The following is an archived post from the Amiibo Dojo. It has been uploaded to the Exion Vault for referential purposes and retains its original publication date; some of the post’s links may not function currently or exist at all.
Recently, I ran into this video (note: video deleted) from Amiibo Dan’s channel. It claimed to be able to “re-train a dumb amiibo”. Now, if you know the amiibo training scene on YouTube at all, you’re thinking “oh, this is probably another clickbait training video that doesn’t actually work”. That’s what I thought, at least. I tried the technique on a whim, however, and it actually did what it claimed to do. In tonight’s post, I’m going to analyze this training method and explain just how well it worked.
The basic idea of this video is this: if you have an amiibo that’s spamming moves or isn’t acting well in general, the technique it talks about will fix that for you. I tried this technique on my Villager amiibo, and it worked surprisingly well.
However, the video doesn’t necessarily stop amiibo from spamming like it implies. Rather, the technique helps your amiibo to learn a move it doesn’t use often.
To do this technique, you and your amiibo need to team up (with team attack OFF) against a Level 1 Donkey Kong CPU (Donkey Kong has a large hurtbox, making it easy to hit him, which is why you’d be specifically playing against him). This instantly put me off – I knew for a fact that pitting your amiibo against a CPU of any kind made them worse, let alone a Level 1 CPU. The video also recommends that you play a 2-stock match. During the match, you need to attack the Level 1 CPU with a move you want your amiibo to use more often.
The reason I tried this on my Villager amiibo was simple. Villager amiibo can’t actually learn to effective use their down special, Timber. They’ll plant the sapling, but they can’t detect where they planted it, which makes it very difficult for the amiibo to water the sapling, and then chop down the tree. Because of this, I chose to give my Villager the Timber Counter custom move. It causes the sapling to trip any opponent who walks over it! The move doesn’t require that Villager waters the sapling for it to be effective, so it was an obvious choice.
To my surprise, after using this method, Villager began to plant the tripping sapling more often. There’s a theory I’ve developed that wasn’t mentioned in the video I linked to earlier – what if an amiibo actually learns more from you in a team battle than in a 1 on 1 match?
I recommend you use this training method if you want your Level 50 amiibo to use a certain move more often. It won’t actually make them stop spamming a move; it’ll get them to use other moves instead.
This is the only instance where it’s okay for your amiibo to fight a level 1 CPU. However, if you somehow lose the team battle against the Level 1 Donkey Kong CPU, you’re in serious trouble; because your amiibo just learned from a Level 1 CPU.
I wasn’t actually given permission from Amiibo Dan to write an article on this technique, but hey, I figured it’s free traffic for him and I’m also showing you guys a new training method. I guess I should give a link to his channel, so here you go!
