We’re going to keep today’s post short, simple, and to the point. Training amiibo in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is a surprisingly deep endeavor, and there’s a lot of technical jargon to learn about and read up on. Be sure to consult our character guides and the amiibo Wiki for more information. Now then, if you’ve never trained an amiibo before (or have never trained one “seriously” — whatever that might mean), here are eight things you should know before you get started.

1. Don’t use CPUs to train your amiibo. This includes other amiibo, too. The best way to level up an amiibo is to fight it yourself, even if you’re not good with the character. Generally speaking, you want to be in direct control of the attacks and movement techniques your Figure Player utilizes. If you’re looking to train a strong amiibo, don’t let it face other CPUs or FPs with its learning on.
2. Personalities don’t matter. They’re a vague description of your FP’s playstyle, but they’re not very informative. For example, two Enthusiastic FPs can act completely differently since personalities are a spectrum. If you want to learn more about personalities, check out our post.
3. Don’t charge smash attacks. Even if you break your FP’s shield. FPs can very easily learn to charge their smash attacks, and when they do, they’ll charge them for as long as possible every time they use a smash attack. That leaves them horribly vulnerable, so be sure that you only use smash attacks uncharged.
4. Don’t taunt. And if you really want to taunt, don’t do it too often. Once an FP starts taunting, it’s really difficult to get them to stop. In severe cases, an FP will continue taunting until its opponent attacks. If this sounds funny to you, go for it! Otherwise, try to avoid taunting whenever you can.
5. FPs don’t save matchup experience. This means they can’t tell what character you’re playing as. There are a few YouTube videos making the round that say amiibo learn matchups. This isn’t true! Their training data chips only hold 512 bytes of information, which isn’t enough to save matchup data for every other character in the game. As a result, you’re going to want to mirror match your amiibo whenever its learning is on.
6. FPs can’t recognize things they don’t see. If you’re playing as Bowser and start spamming smash attacks, your FP might try to challenge his super armor and get hit. Sure enough, they don’t know what moves have super armor. They also can’t tell how much damage their opponent has taken, and they can’t notice if Cloud has his Limit Break active or if Joker has Arsène.
7. FPs can’t learn combos that aren’t specifically programmed into their AI. For example, Luigi can learn to use down throw to two forward airs, because that’s a combo the developers programmed into his AI. At the time of writing, he can’t learn the Luigi zero-to-death because the AI doesn’t know how to do it (and cannot learn). Joker is an interesting exception, as his AI knows how to do all sorts of fancy combos, including dragdown ones!
8. Be careful when applying Spirits. Each time your FP is given a Spirit, its training data is scrambled. This is because every Spirit lowers and raises training values by set amounts… but there are over 1,200 Spirits in the game, so compiling a list of each Spirit’s training effects might just be impossible (but trainers like MiDe have certainly tried!). In the meantime, try to give your amiibo Spirits at Level 1 and be sure to do lots of mirror matches afterward regardless.

There’s a lot more to learn about amiibo training, too! Consult our character guides for the latest and greatest strategies for each character, and check out the amiibo Wiki for character history and metagame information. If you have any amiibo training questions whatsoever, feel free to join our Discord server and ask. We’ll be happy to help you out!

If you would like to read more amiibo training guides, please follow this link.

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