by Doc – Owner, Founder, I Don’t Know, I Didn’t Think We’d Get This Far
Fighter values are one of the things that took the longest for the amiibo community to understand, because for the longest time most of the amiibo didn’t seem to use them, and then when Fighter’s Pass 1 and 2 came out they started playing a role. But Fighter Values are very character-specific and confusing, so this post will teach you how they operate as of the community’s knowledge circa 2026. Bear in mind some of this information has yet to be confirmed by multiple other people in testing.
Why Everything Says 49.6063 in Fighter Values World
The slots are a single byte with 127 steps, so every legal value is a multiple of 100/127 and the default is step 63, dead center, which converts to 49.6063. That’s why you never see a clean 50. There isn’t one to land on.
It also means fighter values move in chunks of about 0.8. If you’ve watched one drift and thought the step looked suspiciously consistent, you found the byte. If it’s not 49.6063 in the amiibo editor, then it means your fight value has moved.
Every amiibo has five empty spaces for fighter values, but they all treat it differently. Most amiibo don’t bother with them. For example, Fighter_1 is Crackshoot on Terry, jab input on Ryu, grounded bullet arts on Bayonetta, and revenge forward smash on Incineroar. Because some amiibo can change their fighter values easier than others, you’ll often see people brain transplant one amiibo to another to get the desired fighter value (Shulk seems to be most popular).
This is why proxy training works. Set a value with one character, transplant, and the number carries over while the meaning changes to whatever the receiving character does with that slot. Same way that brain transplants work for every other value.
Ryu and Ken
Both have tap-versus-hold inputs on their normals, and the fighter value decides which version the amiibo throws.
- Fighter_1 — jab
- Fighter_2 — forward tilt
- Fighter_3 — up tilt
- Fighter_4 — down tilt
- Fighter_5 — red vs. blue Hadoken (Ryu only)
Maxed means near-exclusively the light, tapped input. Zeroed means the heavy one. A Ken at Fighter_2 100 only throws light forward tilt; at 0, only heavy. On Ryu, Fighter_5 maxed is red Hadoken and zeroed is blue. On Ken, Fighter_5 does nothing. Would it have killed them for just one good amiibo AI update?
Because four of these map to moves you can just press, Ryu and Ken are the easiest proxy trainers for setting slots 1 through 4. That doesn’t change that Ken is stupid as hell though.
Terry
Fighter_1 governs Crackshoot inversely. The lower the value, the more Crackshoot you get. And it doesn’t care whether Terry uses or lands the move, which is part of why we thought this was an AI problem for years. The value actually changes depending on how long your matches are. That’s not a joke.
Matches of five minutes or under drop it one step, about 0.8. Ten-minute matches drop it two, about 1.6. In the modern meta the norm is 37.7 to 41.7, which from default is ten to twelve short matches, then polish with a couple of one-stocks.
Who the hell designed that, anyway?
Fighter_1 and the Side Special slider are separate, not a scaler on each other. Two Terrys with identical Fighter_1 can Crackshoot at different rates because the Burn Knuckle/Crackshoot balance lives elsewhere.
Incineroar’s Revenge Menu
All five slots decide what he fishes for once Revenge is up.
- Fighter_1 — forward smash
- Fighter_2 — up smash
- Fighter_3 — down smash
- Fighter_4 — side B
- Fighter_5 — everything else
The bottom three are solid; Fighter_1 and Fighter_2 may be swapped. If forward smash isn’t responding, try the other slot before deciding the mapping’s junk.
Obviously this isn’t all that relevant since you only need Side B in your life if you’re training Incineroar.
Bayonetta’s Bullet Arts
- Fighter_1 — grounded bullet arts
- Fighter_2 — aerial bullet arts
With a real caveat: it’s unclear these function at all, further testing is required.
Aegis
Fighter_3 works. Zero leans Pyra, 100 leans Mythra, any move by either blade nudges it toward that blade, and down B inverts how it’s read in the moment.
If it’s extreme enough you can get them to baaaaasically stop changing, except when trying to recover to the ledge it’ll still go from Pyra to Mythra. An Aegis near default flips blades mid-neutral and mid-recovery constantly, and every swap is a free window. Push Fighter_3 to around 10-15 and she plays Pyra and stays Pyra, switching only on hardcoded triggers.
Fighter_1 and Fighter_2 don’t reconcile. Fighter_2 is reported as side special frequency, as aerial switching, and as never moving at all by various trainers so we’re not really sure what’s up with that. A full three-slot mapping circulated once and got shot down as wrong on all three. Chalk it up as an unknown.
Kazuya
Crouch dash moves hang off a fighter value, and which one is disputed, so we’ll have to research. It’s reported as both Fighter_2 and Fighter_3, though the Shulk recipe everyone uses targets Fighter_3 and that seems to work pretty well.
Fighter_2 is separately tangled up with Demon God Fist and wrecks his anti-airs when high; minimize it along with every grounded normal except Up Smash. Whether you want the crouch dash slot high or low depends on whether your Kazuya lands the stuff or whiffs Demon God Fist into a punish forever. Both camps have results, which probably says more about Kazuya AI variance than about the value. Could be anything.
Shulk Is A Crowbar
Worth knowing even if you never train a Shulk. His five slots map to the Monado Arts and sum to 100, so raising one lowers the others, which nobody else does. Since his Shield art shares a slot with Kazuya’s crouch dash, you can brute-force the number with Shulk, transplant, then train as your actual character. If Fighter Values were used in more amiibo AI this would actually be a really useful start for brain transplanting because you can get precise with the values you want, but ixnay on that.
The standard recipe: rage blaster on, spam Shield Art, up smash and side B, grab, parry and shield.
Odds And Ends
- Rosalina — Fighter_1 is tied to Luma recall and it’s broken. Wired to the right behavior, doesn’t fire. Don’t spend a session on it.
- Hero — Fighter_2 is Spellbook usage. Whether you max it for menu kills or keep it low is actively argued.
- Z-air characters — Fighter_1 controls Z-air usage for anyone who has one. Closest thing to a cross-character function we’ve got.
- Pokémon Trainer — none. On the one character where three slots would’ve obviously mapped to Squirtle, Ivysaur and Charizard.
- Snake — none.
Two Ways This Bites You
Fighter values lock when you brain transplant.
Transplants can wipe them. There are reports of values snapping back to 49.6063 after a transplant while everything else survived, possibly tied to learning mode being active during the write but I don’t know personally. Some characters I guess are more tolerant?
Unresolved
There’s a live theory that Fighter_3 makes most or all amiibo play more reactionary in general even on amiibo that aren’t known to have Fighter values active. Some trainers run it maxed on those characters and report more patient play, with Belmonts named as a success case. Attached to it: on Belmonts, Fighter_4 or Fighter_5 set high produces heavy forward smash usage, both at zero produces none, and either one alone reproduces it on slots that character isn’t supposed to use. That’s still a theory though.
Evidence level is with-and-without comparisons by individual trainers, not controlled batches, and the people running it say as much. But if it holds, “dead for most of the roster” is wrong and there’s general-purpose behavior on these bytes nobody has characterized.
Also open: whether Incineroar’s forward smash and up smash slots are the right way round, and whether Kazuya’s crouch dash is on 2 or 3. And there’s a theory of Fighter_1 controlling Foresight. The dodging behind that tracked better with Feint Master raising evasion generally though, so I don’t place a lot of stock in that at the moment.
Amiibo Doctor 