The first real boss encounter in Neverness to Everness happens during Prologue 2: Good Business, Better Treasure, when Taygedo bursts into the Eibon antique shop and forces the new appraiser into combat. The fight is short, but it gates the rest of the prologue behind two specific mechanics: a Broken state that rewards picking up dropped items, and a quest objective that demands you cast your Ultimate three times.
Where the Taygedo fight starts
Taygedo appears inside Eibon, the rundown antique shop on Hankaku Street. You reach it during Prologue 2 by crossing the railway from the Bureau of Anomaly Control, syncing with the Wertheimer Tower in the plaza, then heading north through the alley left of the Pink Paws Bank and down the stairs into Eibon. After investigating the door and pressing the bell-shaped crab on the front desk, a man approaches you, and the encounter triggers.
The boss is fixed at level 11 and is fought solo with the silver-haired protagonist, Zero. There is no team swap pressure here, since the prologue locks you into the starter setup before the wider Esper Cycle systems open up.
Taygedo's attack pattern
Taygedo has a small, predictable moveset. The two things that actually matter are his green pools and his single parry-tagged swing.
A successful parry not only stops the hit, it instantly fills the Esper Cycle Meter, which is how you keep pressure on the break bar.
The Broken state and the item-throw mechanic
After enough damage, Taygedo enters a Broken state. An on-screen prompt appears: "Taygedo is in a Broken state. Touch the items he drops to deal additional damage." This is the fight's main damage window.
Step 1: Stay on Taygedo with normal attacks until his break bar empties and the Broken prompt appears. Do not save your skill for after the break — you want the bar gone fast.
Step 2: Walk over the small objects he drops on the ground. Your character automatically picks them up and hurls them back, causing them to explode on contact and deal a chunk of bonus damage.
Step 3: Resume normal attacks while he is still stunned. The Broken window is short, so chaining hits during it is what actually closes the fight.
Clearing the "Use Ultimate ×3" objective
Partway through the fight, a secondary quest objective appears on the left side of the screen reading Use Ultimate ×3. This is mandatory progression, not optional. The fight will not properly resolve until you have triggered Zero's Ultimate three separate times.
Zero's Ultimate gauge fills from landing normal attacks, using his skill, and especially from successful parries. To hit the count comfortably:
- Open with normal attack strings and the skill to start charging Ultimate energy.
- Parry Taygedo's heavy swing whenever it telegraphs. The cycle fill from a clean parry shortens the wait between Ultimates.
- Cast Ultimate as soon as it is available. Do not hold it for a "better" moment.
The objective ticks up each time the Ultimate animation actually fires, so wasted casts on empty air still count.
How you know the fight is over
Once Taygedo's HP empties, his model breaks and a cutscene takes over: a black-haired woman in a red and black outfit wakes up on a sofa upstairs, looks down at the commotion, and Mint, a blue-haired character, attacks Taygedo. Adler, the bespectacled assistant, then introduces the rest of the Eibon crew — Daffodil on security, Nanally, Sakiri, and Edgar handling low-threat Anomaly cases, and Hotori, the small white-haired girl in a red jacket, as the actual owner of Eibon.
The cutscene transitions to a nighttime exterior where Mint heads off to overtime work, and Adler offers to walk you to your accommodation. When control returns, a new objective reads Dormitory: Follow Adler to the dormitory, and a prompt in the top right tells you to press C to open the Character interface. That objective swap is the confirmation the boss is done, and the prologue has moved on.
Common reasons the fight stalls
If Taygedo is not going down, one of three things is usually wrong.
- Standing in the green pools. The damage-over-time chips faster than most players realize at level 11. Move out before attacking.
- Ignoring the dropped items. Skipping the Broken-state pickups roughly doubles the time-to-kill, since the throw-back damage is the fight's intended burst phase.
- Holding the Ultimate. The "Use Ultimate ×3" objective will not auto-complete from break damage alone. You must press the Ultimate input three times during the fight.
What unlocks after Taygedo
Beating Taygedo wraps the combat portion of Prologue 2 and rolls you into the Eibon dormitory sequence, which introduces the Strange Encounters pull system on the bed interaction. From there, the quest sends you to the Photo Studio investigation — the segment where the larger LV.18 胶卷-MANISH film-reel boss fight eventually plays out with a full four-character team including Sakiri, Adele, and Nanally. Taygedo himself stops being an enemy at this point and reappears as the shop's antique maintenance and logistics handler, plus the TV-headed mascot who shows up for the group photo at the end of the MANISH encounter.
Prologue 2 completion rewards include Hunter Level EXP ×900, Annulith ×60, a Mind Shard – Zero, Expansion Core ×10, Elite Hunter Guide ×15, Chaotic Dye ×15, Manhole Boss ×30, Fons ×60,000, and Beetle Coin ×90,000, all granted once the dormitory and follow-up Eibon objectives finish resolving after the Taygedo fight.