Chainsaw Man’s Makima, Himeno, and Power Seem Like Niche Nikke Units

The first crossover event for Goddess of Victory: Nikke is now live, as of February 22, 2023. Called “Chainsaw x Bullet,” it’s notable for bringing three playable Chainsaw Man characters to the Nikke roster. If you’re thinking of starting or logging into the game to get your hands on members of Special Division 4, we’ve got a quick guide to the event, the characters, and some advice as to why and whether to spend precious gacha resources on the Chainsaw Man characters Power, Makima, and Himeno in the first place.

How to Access the Nikke x Chainsaw Man Crossover Event

All you need to do is load up the game. If you’re completely starting fresh, you’ll have to go through the tutorial sequence and some introductory moves before you’re turned loose on the game proper. Once you’re past that, you’ll start seeing a daily login reward prompt for “Chainsaw x Bullet.” You’ll also see a banner underneath your “Campaign” menu button. Clicking it will load up a special campaign map with nodes for the Event Shop, Missions, Story Quests, Login Stamps (this is separate from the login campaign, so make sure to open it up once a day), and the co-op mode “Coordinated Operation.” That last one opens on February 24, 2023, so players can’t access it yet as of this writing.

The Chainsaw Man x Nikke event map.

What to do to Progress in Bullet x Chainsaw

To progress in the event, you’ll need to clear the story stages. Each day you’ll receive five “stamina” points. The points are consumed whenever you run an event stage. You can buy more in the shop for gems, but that’s not advisable unless you missed a few days and need to catch up. Event rewards are usually balanced so that players who use up all their event stamina will earn enough points to redeem most of the goodies from the shop. This is particularly true if you’ve got an Event Bonus Nikke in your roster.

The event bonus units for the Chainsaw x Bullet event are:

• Chainsaw Man units (Makima, Power, and Himeno)
• Counters squad members (Rapi, Anis, and Neon)
• Alice
• Yan
• Dolla
• Pepper

Try to have a few of these units in your squad whenever you play an event stage. However, don’t sacrifice your squad cohesion just for it, lest you be unable to finish the fight. Their bonuses add up to a maximum of 100%, doubling the amount of “Unknown Data” currency you receive.

Finally, there’s Coordinated Operation. This is a matchmade co-op mode similar to the regular “Wildcat Engine” mode. Players can match up in a squad, either with random players or their Union members, to defeat a powerful boss. Each player will control one member of a team. Progress earns Broken Core currency, which can be traded for various goodies. Coordinated Operation opens on February 24, 2023 and all of its stages will be unlocked by March 12, 2023.

How to Obtain Makima and Power in the Nikke x Chainsaw Man Crossover Event

Unfortunately for free players, Makima and Power are part of the featured gacha banner for the event. They each have a separate Limited Recruitment banner active currently. Being the featured characters on their respective banners, they each have a 2% chance, on top of the standard 4% SSR unit drop rate on the banner itself. For example, of any roll on Power’s banner, players have a 4% chance for any given SSR unit to drop, and a 2% chance of that unit being Power.

Ultimately, though, whether you get them will depend on your luck in the gacha. Roll judiciously, and don’t go overboard. Note that featured banners are good places to roll for Pilgrim units if you have gems or tickets to spare. This is because featured banners suppress the chance of every other SSR unit to drop except the Pilgrims and the featured character. Thus, Pilgrims are more likely to end up in a given roll than they usually are on the standard banner.

Should I Roll for Makima and Power?

Feel free to, if you really want to. However, a cursory analysis of Power and Makima as Nikke units shows that they’re a bit on the niche side compared with the game’s current top-rankers.

Makima’s skill set is oriented towards “Tanking,” by causing enemies to attack her. Unfortunately, at the moment tanking characters in Nikke are less effective than designed, as they struggle to survive all the damage they take by taunting all those enemies. Makima has a unique effect, “Indomitable,” which activates once per battle, when she takes lethal damage (with the exception of certain insta-kill boss attacks). Under the effect of Indomitable, Makima cannot be killed for a short time, and her skills gain additional effects, like a healing surge when she attacks. This might be enough to make her sturdy in a situation that would melt a different tank character (like Ludmilla), but the effect activates only once per battle, meaning longer fights will render Makima just as vulnerable as any other tank. The shorter fights in PVP battles seem to be more suited to her skills, though, so she could shine there.

If you must roll for only one of the Chainsaw Man units, I would advise a new player roll for Power over Makima. Power is a capable single-target damage dealer who does additional area damage because her skills can expand the area of effect of her rockets. She builds up a unique effect, “Blood Fiend”, that enhances her skills, and can outright double the damage of her burst. Being only the third Burst III SSR Launcher character in the game so far (after Vesti and Laplace), Power seems like she could stand beside them in the field of boss-killing.

Lastly, do be reminded that Power and Makima are Limited-Rarity units. This means that they won’t be added to the general Recruitment pool after their banners deactivate, so there’ll be no way to get them using the normal Recruitment tickets.

Where do I get Chainsaw Man‘s Himeno in Nikke?

Himeno is a free giveaway unit during the event, and players can recruit her simply by participating. You’ll need three copies of Himeno to max out her level cap at 160 (the top end for SR units). The first copy can be obtained through the event login stamp campaign. Himeno is the Day 3 reward. The second copy can be acquired by completing all the Normal-difficulty quests. This applies to both “phases” of the event story, so this copy can only be obtained after March 1, when Phase 2 of the story unlocks. The third and final copy of Himeno can be obtained by beating the Hard-difficulty story quests.

As for how Himeno does in combat, she’s hampered somewhat by the lower base stats of an SR-rarity unit, compared with popular Burst II units. However, her skills complement Sniper-based teams well. She reduces enemy defense when attacking at full charge, which sniper characters should do almost all the time. She also buffs attack and ammo capacity for sniper teammates. Finally, her Burst Skill, Ghost, massively buffs the charge attack damage and critical rate of the team member with the highest Attack stat. That’s usually a Burst III damage-dealer like Scarlet, Rapi, or Power. In fact, Himeno’s Burst seems custom-designed to benefit Launcher or Sniper-using Burst III units. These include Power, Vesti, Laplace, Harran, Alice, Helm, Eulha, and Maxwell.

The Nikke x Chainsaw Man crossover event runs from February 22, 2023 through March 15, 2023. The game is available on Android, iOS, and PC.