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Fatal Claw Return Guide: What Carries Over on a Second Playthrough

Fatal Claw Return explained: which bosses unlock on a second run, what resets, what carries over, and how to plan a New Game Plus attempt without wasting progress.

Fatal Claw Return Guide: What Carries Over on a Second Playthrough guide artwork from Fatal Claw

Fatal Claw unlocks a Return mode after you finish Kisha’s story. The 1.0.54 hotfix made it more important by adding bosses that only appear from your Return playthrough onward — the map now displays certain fusion-skill bosses starting from Return, and a related event rebalanced so one Cure can be crafted during the first playthrough too. That change is what turns Return from a curiosity into a real second run.

This page covers what the mode does, what it does not, and how to approach it. Where NDEV has not documented something, we say so rather than guessing.

What Return Is

Return is Fatal Claw’s New Game Plus layer. You start a new campaign with a portion of your first-run progress intact, and a small number of game elements that were locked in the first run become available.

The terminology in the 1.0.54 notes is specific: certain bosses “are displayed starting from Return playthroughs.” That means their map markers and entries appear only once you are past your first completed save. They are not new bosses added by a patch — they are existing content that was always meant to be reached on a repeat run.

What Carries Over

The practical answer is: enough to make the second run faster, not enough to skip it.

Carries over:

  • Claw upgrades purchased with Kannium. This is the single biggest carryover, because Claw sharpening is what gates much of the combat route.
  • Cabitz ability configurations. You can bring your tuned ability set rather than rebuilding from the tree.
  • Unlocked map knowledge in the sense that you know the layout, even if markers reappear fresh.
  • Story knowledge, obviously. Route knowledge is the real currency in a repeat run.

Does not carry over:

  • Cure resources. You craft these again on the new run.
  • Memory Fragments. These are spent again on skill unlocks and narrative hints.
  • Boss defeats and their one-time rewards.
  • Region access gates that require story progress.

What 1.0.54 Changed

Three changes from the 1.0.54 hotfix directly affect Return planning.

Fusion-skill boss markers now show from Return onward. Before this patch, these bosses existed but were hard to locate on a second run because the map did not display them. You either knew the location already or you did not find them.

One Cure can be crafted during the first playthrough. The related event was adjusted so this no longer competes with Return-only timing. If you were holding Cures back on your first run waiting to save them for New Game Plus, that reasoning no longer applies — the 1.0.38 hotfix had already reduced Memory Fragment costs for skill tree resets from 20 to 10 and narrative hint unlocks from 20 to 5, and this change continues that direction.

Stone Warp can be used from Stones of Narrative. Added in the same patch, alongside new Stones of Narrative in certain areas. This matters for Return because it compresses the travel time on a route you already know.

How To Plan A Return Run

There are two reasonable strategies and the game supports both.

Speedrun Orientation

Keep your Kannium investment from the first run and do not spend Memory Fragments on anything except the skill unlocks you actually use. On the second run you are moving fast enough that combat routing is the bottleneck, not power, so extra skills matter less than traversal. The progression route guide lists which gates you can skip with enough Claw damage.

Completionist Orientation

Use Return to reach the content the first run did not expose — the fusion-skill bosses whose markers now appear, and the endings you missed. If your first run followed a single route, this is the run where you branch out. The endings guide covers what each ending requires.

The honest recommendation: if you are going to Return at all, pick one of these. A run that neither speeds up nor broadens coverage is the worst use of the mode.

What We Do Not Know

  • NDEV has not published a dedicated Return or New Game Plus guide. The mode is referenced in patch notes but not documented in depth by the studio.
  • We have not measured the exact carryover thresholds. Which Claw upgrades survive, and at what level, is inferred from what the patch notes say rather than from a confirmed list.
  • Difficulty scaling for Return is not documented. Whether bosses gain HP or damage on a second run is not stated anywhere we can find.