Background
Rikku is a young Al Bhed girl introduced very early on in the game, although she is the last character to join the party properly (doing so at the Moonflow area). Her true identity as an Al Bhed remains hidden from the likes of Yevonites such as Wakka in an attempt to avoid persecution, however this fact is inevitably leaked and Wakka soon gets over the shock accepting Rikku as a valuable guardian. Rikku's father (Cid) is leader of the Al Bhed Home, and her brother (Brother) is not only the airship pilot but also an excellent Blitzball player. It should also be noted that Rikku has an intense fear of lightning (which causes a lot of problems for her at the Thunder Plains) as Brother accidentally cast a Thunder spell on her instead of a fiend when she was younger.
Basic Fighting Style
Rikku is the thief of the party, her main skills being Steal and Use, which allow her to steal items from enemies and use items other members of the party would not ordinarily be able to respectively. Other than these 2 skills and a couple of others, Rikku is not likely to be used for much else owing to mediocre strength and magic attributes. However, the uses of stolen objects for customising weapons and armour, teaching Aeons abilities as well as being very useful for her overdrive makes Rikku a very useful character. As she joins the party a lot later than the rest of the crew, her route on the sphere grid is by far the shortest, and therefore the attribute increases are generally higher than those on the other characters' paths. It should also be noted that Rikku's grid starts with a lot of HP nodes to help get her strong enough to fight the battles she immediately finds herself in. Being a thief, Rikku is of course highly agile and excells only really in this attribute, although her accuracy and defences are servicable.
Rikku is able to dismantle a variety of Machina enemies instantly with her Steal command, and the Use command will come in handy in many a boss fight, especially when other members may not be available. If you decide to take on the Monster Arena and/or Dark Aeons Rikku is likely to be essential for the hardest enemies in both these quests. Although both her and Yuna have sensible bonuses on their Celestial weapons, Yuna's ability to summon may attract you for a lot of the battles. However, Rikku's extremely versatile overdrive (Mix) is a necessity for some battles, especially against the Dark Aeons, and she is likely to be used in tandem with Yuna.
Notable Skills
The skills that Rikku gains on her initial sphere grid path are detailed below:
Steal - Steals an item from an enemy (as a rule of thumb success rate starts at 100%, and halves after each steal, although luck does affect success rate), and will instantly destroy certain Machina enemies. Enemies carry both common and rare itmes, and abilities on weapons such as Master Thief will enable only the rare items to be stolen.
Use - Uses an item not available from the 'Item' command (often these are items stolen from enemies).
Luck - Raises the Luck attribute of all active party members for the battle, this effect can be stacked up to 5 times.
Spare Change - Throws gil at an enemy to damage them (damage is gil thrown divided by 10).
Mug - Combined use of the Steal and Attack commands (steals an item and does damage).
Bribe - If you give a monster enough money (equivalent to 20 times their HP), they will run away from the battle and leave (often a lot of) rare items behind. Note that the total you give is cumulative, so if you give a large amount and miss, just give a few gil each time until it works. As this skill will cost you a lot of money (usually around the hundreds of thousands to millions of gil), it only becomes really useful when obtaining these items for assistance in battling the monster arena creations. Therefore this skill is discussed in more detail in the Monster Arena section, along with useful fiends to bribe.
Pilfer Gil - Steals gil from an enemy. International version only.
Nab Gil - Combined use of the Pilfer Gil and Attack commands (steals gil and does damage). International version only.
Quick Pockets - Uses an item, but your next turn will come up quicker - like a quick hit but with items instead of an attack. This skill is surrounded by a lot of lvl. 4 key spheres and has a high MP cost, so you may want to consider the use of a precious Master Sphere and either copycat (see below) or 1 MP cost to help you utilise it correctly. International version only.
Copycat - The user will perform exactly the same action as the last party member (unless it was an exclusive action such as an overdrive or summon). This includes skills the user has not learnt, and will even work with doublecasts. Whatever the previous action was, it will always cost 28MP to copycat, but bear in mind that the damage is not likely to be the same due to differing attributes between characters. You cannot use this skill in the Omega Ruins.
Overdrive
Rikku has by far the most versatile overdrive of any character, as it allows her to combine any two items in the inventory to create a whole range of different effects. It would be impractical to list all the possible combinations here as there are so many, but below are some particularly useful examples:
| Name | Effect | Mix |
|---|---|---|
| Final Phoenix | Revive all party members with full HP | Phoenix Down + Lvl.1-4 Key Sphere |
| Final Elixir | Revives party members, restores HP and MP, removes status effects | High Potion + Lvl.1-4 Key Sphere |
| Ultra NulAll | Casts all 4 nul spells and stat boosters (e.g. Cheer, Focus etc.) | Heal Spring + Musk/Hypello Potion |
| Hyper Vitality | Doubles maximum HP and casts cheer | Stamina Tonic + Potion |
| Hyper Mighty G | Casts Auto-Life, Protect, Shell, Regen and Haste on all party members | Heal Spring + Pendulum/Underdog's Secret/Amulet |
| Miracle Drink | Gives all party members a high critical hit rate | Ether + Designer Wallet |
| Trio of 9999 | Each attack of all party members will hit for 9999 damage | Door to Tommorow + Door to Tommorow |
| Supernova | 2 times 9999 damage (19998) to all enemies | Shining Gem + Supreme Gem |