Axel and Orserk Hard Counter

Every slot has a job. The cards below show the exact synergy, its rank range, who it affects, and a mapped route to recruiting that pal.

Primary Ground carry01

Knocklem Core attacker

Steel Guardian Mode raises its Attack and Defense by 50% each at rank 1, for 40 seconds on a 50-second cooldown: that is our data. Community rank tables put rank 5 at 200% each, which we cannot confirm.

Activated skill with no rank curve in our v1.0.3 export, so no scaling row appears below. The trigger, the 40-second duration and the 50-second cooldown are verified; the rank 5 magnitude is not.

Recruitment route

Catch it in the wild. Spawns at levels 55 to 60 across 11 points on the main island.

Rotation carry02

Knocklem Core attacker

The second copy buys a fresh Steel Guardian window the moment the first ends, a second 135-Defense health pool, and a clean answer to a Knocklem caught on the wrong side of the fence or under Crosswind.

Same skill, same missing rank curve, so this slot surfaces no scaling row either. Its value is rotation timing, not a different number.

Recruitment route

Catch it in the wild. Spawns at levels 55 to 60 across 11 points on the main island.

Stack engine03

Orserk 1 effect

Every bullet you land adds 1% to 5% Attack and Defense to the Pal fighting beside you for 5 seconds, stacking to 30. A held full bar at rank 5 is 150% of each on the active Knocklem.

• Attack and Defense per Bullet Hit1% → 5%Active palUnique effect · does not stack

Recruitment route

Catch it in the wild. Only spawns on the World Tree region.

Weakness amplifier04

Turtacle Terra 1 effect

Adds 25% to 40% to Player and Pal Ground attacks, but only against a target weak to Ground. Orserk and both opening adds are Electric, so the condition holds for every enemy in the arena.

• Ground Damage vs Weakness25% → 40%You and palUnique effect · does not stack

Recruitment route

Catch it in the wild. Spawns at levels 40 to 48 across 102 points on the main island.

Grass mitigation and heal05

Petallia Ignis 2 effects

The slot that makes this party Axel-specific: 15% to 30% less Grass damage for you and every party Pal, outright Ivy-Covered immunity, and an activated heal worth 80% to 90% of your Health on a 150-second cooldown.

• Grass Damage Reduction15% → 30%You and palUnique effect · does not stack
• Ivy-Covered ImmunityActive → ActiveYou and palUnique effect · does not stack

Recruitment route

Catch it in the wild. Only spawns on the World Tree region.

Compare every surfaced partner effect at base rank and full condensation. Effects marked Unique can still scale by rank, but a second carrier of the same species adds nothing. Two different species carrying the same effect do add together.

Pal / role	Partner effect	Affects	Rank 1	Rank 5
OrserkStack engine	Attack and Defense per Bullet HitUnique	Active pal	1%	5%
Turtacle TerraWeakness amplifier	Ground Damage vs WeaknessUnique	You and pal	25%	40%
Petallia IgnisGrass mitigation and heal	Grass Damage ReductionUnique	You and pal	15%	30%
Petallia IgnisGrass mitigation and heal	Ivy-Covered ImmunityUnique	You and pal	Active	Active

Values verified against current partner-skill rank curves

The Knocklems carry the same four passives each, tuned for uptime rather than peak damage, because the check is passed by a tank that never stops attacking. The support trio carries player-facing implants instead: in a Pal-led fight the defensive ones outrank the attack ones. One swap has no card below: Demon God is the aggressive replacement for Diamond Body, and our catalog ships it without effect text, so the wiki figure of 30% Attack and 5% Defense comes from community rank tables and we cannot confirm it. What it costs is verifiable, the flinch and knockback immunity that lets Knocklem finish a Rocky Impact under Electric fire, so take it only once fence deaths and Crosswind recalls are no longer what ends your runs. It rolls in the standard pool either way.

The weapons here are jobs, not damage-per-second picks: one feeds the buff, one deletes the adds, one moves you across a fence split. Materials shown on item rows are the first craftable tier.

An ordering, not a budget, and it runs opposite to the trainer-damage builds: the Knocklems carry the check, so your points go into staying alive to manage them.

1. 1HealthFirst. Petallia's heal restores a percentage, so a bigger bar makes the one reset worth more, and a dead player ends a run that two healthy Knocklems would have finished.
2. 2AttackSecond. The drones and your rifle are real contributors to a 514,800 HP check. This is Pal-led, not player-idle.
3. 3StaminaThird. You circle the outer ring for five minutes, and every fence reposition and Charge Cannon escape draws on it.
4. 4Weight and work speedLast. Neither does anything inside the tower.

The loop below repeats from the moment the adds die until the timer ends. The phase plan above is the schedule; this is the engine turning inside it.

1. 1Activate Steel Guardian Mode on every deploy

   The buff is activated, not passive: a Knocklem on the field without it is fighting at base stats. Trigger it the moment either Knocklem lands, every rotation, no exceptions.

2. 2Keep hits connecting to hold 30 stacks

   Orserk's buff decays five seconds after your last landed hit, so a reload plus a long dodge can erase the whole bar. The drones exist to cover exactly those gaps: stay in their range and the stacks hold themselves.

3. 3Let Knocklem cycle its three Ground moves

   Rocky Impact, Sand Twister and Rock Lance: 600, 500 and 400 power, all into the boss's weakness, all raised by Turtacle Terra's bonus, all faster under Serenity. Your job is not to micromanage the casts; it is to keep the buffs feeding them.

4. 4Rotate on triggers, not on feel

   Recall when the buff ends, when Knocklem's health halves, when the fence splits you from it, or when Crosswind is casting at it. Deploy the other Knocklem and reactivate. Four triggers, checked every few seconds, are the whole skill ceiling of this build.

5. 5Contribute weapon damage from the outer ring

   Between fence cycles, put your rifle into the boss. Two positioning rules: never stand between the central pillars, and never stand on Reflect Leaf's rebound line.

6. 6Spend Petallia as a reset, not a top-up

   Recall the tank, deploy Petallia Ignis, take the 90% heal, redeploy the healthier Knocklem. The swap costs a few seconds of stack decay, so take it when your health is critical, not when it is dented. The heal is player-only: it does nothing for an injured Knocklem.

The clock decides this fight, so read the windows as budgets. The adds get forty-five seconds, the boss gets the rest, and Steel Guardian Mode's 40-second duration means you will rotate Knocklems several times before the timer runs out. The checkpoints are what tell you whether a failed run was pace or execution.

1. 1
   0:00 to 0:15Open on your side of the arena

   Start on the outer ring, away from the central pillars the fence will connect. Put a rocket into the adds, deploy Knocklem 1, activate Steel Guardian Mode, and get the Drone Launcher out so Orserk's stacks start climbing before the first exchange.

2. 2
   0:15 to 0:45Kill both adds, one at a time

   Lock Knocklem onto Mossanda Lux with Attack That Enemy (aim at the target and press the mouse wheel or right stick), then Relaxaurus Lux. Do not split damage onto the boss: the adds' projectile pressure and target-stealing cost more clock than they are worth.

   Both adds are dead by 0:45 with the first Steel Guardian window still running.

3. 3
   0:45 to 1:30Redirect and settle the loop

   Point Knocklem at the boss and let it cycle Rocky Impact, Sand Twister and Rock Lance. Your job shrinks to three things: keep hits connecting for the stacks, add safe weapon damage, and watch the pillars for the fence. Stay on the outer ring.

4. 4
   1:30 to 2:30First rotations

   Steel Guardian's 40-second window has ended at least once by now. Recall on the buff ending, on half health, on a fence split or on an incoming Crosswind, then deploy Knocklem 2 with a fresh activation. An unbuffed Knocklem standing in Grass fire is the slow way to lose.

   Boss at or below 60% by 2:30. Above 70% means stacks are lapsing or the drones are out of range.

5. 5
   2:30 to 3:30Spend the reset if you need it

   The loop continues. If your own health is critical, recall the tank, deploy Petallia Ignis, take the 90% heal, and redeploy whichever Knocklem is healthier. The 150-second cooldown means you get this once, twice only if the first use came very early.

6. 6
   3:30 to 4:30Damage discipline

   Rotate on triggers, not on feel, and hold your side through every fence cycle. If a Knocklem goes down, spend a Revival Potion only when the other is also below half; otherwise the standing tank with full stacks outdamages the revive detour.

7. 7
   4:30 to 5:00Spend everything

   Both Steel Guardian activations, every rocket, the rest of your ammunition. Do not recall for safety in the final thirty seconds unless the tank is about to die with the boss still above a sliver. A timer wipe and a death wipe pay the same.

   Boss under 15% entering this window. If not, the run was lost at an earlier checkpoint, not here.

Seven catalog moves and one arena hazard, grouped by what each demands from you rather than by element. Power and cooldown render from the catalog on each row, so the text below spends its words on the response: the Electric bursts force a dodge, the delayed detonations force a second dodge, and the Grass kit forces a recall decision.

Three ideas come up every time this fight is discussed. Each is genuinely defensible, and each trades away the thing this party is built to guarantee.

The Ice speed-clear

The case for it
Ice hits Orserk's weakness as hard as Ground does, and Ice attackers dodge the Grass counter-kit entirely because they do not share Knocklem's Grass weakness. Player-damage Ice builds post faster clears.

Faster when it works. Every Ice route moves the load onto your aim, your weapon tier and your dodging, and none of the safe Ice options reproduces an activated Attack and Defense buff running on a two-Pal rotation. This page's premise is the consistent clear, and that is the double Knocklem.

God of Destruction on the Knocklems

The case for it
Attack +40% and Defense +20% is the largest stat passive available, and this fight is a damage check on a timer.

It also halves max Health, and the entire reason this party works is a tank that survives the Grass kit long enough to keep its buff windows running. A half-health Knocklem turns Crosswind from a recall trigger into a death. The check is passed with uptime, not with a glass tank.

One Knocklem plus a fourth multiplier

The case for it
The second Knocklem adds no new buff, so the slot could hold Silvegis's shield mitigation or another amplifier instead.

Steel Guardian Mode runs 40 seconds against a 50-second cooldown, so a lone Knocklem fights ten seconds of every fifty unbuffed with no relief waiting. The second copy buys continuous uptime, a spare health pool and a free answer to every recall trigger, which is worth more across five minutes than any third multiplier.

Two breeding lines, three condensation projects and three crafts. None of it needs a lucky drop, but the Drone Launcher sits at technology 77, so this is an endgame shopping list.

1. Breed the Knocklem pairYou need two, built identically: same four passives, same three moves. Both slots want full condensation and real levels, so start the breeding line early rather than hunting a second wild catch late.Knocklem field guide
2. Condense the support trio to rank 5The support numbers on this page are rank 5 values: 5% per hit from Orserk, 40% from Turtacle Terra, 30% Grass reduction and a 90% heal from Petallia Ignis. At rank 1 the same three slots pay 1%, 25%, and 15% with an 80% heal.
3. Condense the Knocklems tooOur data holds no rank curve for Steel Guardian Mode, so we cannot show what condensation adds to it. It is still the recommendation: the support values above assume rank 5, and if the community tables are right about the buff, this is the largest upgrade in the build.
4. Reach technology 77 for the Drone LauncherIt wants 70 Paloxite Ingots, 40 World Tree Holy Water, 8 AI Cores and 5 Ancient Civilization Cores. Expensive, but it is the machine that holds Orserk's stacks, so it outranks every other craft on this list.Drone Launcher materials
5. Craft the Rocket Launcher at technology 6575 Coralum Ingots, 30 Polymer, 25 Carbon Fiber and 10 Computers. One round into the opening adds is the cheapest forty-five seconds this fight will ever sell you.
6. Stock Revival Potions at technology 6130 Cavern Mushrooms, 50 Red Berries, 20 High Quality Pal Oil, 10 Cotton Candy and 20 Sulfur per potion. Two is enough: this is insurance for a downed Knocklem, not part of the rotation.

Keep the build's identity while adapting the lineup to the pals you own or the encounter ahead.

AegidronSwap for Petallia Ignis when fence stuns end more runs than Grass damage. Rank 5 grants Stun immunity and cuts explosive damage by 60% to 80%, which blunts Charge Cannon too. The price is Ivy immunity, the Grass reduction, the heal, and a far heavier acquisition project.SilvegisThe Petallia swap for when you are dying and the Knocklems are not. It cuts shield damage by 65% to 80% and shield-regeneration delay by 30% to 60%, but it protects your shield only: the Knocklems still eat the full Grass kit.