Final Fantasy 4 Pixel Remaster: How To Get All the Summons

Quick Links

• Rydia’s Summon List
• How To Get Asura And Leviathan
• How To Get Sylph
• How To Get Odin
• How To Get Bahamut
• Where To Farm Summons

Rydia is one of Final Fantasy 4’s fan-favorite characters and with good reason – she has a compelling storyline, memorable lines of dialogue (“You’re a grownup! You’re not supposed to cry!”), and a cool mid-game time skip sees her change from a weak child into an adult capable of blasting foes away with Flares and Bios.

Rydia is also this game’s summoner and has the power to summon a large variety of magical beasts into battle to devastate your enemies. While some of these summons are acquired automatically, some of them require a bit more effort.

Rydia’s Summon List

There are 15 summons available in Final Fantasy 4: Pixel Remaster, notably excluding Whyt – an addition exclusive to the DS version of the game. The table below details each summon, what they do, and what method is used to acquire them. More information on specific acquisition methods is provided underneath.

Chocobo is learned by Rydia already when she joins Cecil in Kaipo. Rydia will know the other automatically acquired summons when she rejoins the party as an adult in the Underworld.

Acquiring every single summon except the four Rare Drop summons will satisfy the requirements for the Summon Master achievement on Steam. Getting all four Rare Drop summons will instead get you the Summon Collector achievement.

How To Get Asura And Leviathan

Once you have the upgraded Falcon airship you will be able to travel over the lava of the Underworld and enter the Land of Summons. In the basement of the Library, you will find Asura and Leviathan standing next to each other. In order to acquire them for Rydia, you must beat them both in battle, starting with Asura.

How To Beat Asura

The strategy for beating Asura isn’t too complicated.

• She will constantly use healing spells on herself, so counter that strategy by casting Reflect on her. Her healing spells will bounce off onto your party members.
• She also uses powerful physical attacks so Protect is a good shout.
• If you want to target Asura with offensive spells with Rydia (or FuSoYa should you have him in your party), use Reflect on one of your bulkier party members (preferably Cecil) and bounce the spells off of them. They will bypass Asura’s Reflect and deal regular damage.
• Keep up the damage and go all out on healing with Rosa and you should come out victorious quite quickly. Be careful not to target the entire party with healing if you have someone with Reflect, however! You can check your current status effects in the box at the bottom of the screen when selecting your targets.

How To Beat Leviathan

Once you’ve beaten Asura, go heal up at the Inn and return to face Leviathan. He’s only a little harder than Asura but will require a bit more brute force.

• This watery summon is very weak to lightning, so Rydia should break out the Thundagas if you have that spell already. Otherwise, Ramuh or Thundara will still make a big dent in his HP – as will Edge’s Blitz.
• Rosa should be on healing duty mostly, but applying Slow to Leviathan and Shell to everyone else wouldn’t go amiss either.
• Cecil and Kain are content to wail away on Leviathan with their weapons, though Kain may wish to Jump whenever Leviathan transitions into his alternate sprite that signals a large Tidal Wave attack in order to avoid it.
  • Be ready with Rosa’s best healing spells to counter the Tidal Wave damage.
• If you keep exploiting his weakness to lightning, Leviathan shouldn’t take too long to defeat.

How To Get Sylph

The quest to acquire the Sylph summon is a rare one that doesn’t involve a boss battle. To complete it, you need access to the airship upgrade that allows you to transition between the Overworld and the Underworld freely.

• Head to the northwest corner of the Underworld and enter the Sylph Caves there. Make your way through the short dungeon (which is full of nasty enemies and damage floors so be on your guard!) until you get to a small house. Inside, you’ll find a few Sylphs and an unconscious Yang. Try to talk to him, fail, and then leave.
• Head to Fabul on the Overworld and head up the tower on the left – here you’ll find Yang’s wife who will graciously present you with a Frying Pan. Now make the long journey all the way back to the Sylphs’ home and use the Frying Pan on Yang. After a small sequence, Rydia will learn the Sylph summon!
• If you then return to Yang’s wife in Fabul, she will present you with the Knife – the strongest Thrown item in the game for Edge.

How To Get Odin

You can undertake this quest only after acquiring Leviathan. Head to Baron and go to the tower on the right-hand side (opposite the tower with Cecil’s bedroom). In the basement of this tower, you will encounter the deceased King of Baron, who turns out to be this game’s incarnation of Odin.

To get Odin, you must defeat him in battle.

• This fight isn’t too tricky once you understand what you need to do. Time is of the essence as Odin will periodically raise his sword into the air – this signifies that he’s about to use Zantetsuken and end the battle prematurely with the death of your entire party.
• To stop this attack, you must strike him with lightning damage. The easiest ways to do this are with Rydia’s Thunder spells or with Edge’s Blitz attack. Alternatively, you can equip Edge with Thunder Claws and have him attack normally, which is even quicker.
• Have Rosa use Haste and Berserk on your physical attackers and keep up the lightning barrage with Rydia and you’ll soon overthrow the king. Upon your victory, Rydia will learn the Odin summon.

How To Get Bahamut

As with Odin, you must have acquired Leviathan before facing off against Bahamut.

This summon can be found on the Moon at the end of the game, residing inside his lair which is found to the southeast of the map within a large circle of mountains. After a short dungeon full of Behemoth minibosses, you can finally fight Bahamut and claim the strongest summon for yourself.

• Bahamut has one strategy, and that is to count down from five until he can blast you with Megaflare. This attack will deal absolutely immense damage so you’ll desperately want to avoid it.
  • To do this, simply cast Reflect! It will bounce Megaflare back at Bahamut and you’ll stay alive. Rosa should keep Reflect up on herself at all times and prioritize casting it on party members who do the most damage.
  • These will probably be Rydia (who can hit the damage cap with her Flare spell if you’ve leveled up that high) and FuSoYa (who can also be put on Reflect duty if you take Bahamut on while he’s still in the party).
• If you’ve managed to find Artemis Arrows, you may wish to equip them on Cecil and have him use your best bow. These arrows deal extra damage against Dragon enemies and Bahamut will be extremely susceptible to them.
  • You could also put them on Rosa, but she will probably be too busy casting Reflect.
• Slow is also useful to cast on Bahamut as it will prolong his countdowns.
• If you are strong enough, it is perfectly possible to defeat him before he gets even one Megaflare off.

Where To Farm Summons

There are four summons in the game that are learned from items that drop from enemies. These are Goblin, Cockatrice, Bomb, and Mindflayer. While not strong or terribly useful, you will want these summons if you are an achievement hunter or desire a completionist run of the game.

The problem is that these items drop from enemies incredibly rarely and are the bane of many players throughout the game’s history. Thankfully, Square Enix has made the drop rate a little nicer in the Pixel Remaster, but it’s still very low and the process can be a slog.

Thankfully, there is a way to expedite the process for three of the summons! You can use the Siren item to instantly start an encounter in your current location. It used to be the case that players had to farm these items and utilize the Fat Chocobo to store as many of them as possible, but Square Enix has again been very nice to completionists and added Sirens to the Namingway shop found on the Moon.

• To get Goblin, simply beat up Goblins found on the Overworld outside Baron. Using a Siren will force an encounter with six Goblins at once for the best chance at the summon, but you’ll fight plenty of Goblins even without the item.
• To get Cockatrice, you can use Sirens on the Overworld outside Mysidia. Using Sirens will guarantee encounters with them but you might not need them thanks to the large numbers of Cockatrice enemies found there.
• If you decide to farm the Goblin summon without Sirens outside Baron, there’s a good chance that you’ll run into Helldivers from time to time. These can also drop the Cockatrice item so you may be able to kill two birds with one stone!
• To get Mindflayers, head to the first level of the Magnetic Cavern north of Troia. With the Dark Elf defeated there will be no magnetic field and you can equip whatever you like. This method benefits the most from using Sirens as they guarantee an encounter with two Mindflayers, while just running around looking for them would take forever.
• There is no way to use Sirens to farm for the Bomb summon. As a result, one of the best places to farm for this summon is to fight random encounters in the Eastern Passage found on the Moon. You’re looking for the enemies called Dark Grenade, as they can drop the item required.

It might not be necessary to use these specific locations to farm for summons. The table below details every enemy capable of dropping the summon items, along with their Bestiary numbers.

Note that this means that there are some enemies that do resemble these summons but don’t drop the items. These include 022 Domovoi, 027 Bomb, 029 Gray Bomb, 076 Goblin Captain, and 092 Balloon.

Once you have acquired the summon item that you are looking for, simply use it from the inventory to teach Rydia the summon.