How to make perfect Magonga soup in FF7 Rebirth’s The Spice of Life quest

Sometime after the reactor portion of Gongaga, you can find Cissnei in her home working over the stove. Her concoction is terrible, and you need to help her create Gongaga mushroom soup. This kicks off the “The Spice of Life” side quest.

This is one of the quests in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth that has multiple outcomes. Depending on how well you do, you could walk away with a gold stamp, you lucky duck. It’s not as easy as it sounds, either. In fact, as you proceed, it becomes more and more difficult, threatening your chances at a sticker. I can help, but you also must believe in yourself.

Starting the FF7 Rebirth mushroom picking quest

After the reactor portion of Gongaga, you can start The Spice of Life side quest by talking to Cissnei in her home. The first order of business after talking to Cissnei at her home is to head North down the road to meet Melon, the dog of Farmer Torgan. While the good boy is there to sell produce, they have run out entirely. They’ll run back toward Torgan, and you’ll have to give chase.

You’ll follow Melon to a field where Torgan is toiling away. Like any good farmer, he’ll tell you he doesn’t like city folk and that you should screw off. Eventually, he’ll relent. He’ll not only give you some produce, but he’ll also give you tips on your recipe. First, he says you should choose Magonga mushrooms rather than Gongaga. You should also season with a particular type of rock salt. A very particular type. He’ll give you a sketch to show you what you’re looking for.

Finding the rock salt for the Magonga soup

Melon will then lead you into the jungle in pursuit of the rock salt for the Magonga soup. On the way to your destination, you’ll need to defend Melon from three different monster attacks. These aren’t any different than what you’d normally run into while traversing the jungle, but they do get a bit trickier as you proceed. The Gorgon Mane that you run into, for example, can be pressured by hitting it with fire magic, but it evades most attacks while in the air.

When you finally reach your destination, you’ll be led to a cluster of minerals. You’ll want to check that sketch of yours. While Torgan implied that you’d be looking for one of a particular color, you can also look at the shape of its formation. Each one is very distinct to prevent you from mixing them up.

However – and this is very important – you need three pieces of rock salt. There will be three in that first area, but do not just pick them all up. Only pick up the one that matches the sketch you have. There are other clusters of deposits around the area, and you need to get three of the types that are in your sketch. There are definitely three to be found, so don’t pick up a different one just to fill your inventory.

I have bad news, that wasn’t the hardest part of the quest. It’s very easy to mess up by picking up the wrong rock salt, but this next part is even harder.

Picking the Magonga Mushrooms

To start your Magonga mushroom picking, you simply need to climb atop your Chocobo and go to the location on your map. There, you have your Chocobo sniff the air by holding up, which will put you on the trail of the Magonga Mushroom. It won’t be in the immediate vicinity, but it isn’t far, either. Just remember that if you lose the scent, give another sniff to pick it up again.

Once you reach it, we begin the tricky part. When you try to pick up the mushroom, it begins a mini-game. Here, you have to rotate the mushroom in various directions to check where it has the most “give.” That is to say, the places where it bends furthest. The mushroom is overlaid with segments (three at first, but it grows from there), and each segment has a different amount of give.

The goal is to pick the sequence of most give to least. To do this, you point the Magonga mushroom in the direction where it bends the most and hit X, then to where it bends second-most and select that, and so on, until you’ve picked every segment.

The difficulty here is figuring out how each segment compares. The part with the most bend can look a lot like the second most bend, and I don’t have a trick for you that makes this easier. I was able to do this on my first try, but on a couple of the mushrooms, I had to give a good hard look, and I wasn’t confident in my answers.

The best I can tell you is that one side will probably bend to be almost perpendicular to the ground, and that’s normally the first one you should pick. But it still isn’t easy because if you’re bending away from yourself, it’s a lot harder to tell what angle it’s at compared to when you’re bending it sideways. It would be easier if you could rotate the camera, but I wasn’t able to find a way to do that.

You have to do this successfully three times. Sniff the air, follow the trail, painstakingly pick the mushroom. At the second and third locations, you will need to fight an enemy first before you can pick the mushrooms there.

If you fail and break one of the Magonga mushrooms, you can still complete the mission. You just won’t get the gold stamp. I’m not certain if there is any margin of error here to get the stamp. As I mentioned, I completed everything perfectly on my first try. However, I think luck played a major role there. Just take your time, consider your actions, and hopefully you’ll get a perfect soup.

With the Magonga mushrooms, salt, and produce in hand, you can return to Cissnei to see the result.

FF7 Rebirth: The Spice of Life rewards

For your expert mushroom-picking skills, you will be rewarded with the following

• A pair of Chakra Materia Earrings.
• A boost to your relationship with Aerith.
• 10 party EXP.
• 1500 EXP.
• A gold stamp on the quest.