Where to find the Tonberry King’s Crown in FF7 Rebirth

In Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, after helping the many Johnnys outside of Costa del Sol, another clone will be peering into the desert ahead, longing for a Tonberry King’s crown to decorate his inn with, as part of “The Saga of Seaside Inn” side quest. However, if you try to cross the water leading to that stage of the quest, you’ll be unable to pass the debris, even with a chocobo.

You won’t actually be able to complete this quest until you progress much farther in the game, so just keep heading toward the main scenario quests (indicated by the blue markers on your map) for now.

Below, we explain where to find the Tonberry King in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, as well as how to take it down in a fight.

Where to find the Tonberry King in FF7 Rebirth

So, you won’t actually be able to get to the Tonberry King until after you start the open world exploration portion of Corel in Chapter 9. There will be a point where you get a new method of transportation that’ll make short work of the debris and water that blocked your way before. You’ll know once you get there — we won’t spoil you.

Before you can get the Tonberry King to show up, you’ll need to find and scan all six lifesprings in Corel. They’re in the locations we’ve circled below:

Graphic: Julia Lee/Polygon | Source images: Square Enix

Graphic: Julia Lee/Polygon | Source images: Square Enix

As usual with wellsprings, when you get close, a bird will appear and lead you to the spring.

Once you do, the Tonberry King will be here, south of Johnny:

Image: Square Enix via Polygon

How to beat the Tonberry King in FF7 Rebirth

Final Fantasy fans should already know what to expect from the Tonberry King: It’s going to stab you, instantly killing you. And yep, it still does that. The best thing to do is keep attacking it from behind while occasionally moving out to do ranged damage.

You’ll want to keep your distance, since it’ll let off occasional blasts in a circle around it, freezing you and setting you up for an easy stab. Some of its stabs are moves you can’t recover from — the knocked-out character will get a debuff that prevents you from using a Phoenix Down on it.

It’ll also summon smaller tonberries as well, and the same thing applies to them — keep dodging and don’t let them stabby stab you.

When it gets pressured, it’ll drop the crown during the fight, and you can use Steal on the crown itself, netting yourself a pristine crown to give to Johnny. If you don’t do this and end up killing it, you’ll get a marred crown (which you can still give to Johnny). If you kill it and want to go back and steal the crown, you can always fight it again by holding down the Triangle button in the arena.

Image: Square Enix via Polygon

Should you give Johnny the marred crown or pristine crown?

If you give Johnny the marred crown, he questions its jankiness, but accepts it. If you give Johnny the pristine crown, he marvels in its beauty before skittering off back to his inn.

For your efforts, he’ll give you Queen’s Blood Card #134: J-Squad (which, yes, is a card of him and his clones).

You’ll also get a hefty chunk of EXP, and your relationship with Yuffie will grow. We didn’t notice any specific different reward based on which crown you gave him, but the crown is displayed on the front desk, so you can give Johnny the shiny pristine crown if you care about aesthetics.

After all of this, you can fast travel to his inn and it’ll be a home to all the collectables you’ve found on your journey. There’s also a mysterious glowing red chest that’s locked. While we’re sure this unlocks once you collect all 88 collectables, we can’t say for certain, since we aren’t even close to finding all of them.

The world of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is huge, but we have your back if you need help. We have a beginners guide, a rundown of side content rewards, a breakdown of the game’s length, and an explainer on how to plan ahead for your Gold Saucer date.

If you need more nitty gritty guides like how to find things like ziplines in Costa del Sol or soldiers in Junon, we have those, too. Or if you love Queen’s Blood, we have a comprehensive list of cards and how to get them.