Rangifer is the first Nushi Emma meets and the encounter that teaches how a Nushi fight is shaped. Deer Nushi is the descriptive name the fight carried in pre-release coverage, before the in-game name was known; Rangifer is the Latin term for reindeer, and it follows the same naming pattern as the other five Nushi. It is fought three times.
Encounters
Rangifer bookends the opening of the campaign and then comes back in the mountains as a genuine mid-game threat rather than a tutorial. Its elemental weakness changes for the third fight, which catches out players who stocked up on the wrong ammunition.
Encounter | Chapter | Level | Zone | Weakness |
|---|---|---|---|---|
First | 1 | 9 | Ogouchi Buffer Zone | Flame |
Second | 1 | 12 | Ogouchi Buffer Zone | Flame |
Third | 5 | 32 | Matsukawa Zone | Lightning |
The third encounter also splits into two phases and reuses the second fight's moveset with tighter spacing between attacks.
Moveset
Attack | What it does | Answer |
|---|---|---|
Horn Swing | Three antler sweeps, occasionally a fourth. Rangifer drops its head after the final swipe. | Parry each hit to build stagger, then punish the lowered head |
Rock Throw | Runs forward and digs up the ground with its horn, throwing debris. | Cannot be parried; dodge |
Seed Projectile | Steps aside and fires seeds from the bud on its back. | Can be parried or dodged |
Hoof Slam | Second encounter onward. Slams the ground and raises damaging vines around itself. | Cannot be parried; dodge out |
Summon Trees | Second encounter onward. Three trees erupt from below. | Cannot be parried; dodge |
How to Fight It
The opening is worth setting up rather than rushing. Building vine bridges to the rooftops around the arena and dropping in with a Falling Assassination removes a large slice of health before the fight properly begins.
For the first two encounters, everything that applies flame works: fire arrows and fire bolts, and Koo's Higanbana: Seeds, which fires a burst of flame-carrying seeds and stacks burn quickly. Both ammunition types come from manuals found in the Ogouchi Buffer Zone, and once a manual is owned the matching ammunition restocks automatically at a campsite.
For the third encounter the weakness flips to lightning. Lightning arrows and bolts, the Thunderwave Sword, and Koo's Sakura: Javelin are the efficient answers there. Plain arrows still hit hard on a Nushi, so ranged pressure is worth keeping up whenever Rangifer moves out of blade range.
Skill Rewards
Each win makes another piece of the Sakura line purchasable in the skill tree. The skills still cost Skill Points; the boss defeat is what unlocks them.
Encounter | Unlocked |
|---|---|
First (level 9) | Nushi Skill: Sakura Storm |
Second (level 12) | Sakura: Javelin, Blade Art: Sakura |
Third (level 32) | Sakura: Javelin II, Finisher: Sakura |
Nushi Skills
The first Rangifer kill hands over Rangiferine Memories, and that item is what unlocks the Nushi Skill Sakura Storm. Nushi Skills are boss finishers rather than menu abilities: each one is triggered by its own combo string and spends charges from Emma's Entanglement Gauge, so they get woven into an attack string rather than selected from a list. Unlocked skills for both characters are listed under View Skills in the equipment menu.
Sakura Storm is the second Nushi Skill most players hold, after Climbing Higanbana, which is available from the start. Because it costs gauge rather than FP, it competes with Entanglement Overdrive for the same resource, which is worth keeping in mind on the third Rangifer fight when both are available.
As a Nushi
Nushi are the giant Malefacts that generate the Blighted Forests spreading across the world, and each fight sits at the centre of the forest it created. Getting to Rangifer means crossing the Ogouchi Buffer Zone's corrupted stretch first, working through the lesser Malefacts and Golems on the way, so the encounter is the end of a run rather than a door Emma walks through.
Defeating a Nushi is what lets Emma absorb its blight, and that absorption is what physically blooms a new flower in her hair. The flower count is the clearest visual cue to how far along the journey she is, which is why pre-release footage was read so closely for it.
Preparing for the Fight
Layer | What matters at this point in the campaign |
|---|---|
Blade | One of the opening Mechblades or the Purifier. No elemental blade is available yet, so flame has to come from ammunition and from Koo |
Ammunition | Fire arrows and fire bolts for the first two fights, from manuals found and bought in the Ogouchi Buffer Zone. Lightning arrows and bolts for the third |
Light Gambeson, the starting piece, already carries five Spirit Stone slots, so a stone loadout is worth building before the first fight rather than after | |
Higanbana: Seeds for flame buildup in the first two fights; Sakura: Javelin once it is unlocked, for the third | |
Approach | Vine bridges to the rooftops around the arena set up a Falling Assassination opener on the first encounter |
Place in the Story
Rangifer is the first Nushi on the road west, and it is the fight that establishes the loop the rest of the campaign runs on: cross a Blighted Forest, reach the Nushi at its centre, beat it, and absorb its power. Emma goes into the first encounter carrying a single flower, the shakuyaku that sprouted when Koo resurrected her, so the fight doubles as the visual baseline for the Flower System that tracks her progress.
Pre-release coverage read the flowers in Emma's hair as a count of Nushi defeated and used that to guess at a much longer roster. The shipped game has six Nushi in total, and Rangifer is the first of them. The specific flower Emma gains from Rangifer is not named in any published material, so this page does not name it.
Related Pages
The full encounter order, including the paired fights and the recurring Malefacts, is under Bosses. The other five Nushi are Lacerta, Taurus, Corvus, Ursa, and Erymanth.