Using templates from pre-existing all-terrain vehicles, this experimental heavy mech has been modified to include weaponry.

The Ni-Type Mech (commonly shortened to “Ni-Mech” and referred to as the “spider tank” or just as “the mech”) is one of the very first bosses that players will encounter, being the boss of the first main story chapter. It provides a unique minigame where players will want to break the legs of the mech in order to gain access to its vulnerable weak spot.

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Behaviour and Attacks

Ni-Mech innately has 50% damage reduction when not shooting parts or its weak spots. It has seven parts that can be targeted and attacked:

• Main body
• Cannon, to the left of the main body
• Missile launcher, to the right of the main body
• Legs (four of them)

Breaking the armour covering the “knees” of a leg will expose a weak spot that can then be destroyed.

When this happens, Ni-Mech will enter a downed state, exposing a weak spot on the back of the main body that can then be attacked. This will also instantly deal 12.5% of Ni-Mech’s health.

Machine Gun

Ni-Mech fires the two machine guns on its main body. At higher difficulty levels, the damage becomes Electric (not that it makes any difference currently) and deals more damage.

Casual players: The tracking of the machine guns is relatively slow, letting you easily dodge it by just sidestepping.
Speedrunners: You can probably just tank this, though it might be worth resetting the run if you get this attack anyways, as Ni-Mech tends to move around while using this attack, making its legs much more difficult to shoot.

Charged Bombardment

Ni-Mech charges its cannon then fires it. This shot deals large amounts of damage and knocks you back on hit. At higher difficulty levels, Ni-Mech will fire three shots instead of one and shots that hit will leave behind a zone that deals damage over time if you’re standing in it. Destroying the cannon will disable this attack.

Casual players: This is by far the scariest attack that Ni-Mech can do, so don’t be afraid to take some time from attacking its legs to dodge. Keeping your distance will also make it easier to sidestep.
Speedrunners: Reset if you get this. Even ignoring the fact that you can’t tank this without incurring a massive time loss from being knocked back, the hitbox of the cannon will often block the leg you’re trying to attack. Overall, it's just not worth dealing with unless you finish prepping all the legs you need (more on this later) before it can fire.

Missile Strike

Ni-Mech launches a barrage of missiles that each create an area-of-effect that deals damage over time. At higher difficulty levels, the area that each missile creates becomes larger. Destroying the missile launcher will disable this attack.

Casual players: The pattern in which the missiles land is in multiple lines that extend outward from your position, so you can look down to find multiple wedges where the missiles will not hurt you and avoid them that way.
Speedrunners: This is the ideal opener attack and the only move you ever want Ni-Mech to do, really. The damage really isn’t relevant, and Ni-Mech stays still the entire time which makes shooting its legs easy.

Jump

Ni-Mech jumps, dealing damage and knocking you back if you’re too close to its landing point. At higher difficulty levels, it will also launch a wave of bullets once it lands. For both casual players and speedrunners alike, you will want Ni-Mech to jump over and past you, as this will place it closer to you once it lands and allow you to stay in effective combat distance.

Leg Stomp

Ni-Mech charges up a leg stomp that deals damage and knocks you back on hit. It doesn’t do this move unless you stay very close to it for a while, so give it some personal space if you don’t want to deal with this. However, speedrunners that are interested in keeping Ni-Mech locked in this animation will be disappointed to know that the time needed to get it to perform this attack is longer than the time it would probably take to attack the legs normally.

Strategy

If you plan on using Cherno - Enigma as your main DPS, click here to skip this entire section.

Because Ni-Mech normally has a large amount of damage reduction, the ideal method of dealing with it is to break its legs and get it to expose its weak spot. This also has the added benefit of Ni-Mech being unable to perform any attacks, allowing you to focus on dealing damage. Since there’s no cooldown on how quickly it can be downed again after a previous downed state ends, it is ideal to first break all the leg armour coverings ahead of time so that the already-exposed leg weak spots can be destroyed as soon as Ni-Mech recovers from a downed state, effectively stunlocking it for the remainder of the fight. This practice is known as “prepping” legs. Because Ni-Mech will be downed for the majority of the fight, it's not worth breaking the cannon or missile launcher unless you're struggling to prep legs quickly.

Or if you have enough damage, you can just use Mauxir - Shadow Ka and completely bypass the damage reduction to kill it in one support skill cast. That also works.

Because of how the optimal gameplay strategy plays out, Ni-Mech times generally end up grouped together based on how many legs are needed for a kill, with some variation depending on how long it takes a player to finish prepping the required number of legs. Runs are often categorised as being an x-leg run, with x representing the number of legs needed (0.5 is added if an additional leg break is needed, but breaking the leg deals enough damage to kill). Thus, the two main ways of improving times is to prep legs faster as well as killing in fewer legs.

Prepping legs is largely just a matter of bringing a properly levelled operative, not being knocked back, and quickly firing accurate shots. See here in the Neural Simulation overview for a primer on parts breaking strategies. As mentioned earlier, the optimal attack for Ni-Mech to perform is Missile Barrage due to its relatively low threat and the fact that it keeps Ni-Mech in one spot. It is especially recommended to reset runs until you get Missile Barrage as Ni-Mech’s first attack because of this.

Being able to kill with fewer leg breaks can be much more difficult, but also comes with much greater time saves. A 2.5 leg run will almost always be slower than a 2 leg run, which will in turn almost always be slower than a 1 leg run. Methods of improving your damage will vary depending on your setup and account state, so it is unfortunately not possible to provide personalised recommendations here. If you’re unsure of your damage output, it’s advisable to do a test run where you prep all four legs to determine how many leg breaks will be needed for you to kill it. Then, you can do a proper run where you only break as many legs as needed.

Team Building

Because the DPS window for Ni-Mech is one where you get to deal damage with no retaliation, any operative with strong damage will do here. Chenxing - Ethereal Cloud gets a special mention here due to being able to mark all seven of Ni-Mech’s parts for a large amount of extra damage.

You will also almost definitely want some form of parts breaker unless you have a very high-level setup that can kill in one cast of Mauxir - Shadow Ka’s support skill. Some DPS operatives can also additionally handle this role, like Katya after Manifest 2 and Yao - Winter Solstice with parts break boosting weapon attachments and follow-up shots from Tess - The Magician’s ultimate ability. But for most people, a team composition will consist of a main DPS, a parts breaker (if the main DPS does not double as this), and a support. It’s worth noting that even if you can’t 100-0 Ni-Mech in a single Shadow Ka support skill, she might still be useful to skip having to prep an additional leg.

Control effect supports don’t have as much value here as they would on other bosses due to Ni-Mech being downed for most of the fight if all goes well. While being vulnerable to Paralyze, it is NOT recommended here due to it preventing you from breaking parts while the paralyse is in effect. It’s unclear whether this is intended or a bug. Slow effects can make prepping legs easier, but loses value once that phase of the fight ends due to Ni-Mech being immune while downed, and applying it in between leg breaks will slow down the speed at which the main body rotates to expose its weak spot again, negating much of its usefulness.

Cheat Codes with Cherno

So uh, Cherno - Enigma doesn't actually have to bother with the leg-breaking gimmick since all of her skill damage ignores damage reductions. You should still try and break legs of course, as you have to shoot it somewhere to stack Enmity and breaking the legs is still a good chunk of damage, but you're not dependant on the Mech's down phases like other operatives are. This means you can skip out on bringing a parts breaker which lets you double up on damage supports, but also requires you to be more careful (or reset more) to ensure you don't get shwacked by Ni-Mech's attacks. A small price to pay for faster times, no doubt.

Bugs

The defence penetration that Marian - Swift’s Deiwos passive provides does not take effect on Ni-Mech’s leg weak spots. This seems to only happen in Neural Sim, and Ni-Mechs in other game modes do not suffer from this bug.