Last time on Final Fantasy VII Remake, we helped out the neighborhood watch in the Sector 7 Slums by exterminating a bunch of lesser drakes who’d moved into the abandoned factory up the street.
The factory’s just too obvious a lair for monsters, though, so we’re about to be sent back there to hunt some bigger game. Here’s how to take on the “Just Flew In from the Graveyard” side quest in FF7R.
Completing the Just Flew In from the Graveyard Side Quest in the Final Fantasy VII Remake
After you complete “Nuisance at the Factory” in Chapter 3, a new side quest icon will appear unannounced on your map. If you head back towards the factory, you’ll find a woman named Gwen arguing with a few Shinra guards.
Speak to her, and she’ll hire you to find and deal with a Cerulean Drake that’s set up inside an isolated part of the factory. You’ll need a watch security key to reach the Drake’s lair, which is inside a crate somewhere on the factory grounds.
You can reenter the factory via the same gate from the “Nuisance” side quest. While the Lesser Drakes haven’t respawned, the big Gorger bugs have, and seem to have leveled up slightly in the intervening period. They now like to spray projectiles from their perches halfway up walls, and can bushwhack you with a sudden grapple that will incapacitate any character it hits. Fortunately, they’re still squishy, and there’s a handy bench you can use on the west side of the factory to restore your HP and MP.
The watch security key is actually in a fixed location, despite what Gwen’s dialogue suggested. Smash the Shinra crates in the big storage area just north of the vending machine icon on your map and you’ll receive the key automatically.
You probably spotted the door that this key unlocks on your last visit to the factory, as it’s in one of the rooms where the Lesser Drakes had holed up. Unlock that door and head inside to confront the Cerulean Drake.
The Drake isn’t that tough, but it’s hard to deal with if you don’t have any wind spells on deck. However, you can really brute-force this fight if you went ahead and did Chadley’s Magic Elements Pt. 1 Battle Report, which is easy to pull off by throwing Blizzard spells at the Gorgers in the factory. He’ll reward you with a Wind Materia. If you then buy a second one from Chadley and equip both Cloud and Tifa with them so they can both cast Aero, you can ground and stagger the Cerulean Drake in no time. Let their ATB build up, then switch between them to hit the Drake with several consecutive casts.
If you don’t have Aero on tap, the fight’s not impossible, but it will take longer. Fire and Thunder spells also work well to stagger the Drake, but it’ll take several more casts than Aero would. Otherwise, it’s down to conducting a delicate and violent aerial ballet with both Cloud and Tifa’s mid-air attack strings.
When the Drake casts Icy Aura, it surrounds itself with a field that forces either of your characters within melee range of the Drake to take cold damage over time. It only does a few damage per tick, but if you manage to land an entire aerial combo on the Drake while it has Icy Aura up, you’ll take almost as much damage as you inflict. Fortunately, you can break Icy Aura early by hitting it with a Fire or Thunder spell.
The Drake’s refusal to land means that a lot of your abilities will miss it entirely, like Divekick, but you can still get a lot of damage in on it with Tifa’s aerial strings and the occasional Uppercut. It’s just a question of how long the fight lasts. The Drake is more annoying than actually dangerous.
There’s no particular reason to finish this side quest on Hard Mode, but if you do, you should go into this fight with so many more ways to deliver high-impact wind attacks that the Cerulean Drake won’t know what hit it.
When you defeat the Cerulean Drake, you’ll be able to warp straight back to Gwen. While the conversation with her doesn’t go that well (which amazingly isn’t entirely Cloud’s fault), she rewards you with a full HP/MP restoration and a Star Bracelet, a spellcaster-friendly piece of armor with two Materia slots.
There’s a lot more to talk about with the FF7 remake. We’ve got quite a few articles on our game hub, including:
- Completing the other 18 Battle Intel Reports for Chadley
- Finish your music collection and unlock the Disc Jockey Trophy
- Find all the semi-hidden Discoveries
You’re already the hero of the neighborhood at this point in the Final Fantasy VII remake, but you can still do a little more. Check back with us, here or via Twitter @PrimaGames, for more information on how you can keep helping the citizens of Sector 7.
