FF7 Remake Bahamut Guide: How To Get Chadley's Secret Summon

Key to getting new, powerful materia in Final Fantasy 7 Remake is Chadley, a side-character you'll find in Chapter 3 who gives you Battle Intel assignments to complete when fighting enemies. Knocking out Chadley's objectives allows him to create new materia, including new summons like Shiva and Fat Chocobo. To get those summons, though, you have to beat the monsters in battle first.

The most powerful of Chadley's summons, Bahamut, is also the most difficult to get. It requires completing all his Battle Intel assignments, before taking on an extremely tough boss fight. Below is everything you need to do to unlock the final summon and defeat it in battle.

We've also got a ton more Final Fantasy 7 Remake guides to help you find every collectible, unlock every secret, and beat every boss along the way.

How To Unlock The Bahamut Summon

You can only get Bahamut by defeating it in Chadley's Combat Simulator. To get the fight, however, you have to clear all 19 other Battle Intel objectives--a time-consuming endeavor. You'll complete most of these through the normal course of playing the game, but a few require a little more effort. Here's the full list of Chadley's objectives:

• Report 01: Monster Bio Pt. 1
  • Assess two enemy types
• Report 02: Magic Elements Pt. 2
  • Hit enemies vulnerable to fire, ice, or lightning using the appropriate magic--one for each element.
• Report 03: The Stagger Effect Pt. 1
  • Use unique abilities on Staggered enemies and charge the ATB gauge 10 times.
• Report 04: The Stagger Effect Pt. 2
  • Stagger 15 enemy types.
• Report 05: Combat Simulator: Shiva
  • Defeat Shiva--check out our Final Fantasy 7 Remake Boss Guide for strategies.
• Report 06: Monster Bio Pt. 2
  • Assess 10 enemy types.
• Report 07: Magic Elements Pt. 2
  • Exploit weaknesses of 15 enemy types.
• Report 08: The Manipulation Technique
  • Defeat two or more enemies with a single attack.
• Report 09: Monster Variants Pt. 1
  • Defeat monsters of three unique varieties--you'll find most of these in side-quests in Chapter 3, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, and Chapter 14.
• Report 10: Combat Simulation: Fat Chocobo
  • Defeat Fat Chocobo--check out our Final Fantasy 7 Remake Boss Guide for strategies.
• Report 11: Monster Bio Pt. 3
  • Assess 20 enemy types.
• Report 12: The Stagger Effect Pt. 3
  • Increase stagger damage bonus to 200%--use Tifa's Rise and Fall, Omnistrike, and Whirlwind Uppercut on a staggered enemy to increase the bonus.
• Report 13: Refocus Analysis
  • Trigger the Refocus limit break two times. The Refocus limit break is equippable with a materia Aerith has when you get her on your team in Chapter 8, but you can equip it to anyone.
• Report 14: The Stagger Effect Pt. 4
  • Stagger 40 enemy types.
• Report 15: Combat Simulation: Leviathan
  • Defeat Leviathan--check out our Final Fantasy 7 Remake Boss Guide for strategies.
• Report 16: Monster Bio Pt. 4
  • Assess 30 enemy types.
• Report 17: Weapon Abilities
  • Acquire all 16 weapon abilities. Use our Weapons Guide to find them all.
• Report 18: MP Consumption
  • Master all 12 types of magic materia. This is a time-consuming one, but you can get a leg up by equipping the Pedometer materia you find in Chapter 14 and walking 5,000 steps to turn it into AP Up materia. You also get a big AP boost when you use the Chapter Select feature after you've completed the game once, which can speed up leveling your green magic materia.
• Report 19: Monster Varients Pt. 2
  • Defeat monsters of 10 unique varieties. You can find more of these in Corneo's Colosseum and the Shinra Combat Simulator.

After you complete all other Battle Intel objectives, you'll unlock Chadley's final challenge: Bahamut. Defeat the summon and you'll get the Bahamut summon materia--but it's a tough fight to get it.

Fighting Bahamut

Bahamut is one of the toughest bosses in the game--it's fast and aggressive, with a number of powerful abilities that hit very, very hard. Crowning all of its lethal moves is Mega Flare, a final attack that will hit all your characters for so much damage that it'll likely wipe them out, even at full health and even if you're leveled all the way up to 50. Having the highest defense you can is key to dealing with Bahamut, and you'll want to rely on Guard when he comes at you with attacks like his claw slashes or his spinning charge attack. You won't avoid most of these because Bahamut is so huge, so get used to blocking. With Cloud, Punisher mode will allow you to get in some counter-attacks, so you're not just getting pummeled.

While defending against other attacks is important, you have to stop Bahamut from using Mega Flare at all costs if you want to win the fight. You'll know he's getting ready to use his massive attack when he starts counting down. He starts at five, and when he gets past one, he'll almost immediately wipe out your whole team. You can stop that from happening, however, by staggering him. Building Bahamut's stagger meter should be your primary focus throughout the fight and guide all your loadout and attack decisions.

You'll want to equip weapons and armor with high attack and defense. We fought our entire battle with Bahamut using no magic but healing spells; his attacks often come so fast and furious that you'll get interrupted if you stop to try to sling spells. Your results may vary on the magic front, but it's fully possible to take him down with just physical attacks, and we found them to be more effective with the focus on staggering the boss. In general, reserve magic for your AI characters, as Bahamut will gun for whoever you're controlling and interrupt your spells with frequency.

Here's how we outfitted our team:

Cloud

• Weapons and Armor: Hardedge, Chain Bangle, Champion Belt
• Materia: Healing, Time, Barrier, Ice+Elemental, HP Up, Chocobo & Moogle summon
• Limit Break: Ascension

Tifa

• Weapons and Armor: Purple Pain, Heavy-Duty Bracer, Transference Module
• Materia: Steadfast Block, Skill Master, HP Up, Deadly Dodge, Chakra, Healing
• Limit Break: Dolphin Flurry

Barret

• Weapons and Armor: Big Bertha, Cog Bangle, Revival Earrings
• Materia: Healing+Magnify, Revival, Auto-Cure, Mp Up, Prayer
• Limit Break: Catastrophe

Your battle strategy is to block the big attacks from Bahamut, while closing in and constantly wailing on him with anything that can drive up his stagger meter. We primarily utilized Tifa for this job, while issuing orders to Cloud and Barret to keep up the pressure or to heal teammates. When you can use ATB abilities, tend toward Cloud's Focused Thrust, Barret's Focused Shot, and Tifa's Focused Strike to push up Bahamut's stagger meter even more. You'll also want to spend some time in the Corneo Colosseum in Chapter 14, where you can earn the Ascension, Dolphin Flurry, and Catastrophe limit breaks for completing the individual "Character vs. Wild Animals" fights.

When you're not using abilities that drive up Bahamut's stagger, use the abilities you have that do high damage, like Braver. With Tifa, keep using Unbridled Strength to increase her attack power, which will allow you to pepper in some Rise and Fall and Omnistrike attacks along with Focused Strike.

We also equipped Tifa with materia to drive up her ATB so that she was constantly able to dish out attacks to raise Bahamut's stagger, which paired nicely with the Transference Module to quickly build up limit breaks.

When Bahamut starts his countdown, he'll also fire up a powerful aura surrounding himself that will damage your team while they stand in it. Because of that, you're going to need to stay on top of healing spells; make Barret your primary healer, since Bahamut will mostly leave him alone. Do your best to keep up the pressure on Bahamut, as you'll stagger him most effectively if you're able to do a lot of damage.

Tifa's constant use of ATB abilities should get her limit break up pretty quickly; make sure Bahamut isn't about to start moving before you activate it, since landing your limit breaks is essential for big stagger increases. Dolphin Flurry should give you a huge boost to Bahamut's stagger, so you absolutely need to land it. If you use a summon, go with Chocobo and Moogle and use the Chocobo Kick summon ability, which specifically increases enemies' stagger meters.

Do your best to block and absorb Bahamut's big attacks. His Umbral Strikes are some of the most annoying, usually bouncing a teammate for two huge hits. They come from first the left, then the right, so a practiced dodge in one direction and then the other can sometimes avoid them. Bahamut will occasionally swing down and grab a teammate, so dodge that move if you can, but if not, switch to someone else and pound Bahamut with big attacks to get him to drop them (Omnistrike, in particular, seemed to work pretty well). If he pulls up into the sky for Divebomb, scatter your team so that he only hits one of them when he lands, then quickly heal that person. You can also use spells like Barrier to make yourself a little more resilient, but in general, constantly punishing Bahamut is the key to victory.

Staggering Bahamut will reset the Mega Flare timer while leaving him open to huge damage, so when that happens, hit him with everything you've got. Take the opportunity to heal up if you're in trouble, as well. When Bahamut comes out of it, you'll start the process over again, but you should be able to build up Tifa's limit break relatively quickly again so you can start building stagger.

We beat Bahamut in two staggers once we were properly outfitted, and he never managed to even pull off a Divebomb. That was after failing the fight three times with our team just one level lower--we cleared it at level 44. Equipment seemed to be the difference, so make sure you've got your team set up for high attack damage and defense if you want to survive. Stick to the stagger strategy, and Bahamut should be yours in no time.