this materia is to get the Goblin Punch materia in 4-5-4. You can then fuse it with any DMW materia to make Costly Punch.

- Now that you have the two key items and one game-breaking materia, you need to start fusing materia to raise your stats. Since you have a move that doles out 99,999 points of damage, you can ignore your Attack stat. Fuse some materia to get your hit points up; we recommend having at least 50,000 for most "Very Hard" missions. Buff up your Vitality and Spirit as much as you can. If you have an item that absorbs elemental magic then you can focus on Vitality.

With the Adaman Bangle, Brutal, and Costly Punch, you should be able to handle all the missions except for the very last one. Eventually, you'll earn items that have the same effect as the Adaman Bangle and Brutal, but with even more bonuses.

- One materia that might come in handy, depending on your playing style, is Dash. This lets you replace the block move with additional speed on the battlefield. For some battles -- particularly those against multiple high-speed enemies -- we found this to be completely necessary. For example, we were bedeviled by the trio of cactuars in 9-6-1. They were simply too fast for us and killed us around 13 times or so. When we used Dash, we had a much easier time. The additional speed allowed us to avoid attacks far more easily. Sure, we looked like a cowardly moron running haphazardly around the battlefield and opportunistically striking when we could, but cowardly running led to victory!