In Chapter 3 of the Final Fantasy VII remake, after running some errands with Tifa around town, she’ll introduce you to Wymer, the watch captain in the Sector 7 slums. As part of Cloud’s ongoing attempts to break in the mercenary business, you’ll end up picking up at least one side quest at this point.

The first of those quests, which you can’t actually skip but you can refuse to do, is “Chadley’s Report,” the first step along the way to the Battle Intel Reports collectibles in FF7R.

Completing Chadley’s Report in the Final Fantasy VII Remake

You receive an Assess Materia just for speaking with Chadley at all, which you should be sure to slot into someone’s gear.

Assess, the FF7R equivalent of past Final Fantasy games’ Scan, opens up a dossier on any new enemy you face, which will detail their weaknesses, attack patterns, stat totals, and assorted other useful information.

It does cost 1 ATB, so it can be difficult to sneak into a fight at times, but it’s almost always worth the time it takes to cast it. You can learn things about a monster’s vulnerabilities through Assess that you’d never catch on to if you were just eyeballing it.

For your first Battle Intel Report, Chadley assigns you “Monster Bio Pt. 1,” which simply requires you to Assess at least two different monsters. You can easily do this over the course of Chapter 3, whether it’s by hunting wererats on Scrap Boulevard or scanning the Doomrats and Drakes that you’re sent to clean out in the other nearby side quests.

Once you’ve Assessed two different monsters, you’ll be given the option of teleporting straight back to Chadley. However you end up returning to him, your reward for your first Report is an Auto-Cure Materia. It only works a set number of times per battle determined by its rank and if it’s equipped on a character who’s currently under the AI’s control, but it forces them to cast a Cure spell on a heavily wounded ally up to 3 times per battle.

This opens up the Battle Intel Reports as a series of missions, though “Chadley’s Report” is the only one that counts as a side quest for the purposes of the Best in the Business Trophy. You can track which reports are currently active via the Battle Intel entry on your main menu.

Completing “Chadley’s Report” opens Chadley up as a Materia merchant. His stock grows as you complete more intel for him, but for the moment, he only sells Auto-Cure (100 gil) and Assess (an inexplicably expensive 1,000 gil) in case you want to double up.

Chadley also now offers a service where you can reset the upgrades you’ve placed on one of your weapons, in exchange for 100 gil. Doing so refunds all SP you’ve spent on the weapon, removes all Materia you’ve socketed into it, and turns off your automatic weapon upgrades if you’ve enabled them.

For more details about Battle Intel Reports, check out our full guide. You’ll want to keep doing Chadley’s dirty work, as you eventually unlock extra fights and abilities from his mission rewards.

Speaking of dirty work, check out our game hub for guides, articles, and tips about all the other weird mercenary jobs you can pick up in the FF7 remake, such as:

Doing weird clerical work for a kid with a monocle wasn’t something we ever expected out of a Final Fantasy VII remake, but Chadley’s not a bad kid. He should probably learn how to do his own homework, though. Pick up part of the conversation about Chadley’s study habits at our official Twitter, @PrimaGames.