Beast of Reincarnation Malefact of Fate — Boss Guide & Bug

The 1.0.9 Freeze — What Is Happening

This is the most important thing on the page right now. Since patch 1.0.9 (August 24, 2026), players report the Malefact of Fate fight locking up. The pattern is consistent across reports:

• You enter the arena and the fight starts normally.
• About a minute in, both bosses stop. Idle animations keep playing, so the game has not crashed — they simply stop moving and attacking.
• You clip straight through them and cannot deal damage. One report adds that the music stops at the same moment.
• The arena stays sealed. You can fast-travel out, but you cannot get back in, and the story cannot continue.
• Quitting to desktop and reloading is the only reset — and then it happens again.

Two players describe this independently in Game Freak’s own Steam bug thread, one stating plainly that “all of this is since 1.0.9.0” and adding that someone on the official Discord hit the identical problem on PS5 — so this is not confined to PC ⚠ two first-hand reports plus one secondhand PS5 report.

Why the Patch Notes Are the Clue

Game Freak has not acknowledged the freeze. But the 1.0.9 notes contain one line that nobody has connected to it:

“The boss battle in The Great Wall Terraces has been changed to an event battle.”

The Great Wall Terraces contains exactly one boss battle, and this is it. So the patch that rebuilt this encounter is the same patch the freeze reports date from. That is a strong coincidence, and we think it is the likely cause — but we are labelling it as inference, not fact: Game Freak has not linked the two, and nobody has published a before-and-after test ⚠ our reading of the patch note; not officially confirmed.

What You Can Actually Do

There is no workaround. Nobody has published one, and we are not going to invent one. What is worth doing:

• Keep a save from before you enter the arena, not one made inside it. This is the single most useful precaution, because a save created inside a sealed arena has nowhere to go.
• File a support ticket if it happens to you. The developer-badged account answering that Steam thread has been explicitly asking players to submit tickets for progression blockers, and this is one.
• Do not downgrade. When the Fuji Frontier elite bug hit, players reinstalled older builds and it changed nothing, because the broken state lived in the save. Assume the same until someone proves otherwise.

We re-check the official bug thread daily and this section is where any update lands — including a fix, a workaround, or a second wave of reports that changes how widespread this looks.

What the Malefact of Fate Actually Is

Half the confusion around this fight is naming. Malefact of Fate is an objective name, not a creature. It is what the game calls the final encounter of Chapter 3, “The Vessel”, which plays out in the Great Wall Terraces.

What you actually fight is a pair: the Nue Malefact, the beast you have already chased through the chapter, joined at the end by the Nue Purifier — Shidou. It is the first duo boss in the game.

All three refer to the same Chapter 3 encounter. If you searched one name and found nothing, that is why.

How to Beat the Malefact of Fate

Both halves are weak to Poison, which is unusually convenient — you do not have to split your build between two resistances. Bring Poison on Koo and it applies to the whole fight.

The Siphon Is the Whole Fight

The mechanic that decides this encounter, and the reason killing Shidou early backfires:

• Pressure Shidou, not Nue. He is the more dangerous of the two and the one the fight is built around.
• At roughly 30% health he latches a root onto Nue and siphons its health into his own bar.
• Attack him to break the channel. Interrupting it leaves both bosses open for a window afterwards — that window is your main damage opportunity.
• Repeat the cycle. Each siphon drains Nue, so letting it happen and then breaking it is how you bring Nue down without attacking it directly.
• Kill Shidou last, once Nue is also low.

Community guides report that Koo’s Higanbana: Roots cancels the link instantly, and that Kiku: Bloom Strike reliably knocks Shidou down for a free opening ⚠ skill-specific behaviour reported by guides; we have not verified it in-game. On Emma’s side, Blade Art: Sakura and Iaido Strike are the commonly recommended picks — see our best build guide for how to get there.

Use Lock-On to Read the Turn Order

The two rarely attack at the same time. With lock-on active the camera swings to whichever boss is winding up, which effectively tells you whose turn it is — so lock-on here is a threat indicator rather than just an aiming aid. Note that since patch 1.0.8 the auto-target options default to off for fresh configurations, so check your settings if the camera is not behaving the way older guides describe.

This Fight Comes Back — Twice

Chapter 3 is your introduction to a pairing you will meet again, which is another reason the naming gets tangled. From our full boss list:

The siphon cycle works at all three, so what you learn here carries. One patch note worth knowing for the Chapter 6 version: since 1.0.8, the Lv 32 Nue Malefact you meet earlier in Fuji Frontier flees instead of fighting and hands you the abilities the fight used to reward. That one is a deliberate change, not a bug — players often call that boss Erica or Erika ⚠ community naming, and she is still fought properly later in the same chapter.

Frequently Asked Questions