Nitride Unica

Nightride UnicaINFORMATION

FROM:

  • ACCEL WORLD

LEGION:

  • ???

SPECIAL ABILITY:

  • ACCELERATION

MAIN ELEMENT:

  • ICE
  • DARK

ROLE:

  • ATTACKER

UNLOCK:

  • Endgame Side EP. Talk to Lotus in the Dicey Cafe.


~SPECIAL MOVES~

 

 

Show/Hide Special Moves

 NAME

 DESCRIPTION

 SP-combo1 Divine Snow  Combo Attack. Two consecutive ballet-like roundhouse kicks.

  • GAUGE COST: 200
 SP-AoE2  Snow Blessing  Area of Effect Attack. Creates a small whirlwind of ice that wraps around Unica damaging enemies in area around her. Lowers enemy movement speed.

  • GAUGE COST: 250

 

 

 ~INCARNATE SKILLS~

 

 

Show/Hide Incarnate Skills

 NAME

 DESCRIPTION

 I-projectile2  Scratch  Projectile Attack.  Handsprings into a forward flip and propels a small shockwave at the target.

  • COOLDOWN: 10
 I-combo3.jpg Rakovita Flip  Combo Attack. Performs a marvelous vault into a 360 turn during first flight phase with salto during second flight phase [Olympic vaulting terms].

  • COOLDOWN: 15
 I-AoE4  Dark Cloud Storm  Area of Effect Attack. Performs simplified Olympic Tumbling which summons several Dark Cyclones that deal heavy damage to an area.

  • COOLDOWN: 30

 

 

 ~HEALING & BUFFS~

 

 

Show/Hide Healing & Buffs

 NAME

 DESCRIPTION

 SpdUP  Approach Run  Increases Self Movement Speed.

  • Movement Speed Increase:
    • Lv1 = 20%
    • Lv500 = 26%
    • Lv1000 = 32%
  • Duration:
    • Lv1 = 30 Seconds
    • Lv500 = 60 Seconds
    • Lv1000 = 90 Seconds
  • COOLDOWN: 180 Seconds
 Mirror  Eternal Silence  Become semi-invisible. Enemies can still see you, but aggro rate is decreased by 50%.

*Has no effect in online play.

  • Duration:
    • Lv1 = 30 Seconds
    • Lv500 = 60 Seconds
    • Lv1000 = 90 Seconds
  • COOLDOWN: 180 Seconds

 

 

 ~PASSIVE SKILLS~

 

 

Show/Hide Passive Skills

  NAME

  DESCRIPTION

 Neo Acceleration  Allows the use of faster Accel Move & Super Jump techniques.
 Gymnast Strike  Unica-chan’s unique fighting style.
 Increase Jump Efficiency  Decreases the amount of stamina used by jumping related actions.
 Stamina Saver  Reduces the cost of stamina based actions by 20%.
 Increase Status Ailment Recovery  Increases the rate of recovery from bad statuses by 20%.
 Increase Physical Defense  Decrease amount of damage received by physical attacks by 10%.
 Increase Special Gauge  Increases Max Special Gauge by 10%.
 Increase Special Gauge Regeneration  Increases the rate of gaining Special Gauge by 10%.
 Cooldown Time Decrease  Decreases the cooldown time of Sword Skills & Special Moves by 10%.
 Increase Critical Rate  Increases the probability of landing a critical strike by 20%.
 Switch Boost  Increases the power of Switch by 10%.
 Increase Attack  Increases physical damage dealt by weapons by 10%.
 Increase BP Drop  Increases the BP dropped by enemies by 10%.
 Increase Jump Efficiency+  Decreases the amount of stamina used by jumping related actions even further.
 Skill Connect Boost  Increases power of Skill Connect by 10%.
 Increase Special Gauge+  Increases Max Special Gauge by 30%.
 Increase Special Gauge Regeneration+  Increases the rate of gaining Special Gauge by 30%.
 Cooldown Time Decrease+  Decreases the cooldown time of Sword Skills & Special Moves by 20%.
 Switch Boost+  Increases the power of Switch by 20%.
[Lv1000] Skill Connect Boost+  Increases power of Skill Connect by 20%.
[Lv1050] Increase Step Invul Duration  Increases the amount of invulnerability time during a step.
[Lv1100] Increase BP Drop+  Increases the BP dropped by enemies by 20%.
[Lv1200] Increase Physical Defense+  Decrease amount of damage received by physical attacks by 20%.

 

 


~HOW TO PLAY NITRIDE UNICA~

This section is written as an more in-depth extension to the AW & SAO Character Overview post and is meant to be used hand in hand with the General Leveling Guide. The purpose of this How-To-Play is to offer players of all levels a skeleton plan which enables them to build their characters up to their full potential. With that being said, it is indeed recommended that you do follow the steps described here.

Accel World characters need a solid team (In particular, a competent Buffer) in order for them to truly shine. They serve as mainly Elemental Attackers and should only typically be used when the team already has all of the key characters that make up Buffer, Debuffer and Healer.

I am aware that AW characters are PvP oriented but I don’t really care about PvP so this How-To-Play is written with co-op play mind.

-Equipment Selection-

Nitride Unica’s Main Elements are Ice & Dark so she is highly compatible with both Ice & Dark Engraved Stones and Enhanced Armaments that Increase Ice & Dark Abilities.

But since a AW characters rely on Elemental Damage for their main damage output, they can benefit greatly from simply using the appropriate Elemental Engraved Stones & Elemental Equipment for each corresponding Boss Weakness. It may appear as a hassle to constantly change equipment for every Boss Weakness but the difference is effectively Double Damage since elemental damage is multiplied by 2 if a boss is weak to that element (Also, if a boss resists an element, that specific Elemental Damage will be reduced by 90%).

For information on which each Bosses weaknesses and resistances, there are Weak/Resist spreadsheets on the Boss Guides page.

In the event that a boss is indeed Resistant to all elements, pick the Engraved Stone and the Elemental Equipment that the team will most likely end up using. Example: a Team with Strea, Seven & Kirito will result in a definite use of Enhance Earth since there is no other Elemental Enhance in the team makeup.

**For some tips on how to select the appropriate Accessories for your character, consult the Selecting Equipment guide.

-AW Combat Guide-

AW characters cannot fly. On top of this, using Special Moves consumes the Special Gauge which is only filled by landing Square & Triangle attacks. This makes AW Combat a lot more complicated as you constantly have to be attacking to build the Special Gauge meter while at the same time trying to control your altitude. But don’t worry, a little bit of practice and picking up some good habits will help you become effective at combat as well as gain enjoyment from using these characters.

Building Special Gauge Meter:

When a fight starts, you will typically always have 0 meter. It would be ideal if there was a nearby mob monster you could smack around for meter gain but if there isn’t do not rush straight to the boss. If you rush straight to the boss you could become out of range of the SAO characters buffs with increase your strength tremendously. Patiently wait for your SAO teammates to cast all of their buff skills and once they are finished, Accel Move in for combat.

Spend the first few moments of the Boss fight restricting yourself to Square and Triangle attacks in order to build a good amount of meter. You can use your Incarnate Skills to punctuate your normal attacks but the purpose here is meter building, not damage output.

Triangle attacks build the most meter but don’t use them if you have below 50% stamina. If you run out of stamina, you will simply fall straight to the ground since you will become unable to Jump, Dash, Super Jump & Accel Move which are important for maintaining altitude.

Once you have around 60%+ meter, you can start using Special Moves rather aggressively and do Skill Connect combos into Incarnate Skills. Just keep in mind that you will be restricted to building meter if you completely exhaust your meter gauge. Because of this, it is recommended that you can get into the good rhythm of using short Skill Connect combos into Incarnate Skills and then building meter while the Incarnate Skills are on cooldown.

The reason why is a good idea to never completely exhaust your meter gauge is for CHRISTMAS. “Christmas” is what I call it when a boss is either DOWNED or does an attack with long duration and is rendered completely helpless for around 30 seconds. This is the time when everyone drops what they are doing and focuses completely on damage output. A lot of AW characters wait for Christmas so they can activate their Mega Buffs and deal high damage. So if you don’t have any meter when it’s Christmas, you will miss out on your biggest chance to deal maximum damage.

Controlling Altitude:

Majority of the Bosses in this game do in fact fly. Therefore it is extremely important for characters who cannot fly to know who to maintain a stable altitude where they feel comfortable and are in full control of the situation.

Your 4 main tools for controlling altitude are Square Attacks, Jumps, Super Jumps and Accel Moves.

Since all of the tools used for Vertical Movement consume a considerable amount of Stamina, there are times when you will just have to float in a safe place and use Square Attacks in order to maintain altitude while regenerating Stamina. Square Attacks don’t use any Stamina. So if you ever run out of Stamina, use Square attacks so that you don’t fall all the way to the ground.

For advanced players, would be ideal if you could land these Square Attacks on a Boss since you could build meter at the same time. If you spot an incoming attack you can simply Jump Cancel the Square Attack into a a quick Guard. If your timing is perfect, you can Instant Block the attack and go right back into Square Attacks without losing any altitude.

Jumps can be used to maintain altitude but be careful. If you use many jumps in quick succession you will rapidly drain your Stamina Gauge and fall right to the ground in failure. For this reason, you should train yourself to use basic jumps simply for maintaining your level of altitude as opposed to long distance upward movement.

Super Jumps and Accel Moves are the tools used to cover large amounts of distance. Quite often when you use one of these techniques, you can move a lot more than intended to and be caught off guard that you are now more displaced than you expected to be. This is especially the case with the Super Jump.

When you are in a boss fight and you have fallen considerably far underneath a boss, use the Accel Move in order to get back onto the Boss’ same Altitude level. Note that this will only work if you can still lock on to the boss. Do not use the Super Jump if you can still lock on to the boss unless you are prepared to elevate much higher than the boss. If you cannot lock on to the boss it means that you are really far below a boss and a Super Jump will be needed to put you into lock-on range.

But be careful since using an Accel Move from underneath a Boss puts you directly in front of the boss and you will be vulnerable its attacks.

-Video of Offensive Skills & Sample Play-
 
-Using Nitride Unica-

Accel World characters are built for combat. They do not have many buff skills so they do not have to worry about constantly casting buffs the way SAO characters do. Because of this, they have a lot of freedom in their playstyle and benefit a lot from being played aggressively. But keep in mind that there is a huge difference between playing Aggressively and playing Recklessly. AW characters don’t have free access to Healing Skills so you have to play with caution.

Unica-chan has a 3-2 split of Incarnate Skills to Special Moves with the favor being in her Incarnate Skills. Her Special Moves form an auxiliary portion of her offense so as a result, Unica-chan doesn’t have to spend a lot of time building up the Special Move Gauge.

Unica-chan’s skillset specialized in AoE of various sizes along with a useful Zangetsu-like projectile. Her more damaging and multi-purpose moves are her 3 Incarnate Skills with her 2 Special Moves being used as secondary or combo filler attacks. Its worth emphasizing that Unica-chan has absolutely no Super Armor in her movelist. If you want to use her effectively, you’ll need to play her carefully and be conscious of where you cast her Sword Skills.

To maximize her damage, you should aim to use Dark Cloud Storm as much as possible. Then while that skill is on cooldown, you can focus on building meter or using her other Incarnate Skills until Dark Cloud Storm is off cooldown. Your placement when you cast Dark Cloud Storm is critical – its a good look to cast it underneath a boss or in a place where you can execute the entire attack without getting hit out of it.

If a boss isn’t DOWNed/Stunned, I would discourage the use of Dark Cloud Storm in Skill Connect combos. This is because almost all of her other moves move her closer to the target and puts you at a high risk of getting hit out of Dark Cloud Storm. The other reason is that Dark Cloud Storm will not recover from cooldown if you combo off of it so intentionally dropping a combo after it makes sense since most of her damage output is based around that Godly Skill.

-Using Buff Skills-

Accel World character buffs typically provide a larger increase than SAO buffs but have a considerably shorter duration. Since Buffs can be overwritten in this game I would like to emphasize that AW chara buffs do in fact overwrite SAO Buffs, but once the AW buff duration is over, they revert back to the SAO buffs. However, This doesn’t hold true when an AW buff changes the kind of element used when it comes to Element Enhance buffs (Same Element overwrites are still good though).

“Approach Run” increases movement speed and helps when traveling lost distances.

“Eternal Silence” can be only be used to control aggro offline. it has no use online so this skill isn’t really worth leveling in my opinion.

-Healing-

AW characters have no access to Healing Magic. Therefore, Healing Items become their main source of HP Recovery outside of relying on Healer teammates. Since they have few skills and end up having lots of free space in their Pallet, you can equip tons of Healing Items directly to their Pallet for quick healing access.

Since using a Healing Item leaves you vulnerable to attacks, its good form to first super jump as high as you can and then use an item while falling to the ground.

When you take damage with AW characters, don’t be a hero. Pop a quick HP Regen item and then continue fighting cautiously. If you have taken considerable damage, fall back to safety and use an Ancient Fruit (Full Recovery item) or a Pure Healing Crystal (Party HP 50% Recovery item).

It would be the best thing for you, as an AW character, if you had a healer who would care about you and heal you constantly. But don’t be a burden to the team. Understand that you don’t have free access to healing and don’t fight recklessly.

 -BK’s Opinion on Nitride Unica-

Have you ever heard the term ‘Main Trap‘ before?

Of course you haven’t. I made it up w.

A ‘Main Trap‘ is a term I use to describe a character that just works so well and is so fun that there’s a real danger of maining them and forsaking even giving other character’s a chance. This is bad because you pick up terrible gameplay habits and you end up with this weird sense of “AccelSword = This character”.

On the SAO side of things, 2Hand Sword is one hell of a Main Trap – Super Armor on everything, high damage & good character’s use it. If you fall into the 2H Main Trap, you end up becoming a player who gets hit by everything because you don’t learn to read a boss’ attacks. Then when its time to play a weapon that has no Super Armor you start having Negative Fun and go back to 2H.

But here in the AW roster Unica-chan is the biggest Main Trap. Dark Cloud Storm is too strong – too appealing and cheap that there’s a danger you’ll become a One Trick Pony that only knows how to use that skill and be an utterly useless player during its cooldown. On top of this, that Skill is purely elemental based so you’d be doing no damage to bosses that resist everything like Death & Melancolia.

“But BK, Black Lotus, Blue Knight, Cyan Pile and Ash Roller are all stronger than Nitride Unica. How come they aren’t Main Traps but she is?”

Well there’s one simple answer to that question:

Nitride Unica needs 0 leveling to be strong. If you just pick her and jam any quest you’ll see what I mean.

I am on a mission to make English speaking players better than Japanese players by writing all this stuff on this site. So if you want to walk along the path I am laying out for you, I’ll tell you to use this character with the term “Main Trap” in mind.

She’s undeniably good. But come back to her once you have learned how to actually play the game.

Now that my disclaimer is out of the way, Unica-chan is indeed a Low Key God. When I found out how sick Dark Cloud Storm was, I wanted to scream it from the rooftops. I love the shit out of this character. But luckily I had the the presence of mind to see how maining her can make you into a bad player who actually doesn’t know how to play the game.

I am having visions of everyone running around with only Dark Cloud Storm equipped in their pallet like those utterly unconscious LS Seven players that only used Dimensional Abyss (=_=)

Song buffs? Magia? Healing? Actually contributing to the team? Plz, I’ve got the allegedly best skill in the game and its all I need even though its damage output is lower than my spear.

I must have done at least two thousand (not an exaggeration) Lost Song boss runs in that format with my Liz and 3 dead-weight Sevens using that damn skill and nothing else. Its enough to drive any player that’s serious about the game over the edge and harness a smoldering hate against the character and the people that facilitated that BS strat.

I won’t let that happen again. We are done with weak online players now. I suffered through enough solo-but-in-a-team Lost Song runs to push me into spending 4 months building this site that’ll hopefully turn anyone who pays attention into a good player in AccelSword.

So for the love of all that is enjoyable co-operative online play, use Unica-chan in moderation and if you’re going to play her, try to play her properly (@_@)

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