Shadow Fight 2 Special Edition is a game we happen to be playing quite a lot these days, and while it is a paid iOS game, it also happens to be worth the money. As a reminder of what we told you in our first, and ultimate strategy guide for Shadow Fight 2 Special Edition, it takes place in a setting inspired by feudal Japan (despite the semi-modern costumes and hard rock background music), with your character being a shadow warrior who fights his way through a variety of enemies and bosses across six stages/worlds, collecting and upgrading equipment in what Nekki describes as a hybrid of fighting and RPG gaming.
Our ultimate guide had talked you through a wide range of tips, and we do mean a very wide range. But this is such a deep fighting game that we thought we’d give you another Shadow Fight 2 Special Edition strategy guide, this time focusing on advanced tips, and strategies for beating some of the other bosses in the game. The ultimate guide featured some advice on how to beat Lynx, and in here, we’ll be telling you all you need to do to beat the next three bosses, namely Hermit, Butcher, and Wasp.
1. Take On Random Post-Level Up Fights
This is something we should have included in the ultimate guide, but these random fights usually pop up after each fourth or fifth level-up. These can also be considered as side missions, separate from the main campaign/story fights and tournaments. We suggest taking them on, but making sure you only do so once your equipment is fully leveled up. If you lose your first fight, you will have to pay gems for a second chance, with the amount of gems increasing with each retry against that random enemy. But if you beat them, you will be rewarded richly, not in the form of gems, but rather by winning their special weapon! Of course, you’ll have to pay coins to upgrade it like you normally would, but the weapon should serve you better than most of the game’s regular weapons, making it a potential tide-turner in battle.
Also remember that once you abandon these optional random fights, you won’t be able to fight these enemies again!
2. The Boss Rematch
After you’ve beaten a boss the first time, you will get a second chance to fight that boss once you’ve started a new stage, or even once you’re several stages removed from that boss fight. We suggest going for it once you’re about a stage or two ahead, because if you beat a boss in a rematch, you’ll get to win their weapon as well! You won’t get much XP as a reward, but the weapon will also come in handy in battle, as long as you don’t win it too late, for example, if you’re already in the fourth stage and defeat first stage boss Lynx; his special weapon won’t be too useful against those much stronger enemies.
3. Your Opponents Become More Likely To Come From Behind In Stage 2 And Beyond
If you’ll notice, everything appears to be very cut-and-dry in Hero Reborn, the first stage, as compared to the subsequent stages. The AI is smart, but not as smart as it would be in stage 2 onward, which means you might not need to worry too much about strategy as you would later on in the game. But once you reach Secret Path, the game’s second stage, that’s where things get more serious and the AI gets smarter. Far too often, we noticed that enemies tend to have something up their sleeves once their backs are against the wall, especially if you’re still not changing up your strategy. That means if you’re not careful, you could end up prone to some painful come-from-behind losses — the enemy could work their way back slowly, or they could do it with one quick critical hit, especially if magic is involved. Don’t get too overconfident, and make sure to mix things up!
4. Adjust Your Strategy From Round To Round In Boss Fights
One thing we’ve noticed with the boss fights is that it’s fairly easy to get the first win, and also relatively easy to take a 2-0 lead. But it’s even easier to lose the boss fight when the boss wins the last three rounds, as that’s where they tend to take stock of their earlier mistakes and tweak their strategy. Shadow Fight 2, as we said several times in the ultimate guide, has a rather smart AI, and if you keep on spamming the enemy — the bosses, in this case — with the same moves, they will notice.
5. How To Beat Hermit
Don’t be deceived by the second stage boss, Hermit. He may be a little old man who looks like easy pickings just by his appearance alone. But if you know your martial arts tropes, you should know that that little old man is oftentimes far deadlier than most anyone else in the cast. That’s the case with Hermit, whose main distinguishing ability is his magic — a simple blast of energy that could take out up to 70 to 80 percent of your HP, and a skill where he floats in the air and hits targeted blasts of energy that could wipe out up to 50 percent of HP per blast, as long as he remains levitating.
For the first round, you can simply blast away at him with close-contact attacks; keep the attacks coming fast and furious, and more often than not, he won’t have an answer unless he’s at a good distance from you. Once he’s at a distance, that’s where he can cast his first magic spell, which is easy to avoid (by rolling or jumping or countering with your weapon), but deadly once it hits. He won’t levitate just yet; in the game’s context, that may be because he’s trying to get a good read on you before he brings out his “A” game.
For the succeeding rounds, you’ll want to mix in some kicks and projectiles to your close-contact attack, especially once Hermit’s HP is at 50 percent or less. As we mentioned above, Hermit will start levitating in the second round onward, and hitting you with projectile blasts of energy for his second spell. The best way to go around this is to stay calm, make sure you’re at a distance, and don’t move around too much — chances are you’ll end up getting hit by those energy blasts. While at that safe distance, make use of your ranged weapon until you end up with a head shot; that’s going to knock Hermit back down, and that’s when you can close back in on him, hopefully diversifying your attacks to build up the rage meter and prevent him from getting too much of a read on you.
Defeating Hermit will unlock the ability to use magic spells in battle, and that’s exactly what we will be talking about up next.
6. How To Use Magic
Magic becomes available in the third stage, after you’ve beaten second-stage boss Hermit. And buying spells works exactly the same way as it does when buying other types of equipment — as you level up, more spells will be made available, and you can buy them with coins or gems, and upgrade them as you move along. Using them in battle, however, is a completely different story.
Instead of using a traditional mana system, you get to load up your “mana,” if you can call it that, by landing blows on your opponent. Take out more damage and you fill up the mana counter faster, but take note that the only time you can cast a spell is when you’ve filled up that counter on the right side of your screen.
As magic can be a huge game-changer that could potentially turn the tide in battle, we suggest that you use it only when needed. Don’t use magic when a fight is winnable; rather, use it if you’re behind on health points, or are looking to take out an opponent before they mount one of the comebacks we were telling you about earlier. If your spells hit the target and aren’t blocked, they could take out a huge chunk of your enemy’s HP, but if they block the spell, or worse, if they completely dodge it, that’s going to be a huge waste, and you don’t want to refill the counter/meter all over again, right?
7. Complete The Challenges
Challenges become available in the second stage, and these are fights with non-campaign enemies where there are certain conditions that apply only to you, and not to the opponent. For example, you may be asked to fight without a helmet, or worse, you may be informed that being knocked to the ground or pushed out of the stipulated area means an automatic loss. You may also be given a limited amount of time to win a round, or forced to beat your opponent without kicks, or without any kind of weapon at all. These are just some of the conditions, and once you reach the third stage, the game will start upping the difficulty by combining multiple stipulations in one challenge. But regardless of what the stipulations are, you get 12 challenges per stage, and completing them will earn you coins and XP. Make sure you try to complete all of them, especially when leveling up becomes harder!
8. Grinding In Survival Becomes More Important In Later Stages
Although we already mentioned the importance of replaying the Survival game mode in our ultimate guide, we’re going to be mentioning it again in this Shadow Fight 2 advanced guide. As you progress through more stages and find yourself up against tougher enemies, you’ll also find it harder to level up than before, as you’ll need more XP to get from one level to another. And if you can’t level up, you can’t get your hands on better weapons that could help you take out the bosses, weapons that can only be bought with gems. As Survival is very generous in giving out gems, we suggest grinding for gems (and coins as well) by replaying this mode as often as needed. It may get boring and tedious with several repetitions, but Survival is arguably the easiest mode to play in this game, and it’s proof positive that the game makes it easy for anyone to earn a ton of premium currency.
9. How To Beat Butcher
Butcher is the third stage boss, and as you can guess from the name, his weapons of choice are two butcher knives. He also has a big, burly physique, yet has some powerful magic spells, and boasts of impressive quickness for a man of his size. So how do you defeat a guy who calls himself Butcher?
Strangely enough, it appears to be easier to beat Butcher than it is to defeat Hermit. Like your average boss, he tends to take it easy on you in the first round, and saves the game-changing moves for subsequent rounds. But if you keep coming at him in close contact, even in the second round and beyond, you might be able to defeat him. The less time it takes you to beat him, the better, because his blows do hurt a lot and take out a ton of HP. And you can’t discount his magic as well. Butcher’s attacks are strong enough to turn the tide and reverse your good fortunes quickly, so work toward taking him out ASAP and you should be good.
10. How To Beat Wasp
In the fourth stage, you’ll encounter the boss character Wasp, and she has three special skills/magic spells worth noting. The first is the basic bolt of energy/lightning not unlike the one launched by Hermit — that too could eat a huge chunk of your HP if you get hit by it. She can also trigger an explosion near you that’s capable of draining about 30 to 50 percent of your HP, and also bound from one end of the screen to the other and stab you with her spear, also taking out around the same percentage of HP. She’s a tough customer and substantially harder to beat than Butcher, but it can be done.
We’ve gotten the best results with the Kusarigama, a flail-like weapon that’s the highest-ranked weapon you can use in the fourth stage — this is a melee weapon that allows you to attack from a safe enough distance. You should have no trouble beating Wasp in the first round, and when it comes to the subsequent rounds, all you really have to do is to be quick in avoiding the lightning bolt. That’s the real tide-turner, though the same can be said by Wasp’s other spells/special skills; she can use one to set up a combo and send your HP from 80-100 percent to zero in just a few seconds’ time. It also helps to save your magic attacks for the later rounds, and make sure you time them properly. Wasp is quite a good defensive fighter, so you need to be sure she’s completely vulnerable and open before you launch your magic at her.