Nushi Skills, Blade Arts & Finishers: Every Boss Reward

Four kinds of reward, not one

Almost every page on this site uses the phrase “Nushi Skill” as shorthand for whatever a boss hands over. The reward column on our boss list is more precise than that, and the distinction is worth learning before you plan a route, because the four reward categories behave differently.

• Nushi Skill. Our glossary defines this as the new ability Emma and Koo unlock by sealing a region's apex Malefact. Only five fights on the entire roster are recorded as granting one.
• Named arts. Entries like Sakura: Javelin, Nobudou: Burst or Erica: Strangle — each tied to a plant name that runs through the boss's whole reward line.
• Blade Arts. The glossary files these as a separate category of boss-unlocked ability, and six fights grant one. They attach to Emma's katana rather than to Koo.
• Finishers. The rarest label on the list — four fights grant one, and two of the four come from the last two new bosses in the campaign.

What unites all four is the fiction our boss list sets out: a Sealer's job is to absorb the Blight into her own body, so beating an apex Malefact lets Emma and Koo take in its power. Boss rewards are not optional trophies bolted onto the fights — they are the progression system, which is why our builds guide treats the order you clear regions in as a build decision rather than a scheduling one.

The full reward map

Every recorded reward on the roster, in first-encounter order, as the boss list records it:

Read down the third column and a design shape appears that no single boss page shows you. The front half of the campaign is where your vocabulary is set: Chapters 1 through 7 hand over all five Nushi Skills and most of the Blade Arts. From Chapter 8 onward the rewards stop introducing new lines and start closing existing ones — Ursa and Erymanth both grant a second-rank art plus a Finisher, and nothing that is brand new. If you are waiting for a late-game power spike to fix a build that is not working, the reward table says it is not coming; the tools you will finish the game with are the ones you have by Corvus.

The five named Nushi Skills

Our Koo guide records the documented unlock order of the Nushi Skills as Sakura Storm (Rangifer, Chapter 1), Dokuzeri Shower (Lacerta, Chapter 2), Chimeric Flow (Shidou & Nue, Chapter 3), Charging Botan (Taurus, Chapter 4) and Acid Burst Nobudou (Corvus, Chapter 7) — and calls Acid Burst Nobudou the fifth and last entry in that order. That is a striking fact to put next to the chapter count: the game runs to thirteen chapters plus an epilogue, per our walkthrough, and every Nushi Skill you will ever own is in hand by the end of Chapter 7.

Four of the five names are also the heads of plant lines that keep reappearing. Sakura, Dokuzeri, Botan and Nobudou each show up three or four times across the reward table — as a Nushi Skill, as a named art, and as a Blade Art and/or a Finisher. The practical reading is that sealing a boss does not give you a single ability so much as open a themed line that later encounters with the same boss extend.

Our weapons page presents the same reward data from the equipment side and calls these “boss-reward arts and techniques”; that page also removed a “Black Blossom” katana it had once listed as a Shidou & Nue reward, because the name does not appear in the verified boss-reward data. No katana anywhere on this site is recorded as a boss drop — the only named blades our coverage carries are the Digital Deluxe Big Dipper and the Spring Storm and Purity weapons the Crimson Malefact guide recommends, none of which come from sealing a Nushi.

Rewards that are upgrades, not new toys

Four entries in the table carry a roman numeral: Sakura: Javelin II, Botan: Chaser II, Asagao: Boa II and Kiku: Bloom Strike II. The boss list is explicit that later encounters with the same boss upgrade the arts you already hold rather than adding fresh ones — so a rematch is a rank-up, not a second prize.

That matters because most of the roster is fought more than once. Our walkthrough flags four bosses as returning at higher levels in later chapters — Rangifer in Chapter 5 at Level 32, the Nue Malefact in Chapters 3 and 6, Shidou & Nue in Chapters 6 and 11, and Taurus in Chapter 8 — and the boss list adds the Kunai & Kirin resolution in Chapter 12. Our Taurus guide frames the Chapter 8 rematch as the fight that completes the Botan line, and the same logic applies across the roster: the rematch is where a line finishes. Two of the II-rank arts, though — Asagao and Kiku — arrive on bosses that appear only once, which means the site has no record of where their first ranks came from.

Routing: when each kit pays off

The single most useful thing in the reward table is not what a boss gives you but what the next bosses are weak to. Our coverage documents two clean handoffs and one that is implied.

• Lacerta → the Poison bosses. Lacerta grants the Dokuzeri line, and the boss list calls those “the poison tools you will want for the next stretch.” Shidou & Nue (Chapters 3, 6 and 11) and Kunai & Kirin (Chapters 8 and 12) are both recorded as weak to Poison — that is five separate encounters answered by one Chapter 2 reward.
• Corvus → the Acid bosses. Our Corvus guide spells this out: Acid Burst Nobudou lands in Chapter 7, the Taurus rematch sits at Chapter 8 and Ursa at Chapter 10, and both are recorded as weak to Acid. The Ursa guide is the page about spending that kit.
• Rangifer → nothing in particular. Sakura Storm is the biggest reward bundle of the first act, but no later boss on the roster is recorded as weak to Flame. Rangifer's reward is a general-purpose opener, not a counter you are being handed for a specific wall ahead.

One caveat our Corvus guide raises and this page will not paper over: our weapons page lists only Fire, Lightning and Wet as enchantable elements. What Corvus grants is therefore an acid ability line, not proof that acid ammunition exists. The same gap applies to the poison rewards from Lacerta. How Poison and Acid damage reach an enemy outside these arts is not confirmed anywhere in our coverage — see the elemental weakness guide for the full accounting of which weakness labels you can and cannot equip against.

The two fights that pay you nothing new

The Crimson Malefact in Chapter 9 is the only mandatory story boss on the roster whose reward column reads “none”, and our coverage is unusually firm about it: both the boss list and the tested reward table behind the Crimson Malefact page agree the fight pays out nothing mechanically. It is also the one fight Emma takes without Koo, which makes it a double exception — no companion going in, no ability coming out.

The final boss is a softer version of the same thing. The final boss guide's reward line is Blossoms of Reincarnation, and our pages do not establish whether that is a Nushi Skill, a Blade Art, a Finisher or something else. Given that beating it rolls straight into the ending and New Game Plus, treat it as a capstone rather than a tool you will get to use in that run.

Where our own pages disagree

One reward is credited twice on this site. Chimeric Flow appears on the boss list against both the Nue Malefact row (“with the Ch.3 fight”) and the Shidou & Nue row, and our weapons page lists it only under Shidou & Nue. Our walkthrough threads the needle by saying the Nue Malefact's Chapter 3 encounter “feeds into Chimeric Flow”. The most likely reading is that these are descriptions of one Chapter 3 event rather than two rewards, but no page here states that outright, so we do not either. If you are counting Nushi Skills, count five.

What this page does not claim

We have names and unlock points, and nothing else. No page on this site documents what any individual Nushi Skill, art, Blade Art or Finisher actually does — no damage, no FP cost, no cooldown, no range. Our Koo guide states the reason plainly: FP costs are tuning values that shift with patches, so it points at the in-game menus instead of freezing numbers. We also have no SP costs for the skill-tree nodes these arts presumably sit alongside. Where you want effect text, the game's own Skills menu is the source of truth, and our builds guide says the same.

Nushi Skills FAQ

How many Nushi Skills are there?

Five are documented by name on this site: Sakura Storm, Dokuzeri Shower, Chimeric Flow, Charging Botan and Acid Burst Nobudou. All five are unlocked by the end of Chapter 7.

Can you miss a Nushi Skill?

Nothing in our coverage suggests so. Every boss that grants one is a mandatory story boss on a linear thirteen-chapter route, and our walkthrough describes progress as gated by the main story.

What is the difference between a Nushi Skill and a Blade Art?

Our glossary treats them as two separate categories of boss-unlocked ability. Blade Arts are recorded against six fights and are named for the same plant lines; Nushi Skills are recorded against five and are the ones the boss list describes as Emma and Koo absorbing the beast's power. The mechanical distinction between them is not documented on this site.

Which boss gives the best reward?

By our boss list's own wording, Corvus — it calls Acid Burst Nobudou the most build-defining pickup in the back half of the game, because two of the fights that follow are weak to Acid. Rangifer gives the largest bundle (a Nushi Skill, a named art with a later upgrade, a Blade Art and a Finisher), but nothing later is weak to Flame.

Do rewards carry into New Game Plus?

Our builds guide describes NG+ as carrying your build into a tougher second run, but Game Freak has not published a breakdown of exactly what transfers, as our length guide notes. Treat the specifics as not confirmed.

Related guides

• All bosses — the roster these rewards come from
• Elemental weaknesses — which rewards you can actually aim
• Koo commands, FP and Bloom Arts
• Builds — where arts sit in the skill trees
• All weapons and the elemental system

Sources on this site

Every name and chapter above is drawn from the following pages of this guide, each of which names the outside material it was checked against:

• All bosses
• All weapons
• Koo guide
• Walkthrough
• Builds
• Glossary
• Corvus boss guide
• Ursa boss guide
• Taurus boss guide
• Crimson Malefact boss guide
• Final boss guide
• How long to beat

Last reviewed: September 11, 2026 · Game version checked: 1.0.11 · Every figure on this page is sourced from the pages listed above; where they disagree or fall silent, this page says so instead of choosing.