Nikke Novel Review and Guide.

Rarity	Class	Weapon	Burst	Cooldown	Element	Manufacturer
				20 seconds

Novel build & priority

Skill priority

Skill 1	Skill 2	Burst
1-4	1-4	10

Best harmony cube

Resilience, Bastion, or Quantum. Whatever you have with an empty slot is good. Quantum is a good cube for extra burst generation on support units like Novel.

Stat priority

Other than max ammo capacity, the rest of the lines can be whatever you get since she doesn’t deal that much damage. Hit rate, ATK and elemental damage are always welcomed stats.

Skills

Skill 1: Something’s Fishy Here
Active – Cooldown 10.00S
■ Affects 3 enemy unit(s) with the highest DEF.
Deals 52.36% of ATK as damage.
DEF ▼ 7.05% for 5 sec.

Skill 2: Detective’s Intuition
Passive
■ Activates after landing 100 normal attack(s). Affects self.
Cornucopia: DEF ▲ 13.5%, stacks up to 5 time(s) and lasts for 15 sec.

Burst Skill: Case Closed
Active – Cooldown 20.00S
■ Affects 1 enemy unit(s) with the highest ATK.
Deals 330.61% of ATK as damage.
■ Activates when Cornucopia is fully stacked. Affects 1 enemy unit(s).
Damage Taken ▲ 67.5% for 5 sec.

Character traits

Pros

– Increase damage taken debuff on enemies is the strongest damage buff you can get.
– Small defense shred on enemies that is fairly consistent.

Cons

– Maximum investment into Burst is mandatory, especially for competitive content.
– Outside of her Burst, her actual buffs are non-existent or extremely weak overall.
– Meant to be used on boss encounters to maximize damage in a single burst.

Review

Novel is designed essentially as a boss specific debuffer, she was given one of the strongest debuffs that can be applied to a boss, which is a forced more damage multiplier given to your team.

The biggest issue is that the Burst only applies the massive debuff to bosses when her stacks are maxed, which takes 500 bullets. For an SMG with high fire rate, it doesn’t take too long, and you can offset it fairly easily with things like Reload speed buffs from cubes and other support units, or reducing ammo clip size.

When the buff is applied to a boss during a fight, it’s extremely noticeable how much more damage it will take.

Novel is an almost essential unit if you plan on being competitive in any game mode. She has held her spot fine due to the nature of potential damage she can enable your team to do.

Her overall weakness is the rest of her kit, she doesn’t really bring anything else to the team outside of that debuff, so her uses in campaign (outside of boss encounters) and most other content is extremely limited.

Should you reroll for Novel?

We do not recommend rerolling for Novel.

Not really. If you are going to reroll for a Burst II unit, you should aim for Centi or someone that can increase damage in your team like Dolla or Rupee.

If you are keen on rerolling, consider checking our guides to see what are the units you should be aiming for.

Novel