Over the course of your adventure you may come across rare tomes containing martial wisdom pertaining to a variety of combat styles. In other words, books that give character SP for upgrading their weapons. In Normal difficulty these books are quite rare, and typically you can only earn three (out of a possible fourteen) for each character: you can buy one from the Moogle Emporium in Chapter 8 or Chapter 14, you can earn another from completing the “vs. Shinra Thugs” battle in the Underground Colosseum for each character, while a final one can be obtained for completing a specific side quest for each character. The rest will have to be earned in Hard difficulty, usually by defeating bosses, defeating rare monsters during side quests or by completing the “vs. 3-C SOLDIER Candidates” Shinra Simulation Battle in Chapter 16 or Chapter 17.

You’ll gain SP every time you level up, of course, but even at level 50 you won’t have enough SP to buy everything on your weapons… or to hit Weapon Level 6. To gain enough SP to hit Weapon Level 6 (and hence unlock the last tier of weapon upgrades) you’ll need to acquire some Manuscripts from Hard difficulty. By the time this is possible you’ll have chapter select unlocked, and since you don’t have to play through Hard difficulty linearly, you can skip around to go to whatever chapters you wish to acquire Manuscripts as you see fit.

A list of every Manuscript and where they can be found follows:

Cloud’s Manuscripts¶

Barret’s Manuscripts¶

Tifa’s Manuscripts¶

Aerith’s Manuscripts¶