Nidhoggr Guide

Published February 15 2023

Updated January 4 2024

This guide covers the recommended team compositions and strategies to beat Nidhoggr. Here you can find other compositions such as the Nidhoggr Guide - No Freyja Holy Relic if you want to complete all 3 floors without having Freyja's Holy Relic or Light Mael of Sunshine.

The goal is to maximize the acquisition of Source of the Roots’ Corruption, a rare material.

Demonic Beast Battles are the main source of Holy Relic materials. When crafted, Holy Relics grant special effects and additional basic stats to registered heroes. It is the most difficult PVE content to clear, requiring your heroes to be maxed out in levels and equipment to compete. Specific skills are also needed to counter the gimmicks in each Phase. Damage Reduction, Cleanse, Buff Removal, Cancel Stances, and Strong single-target burst damage are important characteristics to have on your team.
There are currently three floors, each with 3 phases to clear. First-Time Stage Clear Rewards can be claimed after clearing a floor once before reset. Simultaneously, stage rewards can be farmed repeatedly to acquire other materials.

## Preparation

### Equipment

LR Red Princess Elizabeth - HP / Defense (Green Old Fart King association), Holy Relic recommended.

Light Mael of Sunshine - Attack / Crit Damage

Dark Traitor Meliodas – Attack / Crit Dmg (Red Sariel association)

Green Princess Elizabeth or Red Princess Elizabeth/LR Red Princess Elizabeth – HP / Defense (Green Old Fart King association), Holy Relic recommended.

Red Freyr – Attack / Crit Damage (Red Tarmiel association)

Blue Ellatte – HP / Defense

Red Tarmiel - HP / Recovery

Blue Ban – Defense / Defense / Defense (Resistance rolls in the mid pieces, R gear works as well), Holy Relic not required.

Blue Fairy King Harlequin – Attack / Crit Damage (Red Sariel Association), Holy Relic recommended

Green Valenti – HP / Defense (Resistance rolls in the mid pieces), Holy Relic not required

Green Brunhild – Attack / Defense or Crit Damage, Holy Relic recommended but not required.

Red Festival Queen Diane – HP / Defense (Red or Blue Tarmiel association)

Red Halloween Matrona – HP / Defense (Red or Blue Tarmiel association), Holy Relic recommended.

Dark Purgatory Meliodas - Attack / Crit Dmg (Red Sariel association)

Red Skadi - HP / Defense, Holy Relic recommended but not required

Light Mael of Sunshine - Attack / Defense

Red Freyja or Green Summer Freyja - Attack / Critical Damage or Attack / Defense, Holy Relic Required (Half Resistance and Defense is optimal)

Blue Festival Ludociel / LR Blue Festival Ludociel or Red Summer Ludociel HP / Defense

Red Tyr - Attack / Defense or Crit Damage

Red Megellda - HP / Defense or Defense / Defense / Defense

### Possible Teams

* Team with Red Skadi, Red Halloween Matrona and Red Festival Queen Diane is only recommended if you have Matrona's Holy Relic
* Team with Light Mael and Red / Green Freyja is only recommended if Freyja has her Holy Relic or else she won’t be able to benefit from their uniques and have Mael's passive apply Brilliance of the Sun in battle as well as have Freyja use Stance Cancel to remove the Nidhoggr’s stances.
* The Red Tarmiel team with Light Mael is recommended if you are missing Red Freyja / Green Summer Freyja and or Freyja’s Holy Relic.

#### Useful Artifacts Sets

* **No. 37 Twilight Temple**
	+ Increases Attack-related stats by 3% / 6% / 9% / 12% / 15% when all allies in Demonic Beast Battle are of the same race.

* **No. 29 Eikthyrnir’s Refuge (Highly Recommended)**
	+ In Demonic Beast Battle, increases allies’ basic stats by 2%/4%/6%/8%/10%. When the Ultimate Move Gauge has 5 orbs or more, removes and becomes immune to Freeze.

* **No. 27 Special Summer (Highly Recommended)**
	+ Increases allies’ Resistance by 4% / 8% / 12% / 16% / 20%

* **No. 19 Hraesvelgr's Nest (Highly Recommended)**
	+ Increases allies’ single-target attack damage dealt to enemies by 4% / 8% / 12% / 16% / 20%

* **No. 2 Guardian of Istal (Recommended)**
	+ If an ally is Debuffed from a skill during the enemy’s turn, restores 1% / 2% / 3% / 4% / 5% of their Max HP. (Excludes PVP and Death Match)

* **No. 13 What’s the Tally? (Recommended)**
	+ Recovers 1% / 1.5% / 2% of Max HP at the start of the allies’ turn when taking damage. (Excludes PVP and Death Match)

* **No. 34 Not Alone (Highly Recommended)**
	+ Decreases allies’ damage taken from enemies by 2% / 4% / 6% / 8% / 10% if an ally with the [Ragnarok] characteristic is alive on the battlefield.

* **No. 14 Trio of Troublemakers**
	+ Increases allies’ damage dealt to enemies by 1% / 2% / 3% / 4% / 5%. (Excludes PVP and Death Match)

* **No. 3 Adventures in Midgard**
	+ Increases allies’ damage dealt with single-target attack skills by 2% / 4% / 6%. (Excludes PVP and Death Match)

* **No. 15 Happy Halloween**
	+ Decreases allies’ damage taken from enemies by 1% / 3% / 5%. (Excludes PVP and Death Match)

* **No. 18 Happy New Year**
	+ Decreases [The Seven Deadly Sins] allies’ damage taken from enemies by 2% / 4% / 6% / 8% / 10%
* **No.35 Happy Valentine's (Recommended if your units keep on taking damage )**
	+ Increase Damage Dealt by allies with 50% or less HP by 1%/2%/3%/4%/5% and decrease their damage by 2%/4%/6%/8%/10% (Excluding PVP)
* **No.36 7DS 3rd Anniversary Celebration (Recommended if using a all Goddess Team)**
	+ Increase Allies basic stats by 1%/1.5%/2%/2.5%/3% for each Goddess Ally on the Battlefield (Limit 3 Times)

## Strategy

### Important Notes

* A random Demonic Beast passive is applied on each floor during Phase 3; note that these passives will carry over through the entire run for all floors.
* Similar to Skoll and Hati, Nidhoggr has only 3 Phases per floor.
* Nidhoggr’s attribute is Darkness, meaning your units will take 10% extra damage no matter the attribute.
* Just like in the other Demonic Beast Battles, the HP of your heroes won’t refill after each floor, so you will keep the HP levels you had in the last turn of the previous floor; you should use a heal (if you have it) right before ending each floor.
* A unit with Buff Removal is required to clear through Floor 2 Phase 1 to remove it's immortality or otherwise it is impossible to go beyond it.

## Engaging Nidhoggr

### Floor 1

Overall, all you need on this Floor is to reach the max stacks on Freyja’s Holy Relic to increase the stats of all her allies further and reduce the damage your allies receive as much as possible. Thanks to Elizabeth, you should be able to spam your Ultimate Moves, making Phase 3 relatively easy since Ultimate Moves reduce massively Nidhoggr’s bar.
Make sure you have at least one rank 3 skill for the final phase. This is necessary to make the final phase easier as one rank 3 skill will fully reduce the gauge to empty. Otherwise, you can use a combination of Rank 2 skills and offensive Ultimate Moves. Moreover, the bosses will typically target whoever has the lowest HP stat on the team, which will usually be Red Freyja or Green Princess Elizabeth. Regardless of who it is, try to give them Red Tarmiel’s link to help keep them alive from the onslaught of damage. For the purposes of this guide, the team being used consists of:

* Light Mael of Sunshine
* Red Summer Ludociel
* Red Freyja or Green Summer Freyja (w/ Holy Relic)
* Red LR Princess Elizabeth (w/ Holy Relic)

#### Phase 1

In this first phase, the boss is capable of removing Buffs from your team. So, it is recommended to not use Red Summer Ludociel’s Buff skill until you have been Debuffed. This is more optimal because when Ludociel cleanses a Debuff, he will heal the team a significant amount. Otherwise, attack normally until the boss is dead. It is possible to kill this phase within a single turn with Red Freyja and Light Mael of Sunshine. Your first turn should consist of Freyja’s attacks to increase the stats of all your units. Saving Ludociel’s attack is recommended to have at least one Stance removal for the next Phase.

#### Phase 2

During this phase, the boss will have three damage reduction stacks which can be removed with Stance Cancel skills. This is not completely necessary to remove but removing at least two stacks would be good to do just to clear the phase faster. Otherwise, the boss can not remove Buffs from the team here, but it can Extort one of your allies which can lead to their death if they have a low HP stat, hence the need for Red Tarmiel’s association link. Make sure to remove the Extort effect by either removing the Buff from the boss, or removing the Debuff from the ally affected. Ideally, you should end this Phase before the boss locks all the effects of your ally units (turn 3).

Besides that, the boss can utilize a Stance to regain damage reduction stacks once more. Simply remove the Stance and keep attacking until the boss dies.

#### Phase 3

This phase is relatively easy. Simply put, the boss has Immortality until its gauge is depleted. Ultimates deplete the gauge by 40%, and rank 2 skills will lower it by 20%. In contrast, Rank 3 skills lower the gauge by 100%. Once the gauge is fully depleted, the boss can be killed. Remember, Ultimates that don’t deal damage will not lower the gauge, like Green Princess Elizabeth’s Ultimate Move that simply heals and supports the team.

You will also receive a Demonic Beast Passive here, but this is not relevant at this point in time. Besides that, Nidhoggr will increase its Attack-related stats once it falls below 30% HP or so. After the gauge is depleted, take the time to heal your units and kill the boss.

## Floor 2

#### Phase 1

The boss begins with an Immortality Buff that can be removed. However, do not remove it until you are sure you will kill the boss within the same turn. If you remove the Buff prior to killing it, it will gain massive irremovable Buffs that will make it deal massive damage while gaining massive amounts of damage reduction. Needless to say, it’s good practice to avoid that scenario if at all possible. The simplest way to do that would be to save Green Princess Elizabeth’s Buff Removal skill as the final attack to guarantee it dies when the Buff is removed.

Unlike the first floor, it can’t remove your Buffs anymore so feel free to use them to remove the Debuffs the boss may inflict upon you with Ludociel. The boss will apply a Spore Debuff on itself every turn which in turn makes it weaker over time in terms of health regeneration.

Make sure to keep your Stance Cancel skills ready for the second phase.

#### Phase 2

This phase has the same gimmick as Floor 1, where the boss has three Damage Received Reduction gray buffs. You can only remove these buffs by using skills with Stance removal. However, each time you do this, the boss will apply a red Infect debuff on all your units, preventing them from healing. You can bypass the negative effect by using a cleanse or keep it since they only last until the end of Nidhoggr’s turn. Remember that if you decide to remove all three buffs from Nidhoggr, it will change to a +50% damage dealt gray buff. Removing them all in one turn is recommended to prevent Infect from being a nuance over several turns. It’s also recommended to use heals (such as Elizabeth’s Ultimate) BEFORE removing a Stance during that turn, otherwise, its effects won’t apply.
Like in the first floor, the boss can replenish their damage reduction stacks once they activate their Stance skill. Other than that, attack as you please but keep some one or two strong attack skills for the next phase. Make sure you have a skill to cleanse the Debufffs that will be placed on you during Phase 3.

#### Phase 3

Immediately, the boss will gain a removable damage reduction Debuff. It is best to remove this as soon as possible since you need to keep Nidhoggr under 50% HP every turn to lower his gauge by 33%. The third time you do this, it will lower itself by 34% which will then allow you to kill the boss. Keep in mind that the boss will gain a stack of damage reduction every turn, so it may be best to wait until it has two stacks or more to remove it if you aren’t getting lucky with Buff removal skills. If you let them stack too much, you will barely do any damage. One or two stacks of damage reduction can be brute-forced.
If Nidhoggr’s HP is above 50% when its turn starts, the bar will refill by 33%, and also, the boss will receive a buff in its Attack-related stats.. When you lower the boss’ HP enough, each time it will gain an HP-related stat Buff of 5%.

## Floor 3

#### Phase 1

Within this phase, there are a few things to watch out for. First, on the third turn the boss will seal the skill type that you use first. For example, if you were to use Mael’s Attack skill, the boss will seal all Attack skills for two turns. This Debuff is gray and therefore, can not be removed by cleansing it away. Due to this annoyance, you should bait it out with Elizabeth’s Recovery skill so it only seals Recovery skills. Since she is the only one that has such a skill, it basically doesn’t hurt you at all and Elizabeth’s Ultimate can still heal you. Bear in mind that the boss can NOT seal Ultimate Moves, so using those first won’t hurt you. Following that third turn, every other turn the gimmick will repeat, so use those Buff or Recovery skills first.

Secondly, when the boss applies a Stance, it will inflict a gray Infect Debuff on the team for two turns. However, this can be removed by simply removing the boss’ Stance through whichever means you wish, either through Red Summer Ludociel’s Stance Removal skill or Freyja’s single-target skill, or even Mael’s Ultimate Move.

Lastly, the boss has a gauge that will grant it Immortality until it is depleted. Unless you can kill the boss in the first turn upon starting the fight, you will have to deal with the gauge’s mechanics. It will increase by 50% every turn, and completely refill every turn if the boss has its Attack Buff active (which can be removed by Elizabeth). If you want the simplest and most reliable way to clear this phase, you can get Mael’s, Freyja’s, and Ludociel’s Ultimates. Using all three in succession will deplete the gauge fully which allows the fourth attack to kill the boss. Otherwise, you can save Freyja’s Pierce skill until it becomes a Rank 3 skill through combining skills, and that one attack will fully deplete the gauge as well. Trying to use other skills as the Rank 3 to use does deplete it substantially (around 45%), but is not reliable enough to use consistently.

#### Phase 2

This phase will require Stance Removal skills. Removing the damage reduction stacks on the boss will grant it gray Debuffs BUT will increase the boss’ gauge. These Debuffs help you lower the gauge. They can range from using a Buff skill, using an Ultimate Move,  Recovery Skill, or even a Stance skill but that one won’t help you as the optimal Goddess team does not have a Stance unit present, unfortunately.

Another gimmick to watch out for is that if a unit on your team does not use a skill during the ally turn, they will gain a stack of Darkness. This Darkness effect is not permanent, but will last multiple turns, around three to be precise. As stated previously, the Darkness effect can stack repeatedly which will in turn make your units take absurd levels of damage.

Lastly, the boss’ Ultimate has an Extort effect on the entire time, and your weakest unit is liable to be killed. Try to have Ludociel’s damage reduction active to help with survival. Aside from all that, try not to fill the boss’ gauge too much as it will then prove difficult to lower it to zero again. Unfortunately, this phase and the subsequent one do fall victim to card RNG. If you get nothing but Stance Removal skills, you will essentially be perpetually stuck in this phase for too long or will likely be killed by the boss.

#### Phase 3

Thankfully, phase 3 of the final floor is pretty simple to tackle. You want to lower the boss’ HP under 50% in order to remove the five gray Buffs it has. Each time you do this, it will have an HP-related stats Buff. Once you do this five times, it will gain a massive Buff to all stats of about 25%. However, you can then kill the boss from that point onward.

Other than that, the boss will utilize a Stance every third turn that can counter your attacks and deal big damage back to you. However, you can remove the Stance easily enough. Overall, this phase is pretty easy AS LONG as you have something to cleanse the Ignite Debuffs from the boss’ Ultimate Move. If you don’t, you will be killed fairly quickly afterward. You can survive a turn with them on you, but your units will definitely be near death by that point. If you do not have Ludociel’s Buff skill or Elizabeth’s Debuff Removal with her Recovery skill, it’s basically a guaranteed loss, unfortunately. If you do get one of them, this phase should prove easy enough for you compared to everything that came before it.

## Recommended Holy Relics to Craft

* Red / Green Freyja - Hati's Afterimage
* Red Freyr - Key of the Vanir Gods
* Festival Red Diane - Nastrond's Ice Hammer
* Blue Nebula Zeldris - Narfi's Ancient Fragmented Sword