Elemental (Final Fantasy XI)

There are 8 types of elemental present in Final Fantasy XI. Each corresponds to one of the 8 elements present in the game; fire, air, water, earth, ice, and thunder for the terrestrial elementals, plus light and dark. Elementals make appearances, generally, as either the pet of a beastmen summoner or due to the prevailing weather conditions in the area. While Elementals can also be called by summoners (after using the appropriate Pact item to learn the summoning spell), they are generally useless; they cannot be controlled as specifically as avatars, they have the highest perpetuation cost of all summons, and cast spells at random. A high point in a player's elemental, however, is that they tend to cast Ancient Magic at higher levels.

Light Spirits are the most useful (and probably the ONLY useful) elemental summoners can obtain; they have many status enhancing spells and cure magic that is cast not only on the summoner, but also the party, and even other members of an entire alliance. Encountering wild Light Elementals, however, is extremely difficult since light-element weather conditions are very rare, and are only known to occur in a single area.

Elementals of every type can be encountered in Ru'Aun Gardens in the region of Tu'Lia, but their levels are rather high and there are not many of them at once. There are also countless arcane nearby, making casting magic difficult for players that want to avoid extra enemies.

Elemental by Weather
Below is listed the types of weather and what kind of elemental may spawn when that weather is going on. It should be noted that the last two types of weather are very rare and while every area has its own weather patterns, only a very select few zones will have light or dark weather. Also, any elemental magic cast during weather of the same type is enhanced. They are all potent casters, made even more potent if fought in their native type of weather, and have a large amount of hit points and damage reduction versus physical attacks.