Beast of Reincarnation Bosses in Order — 11 Names, 22 Fights

All Bosses in Chapter Order

The “Water Weakness” That Doesn’t Exist

You will see Crimson Malefact listed as weak to Water in more than one boss table. It isn’t. We traced it: the site that started it contradicts itself — its own dedicated Crimson Malefact page says Weakness: None and recommends Spring Storm or Purity for sustain rather than for any elemental advantage, while its summary table says Water. Everyone else copied the table.

Water does exist in the game — Koo has a Water-element Skill Amber called Aquatic Fang — but it is not one of the four affinities enemies resist (Poison, Flame, Acid, Lightning). No armor carries Water resistance and no arrow or bolt deals it. What water actually does is apply Drenched, a setup state that combos into Lightning for a Jolt. Drenched is a stepping stone, not a weakness — the full breakdown is in the status effects guide.

Practically: bring your best raw damage to Chapter 9, not a water gimmick.

How Many Boss Fights, Really — Nobody Else Has This Right

Ask how many bosses this game has and you get 11, which is true and useless: those 11 bosses are fought 22 times. The interesting number is the second one, and every published count of it is wrong — including, until today, ours.

We rebuilt the count from two independent chapter-by-chapter lists and got 21 encounters from each. Then we found the fight they both drop: Chapter 7 contains two separate Corvus battles, Lv 38 and Lv 41, and the big two list only the first. The second one is not obscure — IGN gives it its own boss page (“this Corvus is Lv. 41”), Eurogamer notes the Lv 41 Corvus is the one that drops Corvine Memories to unlock Nobudou, and walkthrough series file it as a separate episode titled Second Corvus. Add it back and the real figure is 22.

One honest caveat on our own number. In Chapter 3 both the Nue Malefact and the Shidou and Nue fight are recorded at Lv 20 in the same location. We count them as two encounters because both sources list them separately — but if they are in fact one battle with two named halves, the total is 21, not 22. Nobody publishes enough detail to settle it, so we are telling you where our own number is soft instead of rounding the doubt away.

And patch 1.0.9 moved that exact fight — then broke it. The August 24 notes say “the boss battle in The Great Wall Terraces has been changed to an event battle”, without naming it. It is this one: the Chapter 3 finale, known in walkthroughs as the Malefact of Fate — the Nue Malefact paired with the Nue Purifier (Shidou). There is only one boss battle in that region, so there is no ambiguity about which fight the note means.

For a week after that patch, four players independently reported the fight freezing — bosses stuck in idle, no attacks, the arena sealed so the story could not continue. Patch 1.0.10 (August 31) fixed it, and the official wording finally explained who was affected: players who had lost that boss battle before updating and then re-challenged it. Full detail — the fight itself, the three names it goes by, and the softlock — is on our Malefact of Fate guide.

What Patch 1.0.11 Changed for Bosses (September 8)

Three lines in the fifth patch’s notes touch this list, and none of them names a number. “Adjusted attack patterns and attack frequencies for certain Nushi” — which Nushi, and in which direction, is unstated, so if a fight in the table above feels different from a guide’s description, this is the likely reason. “Re-enabled acid pool generation exclusively for specific attacks from Corvus” — 1.0.9 had removed acid fields from crow-type attacks; both Chapter 7 Corvus fights get some of them back. And “Fixed an issue where Shido’s Iaido Strike failed to register hits in specific positions” — the Chapter 3 Nue Purifier, discussed on the Malefact of Fate guide. On the roadmap side, the same notes are the first to promise a difficulty mode above Hard; until it ships, the Lv figures here are for the three existing settings.

What Patch 1.0.12 Changed for Bosses (September 17)

One fix and one promise. The fix: “Fixed progression blockers related to event and boss battles across various zones” — no zone, boss or symptom is named, so if a fight that used to freeze or refuse to start now works for you, this is the line to credit, and if it still does not, the notes give no way to tell whether yours was on the list. The promise is new to any official roadmap: “Revamping attack patterns for similar boss types (Nushi variants and Shidou)” — the first time Game Freak has said the rematch-style fights in the table above will be reworked, framed as part of adjusting existing zones “to make them even more enjoyable”. No date, and the difficulty mode above Hard is carried over unshipped. Until either lands, the Lv figures and patterns described here are for the game as it is on 1.0.12.

A Note on “Erica”

Community reports about the Chapter 6 encounter often call that boss Erica or Erika, and we recorded that here as a naming alias. Patch 1.0.10 gives a reason to doubt it. The notes list a fix for “Erica: Strangle” failing to re-trigger after “Higanbana: Roots” — so Erica is the name of one of Koo’s Bloom Arts, part of a flower-naming scheme alongside Higanbana (red spider lily) and Kiku (chrysanthemum).

That does not prove no character is called Erica, but it does supply an obvious way for the name to have leaked into boss discussion. Treat “the Erica fight” as community shorthand of uncertain origin rather than an in-game boss name ⚠ Erica confirmed as a Bloom Art name; the boss usage remains unverified either way. Guides consistently call this boss the Nue Malefact.

What this does to the count: nothing yet. An “event battle” in the 1.0.8 precedent still happened and still paid its reward — it just stopped being a fight — and here the fight is evidently still meant to occur, since players are entering the arena and starting it. We are leaving the count at 22 and will revisit if the repaired version turns out to skip the battle entirely.

For reference, the counts in circulation: Google’s AI summary says “around 27”, a popular video says 24, the two biggest wikis imply 21, and our own page said 18 until this correction. None of them show their work, which is why the chapter table above lists every fight with its level — count it yourself.

One more correction worth knowing: the Chapter 8 Kunai and Kirin encounter is the one fight in the game you are allowed to lose — the story continues either way.

And one fight you can no longer have. Since patch 1.0.8, the Chapter 6 Nue Malefact flees when you approach instead of fighting, handing you the abilities it used to drop. Players report it as a bug; it is actually the unnamed “one battle midway through the Fuji Frontier Zone” that the patch notes converted into a scripted event — the full identification is on our patch notes page. We still count it as an encounter, because it is still a scheduled beat in the chapter, but if you are counting swings of a sword, that is 21.

Be careful how you read that last one. Several guides call it a “scripted loss”, which suggests the fight is unwinnable and that you should just let it end. The source they draw on says something different: losing does not block progress. Nobody has published that winning is impossible, so if you want the fight, take it — just don’t burn an hour retrying under the impression you have to win. The Chapter 12 rematch is the one that must actually be beaten.

Hard Boss Cheat Sheet

Story context for who these bosses are is deliberately kept out of this page — the identity reveals live in the ending explained guide (heavy spoilers).

What Is a Nushi?

Nushi are the giant beasts that rule each region of blighted Japan. Defeating one lets Emma absorb its power as a Nushi Skill — Rangifer, for example, grants Sakura Storm. Six Nushi carry their own kill trophies: Rangifer, Lacerta, Ursa, Corvus, Erymanth and Taurus. Nushi Skills are permanent and survive respecs.

Beating Rangifer, Your First Real Boss

• Level 6–7 is enough for the first encounter (the rematch comes at Lv 12).
• It’s weak to fire — bring fire-based tools if you have them.
• Rest at the campsite outside the lair first; retries are free (see death rules).
• Parry the antler sweeps to build its Down Gauge, then spend the Lethal execution — the loop from our beginner guide carries the whole fight.

Boss Regions at a Glance

Encounters spread across five broad areas — Kanto, the Mountainous region, the Drowned region, the Wasteland and The Capital — matching the chapter flow in our walkthrough. We’re expanding individual boss strategy pages as fights are documented; this hub tracks order and requirements first.