Building a Team for Bosses and Late-Game Content

A boss has a second bar under its health bar: the break shield. Empty it and the enemy is stunned, and a damage window opens. The window lasts until the break meter regenerates, and the enemy takes greatly increased damage for the whole of it. For bosses that figure is 250%. That makes Break the largest single damage multiplier in the game, and any boss team should be built around it.

Break-role Aniimo are the specialists here. Their job is to wear down that shield and stagger the enemy, so your damage dealer gets to swing into a stunned target instead of a healthy one. You can push it further with Rookie's Bouncy Sling, which increases the break damage a target takes by 15% for 15 seconds.

The catch is that more break is not always better. In some fights you should not empty the bar completely, and the Magmarex phase is one of them. Learn the fight before you treat every break bar as something to zero out.

Aniimo has several different types of boss encounter, and the harder ones are where a lopsided team falls apart. Late-game and boss content needs healing and support on the team as well as damage. A team that kills fast but cannot recover from a mistake will lose the long fights.

Hollow Battle Interlink shows the other side of this. Its bosses are very tanky, which makes the mode a tight DPS check. You still need real damage. The point of the break window is to multiply the damage you already have, not to replace it.

It also helps to know that a healer or support is not dead weight on the damage meter. Aniimo in non-DPS roles can still deal damage, so a balanced team gives up less than you might expect.

In standard single-player play you carry four Aniimo. The active team is your main starter plus three others, and every other creature sits in a box. In combat they show in slots 1 to 4 on the right of the screen. The combat team size is not entirely settled, though, and three active Aniimo is the other figure in play, so check your own screen before planning around a fourth slot.

Each Aniimo has an elemental affinity and one combat role, picked from DPS, break (breaker), healing, support or regen. The role is fixed and cannot be changed. That has a practical consequence: decide what a creature is for before you invest in it, or you will spend development materials on something that cannot become what you need. There is plenty to spend on, too. Beyond levelling, Aniimo grow through training, enchantment, resonance, awakening, carried items and runes.

A solid starting shape for bosses is a damage dealer, a breaker and a healer, with the last slot depending on the fight. One option for that slot is a second damage dealer of a different element. With a Light DPS and a Dark DPS, for example, you can switch to whichever one covers the enemy's element.

Combat lets you swap instantly, in real time, between the Aniimo in your active party. That is what makes a break team work. Your breaker wears down the shield, then you swap to the damage dealer for the window.

Your support's job is to make sure that burst is fully buffed. Reapply buffs just before the break gauge empties, not after the stun starts. A buff that goes up late means part of your best damage of the fight goes out unbuffed, and the window only lasts until the meter comes back.

Swapping also keeps you alive between windows. You can switch out an Aniimo that is low on health, and enemy attacks are telegraphed with large red markers on the ground before they hit. Watch for the red, get out of it, and keep your damage dealer healthy for the next break.

You can change who sits in the active party, but only outside combat. Once a fight starts you are swapping between the four you brought, so the team you pick going in is the team you have.

Presets make this much less of a chore. You can set up to eight preset battle party rosters and switch between them during exploration. You can also give them custom names, which is worth doing. A preset named after a specific boss, or after the element it covers, is easier to find than "Team 3" when you are standing at the arena entrance.

06Where to start

Build every boss team around the break window. Bring a breaker to open it and a damage dealer to use it, plus a healer or support to keep the team alive and buff the burst just before the gauge empties. Decide each Aniimo's role before you invest in it, because the role is permanent. Save your boss setups as named presets so you can switch to the right one before the fight, since you can't change the party once it starts.