Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: How To Make Your Spirits Stronger

Some battles in World of Light, the singleplayer side of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, are brutally tough — even if you’ve leveled your Spirit up to Level 99. The 4-Star Legendary Spirit battles can feel almost impossible. Fear not — there’s actually an easy way to boost your fighting power significantly, and it only takes a tiny change in your roster.

Here, I’m going to talk about the best ways to get the most powerful Spirits, and how to give yourself a clear edge even in the toughest fights. As long as you have a higher score than your opponent, you’ve got a pretty good advantage. The problem with most Legendary battles early on is that you’ll be outclassed — sometimes by a huge margin. It’s pretty typical to have a 5,000~ point deficit when you face off against Legendary Spirits. Here’s a few tips you can use to narrow that divide.

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How To Make Your Spirits Stronger | 20% Damage Bonus Guide

Here’s a very simple trick that SSBU never explicitly states — pairing a Fighter and a Primary Spirit from the same franchise will give you an instant 20%+ boost in your power level.

Equip a Primary Spirit from the same franchise / series as your Fighter to gain an instant 20% boost to your spirit level.
- Don’t know which franchise / series a character is from? Look in the corner of the screen. There is a small symbol for each series. Match up those symbols!

For example, pairing Pikachu with Groudon, Solid Snake with Otacon, Richter Belmont with Alucard, or Mario with Bullet Bill will instantly give you a higher spirit level. You don’t need to do anything at all. Even if you don’t know how to play as the fighters you’ve paired up, it’s still sometimes much easier to win simply because you’re doing so much more damage to your opponent.

NOTE: There are four types of spirits, and each one has a strength / weakness against the other spirit types. To easily select an advantaged spirit, use the Quick-Select option in the Spirits Party menu.

Upgrading Primary Spirits

Along with pairing Primary Spirits to your Fighter, you can also upgrade certain Primary Spirits. Rarely, you’ll unlock a Primary Spirit with a special aura — that means you can upgrade them to their next Rank. There are four ranks — one for each Star. A three star spirit is better than a two star spirit, and nothing is better than a four star spirit.

Leveling up these unique Primary Spirits will rank them up by one star — you’ll unlock a unique skill, and enter a whole new level of power. They’ll revert back to Level 1, but as you enhance your Primary Spirit, you’ll rapidly outpace your old version.

I recommend focusing all your Snacks on upgradable Primary Spirits, or Rank 3 / Rank 4 Spirits. If you manage to unlock a team of Rank 4 Primary Spirits, you’ll become unstoppable and easily sweep through the World of Light.

Using The Spirit Board

Finally, let’s talk about the Spirit Board. The Spirit Board is a good way to practice and unlock lots of extra Spirits — but you’ll only get one chance to unlock each one. The Spirit Board is an optional mode outside of World of Light that lets you farm for Spirits. You’ll get several spirit battles randomly that you can select. For each win, you’ll get the spirit — if you lose, the spirits will still reroll, so you’ll miss your chance.

Unlocking Spirits in the Spirit Board is a great way to earn tons of extra SP (spirit points) that you can spend in unlockable shops. Why do you need SP? Because sometimes you’ll be able to buy very valuable Spirits in shops — they recycle inventory daily, so check back often.

On top of that, you can often purchase Snacks from shops. Snacks are the best way to level up. A handful of Snacks (L) will level up a high-ranked Spirit almost completely. I recommend saving Snacks for only your best Spirits — you can earn more free Snacks when you fight battles at a disadvantage.