Mortal Shell 2: Best Shells

In Mortal Shell 2, there are 8 different Shells for players to find and unlock throughout the game, each with a distinct playstyle that’s completely different from the others. Choosing which Shell you should invest resources in is actually a really important decision to make.

Glimpses, the currency used to upgrade Shells, is limited, and even if players are extremely frugal with them, it is only possible to max out 3 Shells at most during a single playthrough. Of course, Shell upgrade progress carries over to NG+, but most players want to use the best Shell during their first playthrough, not their second.

All Shells in Mortal Shell 2 become extremely powerful when upgraded to max level. There is no “bad” Shell in the game. However, some are still better than others.

Best Shells in Mortal Shell 2

Shell Tier List

S Tier Shells

Genessa

Genessa has possibly the highest possible damage output in Mortal Shell 2, thanks to her ability, Stray Doubles. This ability allows her to duplicate herself so that every weapon or sidearm attack she performs, her duplicate performs as well. When upgraded further, she can summon a second phantom using Stray Doubles, effectively tripling all damage she does.

To balance this, Stray Doubles only become available as a skill when Genessa is severed (dies once). When her first health bar is depleted, instead of turning back into the Harbinger like all other Shells, she remains Genessa, gaining the Stray Doubles ability. Additionally, in this state, Genessa’s health is reduced by quite a bit. Attacks that used to require three hits to kill her can now do so in one hit.

In her normal state, Genessa gets Faithful Doubles, which give her the ability to summon phantom images that attack enemies, similar to the Grisha Remnant item. The more powerful Genessa is, the more powerful her Faithful Doubles will be. Additionally, players can invest in a Faithful Doubles playstyle by increasing the number of phantoms that you can summon and how many attacks they can do before disappearing. This is extremely good for exploration as it allows Genessa to attack from behind corners and stay at a distance while her illusions clean up the battlefield.

Tiel

Don’t be fooled by how early you can unlock Tiel in Mortal Shell 2. He is easily one of the most broken Shells in the game, even without any investment. At higher levels, Tiel’s invisibility becomes near-permanent, preventing anyone from even touching him if he doesn’t want to engage with them. Excellent for exploration and even better against bosses.

Tiel’s Shadow Dash makes it so that any time Tiel performs a “perfect dodge,” he gains invisibility for a few seconds.

In this state, he can move, charge up sidearms, or weapons. This state only ends prematurely if Tiel dashes again, gets struck by something, or lands an attack on someone. The best part is that using a Mether’s Pulse (healing flask) does not break invisibility, making it possible for players to reset during boss fights without worrying.

Tiel’s Lingering Shadow ability, on the other hand, makes him go invisible for a short duration where he can only move while crouched. He can perform a Shadow Strike in this state, an attack that deals massive damage (similar to a Riposte) and removes the invisibility status from Tiel.

This ability becomes completely broken after players unlock the “Lethality” upgrade (unlocks at Tier 3 Shell Bonding). This passive gives Tiel the ability to not only restore a large amount of Resolve on every Shadow Strike, but also gives him a 50% chance to reactivate Lingering Shadow immediately after a Shadow Strike. Effectively, this means that Tiel can stay in permanent invisibility if he manages his Resolve correctly. And this is the base effect without taking into account any additional Tarstones that might increase Resolve efficiency.

Smert

Smert is arguably the highest skill ceiling Shell in Mortal Shell 2, with the ability to deal an insane amount of damage, but at an extremely high risk of dying. He shines in the hands of a player who can keep him alive in a near-death state for as long as possible.

He has the ability to dish out an insane amount of single-target damage if invested into. Confusingly, Smert is simultaneously the easiest Shell to cheese with, but the hardest Shell to master.

His ability, Miracle, works as a complete Time Stop. When you activate it, Smert loses half of his HP, and time around him freezes for a long duration. During this duration, Smert cannot use melee weapons or sidearms. Instead, he can hit enemies using his fists, kicks, and ground punches.

Every unarmed attack he does inflicts the Chaos debuff on the target. The Chaos debuff inflicts a random ailment or status effect on the target when it expires, but does not deal damage itself. This means you can inflict the burn, poison, freeze, stasis, or freeze status effects on enemies, though not all at once.

A key mechanic of Miracle is that the time that it lasts can be forcefully extended by sacrificing your health. This means you have a means of deciding how low you want your HP to be by yourself. This is crucial because Smert’s second ability, Deadly Revelation, only works at 10% health.

The core gameplay loop of Smert is to first enter Miracle to freeze time completely, use unarmed attacks to inflict as many Chaos stacks as possible on the enemy, extend the duration of Miracle until health is below 10%, end Miracle, and then use the Resolve Gain boost from Deadly Revelation to quickly build up the Resolve needed to trigger Miracle again. Rinse and repeat.

The tricky part, of course, is staying alive during the time when you need to gain Resolve to trigger Miracle again. Sub-10 % health is basically a guaranteed death from any enemy hit, no matter how small, so the margin of error is zero. This is what makes Smert one of the highest skill-ceiling Shells in Mortal Shell 2.

A Tier Shells

Eredrim

Eredrim is the ultimate boss killer in Mortal Shell 2, but not as oppressively strong against large groups of enemies, which is why he isn’t in S Tier. His entire kit is built around Breaking enemies and performing Ripostes to deal massive damage. With investment, he can put most bosses into Riposte range using only two Shoulder Bashes, turning hard boss fights into cake walks.

Players who are good at parrying or perfect guarding will love Eredrim, because his playstyle complements that cinematic, action-y style of gameplay perfectly. The best part is that even if you have terrible parry timings and can’t block a blow to save your life, Eredrim can forcefully break enemies with a couple of Shoulder Bashes anyway. The only difference is that you’ll need to adopt a more patient playstyle.

Ethereal Diapason is an okay ability in some scenarios but not really useful most of the time because of how long the charge-up time is for this move. Additionally, breaking a group of enemies sounds good on paper, but the amount of Break damage this move does is nowhere near enough to break someone in one move, and the Resolve cost makes spamming impossible. In most cases, your Resolve is best spent elsewhere.

Gragu

Gragu is one of the most polarizing Shells in Mortal Shell 2. That is because while he is easily the best Shell for exploration, he can struggle against bosses, especially without any upgrades.

Gragu’s main gimmick is that he replaces the Mether’s Pulse (healing flask) with his unique ability, Revered Heart. This means that while you’re using Gragu, you cannot use a healing flask at all. All of the Revered Glands and Synaptic Vessels you used to upgrade efficiency and capacity are useless when you’re Gragu. Well, kind of. You can still use the Mether’s Pulse as a Harbinger when you’re severed from Gragu, but that is the only way you can do so.

Revered Heart is a downgraded version of the Mether’s Pulse in terms of healing. A single Revered Heart restores less than one third of what is restored by the Mether’s Pulse, and it has fewer uses by default (3). But to counteract this, killing enemies allows you to gain more Revered Heart charges. The more enemies you kill, the more Revered Hearts you’ll gain.

In exploration, Revered Heart outshines Mether’s Pulse nine times out of ten. This is because, to Gragu, every enemy in the game is a walking health pot, waiting to be harvested. As long as he plays patiently and uses Revered Hearts correctly, Gragu is the only character in Mortal Shell 2 who can realistically clear the entire map without touching a single beacon even once.

Against bosses, Gragu struggles quite a bit more than other Shells. His ability, Staggering Blow, is a great counter to them on paper, but there is a long wind-up animation to it, and it has the habit of whiffing at the most crucial moment. Additionally, Gragu’s default method of farming Revered Hearts for healing (killing mobs) does not work in boss fights.

This shortcoming can be counteracted by some of his Shell Tier upgrades. Maniac makes his melee attacks deal 140% damage against foes he hasn’t faced off against before, and Heartwork gives Gragu a 3% chance to replenish all Revered Heart charges when he applies Bloodcurse, easily doable using the Arbiter’s Prize Tarstone.

Proxima

Proxima is a tanky Shell with a large health pool, inherent damage mitigation, and the ability to hook herself to enemies. She shines in the early to mid-game stages of the game, but gets left behind in the later stages.

Proxima’s kit is fairly straightforward and doesn’t need much explaining. She can take more hits than other Shells and close the distance with enemies, either by pulling them to her or by pulling herself to them.

In terms of combat effectiveness, Proxima works quite well across the board. She does well in boss fights because of her damage mitigation and handles groups of enemies very well, especially after you unlock her Discharge upgrade, which summons a lightning storm every time she uses Biosampler.

Her true value, however, lies in the ability to harvest “Biosamples” after getting the Collected upgrade at Tier 3 Shell Bonding. These Biosamples can be sold for Gold to Merrick. While this doesn’t seem impressive at first glance, you have to understand that Gold is actually one of the hardest currencies to farm in Mortal Shell 2. Enemies drop a minuscule amount of it per kill, and there are no other renewable sources of it in the game. That is, except Proxima.

B Tier Shells

Sariel

Sariel is a tricky character to understand because his kit is quite complex. To boil it down, he is a tanky character who can nullify and mitigate incoming damage by debuffing nearby enemies. The more he debuffs them, the less damage they do and the less health he loses.

The core of his kit revolves around Pain, which is essentially the Rally mechanic from Bloodborne. Pain converts a part of Sariel’s health pool into gray health. If you get hit while you have gray health, all of it is lost, but if you hit enemies while you have gray health, you convert the gray health into regular health based on how much damage you do.

Curse makes it so that if an enemy hits you, the damage is reflected back to them (but only for the first hit). This also means that if you have gray health because of pain and a Cursed enemy hits you once, your gray health will remain intact because the damage was reflected back to them.

The trouble with Sariel is that it requires a ton of investment to unlock his full potential. His best upgrades give him the ability to deal true AoE damage, deal massive damage with his Thorns ability, cure Pain using Mether’s Pulse (healing flask), and regenerate his Thorns very quickly. However, all of these are locked behind Tier 4 Shell Bonding, which means you need to invest 30 Glimpses into him before he comes online.

C Tier Shells

Lazlo

Lazlo finds himself in an awkward position of being outshone by other characters in almost everything he does. In terms of inflicting status effects (burn), he falls short of Sariel; in terms of tanking, he falls short of Proxima; and in terms of AoE, which he specializes in, he underwhelms.

Lazlo’s kit revolves around dealing AoE damage, inflicting Burn, and tanking. He has permanent armor on his body that grants him 10% damage mitigation, which heats up every time he uses Retribution. When the heat bar is filled up, the armor breaks, and a larger shockwave emits from Lazlo, dealing damage.

The trouble with Lazlo is that his AoE damage is quite low, and not something that can be relied on at early levels, even against a group of small enemies. Half the time, you find yourself using your Resolve for weapon abilities and sidearms instead of wanting to use Lazlo’s kit.

That said, it’s not all doom and gloom. Lazlo has some pretty amazing upgrades to look forward to. In particular, the Warmed Up upgrade, which unlocks at Tier 1 Bonding, gives Lazlo a much-needed damage boost when using his Heat Meter. More upgrades further polish up Lazlo’s tankiness and damage, but the core problems persist no matter what you do.

The main reason for this is that Lazlo’s upgrades enhance two different aspects: when he is with armor and when he is without armor, with no overlap in between. Because of this, Lazlo is often in the awkward spot of not being able to fully utilize the points you’ve spent upgrading him, which is why he’s been put in C Tier.