Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is an epic RPG of heroism and villainy, set in a massive fantasy world, filled with exciting quests where you’ll…pick mushrooms? Okay, sometimes Cloud and Co. need to grab some random odd jobs to fund their world-saving endeavors. Picking mushrooms for Cissnei (who’s apparently an awful cook) in “The Spice of Life” side-quest is one of those very odd jobs.
Like most FF7 Rebirth quests, “The Spice of Life” is rather straightforward. Follow a dog, kill some things, grab some salt, then pick some mushrooms. It’s that last part which is tricky: The mushroom picking puzzle is very easy to screw up if you’re not paying attention.
Let’s go over how to pick the perfect Magonga mushroom first, assuming this is the part you’re having trouble with. After the mushrooms, I’ll go over some tips for the other parts of the quest (like those god damn jellyfish-looking monsters).
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Mushroom picking 101
I’ve seen enough episodes of Survivorman to know that mushroom-picking can be dangerous business. But unlike Les Stroud, Cloud’s got a chocobo with a nose for the world-famous Magonga mushrooms. You have to pick 3 mushrooms for “The Spice of Life,” each one requiring your chocobo to sniff out the location.
Unfortunately, our green-feathered buddy sometimes takes a while. You’ll need to hold down “Up” on the d-pad for a while. If it’s taking too long, try moving around on chocoback for a few moments before sniffing the air again. After a little while, a golden trail will appear, sending you to those shrooms. Once you locate them, it’s time to get to picking. And this is Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, so that means we’re looking at another mini-game!
Mushroom picking is rather simple in concept, but tricky in practice. You’ll be asked to bend the mushroom at a few different angles to determine the weakest point to the strongest. You’ll select each angle from weakest to strongest with R2, then hold down L2 and R2 to pick the mushroom once you’ve chosen the correct order.
Identify the stiffest part first
While you need to select the weakest part of the mushroom first, I found it best to figure out which part is the stiffest, so you can rule out selecting that one. You can twirl the left analog stick as much as you want to see how flexible each portion of the mushroom is. Once you’ve identified the area where it bends the least, ignore that one and start figuring out which of the remaining angles bends the most.
After figuring out the stiffest part of the mushroom, I like rotating the analog stick to sweep through the remaining areas, paying close attention to where the mushroom bends the most. Once you figure that out, start selecting the order, weakest to strongest, to pull the mushroom, and hopefully you’ve nailed it.
It can be tricky. Honestly, go ahead and plant a hard save down before each mushroom if you just wanna save-scum it. Sadly, there isn’t a preset combination for each mushroom, so I can’t just tell you the order in which to do it. But ruling out the stiffest directions first has been the most reliable approach.
What about those damn jellyfish?
Oh yeah, these things suck. The Gorgon Manes, which look like giant flying jellyfish, rank among the top list of Most-Pain-In-The-Ass enemies of Rebirth. They can be virtually impervious to attacks while moving and hitting them with melee is tough—they always feel just out of reach.
Fire makes short work of them, though, so I suggest having Aerith and Yuffie in your party. Give Aerith any materia that’ll get her ATB gauge filling up quick and rely on Fire Ninjutsu from Yuffie to deal with these freaks.
Cloud also isn’t a bad ranged fighter. You’ll need to dodge with circle and then immediately start tapping or holding square. Tapping will see Cloud shoot beams from his sword, while holding square will make him fly toward his enemy, fighting in mid-air.
“The Spice of Life” may have a frustrating mini-game, but it’s a cute little adventure with our pal (and canonically correct romantic option) Aerith. If you screw up the mushroom picking part, you won’t see a difference in your quest rewards, but a 100% run will require you to pick perfect mushrooms. You’ll be able to restart any and all side-quests once you finish the game, however.
