Paper Mario: The Origami King Rubber Band boss fight guide

Paper Mario: The Origami King’s boss fights introduce a twist on the game’s spinning ring-based combat. In every fight against a Boss or a Vellumental, like this fight against Rubber Bands in Big Sho’ Theater, you’ll have to chart a path for Mario from the outside ring in and land on an attack action.

Every boss fight in Paper Mario: The Origami King has rules that you’ll learn over the course of your turns. Not knowing them means you’ll waste turns and open yourself to more damage.

In this Paper Mario: The Origami King guide, we’ll let you know the rules to the Rubber Bands fight in Big Sho’ Theater so you don’t have to learn them the hard way, and then we’ll give you step-by-step guides to defeating it.

Rubber Band boss fight strategy

There’s a lot going on in this fight that you probably aren’t prepared for. Rubber Band adds a new spin on messing up the arena tiles. Rubber Band can also heal almost all of the damage you deal. Unless you know the tricks.

The trick to beating Rubber Band is to use 1,000-Fold Arm Magic Circle attacks only — never your boots or hammer.

1. At the start of each turn, Rubber Band will throw out Bumper Bands. These don’t hurt you, and you’ll actually need to use them to navigate. Bumper Bands don’t change your direction of travel. They only move you in or out one ring depending on which way they’re facing.
2. Every turn, only focus on hitting the ON switch, and then a 1,000-Fold Arms Magic Circle.
3. 1,000-Fold Arms Magic Circle attacks do the most damage from the innermost ring, but the second ring out isn’t too bad either.
4. Heal whenever you can. When you get Rubber Band down to about 1 hit point, it’ll hit you with an attack that can easily kill you if you’re not careful.

Rubber Band boss fight step-by-step

Knowing what to do and managing to do it are sometimes two different things in Paper Mario: The Origami King. Below, we’ll go step-by-step through this fight.

Turn 1

All four turns of this fight are going to only be about activating and using 1,000-Fold Arms attacks.

Image: Intelligent Systems/Nintendo via Polygon

1. Spin the third ring in one segment clockwise.
2. Spin the innermost ring two segments counterclockwise.
3. Burn your third ring move by hitting A twice.
4. Activate the 1,000-Fold Arms attack, and grab Rubber Band’s head. When you let it go, you’ll deal 36 points of damage that Rubber Band can’t heal.
5. It’ll attack you with Rubber Bind. You can block all three of the attacks for minimal damage, but if you miss one, you’ll get wrapped in rubber bands, lose a turn, and take a ton of damage. Even if you get hit, you can pick up on the next turn normally.

Turn 2

Image: Intelligent Systems/Nintendo via Polygon

1. Slide the ON switch all the way across the arena to end up on the outer ring in the upper left.
2. Spin the second ring in three segments counterclockwise.
3. Spin the third ring in four segments counterclockwise.
4. Hit Rubber Band with another 1,000-Fold Arm attack. This one will only deal 24 damage, but that’s fine.
5. Block the Rubber Bind attacks again. We’ll pick up some healing on the next turn.

Turn 3

Image: Intelligent Systems/Nintendo via Polygon

1. Slide the heart in the upper left to the outermost ring — you’re going to need it in a second.
2. Spin the third ring in two segments clockwise.
3. Burn your third move.
4. Hit Rubber Band with one more 1,000-Fold Arm attack. This will drop it to one hit point, and it’ll just be one big rubber band now.
5. That one big rubber band is also its strongest form. It’ll hit you with a Solo Snapback attack that’ll deal 40 to 50 points of damage. You can block some of it, but this attack is why we picked up the heart with the first move this turn.

Turn 4

Image: Intelligent Systems/Nintendo via Polygon

1. Spin the third ring in two segments counterclockwise.
2. Spin the innermost ring one segment counterclockwise.
3. Burn your last move.
4. When you activate 1,000-Fold Arms this time, (what’s left of) Rubber Band will wriggle around, making it hard to grab. It’ll pause during its dancing a couple times on the left and then the right sides. Grab it, and finish it off.