A Guide to Feeding your Amiibo

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.

Hey there! You’re probably here because you need some help feeding your amiibo. Well, if that’s the case, then you’ve come to the right place! This guide’s going to tell you a bunch of feeding-related stuff, like the best bonuses for your amiibo, and potential stat spreads. Let’s get started!

Table of Contents

I’ve set up a table of contents that’ll help you navigate this guide. You can click any part of the table of contents below, and the page will automatically scroll down to the section you clicked on!

Section 1: General Feeding Info
Section 2: Stat & Bonus Setups
Section 3: Bonus Effect Tier List
Section 4: Conclusion & Credits

We’ll begin today by talking about feeding in general. If you are new to feeding your amiibo, this is the perfect section for you! Let’s start off with some general information about feeding your amiibo.

Your amiibo can’t have a stat total of over +120. So, you know how you can boost your amiibo’s attack, defense, and speed? Let’s say an amiibo has +32 Attack, 101 Defense, and -13 speed. How do you know if this is a legitimate stat spread? You take 32 and add it to 101, and then subtract 13. Your total is 120! As long as your amiibo’s three stats add up to 120 or less, you’re good. Using cheating devices, people can give their amiibo +200 in every stat, which is not legitimate. Doing that can get you disqualified from a tournament!
Once you feed your amiibo a piece of equipment, that equipment piece is gone forever. Even if you do not save your amiibo’s progress. Once you feed an amiibo equipment, that piece gone forever, no matter what.
You can get equipment and custom moves for your amiibo through many different methods. Looking for a guide on how to farm equipment for your amiibo? If so, click here. The free guide will open in a new tab.
You should have your amiibo fully fed before it even levels up. At some point, though, it’ll become full. But if you take your Level 1 amiibo into a 1-stock match and immediately kill yourself, the amiibo will be able to eat more equipment. The amiibo will never level up if you kill yourself in 1 stock matches, and it will not have any adverse effects on it during training!
If you have amiibo that were trained without equipment and want to give them equipment even though they are already Level 50, that is fine too. In fact, my Ness amiibo won a tournament that required equipment, even though I had initially trained him without equipment.

So, I think that’s everything. If you have any questions whatsoever, please do not hesitate to either fill out the Amiibo Dojo contact form or email me directly at amiibocloud@gmail.com.

Looking for a stat and bonus effect setup that works your your amiibo? Good! I’ve got a whole bunch of them right here. We’re going to start off with a few stat boost spreads. Take your pick, and then pair the stat boosts you chose with a set of bonus effects, and then you’re good to go!

#1: Balanced: 40 Attack | 40 Defense | 40 Speed

This is the most balanced stat spread for your amiibo, and it is my go-to stat setup when I feed my amiibo. It gives your amiibo a respectable boost to its attack, defense, and speed, making it a very balanced character. My most highly recommended stat spread for any character.

#2: Defensive: 40 Attack | 80 Defense | 0 Speed

This is a more defensive build that sacrifices extra mobility for more defense. If you’re training a character like Yoshi or Greninja who are already fast, this might be the best idea for your amiibo. It is my second highest recommendation for any character.

#3: Overloaded: 200 Attack | 120 Defense | -200 Speed

Before I explain this bonus, keep in mind that the “Overloaded” stat setup can have its attack and defense points switched so that it is 120 Attack | 200 Defense | -200 speed instead. Basically, this spread maxes out two of your amiibo’s stats: attack and defense. Your amiibo will be a tank with this spread! It will be able to deal a lot of damage and take a lot of hits. There’s a big negative to this setup, however, and that’s the -200 points speed. Your amiibo will not only be significantly slower, but its jump will also be lowered as a result of the negative speed points, worsening its recovery. Not the best stat setup out there.

#4: Aggressive: 90 Attack | 0 Defense | 30 Speed

A very risky setup that sacrifices defense for power and speed. Your amiibo will die to hits a lot earlier than if it had defense points, but it will be able to deal a lot of damage and be quite fast, too. Not recommended, but it still has its uses.

Once you’ve taken your pick from the lot (I still highly recommend stat setup #1), you’ll need to pair the stats you chose with a bonus effect setup. I’ve got a bunch of them, so pick your favorite.

Set #1: Rock-Paper-Scissors

Critical-hit capability
Explosive perfect shield / Improved shield regeneration
Improved escapability

Originally brought to light (and named) by Amiibo Trainer, this is a very solid bonus setup that allows your amiibo to be ready for anything. “Why is called rock-paper-scissors”, you ask? Explosive perfect shield (or Improved shield regeneration, if you don’t want to use exploding shield) acts as the “rock” of the set, because it improves your amiibo’s defensive game. It causes a damaging explosion just by blocking! The Critical-hit capability acts as the “scissors” since it bolsters the power of your amiibo’s attacks. And I guess that leaves Improved escapability (which allows your amiibo to more easily escape from grabs) as the “paper”. This isn’t the best setup, but it’s pretty darn good.

Set #2: Defensive

Easy perfect shield / Explosive perfect shield
Improved shield regeneration / Health-restoring shield / Mirror shield
Improved escapability

This set focuses more on the defenses. For slot one, you can go with either Easy perfect shield, which will allow your amiibo to block more consistently, or Explosive perfect shield, which allows your amiibo to deal damage and knockback just by shielding! Slot two can go one of three ways. You can choose to use Improved shield regeneration to lower the chance of your amiibo’s shield breaking, Health-restoring shield to recover HP faster, or Mirror shield to inflict damage on opponents by blocking. Improved escapability is a must, because it grants your amiibo the ability to more easily escape from grabs and stuns.

Set #3: Healer

Auto-heal capability
Auto-heal capability
Auto-heal capability

A very simple set that uses three auto-heal bonuses. With this setup, your amiibo will heal 4% every 3 seconds, which is actually huge. It’ll be able to recover 80% in one minute! This set is best suited for amiibo that are trained to play passively.

Set #4: Trade-Off Tank

Critical-hit capability
Improved trade-off ability
Lifesteal

This set is best paired with a stat setup that greatly increases your amiibo’s defense and attack. Critical-hit capability gives your amiibo’s attacks a 20% chance to deal 3 times as much damage as they normally would. Lifesteal allows your amiibo to recover some HP by attacking. But Improved trade-off ability is the highlight of this set. In exchange for your amiibo starting each life at 60% (which is nullified by the Lifesteal bonus), it will slowly gain attack, defense, and speed the longer it stays alive.

Set #5: Aggressive Healer

Critical-hit capability
Auto-heal capability
Lifesteal

This is a set that I saw a lot during one of Amiibo Dan’s tournaments. The idea of this set is that your amiibo’s power will greatly increase thanks to the critical hit bonus. The other two bonuses, Auto heal and Lifesteal, are dedicated to keeping your amiibo’s damage low. Not the best spread ever, but I believe it can work.

Set #6: Upwards Launcher

Critical-hit capability
Improved launch ability
Quick smash attacks

This is a very situational spread that I use for my Lucas amiibo. Critical-hit capability, as you know, gives your amiibo’s attacks a 20% chance of dealing critical damage. Improved launch ability boosts the power of moves that launch foes upwards by 30%, which works well for characters with powerful up smashes or up throws, like Charizard, Lucas, and Mewtwo.

Set #7: Trade-Off Healer

Improved trade-off attack / Improved trade-off defense
Lifesteal / Auto-heal capability
Lifesteal / Auto-heal capability

This setup is built around one trade-off bonus. Now, the cool thing about this set is that it can be tailored for an aggressive or defensive amiibo. Want a hard-hitting amiibo that can heal itself well? Go with Improved trade-off attack. Or maybe you’d prefer a defensive amiibo that can take a lot of hits, in which case you’d select Improved trade-off defense. As for the second and third slots, you can pick either two Lifesteals or two Auto-heal capability bonuses. Lifesteal works better for aggressive amiibo, while Auto heal works better for defensive or passive amiibo.

I’ll be updating this section with new bonus effect spreads every so often. Check back sometimes to see if I’ve added anything! But…maybe you still don’t want to use any of these sets. Maybe you want to craft your own bonus effect setup, but you can’t decide which bonuses to use. Not a problem! I’ve created a list of every bonus effect and its viability below!

Are you trying to come up with a bonus effect setup of your own, but you can’t decide on which bonus to choose? Or, maybe your amiibo has a questionable bonus that you’re thinking of replacing. That’s where this list comes in handy – we’re going to be going over every single bonus effect ever. I’ve placed each bonus effect into one of four ranks: the S Rank, A Rank, B Rank, C Rank, and D Rank, similar to the organization methods of my amiibo tier list.

S Rank: The best bonuses in the game are placed here. They’re top picks for your amiibo! The bonuses you see here are huge game-changers that you should heavily consider giving to your amiibo.

Critical-hit capability: Tied with Explosive perfect shield, this is one of the best bonuses you can give to your amiibo. This bonus does not stack (meaning that putting three of it on your amiibo is useless, because only one of them will activate), and gives all of your amiibo’s attacks a 20% chance to inflict three times as much damage as they would normally do. You may notice that I used a lot of italics in this paragraph. That is because this bonus is incredibly good.
Explosive perfect shield: Undoubtedly the best defensive bonus in the game. Whenever your amiibo perfect shields an attack (which is very often, due to the fact that they can react quicker than any human), a small explosion is created that deals 15% damage and high knockback. With this bonus, all your amiibo needs to do to win is block.
Improved escapability: This bonus allows your amiibo to escape from grabs and being stunned 50% faster than usual. It essentially grants your amiibo immunity to being thrown (most notably by Ness) until it gets to 165% or higher. It’s just crazy!
Auto-heal capability: It’s a really great bonus that allows your amiibo to heal 2% every 3 seconds. But this bonus really shines because it stacks. If you give your amiibo two auto heal bonuses, it will heal 3% every 3 seconds, and if you give your amiibo three auto-heal bonuses, it will heal 4% every 3 seconds. This means that in one minute, your amiibo can heal a whopping 80% with three auto-heal bonuses!

A Rank: Great bonuses are sorted into this rank. They’re great picks for your amiibo! The bonuses you see are generally best paired with one of the S-Rank bonuses.

Easy perfect shield: This bonus will give your amiibo more time to perfect shield an attack. It goes particularly well with the Improved shield regeneration, Health-restoring shield, Mirror shield, and Explosive perfect shield bonuses.
Improved shield regeneration: It’s a very helpful bonus that allows your amiibo’s shield to recharge 50% faster than normal. It’s particularly helpful against opponents who can normally break shields easily. This bonus pairs well with Easy perfect shield and Explosive perfect shield, among others.
Lifesteal: A great offensive bonus that goes well with Critical-hit capability. With this bonus, all of your amiibo’s attacks have a 50% chance of recovering 50% of the damage that attack dealt. Does that make sense? Either way, this bonus is great on aggressively-trained amiibo, or fighters who just deal a lot of damage, such as Marth.
Health-restoring shield: A crazy good bonus that allows your amibo to recover HP just by blocking. If an attack strikes the shield, your amiibo will be healed by 25% of the damage that attack would have dealt. The bonus goes really good with Improved shield regeneration.
Mirror shield: An awesome bonus that allows your amiibo to rack up damage just by blocking! If an attack strikes the mirror shield, the attacker will recieve 25% of the damage they would have dealt to you. This bonus is like a toned-down version of Explosive perfect shield.

B Rank: Good bonuses are placed into this group. They’re very solid choices for your amiibo! The bonuses you see here are viable picks that might be best paired with an A or S Rank bonus.

Improved dodge ability: This bonus very slightly improves your amiibo’s dodge ability, hence its name. To be exact, it increases the number of intangibility frames in your amiibo’s dodge by 10%.
Reduced landing impact: A good bonus for amiibo who personally prefer the air. It lowers all landing lag of aerials by 30%, allowing your amiibo to move more quickly again after landing.
Quick smash attacks: It allows your amiibo to fully charge a smash attack twice as long as usual! Your amiibo will be able to unleash fully charged smash attacks in half the time!
Hyper smash attacks: This bonus increases the power of a fully charged smash attack by 30%, at the cost of taking longer for its smash attacks to become fully charged.
Improved defense in a crisis: A pretty solid bonus that can save your amiibo if it is in trouble. When your amiibo’s damage reaches 100%, it will take 66% less damage and knockback from all attacks for 20 seconds. After 20 seconds, the bonus effect fizzles out and is inactive for the rest of the amiibo’s stock.
Improved attack at 0 damage: This bonus causes your amiibo’s attack power to be increased by 50% as long as it stays at 0%. It’s generally best paired with healing bonuses, such as Lifesteal and Auto-heal capability.
Improved trade-off attack: In exchange for starting each life with 30%, your amiibo’s attack power will be increased by 15%. Best paired with healing bonuses like auto-heal and lifesteal.
Improved trade-off defense: In exchange for starting each life with 30%, your amiibo will take 20% less damage from any attack it gets hit by. Best paired with healing bonuses like auto-heal and lifesteal.
Improved trade-off ability: In exchange for starting each life with 60%, your amiibo’s attack, defense, and speed will slowly increase the longer it stays alive. Best paired with healing bonuses like auto-heal or lifesteal.
Improved launch ability: This bonus increases the attack power of your amiibo’s moves, but only ones that launch opponents upwards. This bonus is great for Charizard, Mewtwo, and especially Lucas, as their up throws are already strong, and they benefit from the bonus. Lucas’ up smash is also the strongest move in the game knockback-wise, which this bonus will only bolster.

C Rank: These bonuses are decent at best. They’re all outclassed by those in the B, A, and S Ranks. I do not recommend you give these bonus to an amiibo who you want to be a seriously-trained tournament contender.

Increased run speed: Hence its name, this bonus increases your amiibo’s running speed by 30%. I believe it to be sorta useless, since A. you could do something like Explosive perfect shield instead and win more consistently, and B. because you could just boost your amiibo’s shield points rather than use this bonus.
Increased lateral air movement: This bonus increases your amiibo’s air mobility by 25%. This can help its recovery become better! However, it’s kind of outclassed. Why would you use this bonus when better options like Critical-hit capability, Improved escapability, and Explosive perfect shield are out there?
Improved jump, Improved ground jumps, Improved double jump: I’ve grouped all of the jump-boosting bonuses into one paragraph, as you can see. These bonuses, as you might’ve guessed, increase your amiibo’s jump height. As with most of the bonuses in the Decent rank, it’s just outclassed. There are so many better things you could be doing with the three available bonus slots for your amiibo.
Increased walk speed: This bonus increases your amiibo’s walking speed by 30%. As with the Increased lateral air movement bonus we talked about two paragraphs ago, the Increased walk speed bonus is outclassed. Except, this bonus only increases your walk speed. Your run speed will be the same. Overall, this is just not a very good bonus to give your amiibo. Sorry!
Easier edge grabs: This bonus gives your amiibo’s edge-grabbing range a 30% boost. Again, this bonus is outclassed by those in the S, A, and B ranks. It’s just not worth using this bonus when there are so many other options.
Improved air defense: It makes your amiibo take 25% less damage from attacks, but only in midair. This bonus is sort of useless simply because your amiibo really shouldn’t be in the air that much. I train my amiibo to stay on the ground at all times (it’s very possible that they get punished if they’re going for aerials), so this bonus is useless. At least, to me it is.
Improved air attacks: Like I just said, I train my amiibo to remain on the ground, so this bonus is useless to me. It increases the power of your amiibo’s aerial attacks by 15%. I don’t recommend using this bonus, but if you do, I recommend that you stack it. If you give your amiibo two Improved air attacks bonuses, their aerials will deal a total of 25% more damage. If you go with three, the boost will be 35% instead.
Improved attack in a crisis: When your amiibo’s damage reaches 100%, this bonus will increase its attack power by 70%, but only for 20 seconds. After 20 seconds elapses, the bonus will not go into effect for the rest of the amiibo’s current stock. The attack increase here is big, but the bonus itself is not reliable because it will only activate one time per stock.
Powered up in a crisis: When your amiibo’s damage reaches 100%, its attack, defense, and speed will slowly increase…but only for 20 seconds. After that time is up, its attack, defense, and speed go back to normal. Decent bonus in a clutch, but its limited use makes it a poor choice overall.
Improved attack / speed at 0%: If your amiibo has 0%, its attack and speed will gradually increase. The highest its attack power can get is 40% more than usual, and it can gain up to a 25% speed boost. But if your amiibo even takes one point of damage, the effects will wear off. In general, you don’t want to give your amiibo a bonus that will change its speed in the middle of a match. The amiibo might get confused by this.
Improved trade-off speed: In exchange for your amiibo starting each life with 30% damage, it will move 30% faster. A decent bonus, because as long as your amiibo has it, its speed will be increased no matter what. However, it’s a bit outclassed. Why go for speed when you can do improved trade-off attack or defense?
No-flinch charged smashes: This bonus gives your amiibo super armor when it is charging a smash attack! This means that it can not be launched (by a standard attack) while it is charging a smash. Its use a little situational, but the bonus is best paired with Quick smash attacks and/or Hyper smash attacks.
Prone damage dealer: This bonus causes your amiibo to deal 40% more damage to opponents who are laying down on the ground. Its use is very situational, since amiibo can tech with ease.
First-strike advantage: If you land the first strike of the battle with this bonus equipped, you will be invincible for 10 seconds. The problem with this bonus is that other amiibo can detect if you are invincible, and they will run away. Might not be the best choice for your amiibo.
Crash run: Honestly, this is a bonus that I have not tested much. I don’t like my amiibo running all over the place. This bonus allows your amiibo to do damage just by running into opponents, making it a risky way to deal damage. This bonus is just outclassed by Explosive perfect shield (which is a much more consistent method of inflicting pain upon opponents).
Heal while crouching: You’ll never guess what this bonus does. If your amiibo is crouching, it will heal 3% every 2 seconds. The bonus does not stack. I dunno, I don’t really like this bonus effect simply because your amiibo needs to crouch. Auto-heal capability does a much better job.
KOs heal damage: This bonus has a really good concept, but…well, if your amiibo gets a KO, it heals 15%. And the bonus doesn’t even stack. So…yeah. 15% is not that much, considering that amiibo can easily inflict 15% damage with one hit.
Chance of double Final Smash: In a tournament setting where Smash Balls are turned off, this bonus is 100% useless. But if you’re training your amiibo for a tournament where Smash Balls are allowed, this is probably the best Smash Ball-related bonus you can ask for. With this bonus, you have a 20% chance of being able to use a Final Smash a second time after using it once. It’s still a bit outclassed by bonuses in the A, B, and S ranks, though.

D Rank: Bonuses in this group are either virtually useless or greatly outclassed by other ones. These are bonuses that you should never give to a “serious” amiibo.

Decreased run speed, Decreased lateral air movement, Weakened jump, Weakened ground jumps, Weakened double jump, Decreased walk speed, Decreased edge-grab duration, Harder edge grabs, No perfect shield, Weakened shield regeneration, Weakened air defense, Weakened dodge ability, Increased landing impact, Weakened air attacks, No respawn invincibility: Phew. That is a lot of bonuses. These bonuses all weaken your amiibo. A serious amiibo should never have any of them. It’ll have no chance of winning!
Skating traction: This bonus increases your amiibo’s mobility by 50%. Sounds great, right? Wrong! As a trade-off, your amiibo won’t be able to stop moving. Literally, it’ll just slide around when it stops running. Giving this bonus to your amiibo will make it a mess.
Floaty jumps: This bonus effect isn’t necessarily bad, per se, it’s just heavily outclassed. Why would you use this bonus when your amiibo could have a bonus that’s much more…influential, like Explosive perfect shield? In case you wanted to know, this bonus causes your amiibo to fall 40% slower.
Heavy jumps: The heavy jumps bonus is in the same group as the one above. It isn’t necessarily bad, it’s just really outclassed. You could do way better than this. Instead of giving your amiibo heavy jumps, you could give it Explosive perfect shield, Improved escapability, or Critical-hit capability: bonuses that are infinitely more useful. The heavy jumps bonus effect causes your amiibo to fall 40% faster. It’s just kind of worthless, in my opinion.
Improved braking ability: You could do so much better than this. This bonus allows your amiibo to stop moving faster. That’s it. Nothing else. It’s worthless, really.
Improved meteor effect: Sorry, Mario amiibo trainers. Amiibo meteor smash foes so rarely that this bonus isn’t worth it. They don’t like going off-stage – they think it’s too risky.
Improved speed in a crisis: This bonus could mess up your amiibo. When your amiibo has taken 100% damage or more, its speed is increased by 50%, but only for 20 seconds. That can be kinda disorienting to your amiibo. Plus, there’s a bunch of better bonuses you could use instead of this one.
Improved speed at 0 damage: Same with the above bonus. When your amibo has taken no damage, its speed is increased by 32%. Oddly specific number aside, this bonus is kind of disorienting for your amiibo. Don’t use this one.
Countdown bonus: This bonus greatly improves your amiibo’s launch power for the last five seconds of timed matches only. It’s useless in stock matches (which most amiibo tournaments play). Even so, five seconds? That’s clutch. I think you can do better than this bonus.
Extended respawn invincibility: This bonus causes your amiibo’s respawn invincibility to last three times longer than usual. Problem is, other amiibo will detect that your amiibo is invincible, and just run away until the invincibility wears off.
Stronger item throws, Weakened item throws, Battering item boost, Throwing item boost, Projectile item boost, Quicker bat swing, Star Rod equipped, Lip’s Stick equipped, Super Scope equipped, Ray Gun equipped, Fire Flower equipped, Beam Sword equipped, Home-Run Bat equipped, Bob-omb equipped, Mr. Saturn equipped. Phew. That was a mouthful. I’m grouping all of these bonuses into one paragraph, since they all involve items. In amiibo tournaments, items are turned OFF. If the items are indeed turned off, these bonuses become completely useless. Don’t use ’em.
Increased healing from food, Decreased healing from food, Improved speed after eating, Improved defense after eating, Improved attack after eating, Power up after eating, Invincibility after eating. Yup, I’m shoving all the food bonuses into one paragraph as well. These bonuses are completely useless in tournaments, because items are turned off. I’m reading your mind right now, by the way. You’re thinking “What about Wario? He can eat his own bike!” Well, unfortunately, these bonuses only activate if Wario eats actual food. The bike will not activate them.
Smash ball gravitation, Respawn Final Smash, Smash Ball retention, Powered up Final Smash, Healing Final Smash. These are bonuses that improve your amiibo’s Final Smash. You might’ve guessed it, but if items are turned off, this bonuses are useless. Even if Smash Balls are turned on, there’s still better options, such as Chance of double Final Smash – which is in the C Rank.

So there we go! All of the bonuses in the game…or, at least, I hope so. If you find that I’ve missed any, you can let me know by filling out Amiibo Dojo’s contact form or by emailing me directly at amiibocloud@gmail.com!

And that’s it! I’ve gone over general feeding information, potential stat and bonus setups for your amiibo, and I even put together a bonus effect tier list. Thanks for reading, as always! If you have any questions, you can fill out the Amiibo Dojo contact form or email me directly at amiibocloud@gmail.com. Your email address will never be shared.

All of my character-specific amiibo guides will link you to this page at some point, so…if you came from one of my character guides, you can close this tab and return to the guide. Otherwise, you can check out Amiibo Dojo on Twitter here, or you can look at a page showing all of my character guides here (note: link defunct).

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A Guide to Feeding your Amiibo

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