Recruiting Yuffie & Vincent

In Final Fantasy VII you can recruit nine characters onto your team, two of them are optional. These are Yuffie and Vincent. This section will help you recruit them onto your team and give you some (brief) information on them.


Yuffie

Job Class: Ninja // long range fighter
Recruitment Difficulty: Easy, unless you forget the instructions.. then you're just going to end up poor
Worth Recruiting? I think so. I used her quite a bit near the end of the game. Her final/special weapon makes her attack higher against enemies with much higher HP.. so she's perfect against bosses with it. She has some good limit breaks too, it's best to keep her on the Level 3. She does give you an extra little sidequest or two on the Wutai continent, so there's extra play time as well with her.



Vincent

Job Class: Gunman // again a long range fighter
Recruitment Difficulty: Difficult in my opinion, especially when you go to get him when you first reach the area. It's a little easier now that I'm used to the Safe combination, but the first time took me ages to get it. I'm glad I looked up the combination, cos I only just recently found all the clues.
Worth Recruiting? That depends really. A long range fighter can be a lot easier to train, but I find his limit breaks pretty annoying. I don't like the spell Berserk so that's probably why, I like to control my team. Apart from that he's average, in my opinion better to use than Barrett.
Other notes: Like Cait Sith he only has one limit break per level, but at least he uses all four levels. Full details are (or will be) in the Limit Break section.

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Recruiting Yuffie

This can be done very early in the game. The earliest I've gotten her is right after leaving Mythril Mines, and going into the first forest I see. Literally, it's happened twice. Yuffie will appear as your opponent in a normal battle (I'll get a cap when I get that far in the game) if you venture into the woods in the Junon Area, or any area apparently.. I've never tested it. The first time it took her a while to show up, second time she was my first battle.. so it's a matter of luck really.

She's easy to defeat, so no worries there. Once she's defeated you'll appear in an area you'll never see again with her. As usual you've got two options of what you say to her, if you get it wrong she'll disappear, taking some of your money with her. If you get each one right (there's five) then she'll be on your team.

Here's what you have to say. But first some rules (credit to another walkthrough here, I've never strayed from it). Do not open the menu during this whole thing. I'm not sure if you're allowed to touch the Save Point here either, avoid. Though in Crisis Core she tries to trick Zack into using a Save Point, so I assume it's a little wink at the original game.. yes best avoid that save point.

When prompted, this is how you reply
1 - "Not interested."
2 - ".. petrified."
3 - "Wait a second!"
4 - ".... That is right"
5 - "Let us hurry on"

You'll leave this screen and she'll invite herself into the party, after naming her of course.

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Recruiting Vincent

This can be done as soon as you get to Nibelheim, I suggest waiting until you're in your early 30's before doing this part though, there's a boss battle that gave me game over when I went too early. He's hidden inside the mansion, but you have to get to a safe first to reach him.

The clues for the combination are in the first room to the left, you'll see something on the floor. The fourth dial is there, in a hidden fourth option, that one just tells you it, the rest have clues in it's place.

It took me a while to find them, but they're in the following places:
To the right of the piano, near the wall.. just keep clicking X/O (whatever is your OK button).
The chest in the room next to the safe, after you get the item look again.
In the far right of the mansion, up the stairs.. there's a creak in the floor next to the bed (the one nearby the "secret" passage down to the dreaded basement). Cloud'll turn around when it happens. He's facing the direction you need to go (more or less.. if he could he'd have to step a lot to the left). just go out the door again, and walk up the corridor.. keep pressing the OK button. About half way up this corridor is the other clue. I know the original clue you read tells you the directions from the floorboard creak, but I never remember it lol.

Now the safe. You have 20 seconds to get the combination right, if you don't you have to do it again. You can't go over the number it says here either, for example (it's what I always do lol) when you're doing the right to 59 combination, if you accidentally let it slip on 60 you've failed. So anyway, here it is:

Right to 36, Left to 10, Right to 59, Right to 97.

As soon as you get it you'll jump straight into a battle, so be prepared first (The Enemy Skill Big Guard will be very useful here btw). There's a rare enemy in the basement of the mansion very similar called the Ying and Yang.. well it's a similar idea (one is magic based, the other is physical.. and are immune to what they're best at) but I do find Ying and Yang more annoying as it's animation slows the battle down a LOT. Anyway two things will happen when you battle this guy, and get his health halfway down:

1 - If you used a physical attacks on him to get him to half health, he'll change to a purple form and be quite resistant now. Hit him with magic. He's also very nasty, he'll do a lot of physical damage to you now.. make sure you have Protect (via Big Guard) cast and you jump into the back row when he changes. If you don't know how to do that, hit the left button when issuing commands, and select Change.

2 - If you used a spell to get him half health, he'll change to a red form and be quite hard to kill with magic now. Hit him with physical attacks. He'll spam spells like there's no tomorrow.

Once you have defeated him pick up everything that's there. Go down to the basement. You will have seen a door on the way that you couldn't go through before, now you can. You'll see a few coffins, the one in the middle is the one you're after.

Tell him about Sephiroph when prompted. When he goes back into the coffin, open it again. Ask who he is. After you're done talking to him, just leave the area and he'll join you.