As you can see in the featured image, on rare occasions amiibo will scan in as level 0. This is a level value that’s not even accessible with byte editing or Switch modding: as far as we know there’s no way to get an amiibo to consistently scan as level 0. So… what’s the deal?
There’s been very few instances of this happening, but it has been demonstrated to happen every once in a while. Two very important facts should be noted about these instances:
- They were always in online arenas
- They always scanned in as Mario, and appeared to have the same behavior as the CPU AI.
It seems likely, then, that level 0 amiibo would be an error handler in the event that an amiibo is not properly transmitted in an arena, but the game still continues anyway. This theory makes sense for a couple of reasons:
- Nintendo usually uses Mario as a base character or default option for errors. In many Nintendo games, Mario is the first character added in, and he often occupies the first character ID. Having it default to Mario for an error would continue that practice.
- Level 0 amiibo are impossible to obtain, so developers would, at a moment’s notice, know that something had gone wrong.
- Having the AI default to the base CPU AI is probably a sign that the behavior data for the amiibo was also not transmitted properly. You wouldn’t expect that the amiibo would get better if it was properly scanned, would you?
I think it’s pretty clear what level 0 amiibo are. If you see any, count yourself lucky! Only a few people have ever seen one before – I consider them to be rarer than Shiny Pokemon.
Amiibo Doctor 