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Fighting gods is something of a tradition inHonkai: Star Rail, starting with the tutorial and continuing throughout the story. In Amphoreus, you’ll face off against Nikador, the Titan of Strife a whopping three times. They get stronger each time you fight them, with each incarnation adding new mechanics or phases, culminating in a fight against a deity at nearly their full strength.
Taking down Nikador can be a trial; the final time you face them is a true test of your skills and builds. You’ll discover everything you need to know about beating them here.
All Incarnation Of Strife Attacks
The first time you fight Nikador (called Savage God, Mad King, Incarnation Of Strife in-game),they’ll only have one phase. The second and third fights have two phases, but encounters two and three are very different beasts.
You’ll use the initial fight as a primer for those that follow, andthe second one is essentially an expansion on the first. It only adds a few extra attacks without doing much to change up how it all works. The final fight requires you to engage with its mechanics unless you want to tempt a full team wipe.
How To Beat The First Encounter
One note before we get started. Like all the Titankin enemies in Amphoreus,Nikador has the War Armor effectvia the Polis Protector Talent, which reduces the damage they take. After being hit seven times, the War Armor shatters, dealing damage to the boss, adding minor Imaginary damage to your attacks, and delaying their action.
After using the Calamity Eternal attack,Nikador gains the Titanic Corpus buff, which reduces the damage they take by 30 percent and increases the damage of their next attack by 20 percent. Titanic Corpus functions similarly to War Armor but has 12 stacks instead of seven and also enables Nikador’s next attack to Imprison any of your characters it hits.
To counter this effect, your party will gain Glory stacks after Nikador uses Calamity Eternal, and Skill and Ultimate attacks increase your Glory values. Glory allows your attacks to remove Titanic Corpus stacks and also increases their damage dealt, and removing all of them not only deals heavy damage to the boss butalso regenerates Energy for the whole party.
However, after using Calamity Eternal, that stack value increases to 12, and all characters gain Glory stacks. The number ofGlory stacks determines how many Titanic Corpus stacks they can reduce, and you can gain Glory by using Skills and Ultimates.
It doesn’t matter what kind of attack you use to reduce War Armor and Titanic Corpus.Regular attacks, Ultimates, and follow-up attacksall reduce the corresponding amount of stacks on the boss.
If you manage to remove all 12 Titanic Corpus stacks, not only will the boss take a solid chunk of damage, but it will alsocancel the effect and regenerate Energyfor the whole party.
The Savage God, Mad King, Incarnation of Strife alsouses the following attacks:
Hewing of the River of Souls
Multiple hits of Imaginary damageto all of your characters.
Calamity Eternal
DealsImaginary damage to all alliesactivates Titanic Corpus and applies Glory to all allies.
How To Beat The Second Encounter
You fight Nikador again midway through the Amphoreus campaign, andthis encounter has two phasesplus an additional attack to deal with.
Description
DealsImaginary damage to all allies, activates Titanic Corpus, and applies Glory to all allies.
All Realms Leveled, All Legions to Dust
This attack dealsa massive amount of Imaginary damageto the entire party, enough to team wipe the unprepared.
Ruination of Night and Light
This second encounter with Nikador is a more traditional Honkai: Star Rail boss fight. Theonly attack that’s truly threatening is All Realms Leveled, All Legions to Dust, but you should do your best to keep everyone at full health regardless.
How To Beat The Third Encounter
The third fight with Nikadorpits you against them at nearly their full power, and they receive a name change befitting the increased difficulty: The Giver, Master of Legions, Lance of Fury. This form not only uses the same attacks as phase two but has a new trick up its sleeve, and it’s a doozy.
Nikador isn’t the only one who gets to act here; his restored divinity also does. The divinity ismarked by a golden sigil in the turn order, the same one that floats near the Titan’s back.
Whenever the divinity first attacks, it uses The Vanquished Behold Woe,drawing out your characters' literal souls, inflicting the Conquer or Be Conqueredstate, and reducing the amount of HP they can heal.
Attacking the spears holding a character’s soul reduces that spear’s HP and increases the character’s ability to heal.Breaking a spear removes the Conquer or Be Conquered stateand returns a character’s ability to fully heal.
Nikador’s divinity can act multiple times, so even if you break its soul spears to get your healing abilities back,the boss can simply draw out your party’s souls again.
In the first phase of the fight, the soul draw and Nikador’s regular attacks are all you need to deal with. The second phase iswhere it gets dicey.
The Vanquished Behold Woe
Removes the souls of all allies on field, applying the Conquer or Be Conquered State andreducing the amount of HP they can heal.
Fury Falls, and Bows to Strife
Nikador’s strongest attack dealsImaginary damage to all characters based on a percentage of their maximum HP, ignores their Defense stat, and has a high chance to Imprison Conquered characters.
Reduces the Defenseof all allies on the field.
This attack deals a massive amount of Imaginary damage to the entire party, enoughto team wipe the unprepared.
To avoid being easily wiped by the Fury Falls, and Bows to Strife attack, it’s highly recommended removing your characters' Conquered states bydestroying as many of the character soul spears as possible. The more of them the boss can absorb before its ultimate attack, the more it can enhance its damage.
Best Teams For Beating The Incarnation Of Strife And The Lance Of Fury
Nikador’s forms are allweak to Ice, Lightning, and Quantum damage, meaning you’ll want to have a source of at least one of each damage type — preferably two. If you’re newer to Honkai: Star Rail, Serval, Pela, and especially Remembrance Trailblazer are fantastic choices here.
Note that the soul spears conjured by The Vanquished Behold Woe in the fight against the Lance of Fury areweak to Lightning, Quantum, and Imaginary, making Lightning the preferred damage type.
The teams presented heredeal with all versions of the boss well, with one team, in particular, trivializing the fights.
Acheron
Acheron makes all the Nikador fights easy, especially the third encounter against the Lance of Fury. Her Ultimate can easily defeat the soul spears,each of which deals massive damage to the boss when destroyed. One or two Ultimates are all it takes, which are easy to achieve with a well-built team.
Jing Yuan
Jing Yuan is fantastic for the Nikador fight for the same reason as Acheron:massive AoE Lightning damage to destroy soul spearsand, therefore, take huge chunks out of the boss’s health bar.
The Herta
As the featured character in 3.0, the Herta is a fantastic option against Nikador. Her incredible AoE damage, Ice element, andsynergy with both premium and free-to-play teamsmake her an easy choice.
Free-to-Play
While not ideal,using Serval or Moze as your main DPSwith Pela as debuff and sub-DPS is entirely doable. You’ll need to build your Lynx a bit more to deal with Nikador’s damage output, and you might have a few wipes, but this team should still do fine.
