If you want to know how to unlock the mighty Alexander summon in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, first, you must defeat it in battle through Chadley's Combat Simulator.
The Alexander Summon Entity battle becomes available as soon as you unlock the third open-world zone in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.
Once you're there, find Chadley at any location, talk to him, select "Use Combat Simulator," and choose Summon Entity Alexander under Combat Challenges. If you want to know how to prepare for this battle and the best tactics, check out the guide below.
How to unlock Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Alexander
Like other Summon entity battles in the Combat Simulator, regardless of the level at which you engage in the battle, these ultra-tough bosses will sync to your characters' level, ensuring a consistently high level of challenge.
Even if you can lower the difficulty to Easy, you will still be prevented from using any consumable items during the battle, just like in Hard mode, so keep that in mind when preparing for the battle - you can only rely on your gear, skills, and equipped materia.
Alexander is a giant battle castle-like robot, that will be very familiar to the fans of other Final Fantasy games. The fight with him in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth will look like this:
- Alexander will be almost completely immune to any damage while his two arms are active, so destroying both arms should be a priority. The arms and the middle part of Alexander are vulnerable to lightning-based magic, so attack them with Thunder/Thundara/Thundaga spells and electric-type abilities like Electric Impulse. If you have the Ramuh Summon Materia (unlocked if you have the FFVII Remake Intermission DLC save file), it might be a good idea to summon him during the battle.
- Alexander will sometimes cast Whirling Ray, power beams that rotate in a circle on the floor, which you'll need to avoid by moving. Often, he will also cast Radiant Wave, an energetic wave that you must block or dodge.
- During the battle, you'll notice that Alexander casts Karma Collection, a buff that stacks on him and that you want to remove as soon as possible with Esuna. This is important because when the boss casts its special attack "Judgment," the damage will be higher if there are more stacked Karma buffs.
- Once both arms are gone, Alexander will become pressured and will no longer be immune to damage. Use this time to spam all your lightning magic and attacks to try to Stagger him for more damage. Ideally, if your party is strong enough, he can fall here. However, if not, he will regenerate his arms, and you'll have to repeat the process with a few more devastating moves that he'll start using as his health decreases.
- During this time, Alexander might spawn Pillars of Light on the field that you need to take down as soon as possible. Also, there is a Tracking Beam that will send homing energy beams that will follow the character you control; just run and dodge to avoid them.
- Towards the end, he might shoot a Giant Laser that can also be avoided by dodging, and he might even teleport to the other side of the arena while filling the other half of the floor with energy that drains your health, so quickly move out of it.
- Eventually, while avoiding all of this, you will destroy both of his arms again and nuke the body with your thunder magic and limit breaks until Alexander is finally defeated.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Alexander Summon Stone locations
If all of this seems like too much, preparing before taking on Alexander is the way to go. Make sure that all three characters you choose for this encounter have high magic defence, plenty of HP, as well as lightning-based magic and skills at their disposal.
To ease the battle with Alexander, you can lower the game difficulty to Easy and analyze the three Summon Crystals in the Corel Region to unlock weakened versions of this boss. Check out the maps below for the locations of all three shrines where the Summon Crystals are located to make this battle a little easier.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Alexander boss rewards
Once you get Alexander Summon Materia you can equip it and call upon it during the battles. You can use Alexander to deal large amounts of non-elemental magic damage with his regular attacks as well as with his Ultimate: Divine Judgment. If you level up Alexander Summon Materia to LVL4, through Summon Crystal analysis (see the maps above) the Grand Laser attack will become available as well.