Aerial Drain is a Command Materia in CRISIS CORE -FINAL FANTASY VII- REUNION, and it’s debatably one of the best materia in the game, as it combines the offensives and defensive properties of Command Materia like Jump and High Jump with the healing provided by Magic Materia like Drain, Drainra or Drainga. This page will provide details about how to acquire Aerial Drain early.

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(1 of 2) You can fuse various materia with Drain to gain Aerial Drain,

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You can fuse various materia with Drain to gain Aerial Drain, (left), or you can just buy Aerial Drain from the Wutai Secret Shop. (right)

Where to Get Aerial Drain¶

You can acquire a chunk of Aerial Drain materia via either Materia Fusion or by buying it from the Wutai Secret Shop, where it’ll set you back 18,000 Gil.

You can unlock the Wutai Secret Shop as early as Chapter 2, but to do so you must reach and clear Mission 4-2-6, which is quite difficult at this point in the game. Check out the page Mission 4-2-6: The Five Saints of Wutai for more information on defeating the powerful enemies that may frustrate your attempts to clear this mission. In short, it may be easier to wait until Chapter 3 or Chapter 4, where you’ll have more resources, but these “Five Saints of Wutai” are genuinely a huge difficulty spike for how early they can be fought.

Aerial Drain can also be created via Materia Fusion, where it sits atop the Drain / Omose Command Materia hierarchy; just keep upgrading Osmose Blade, Drain Blade, Power Drain and finally Power Osmose - eventually the next upgrade will net you Aerial Drain. As the name implies you can also use Drain / Drainra / Drainga as fusion bases, mixing them with Assault Twister+, Death Blade, Dispel Blade, Elemental Strike and Status Strike should yield Assault Drain, as will fusing Drainga + ATK Up or VIT Up.

Since it’s a top-tier materia, it won’t be changed into something else easily via Materia Fusion, making it fairly simple to add stats to Aerial Drain. A moderate selling point, to be sure, but it’s always nice to not have to fuss when you want to add stats to your materia.

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(1 of 2) Aerial Drain deals AoE damage, healing you equal to the damage dealt.

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Aerial Drain deals AoE damage, healing you equal to the damage dealt. (left), The jump phase of Aerial Drain is also useful for evading attacks. (right)

What Makes Aerial Drain Good¶

As touched on earlier, Aerial Drain will likely earn a spot as one of your equipped materia due to its sheer utility, as it deals damage, avoids enemy damage, and heals you, all at the same time! When you use Aerial Drain you’ll leap up into the air, and when you’re thus elevated, most attacks that occur won’t damage you. If you get the timing right, you can dodge all sorts of enemy attacks, but you are vulnerable to damage when you land, so using this materia does take some practice.

When you land after using Aerial Drain you’ll unleash an AoE slash that damages all foes within a short range and you’ll heal for the damage dealt. Aerial Drain isn’t the most fantastically powerful Command Materia (Costly Punch is your go-to for pure damage output), but with 255 Strength Aerial Drain will still deal tens of thousands of damage to most foes.

In theory, it’s possible to win most fights by just spamming Aerial Drain, especially if you don’t have to worry about AP costs (the Genji Helm is ideal for this), but in practice you’ll want to mix Costly Punch (to deal massive damage) with Aerial Drain (to dodge/heal). At least for the more difficult, durable foes… but Aerial Drain does make fights against everything but the most elite enemies a trivial, mindless affair.