Death Penalty (Final Fantasy VII)

Death Penalty is Vincent's ultimate weapon in Final Fantasy VII. It is obtained in ???, available later in the game. As with other ultimate weapons, Death Penalty has very high stats, eight linked Materia slots, and a unique mechanic: the weapon deals damage based on how many enemies Vincent has killed over the course of the game. The weapon thus has a very high consistent damage potential, if Vincent is used often.
==Characteristics==
Death Penalty is based on the Colt M1855 revolving rifle.
Though the gun is a rifle, Vincent wields it with only one hand like a pistol due to a lack of a two-handed animation. This would actually be a good technique to use with the M1855, since the gun commonly sprayed shards of lead into the user's non-firing arm, and had the risk of a chain fire, which destroyed the weapon and the users arm in the process. Commanders instructed soldiers to hold the weapon behind the cylinder to avoid being injured, meaning Vincent's one-handed method is the safest way to use it.
==Obtained==
Death Penalty is found in the ??? cave. The cave can be accessed either by a submarine or a colored chocobo. Vincent must be in the party to witness a cutscene, after which the player must fight between 2 and 11 random encounters and return to the cave, where Vincent finds the Death Penalty along with his ultimate Limit Break manual for Chaos.
==Mechanics==
Death Penalty's power is boosted after every enemy Vincent kills. Due to a damage overflow glitch, if enough enemies are killed, the Death Penalty can kill almost any enemy with a single hit, including Emerald Weapon (but not Ruby Weapon due to its high defense stat).
:Power = [10 + ( Vincent's~Kills / 128) ] / 16 
This is then modified by the attack's power; for normal attacks, the multiplier is 1.0. Unlike most other damage modifiers, each character's ultimate weapon applies the damage modifier after all other modifiers, instead of modifying the attack strength of the weapon itself.
To reach a base 1.0 damage multiplier, Vincent would need 768 kills. This can be difficult to do unless Vincent joins as early as possible and he lands most of the party's death blows. This would likely prevent unlocking Limit Breaks on other characters. For comparison, every character's ultimate weapon reaches an approximately 4x damage multiplier at "full" strength. With Vincent this would require 6,912 kills while other characters, like Cloud, simply needs to stay at full health to achieve their max bonus. On the other hand, Death Penalty grants a damage bonus that can only grow, not decrease.
The number of Vincent's kills is capped at 65535 = 2^{16} - 1, but, as the division by 128 is actually a right bits shift by 7 (logarithm in base 2 of 128), only the quotient is considered. This means the Power stat raises by (Technique~Power)/16 every 128 kills; in particular the maximum power is granted as soon as Vincent has killed 65408 = 128 \times 511 enemies, since 128 \times 512 = 65536, which is greater than the cap. For a physical attack the Technique Power is always 16, therefore in that scenario the maximum power is 511 + 10 = 521.
The weapon is affected by the Vincent Mug glitch.
==Use==
Death Penalty deals more damage the more enemies Vincent has killed. As such, its use will depend entirely on how much and how often the player uses Vincent. If Vincent is used frequenly, and lands a lot of death blows, the weapon will be very worthwhile. It takes 768 kills for the weapon to reach damage on-par with a non-ultimate weapon (significantly higher than simply how many are needed to unlock all Limit Breaks), but reaching more than this makes it a formidable weapon.
Vincent can reach a large number of enemy kills using Enemy Skill Materia abilities such as Matra Magic and Aqualung, which can be used in areas with a large number of enemies such as the Nibel Area forests to kill many enemies. Later, Slash-All or Mega All Materia can also achieve the same for Vincent. However, to do so to reach the number of enemies that would be needed just to make the weapon break even, let alone to allow it to reach its true damage potential, is very time-consuming, meaning one must invest heavily in Vincent.
Death Penalty has four lots of two linked Materia slots. This makes it Vincent's best weapon if he is using Magic Materia or Summon Materia. Though this can be viable for him, one should keep in mind that his Limit Break will make him uncontrollable.
==See also==
* Graph plot of formula.
Category:Weapons in Final Fantasy VII