Poor Decision making? (Spoilers)

[Cilia]

Are crystals even needed beyond the inital summoning?

Another funny thing about primals, since it has come to light that they are just creations of the summoner imaginings. How are some then aware of others, such as Ramuh. Don't some of the others as well refer to each other, or was that something from the 1.0 version. Also, how did Ruda summon Titan and Ifrit in the same form as we fought, aside from it just being easier for the devs to do it that way.

Strictly speaking crystals are never required for summoning. Aether matching up with the element(s) of the primal to be summoned is usually used, e.g. for Bismarck to be summoned the Vanu Vanu just need (a lot of) wind, water, and lightning aether (based on his attacks). Crystals are just a convenient way of carting aether around since they're a dense, tangible form of a normally intangible substance.

They do still need aether after an initial summoning; the aspected aether available to a primal determines it's relative strength. We go up against Shiva and she's reasonably tough (story-wise), but then she gets trounced by Ravana which (according to Ysayle) was due to the lack of available ice crystals (aether).

It's been confirmed the primals are vaguely aware of each other, even if they've never met face-to-face. As manifestations of (elemental) aether, they always exist in the Lifestream where they probably bump into each other as elemental forces. Other people explained how it wasn't Garuda that summoned Ifrit and Titan, but captive Amalj'aa and Kobolds praying to them.