Nushi Skills are Emma’s boss finishers: the powers she takes from the creatures she kills, turned into techniques she can use herself. They are the most direct expression of the progression the campaign is built on, and the Nushi page describes the exchange plainly, that beating a Nushi hands Emma its power rather than simply ending an obstacle.
How They Work
Two things separate a Nushi Skill from every other ability in the game. It is triggered by its own combo string during an attack chain rather than selected from a list, so there is no menu and no pause; and it spends charges from the Entanglement Gauge rather than from the FP pool that Koo’s Bloom Arts draw on.
That second point is the one that shapes builds. The gauge has exactly three sinks: Nushi Skills, Blade Arts, and Entanglement Overdrive. A player running Overdrive as a panic button and a player leaning on Nushi Skills for burst damage are budgeting the same meter, which is why a parry-heavy build feels so different from a gauge-hoarding one. Unlocked skills for both characters are listed under View Skills in the equipment menu.
The unlock itself is indirect. A first win on a Nushi usually drops a Memories item, and that item is what makes the skill purchasable in the skill tree. The skill still costs Skill Points afterwards. Beating the boss opens the door; it does not walk through it.
The Roster
Nushi Skill | Where it comes from | Notes |
|---|---|---|
Climbing Higanbana | Available from the start | The one skill in the set that is not a boss reward, and the first most players hold |
Sakura Storm | Rangifer, first fight | Unlocked by Rangiferine Memories, usually the second Nushi Skill a player owns |
Dokuzeri Shower | Lacerta, first fight | Unlocked by Lacertine Memories, and the start of the poison line |
Rampaging Asagao | Nue Malefact, the first Chapter 3 chase | Unlocked by Ursine Memories |
Creeping Kiku | Nue Malefact, the second Chapter 3 chase | Unlocked by Erymanthian Memories |
Chimeric Flow | The paired Shidou and Nue encounter in Chapter 3 | The only one tied to a paired human-and-companion fight |
Charging Botan | Taurus, first fight | Unlocked by Taurean Memories |
Acid Burst Nobudou | Corvus, first fight | Paid out alongside a Bloom Art and a Blade Art in the same drop |
Rejuvenating Barrier | Clearing the main story | A healing skill, and the only Nushi Skill that is a completion reward rather than a boss reward |
The Memories items are worth reading as a set. Their names track the creature rather than the plant, so Ursine Memories and Erymanthian Memories turn up during the Nue Malefact chases rather than at the Ursa or Erymanth fights themselves, which is the clearest signal the game gives that the Malefact is carrying powers that are not its own.
When to Spend One
The best window is a knockdown rather than an opening. The Erymanth guidance is the clearest statement of it in the corpus: once the boss is actually down, a Nushi Skill combo backed by Koo’s debuff damage is worth more than a plain attack string, and the gauge is better left unopened than spent on a knockdown that will not hold. The Parry System is what fills the gauge, so the same parries that create the stagger also pay for the punish.
Post-Launch Balance
Nushi Skills were retuned on September 8, 2026 in version 1.0.11, in the same pass that covered Blade Arts, finishers and ranged weapons. No per-skill numbers were published with it, so any ranking of these abilities written before September 2026 describes the pre-patch build and should be re-tested rather than trusted. The same update adjusted attack patterns and attack frequency for some Nushi, which moves the windows these skills are spent in. See Post-Launch Updates for the full change record.
Related Pages
Blade Arts covers the other Entanglement Gauge spend on Emma’s side, Bloom Arts covers Koo’s FP-funded command abilities, Bosses lists every encounter and what it pays out, and Entanglement Gauge explains the meter all of this runs on.