How to train your Amiibo in Smash Ultimate – Best Spirit Combinations, Training Regimes and more
Turn your figures into fighters.
Thanks to the global popularity of AI fighters like Hard DK, everyone wants to train their very own Amiibo fighter to take on the world. Here’s how to optimise your training.
In this guide, we’ll go through the basics of training up your Amiibo, as well as tips on making it as powerful as possible. Even if your Amiibo isn’t a fighter, you’ll gain a Spirit as a reward.
How do I start training my Amiibo?
You’ll first need an Amiibo figure from the roster of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. We’ve got ourselves a Ness for the purposes of this guide (sorry!).
Navigate to ‘Games & More’ in the Main Menu, and press the ‘Amiibo’ option at the bottom.
Next, tap your figure to the NFC touchpoint on your controller.
Register yourself as the owner of the Amiibo, and you’ll be able to give it a nickname, after which you’ll be able to choose the fighter’s default skin.
From here, you’ll be able to fight your Amiibo in order to level it up, as well as give it Spirits, which offer unique and powerful abilities. We’d recommend fighting it one-on-one or in a free-for-all, depending on which you’d prefer your Amiibo to excel in.
Exion Vault have more in-depth guides, including specific character guides if you’re looking for more in-depth guides on Amiibo training.
Go full try-hard on your Amiibo from the get go – don’t feel bad! They’ll be saucing on you in no time. Make a ruleset that lets you do 10 stock games (or more!) and keep beating the hell out of them. You could run into problems if your Amiibo fighter struggles to land hits though – if they stop attacking you just let them hit you a few times to give their confidence back.
To start with, fight them in a mirror match. We’re using Ness against Ness, so they learn the prime strategy of spamming PK Fire and edgeguarding with PK Thunder. Keep the levels ticking up, and eventually you’ll be hitting Level 50.
Don’t worry if you reach 50 and the fighter still needs improvement though! Your Amiibo will continue getting stronger with every fight, so keep it up if you need to teach it more new tricks.
Up until level 30 or so, keep fighting your Amiibo with whichever characters you feel comfortable with. Keep the ‘Learn’ feature switched on up until this level, and play how you want your Amiibo fighter to play. According to the experts over at Exion Vault, you can turn the ‘Learn’ feature off after this point. They’ll still change their move priorities, but will not alter their style of play.
You don’t really have a chance to teach your Amiibo specific combos, unfortunately. They’re all programmed into the AI, so you won’t be able to do nutty stuff and have your fighter copy you. They’ll only copy your playstyle, rather than combos. For more in-depth info, Exion Vault have guides on each character’s Amiibo fighter.
Keep doing this up until level 50, and feel free to continue if you want. Your Amiibo will keep improving after hitting level 50, so all experience is good experience.
You can grind your Amiibo to level 50 by pitting it against Level 9 CPU fighters too. Be careful though – with the Learn button turned on, it’ll start replicating style from those fighters.
- 1. Smash Ultimate Guide Hub – Smash Ultimate Guide Hub
- 2. Smash Ultimate Tier List – Smash Ultimate Tier List
- 3. Best Smash Ultimate Control Setup – Smash Ultimate Control Setup
- 4. B-reversing and wavebouncing guide – B-reversing and wavebouncing in Smash Ultimate
- 5. Smash Directional Influence (SDI) Guide – Smash Directional Influence (SDI) Guide
- 6. How to train your Amiibo – Smash Ultimate Amiibo Training and Spirit Combinations
What are the best Spirit combinations for Amiibo?
You’ll need to have a look at your current collection of Spirits to work out how to make your Amiibo as strong as it can be. There’s a whole bunch of numbers and stats to consider when making your Spirit decision, but you’re basically looking to use a high level Spirit with a lot of Power. This can manifest in Attack or Defence, depending on what you’re aiming to do, and will basically make your Amiibo fighter deal more damage than it otherwise would have.
We put the Deoxys (Normal Forme) Primary Spirit on our Ness, and now he breaks shields with one hit and deals ludicrous amounts of damage with all his attacks. Support Spirits can then be added, giving your Amiibo fighter extra abilities at the cost of some of its Attack and Defence power. This is absolutely worth doing, and enables a whole host of outrageous tricks for your Amiibo to wreak havoc on its foes.
SSBWiki has a handy list of all the available Spirits and how to obtain them. It’s best to go for a Spirit with high Attack stats if you’re looking to kill early and wreck enemies with ease, so someone like Akuma or Galacta Knight is a great Primary Spirit to put onto your Amiibo.
Primary Spirits don’t actually keep hold of their Special Abilities when equipped – thanks to Exion Vault for pointing that out to us.
Support Spirit Abilities
Which Support Spirits you use is very subjective. Great Autoheal is extremely annoying to deal with, especially if you have a high Defence Primary Spirit, but it’ll also cost you quite a lot of power to equip.
We’d recommend using Support Spirits which complement the goals you have for your Amiibo. For our Ness, we added Soda Popinski, as he powers up your Side Special attack. Thought PK Fire was annoying and obnoxious? You ain’t seen nothing yet. For a Bowser, you might want to use a Move Speed Spirit, allowing him to more easily hit enemies with his beefed up attacks.
Unless you’re planning on using very specific rulesets, it’s not really worth adding Support Spirits like Dragoon, which offers the ‘Giant Killer’ ability, or Sun Salutation, which gives you ‘Ice Floor Immunity’. These Spirits are mostly useful for Spirit Board and World Of Light battles, rather than Amiibo training.
Let us know what your favourite combinations are! Keep an eye on the trade off between powerful Support Spirit abilities and your Primary Spirit’s power level – you don’t want to sacrifice too much. Remember, you lose the Spirit given to your Amiibo, so consider all your options before splashing out.
That’s all for our Amiibo training and Spirits guide! Once you’ve raised a monster capable of destroying all of humanity, you’ll want to check out our tips on things like Teching and SDI to stand the best chance of beating your creation. You’ll still struggle though. These things hit hard.
