How to upgrade weapons in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth

If you know how to upgrade weapons in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth then you can increase your combat abilities, by unlocking new weapon skills and adding more stat boosts to your arsenal. This side of the game is a bit opaque and can be confusing if you're not used to it, particularly if Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is your first experience of this RPG world or you've taken a break from it for a while. To help explain what's going on, here's an explainer on Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth weapon upgrades and how to use them to improve in combat.

How to use Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth weapon upgrades

To upgrade weapons in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, the first thing you want to do is equip and use them as much as possible. By using a weapon ability regularly you'll increase your proficiency with it, and once that is maxed out you can then use that ability in combat even when you have a different weapon equipped. Take a look at the proficiency bonus requirements for the ability to level it up faster, which can be found in the Materia & Equipment menu by selecting the specific weapon in question.

There's also the Upgrade Weapons screen itself, which can be accessed from the main menu. Here you can select an equipped weapon, then press Triangle to Set Weapon Skills, before selecting a Materia to swap out and change or augment your current Weapon Skills. Note that this seems to have the same effect as swapping out Materia through the Materia & Equipment menu

However, in both the Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Upgrade Weapons screen and the Materia & Equipment menu, once you've selected your weapon a prompt will appear to press Start to access the Auto-Upgrade Settings. There, you can choose to let the game automatically equip your weapon skills as you unlock them, so you don't have to think about managing weapon upgrades yourself. There are three settings you can select, depending on your style of play:

• Balanced - equips skills that balance defense and offense
• Prioritize Attack - equips skills that boost offense
• Prioritize Defense - equips skills that boost defense

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