Ursa is the fifth of the game's six Nushi and one of the last major fights before the Capital. Bear Nushi is the descriptive name the encounter carried in pre-release coverage; Ursa is the Latin term for bear. Unlike Rangifer or Taurus, Ursa is fought exactly once.
Encounter
Chapter | Level | Zone | Weakness | Phases |
|---|---|---|---|---|
10 | 46 | Starfall Tower Zone, in the wasteland stretch | Acid | Two |
Only one Nushi is fought after Ursa. Erymanth waits in the Capital at level 47, and the campaign closes on the Beast of Reincarnation itself.
Moveset
Attack | What it does | Answer |
|---|---|---|
Double Swipe | Turns its body sideways, then swipes twice. | Parry both, then counter |
Rock Slam | Jumps and slams a paw down on Emma's position, leaving debris. | Parry, then counter |
Rock Throw | Throws a rock. Two rocks in the second phase. | Cannot be parried; dodge sideways |
Eight-Hit Combo | Roars, glows red, lands six hits, then a body slam followed by a delayed paw slam. | Dodge the body slam on the jump. The delay before the paw slam is an attack window, but it is a short one |
Flowers From Below | Raises both arms, slams the ground, and flowers erupt after a short delay. | The slam can be parried, the flowers cannot; dodge on the arm raise and answer at range |
Blooming Roots | Plants both paws and sends roots along the ground that bloom as they travel. | Cannot be parried; keep moving sideways and use ranged weapons |
How to Fight It
Acid is the lever. Acid arrows and acid bolts are the reliable option, and Hazebringer is the blade built for it. Without an upgraded acid blade, Purity for its lifesteal or the Cirrus Sword for the shared damage buff both hold up.
Ursa telegraphs almost everything, so the efficient approach is to build the stagger gauge rather than trade raw damage into its health bar. It chains attacks together far more often in the second phase, which narrows the counter windows considerably.
The second phase leans heavily on Blooming Roots, and Ursa mixes rock throws into the same stretch. Neither can be parried, so the phase is largely about movement and ranged chip damage until it commits to something punishable.
Skill Rewards
Beating Ursa makes two skills purchasable: Asagao: Boa II, an upgraded Bloom Art for Koo that creates asagao over a wider area and keeps lighter enemies airborne, and Finisher: Asagao for Emma.
As a Nushi
Nushi are the giant Malefacts that generate the Blighted Forests spreading across the world, and each one sits at the centre of the forest it created. Reaching Ursa means working through the wasteland stretch and the corrupted terrain around the Starfall Tower before the arena opens, so the fight closes a long approach rather than standing alone.
Defeating a Nushi lets Emma absorb its blight, and that absorption blooms another flower in her hair. It also unlocks the skills tied to that Nushi, which is the main way the toolkit grows across the campaign. By Ursa, most of the Sakura, Dokuzeri, Botan, and Nobudou lines are already available, and the Asagao line is what this fight completes.
Preparing for the Fight
Layer | What matters by Chapter 10 |
|---|---|
Blade | Hazebringer for direct acid buildup. Purity for lifesteal or the Cirrus Sword for a shared damage buff are the fallbacks if no acid blade is upgraded |
Ammunition | Acid arrows and acid bolts. Plain arrows still hit hard on a Nushi and are worth keeping stocked for the phases where parrying is off the table |
A six-slot piece is available well before this point. Acid resistance does not help here, since Ursa is weak to acid rather than dealing it, so raw defense or Spirit Stone depth is the better trade | |
The Entangled family pays off in a fight this long, since every parry, dodge, and riposte feeds the gauge and Koo's FP back | |
Anything that binds or staggers buys attack windows during the second phase, when Ursa chains attacks without pause |
Position in the Campaign
By the time Ursa is reachable, every system the game gives the player is available: the full parry and riposte loop, both ranged weapons with all six ammunition types, a mature Bloom Arts menu with mods, and armour with enough Spirit Stone slots for a finished build. The fight reads as a check on that build rather than an introduction to any single system.
Pre-release footage showed Emma approaching this fight with eleven flowers in her hair, and that was widely read at the time as evidence of eleven or more Nushi. The shipped game does not support that reading. There are six Nushi, each with its own defeat milestone, and Ursa is the fifth. Emma's flower count tracks story progress more broadly than Nushi kills alone.
What Pre-Release Coverage Got Right
The one reading that held up is the placement. Everything shown before release pointed to a late-campaign fight built for a finished toolkit, and that is exactly where Ursa sits: Chapter 10 of thirteen, with only Erymanth and the final boss after it. What did not hold up was the roster arithmetic drawn from the flower count, and the assumption that the fight's biome and weakness would stay unpublished. Both are documented above.
After Ursa
The wasteland stretch closes shortly after this fight and the route turns toward the Capital. Chapter 11 runs through the Mount Hiei Zone and the third and final Shidou and Nue encounter at level 48, and Chapter 12 opens the Capital itself, where Erymanth waits at level 47 and Kunai and Kirin return at level 49. Chapter 13 is the Beast of Reincarnation.
Ursa is therefore the last quiet moment in the build curve. Nothing after it introduces a new system; the remaining fights ask for tighter execution of the same kit, and the skills unlocked here are among the last additions to it. Players chasing the collection milestones for every blade and every seedling type usually find they cannot finish both in one run, and a New Game Plus cycle on Reincarnation+ difficulty is where the remainder gets cleared.
Related Pages
The complete encounter order is under Bosses. The other Nushi are Rangifer, Lacerta, Taurus, Corvus, and Erymanth.