During the Streets of Madness main story quest, you will face two bosses, the first of which is the Behemoth. After defeating it, you will have to fight through some more enemies, until you eventually get transported to another dimension, leading to a lengthy segment. You will eventually have your first fight with Ultima here. This page will provide tips and strategies for the Ultima boss fight in the Streets of Madness main quest in Final Fantasy XVI.

How to Beat Ultima in Streets of Madness in Final Fantasy 16¶

Ultima can be a tough battle, as he has two moves (Neutron Flare and Deliverance) that can be difficult to avoid, with one proving to be extremely dangerous. The other attack is just tricky to dodge, but still deals a decent amount of damage. As the battle goes on, the one attack becomes even harder to dodge, due to it being mixed with a new one. Outside of those two moves, though, Ultima isn’t actually all too bad.

All Ultima Attacks in Streets of Madness in Final Fantasy XVI¶

Ultima will have three main phases to the battle, with each one adding a few new moves to the mix. He will still primarily use all of his moves throughout the entire battle, so you will need to learn how to counter/evade them all.

Neutron Flare¶

Ultima will open the battle with this attack, which is probably the one that is most annoying, and possibly one of the worst ones in the battle. He will start by creating some lasers in a fan-like pattern in front of him. He will then flip them up and behind his body, then swing them around in a 360-degree motion. It might be possible to time a dodge to get through them, but there’s two better, and safer, options.

The first is to jump and air dodge, whenever you see the lasers start moving towards you. This would likely take a few tries to get the timing right, but it gives you the freedom to equip whichever Eikons you want. The other way to avoid damage from this move is to simply equip Garuda as an Eikon. With her, you can use Deadly Embrace on the boss to launch yourself into the air, which is the easiest option.

Retreating Slash¶

If you’re up close, Ultima can jump backwards while executing a horizontal slash with his sword. This can be tough to dodge, but there is a little bit of lag before the move comes out, so you will know it’s coming. Plus, the sword will be electrified, which is about the only attack he will use with his sword like that.

Sword Slash¶

Ultima will dash forward, after conjuring a sword, and attempt to slash you with it. You can usually tell this is happening, as you can see him creating a sword from a distance. This should give you more than enough time to either block it or dodge the attack.

Double Slash¶

Ultima will charge up his sword with dark energy, then try and slash you with it. He will then follow this up with another slash. If you see his sword imbued with dark energy, then you know he’s going to perform this attack. This is slightly different from the one where he dashes in from further away, as he seems to only use this one when he’s up close.

Graviga¶

Ultima will conjure a purple orb of dark energy, which is small and will slowly chase after you. After some time has passed, the energy orb will expand into a larger one. It’s very hard to get hit by this attack, since it moves so slowly.

Ice Crystals¶

While not an attack on its own, as it will be accompanied by other attacks, Ultima will shoot some ice crystals at you, which hit the ground and form slightly bigger ice crystals. You will see this with Mark of the Storm, as well as with Graviga.

Mark of the Storm¶

Kind of similar to the Maelstrom attack from the Behemoth, Ultima will mark you with some electrical energy, which will stay on your character for a few seconds. After a few seconds, it will stop following you, then lightning will strike at that spot. As long as you keep moving, you will be fine.

Event Horizon¶

Occurs after the first stagger. Ultima will summon some gravity energy in front of him, which will constantly pull you towards it. You will need to continually dodge away from this, but Ultima will also use other attacks while this is happening. Event Horizon isn’t anything really to worry about, but it’s the other attacks he’ll do that will be a pain.

Ricochet¶

Ultima will fire an electric energy ball that will go in one direction, then bounce off a “wall.” It will continue doing this until it disappears. Since you never really know when it will change directions, it can be annoying, especially as he will continue using other moves.

Deliverance¶

Occurs after the second stagger and is the most dangerous attack in this battle. Ultima will don two large fire blades, one in each hand, then swoop down to attack you with them. After he does this, he’ll do four horizontal slashes, then a vertical one to try and knock you into the air. The last strike will be him crashing down into the ground, causing a big explosion. Naturally, you’d want to avoid all of the attacks, as this move deals major damage to you.

It’s difficult to do this, though, due to it being a total of seven different attacks in one maneuver. You can try to time a dodge to go through the initial hit, then time them for each subsequent strike. You could also use Titanic Block on each of the moves, since there is a brief window in between each one.

Darkness Beam¶

He’ll add this move to his arsenal after he first uses Deliverance. Ultima will charge up briefly, then fire a huge beam of darkness straight ahead. While the move is executed quickly, as long as you keep moving, you shouldn’t be hit by this at all.

Eternal Darkness¶

Similar to the Darkness Beam above, Ultima will start by firing a single beam straight ahead. However, more beams will appear on the sides of the initial one, and it will continue like this until a total of four sets of beams are used (after the first). He will likely start in the central section, along the edge, so you could just keep moving to the edge of the arena to try and avoid this. However, should that not be the case, then you will want to time a dodge after the initial two, back towards the middle. He will always end this attack by teleporting to your location and trying to hit you with an up-close fireball move.

Double Flame Slash¶

The background will turn red and Ultima will dash in to slash you with a flaming sword. The first slash will leave a fiery trail behind it, and he’ll attempt to do another dash-in slash attack. Apart from the flame trail, this isn’t really any different than the other slash moves he has in his arsenal.

Frostbolt¶

Ultima will teleport away from you, then start floating in the sky. As he does this, a bunch of markers will appear on the ground, designating where ice will drop, and lightning will strike. Just avoid the markers and you should be fine with this attack.

Strategy for the Ultima Boss in Streets of Madness in FFXVI¶

The opening move for Ultima in this boss battle is Neutron Flare, the most annoying move in his arsenal. The reason for this is that the timing to dodge it is tricky, plus it can do some decent damage. While you could try to time for a Precision Dodge, it’s much easier to either jump and evade it, or just use Deadly Embrace to launch yourself into the air. The initial lasers can be just stood between, but after they go behind Ultima and shoot back forward, that’s the whole bit that’s hard to avoid.

Outside of that attack, the rest of the first phase is fairly normal and isn’t really anything special. Once you do the first stagger on Ultima, he will debut Event Horizon, a move that is pretty harmless by itself, as it just sucks you towards it, meaning you can keep evading away from it to avoid it. However, the problem with Event Horizon is that it’s usually paired with something like Neutron Flare, so the gravitational pull will make it more difficult sometimes. The only other new attack in this second phase is Ricochet, where an electrical energy ball will bounce around the place.

When you trigger the third phase, either after lowering his health enough or the second stagger, he will open up with Deliverance. This attack hurts a lot and there’s way too many strikes to dodge here. You’re looking at a total of seven attacks for this move, with four being horizontal strikes after the initial lunge. If you get hit by all of the strikes, then you may want to keep a finger on a potion during the middle of it. You could try to dodge and/or block them all, but it’s not going to be easy the first time you see this; it might be a little simpler on subsequent uses, though.

Eternal Darkness will be a new move you see in the third phase, with Ultima just firing a bunch of large beams in quick succession. If you have the room, you can just move away from Ultima and to the side, but you might need to dodge towards the center after the first two sets of beams are fired. Lastly, Frostbolt is another new attack, where Ultima just drops a bunch of ice and lightning strikes, but all of them are marked on the ground, so you should be fine with avoiding all of that.

Recommended Abilities for Ultima in Streets of Madness in FF16¶

The following skills are what we used for the boss battle against Ultima. It is not the definitive build here, as the skills you use might differ. Remember that mastered abilities can be put on any Eikon, which certainly gives more flexibility for builds.

The loadout for this battle looks similar to the one against the Behemoth, due to it being a pretty strong set of abilities. Raging Fists is always a great counter to anything that uses a lot of melee skills, and Ultima is no exception there (same holds true for Rook’s Gambit). Of course, using Diamond Dust (if mastered) in place of Gambit is better, as it does more damage and just about as much, if not more, stagger. Lightning Rod plus Gigaflare is always a lethal combination, although those might best be reserved for when you do stagger him. The same holds true with Dancing Steel and Zantetsuken, once you have your meter full.

Upon defeating Ultima, there will be a number of cutscenes that follow it, then you will go back to the world map. You will be unable to go anywhere else, besides The Hideaway, so choose that to end Streets of Madness and begin Back to Their Origin.