Gamer Corner Guides

Adult Rydia loses the ability to use White Magic (or staffs), but has become a much more powerful Black Mage. She starts off with the tier 2 elemental magic spells, as well as a selection of summons. The elemental summons are useful when you want to exploit the weakness of a large group, since their damage does not change based on the number of targets. Titan is an excellent non-elemental damage spell early in the game (though Quake does more damage for less MP once she learns it at level 47). The Mist Dragon summon does damage based on Rydia's HP, which isn't very high, but it completely ignores Magic Defense and resistances so it has some very nice uses. Later in the game, she can learn other summons via side quests, all of which have powerful effects.

As a child, Rydia can do a bit of everything. She gets very basic White Magic, including Cure1, and the basic Black Magic spells (except Fire1, which she receives as part of the story on Mt. Hobs). Against bosses, her Chocb summon is her most powerful attack, but she has very few MP so you need to be conservative. Rydia will likely spend a lot of turns using various rods as items.