The Windmill Gear in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is an important item needed to, uh, fix a windmill as part of Broden’s quest in Kalm. Finding and crafting it can take time, but here’s what you need to know.
Finding the Windmill Gear recipe
The transmutation recipe for the Windmill Gear has to be dug up from an excavation site. This isn’t available immediately. You first have to locate it. Instead of working backwards from it, these are all the steps to locate it.
First, you’re going to need to activate the Wastelands Tower found in the, er, wastelands East of Midgar and West of Kalm. This will reveal points of interest on your map.
The one you are looking for is the Cavern Lifespring, located southeast of the tower. Go to it and scan it. This will reveal Excavation Intel 1: Bygone Settlement. This takes you out of the wastelands and further east. The excavation site is north of the swamp and east of the Lifespring you just scanned.
Go to the site on Chocobo. It’s pretty easy to spot as a cluster of long-ruined, red brick buildings. There are three things buried here that your Chocobo needs to sniff out. Just hold up, and a circle with an arrow will appear. Pivot your Chocobo in the direction of that arrow, and a trail will appear, leading you to the spot where something is buried. If the trail hits a wall, you’ll need to bypass the wall and sniff again to find the spot. Walk up to where the trail ends and press down to get your Chocobo to dig it up.
The Windmill Gear is one of the three items buried at the excavation site. I’m not sure if the items you dig up are randomized in their spots, but to complete the excavation sites, you need to dig up all three objects, so you might as well get them all before moving on. However, for posterity. In my playthrough, the Windmill Gear was located near the Northwest corner of the site next to a building.
Crafting the Windmill Gear
Unfortunately, finding the recipe is the first part of crafting the Windmill Gear. You need the ingredients for the recipe. For most of these, you just pick them up off of monsters and the ground throughout the normal course of gameplay. One of them isn’t. Here’s what you need.
- 2 Iron Ore
- 1 Lea Titanium
- 5 Beast Bone
- 1 Quetzalcoatl Talon
It’s the last one that requires some work to get. I’ve got a guide that is going up that goes into depth on how to find the Quetzalcoatl and how to defeat it. However, the short version is that you need to scan the Wetlands Lifespring that is found east of the swamp. This will reveal the Quetzalcoatl’s location (you can’t fight it until you scan the Lifespring). Go there, beat it, and you’ll earn the Quetzalcoatl Talon.
As long as you’ve been picking up rocks off the ground, you’ll likely have the items you need. If not, they’re sometimes purchasable at the Chocobo vender at the ranch.
To reiterate, the Windmill Gear is used in the Broden quest. If you’ve started this already, then you can now complete it. If you haven’t, then you can find him in Kalm’s inn after you’ve completed enough quests to re-enter the town.
