It's no understatement to say that the setting of Final Fantasy 6 transforms considerably in its second half. The World of Ruin portion of Square's classic RPG shuffles everything you knew into something twisted and decaying, including the planet's continental layout. In this scrambled madness, eight legendary dragons are awakened.
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Finding and defeating these dragons awards players with the coveted and all-powerful Crusader Magicite, an incredible summon with terrific learnable spells attached. For Final Fantasy 6 Pixel Remaster, we've assembled this guide to help you find all eight and obtain Crusader.
This guide reflects the Pixel Remaster version of FF6, which is comparable (in this sense) to the SNES and PS1 versions - the game's GBA and now-defunct 2014 PC/mobile ports added a bonus dungeon called the Dragon's Den, which features rematches against the eight dragons. We won't be including information on the Dragon's Den, as it's not part of Pixel Remaster, which is surely the most popular version of the game as of this writing!
Final Fantasy 6 tasks you with finding the dragons on your own, but it's not quite the needle-in-a-haystack it may sound like. So long as you're searching the world for former allies rather than rushing to the final dungeon with the minimum mandatory three characters (Celes, Edgar, Setzer), you're bound to bump into them.
The trick is knowing where to find your friends. The game offers clever hints through dialogue, but it's easy to miss a good half those hints. And while some dragons will be right that center-stage (in fact, one is quite literally center-stage), others are a bit less obvious even on their home turf.
Once you've defeated a dragon, a message will appear informing you how many of the eight remain to be found. At the end of this countdown, the message will instead say that a seal has been broken, and the Crusader Magicite will become yours. Since the last two dragons are in the final dungeon, Kefka's Tower, following our guide will net you Crusader right when you've bested this duo.
The Earth Dragon is almost inarguably the easiest of the eight to locate. All players need to do is find the Opera House; upon entry, you'll be informed that something terrible has happened - a dragon has shown up on the opera stage, and it won't budge! Oh, the humanity.
You'll find the World of Ruin's Opera House at the middle of the thin stretch of land connecting the two parts of the westernmost continent. After you've been apprised of the situation, head to the backstage area, where you'll find a fellow who wouldn't let you past him during the memorable World of Balance story sequence here.
Pull the second switch from the right, and you'll be deposited down on to the stage. Approach the Earth Dragon when you're ready. To avoid the Earth Dragon's tough Earth-elemental attacks, consider equipping your old Gaia Gear, which absorbs that element. Casting Float also works wonders.
For the Storm Dragon, you'll need to head to Mount Zozo. This is part of the quest to bring Cyan back into the party, and the game will drop hints about his whereabouts fairly casually without ever fully revealing things. You'll want to head to Maranda first, which in the World of Ruin can be found at the bottom portion of the westernmost continent (due east from the Opera House).
Find the house with the young woman whose injured boyfriend was in Mobliz during the World of Balance. You may have completed a side quest related to the letters she sends him - or you might not have - but either way, it's now been brought to your attention. Check the letter on her desk and the party will note it looks like Cyan's handwriting rather than the boyfriend.
Now, step outside the house and interact with the pigeon which will fly off in a dramatic globe-spanning little cutscene, revealing Zozo as its destination. Go there - it's nestled against its old mountain range on the northern part of the westernmost continent.
Once you've arrived, locate the merchant standing outside a tower and purchase the Rust-Rid. Climb the tower, reach the door that's jammed, and the game will ask you to apply the Rust-Rid. Do that! You'll be able to head through the door and into Mount Zozo. Not too far from the entrance is a save point, and near that save point is a switch to interact with. Pressing the switch opens a treasure chest the Storm Dragon flies out from. Wild stuff.
The Storm Dragon will then fly about and must be bumped into mid-flight to initiate combat. Consider using equipment that denies Wind damage, like the Minerva Bustier. Other than that, he's not so bad.
To find the Ice Dragon, set a course for Narshe, which still has its old cave-like entryway. In the World of Ruin, Narshe is situated on the west side of the northern continent. As always, its entrance is within some mountains.
Do you remember where the party battled Kefka's forces for the protection of Narshe during the World of Balance? The snowfields from that section of the game are home to the Ice Dragon now. To get there, retrace your steps through the Narshe Mines. If you're playing the Pixel Remaster, don't feel bad about disabling encounters to get there faster - though bear in mind, it's populated with new enemies, so if you're filling your bestiary you should be more conservative in that feature's usage.
The biggest problem the Ice Dragon presents in battle is Absolute Zero, an attack which - if it connects - will freeze its targets. It targets the entire party, but has a mercifully slim hit rate. (That said, it somehow struck all four of our party members despite that, which was irritating!) Use Fire-elemental attacks to end the Ice Dragon's chilly reign most swiftly.
The fiery Red Dragon is deep within Phoenix Cave, where the party reunites with Locke who's on his quest to find the legendary (and titular) Phoenix Magicite. Phoenix Cave is at the center of a star-shaped mountain range at the northern tip of the southern continent (the same continent that, at its southern edge, has Albrook where Celes' raft brings her earlier on in the story).
The Phoenix Cave is a maze that requires the use of two parties. You will find the Red Dragon hanging out close to the end of the dungeon - you truly can't miss it.
The best advice for this guy is to only use party members whose levels are not divisible by four, since he likes to use Level 4 Flare somewhat frequently. Being Fire-elemental, you can negate much of his bite with anything that absorbs or negates Fire. Like several dragons, it's susceptible to Poison status, so you can chip away at Red's HP deviously in this fashion. It's also predictably weak to Ice, so Blizzara (or Blizzaga if you have Valigarmanda) is aces.
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The Blue Dragon is nestled inside the Ancient Castle, and is (for multiple reasons) arguably the hardest of the bunch to find. You'll become reacquainted with Figaro Castle as part of the few genuinely mandatory sequences in the World of Ruin, but after that's been taken care of, your next goal will be to find Setzer and acquire the Falcon airship.
Only after you have done this should you return to Figaro Castle - go to the engine room and request that it make the journey between deserts as you did during the World of Balance when you were en route to Kohlingen. Only, this time, Figaro Castle gets stuck on something midway through the trip. You can request that it keep going anyway, or you can have it stop here, which is absolutely the plan.
It turns out, Figaro Castle has been caught on an underground cave. To exit Figaro Castle, head through the hole in the prison cells' wall that you originally came through with Edgar (sorry, 'Gerad'). Now make your way through the cave, and into the Ancient Castle. Acquire the Odin Magicite, but... wait, we're not finished yet!
There's a book within the Ancient Castle main hall's east room that will tell you how to do this, or you can just follow our instructions: from the right-side throne, take five steps south, and then press the confirm button. A noise will inform you that something has changed; go to the east room and head down new the staircase to a secret passageway.
The Blue Dragon's down in the room this leads to. Acid Rain inflicts the party with Sap status, which can be a real pain to deal with. Strike it quickly with Thundara/Thundaga and, as always, your best physical attacks to cross another dragon off the ol' list.
Just beyond the Blue Dragon is a statue of the Ancient Castle's queen. Interacting with the statue transforms your Odin Magicite into the Raiden Magicite, which is great, except that Odin is one of the few ways for most characters to learn Meteor. This would be a problem if we weren't aiming to acquire Crusader, who also teaches Meteor, and does so ten times as swiftly - but it's still worth noting, since Raiden teaches the (fantastic) Quick spell instead.
The (surprisingly weak) Holy Dragon has made the Cultists' Tower its home. Here, party members can only use magic. It's where you'll bring Relm to Strago at the base of the tower to snap him out of his stupor; it's also the home to some great treasure and a difficult boss at the top.
The Cultists' Tower is midway up the eastern continent, which is the one that's just a long stretch of land with Nikeah at the north tip and Mobliz at the south. You'll find it in the middle of a mountain range. Bring characters with good access to magic, since that's really the big issue against the Holy Dragon, is the inability to use conventional attacks and such.
Our latest quarry is hanging out inside the third treasure room, so roughly three-quarters of the way up the Cultists' Tower. Equip Reflect Rings to bounce the Holy spell back at it, or better yet, cast Silence and you'll stifle the poor thing entirely. You'd think the Holy Dragon would be harder.
The final two dragons, both Gold and Skull, you will have no choice but to see (though as with the other dragons, you can still choose not to fight them, since they won't engage you automatically). In Kefka's Tower, the party must split into three groups. Two of these groups will bump into one of the eight legendary dragons on their way to Kefka. Both rooms are quite plain save for the very obvious dragon in the middle; you truly cannot miss them.
Really, the only way locating Gold and Skull will cause you grief is if the mysterious countdown voice doesn't inform you the seal's been broken after you've beaten them both, which would mean there's still more dragon-slaying to be done outside Kefka's Tower. Since you followed this guide, that... really shouldn't happen!
For Gold Dragon, immunity/absorption of Lightning-element attacks essentially guarantees victory. It's weak to Water, so Water Scrolls and Strago's Tsunami will put this brachiosaur (?!) to pasture pretty quickly, but so will powerful physical hits and spells like Meteor and Flare.
Skull Dragon is a more ruthless beast. It's all about hitting with debuffs, including dreaded effects like Imp and Confuse. If you have Ribbons, equip them on folks, especially those whose high attack strength will no doubt one-shot their allies when confused. On our Pixel Remaster replay, we did way more grinding than is necessary, so every dragon was a cakewalk (don't worry, we've fought them more traditionally as well!) but that just made Confuse all the more damning, because nothing hurts more than Sabin doing 9,999 damage to his own brother.
The good news is, Skull Dragon is weak to Holy and Fire, so Holy and Firaga will hurt it big-time. With Skull Dragon down, or Gold Dragon depending on your order of operations here at Kefka's Tower, the Crusader Magicite is all yours. Congrats!
Next: Final Fantasy 6 Pixel Remaster: How To Get All Of Edgar's Tools