Nona is the tenth playable Hero in Gunfire Reborn, unlocked with the new Artisan and Magician DLC. She is an adorable and talented engineer who uses her greatest invention, Iron Wing, to turn the tide of battle. Nona’s Iron Wing can rush into the battlefield as a brawler, soaking up damage, or hold a position as a rapid-fire turret. Additionally, Nona specializes in other mechanical tools, such as her shoulder-mounted rocket launcher, and has an affinity for pistols.
In this guide, we will show you how to play and build Nona in Gunfire Reborn the right way. After reading this, you’ll know how to easily blast your enemies apart with Nona’s mechanical ingenuity.
Nona Hero Summary
Nona’s playstyle mainly focuses on managing herself and her Iron Wing. The dynamic duo is at their best when they support each other. In its Strike Mode, Iron Wing acts as a melee frontline, keeping enemies away from Nona. In its Fire Mode, it helps lock down a position while raining down supportive fire. Nona relies on her Iron Wing to stay alive, and her mech becomes stronger by sharing her stats.
However, Nona’s biggest downside is the constant need to micromanage herself and the mech. Additionally, Nona’s Ascension trees shift her Iron Wing towards either a Strike or Fire Mode build in Gunfire Reborn. Therefore, most of her builds focus on buffing her mech for a ranged or melee play style. A hybrid build, on the other hand, suffers.
How Nona’s Abilities Work in Her Build in Gunfire Reborn
Iron Wing
Iron Wing is Nona’s primary skill, acting as a companion who fights alongside her. It has separate health, attack power, and movement speed stats but benefits from skill damage bonuses obtained by Nona.
Iron Wing has two different modes that can be switched between on the fly: Strike Mode and Fire Mode. Switching modes is possible at any time, unless Iron Wing is already in the process of transforming. If Iron Wing runs out of HP, it can be revived like a player. Otherwise, it will go on cooldown for twenty seconds.
Strike Mode
In Strike Mode, Iron Wing moves around freely and will perform melee slams or leap attacks to nearby enemies. Whenever Iron Wing is summoned in Strike Mode, it enters the battlefield with ‘Mecha Drop,’ which calls down the mech from the sky, smashing into nearby enemies within 10 meters. This effect also taunts nearby enemies into attacking Iron Wing for three seconds.
Strike Mode’s damage is based on the Attack Power stat and any additional bonuses it relieves, which makes Strike Mode shift more toward certain Occult Scrolls and other buffs.
Fire Mode
In Fire Mode, the Iron Wing stays at a fixed location and will shoot missiles at nearby enemies. Damage dealt by their missiles is equal to Nona’s Hardwood Missile, which is her Secondary Skill, and relieves the same damage bonuses. Whenever Iron Wing is summoned in Fire Mode, ‘Mecha Drop’ is replaced with ‘Redeployment,’ which teleports Iron Wing to a new location while they are in Fire Mode.
Since Fire Mode’s damage is scaled off Hardwood Missiles, it makes this build split between Mecha upgrades and buffing Nona’s Hardwood Missiles.
Related: How to Play and Build the Crown Prince in Gunfire Reborn
Hardwood Missile
Hardwood Missile is Nona’s Secondary Skill. Using it deploys Nona’s missile launcher, firing a missile in a straight line that explodes upon hitting an enemy or a solid object. Whenever Hardwood Missile is active, Nona sheaths her active weapon; also, if Iron Wing is caught in the explosion radius, it recovers 25% of its max HP.
Nona Strengths
Nona’s biggest strengths are her Iron Wing, her specialty in Pistol weapons, and her explosive potential with her Hardwood Missile. While she doesn’t fully define herself as a caster character, she still cares a lot about Skill damage because with enough skill power, Iron Wing can annihilate anything on the battlefield, or her Hardwood Missiles can help support Iron Wing or carry her to an explosive victory.
Either way, they both excel at minor amounts of rapid-fire AoE damage but suffer drawbacks such as low movement speed and shield replenishment, meaning neither can survive without one another.
Tips & Tricks for Playing Nona in Gunfire Reborn
Our main tip for playing Nona is learning to control Iron Wing. Her mech having two different firing modes not only introduces two different playstyles and builds, but the bonus skills Iron Wing has based on its transformation also matters. For instance, you can get a lot of use from Iron Wing’s Mecha Drop because of its taunt feature, even if you only use Iron Wing’s Fire Mode.
Also, be careful about your positioning. Nona isn’t durable. Let Iron Wing soak up the damage so you can keep a safe distance, but don’t stray too far, so you can keep Iron Wing’s health topped off with Hardwood Missile.
Nona’s Best Talents
Every character in Gunfire Reborn has three talent trees that focus on enhancing their guns, abilities, or utility. Nona’s talent tree focuses on improving her weapon damage, Divine Craft, and Talent Craft. There are many viable Nona builds in Gunfire Reborn for focusing on one tree over the rest. Yet. We found that focusing on enhancing Nona’s Hardwood Missile is our favorite build because we can increase the damage of Iron Wing’s Fire Mode.
Heat Core
Increases Hardwood’s Missile base damage by 150% up to 450% with the max rank increasing the size of the AoE.
It’s a simple upgrade, but increasing the base damage is important because that buffs our Lucky Hit damage and Critical damage as well. Plus, since Iron Wing doesn’t run out of missiles, unlike us, it’s a permanent damage increase for them.
Shoulder Cannon Upgrade
Iron Wings Fire Mode can launch extra missiles, scaling from eight up to sixteen from its shoulder cannons every twenty to ten seconds. The cooldown is lowered for every missile launched by Nona or Iron Wing.
More missiles from Iron Wing means more damage; even if the Shoulder Cannon Upgrade does have a cooldown, more firepower is always welcome.
Missile Storm
Gain bonus attack speed for Fire Mode, scaling up from 40% to 120%; additionally, after Iron Wing or Nona fires a missile, the next missile from the other users deals additional damage, scaling from 50% to 150%, stacking between 5 to 10 times.
More attack speed in your Gunfire Reborn Nona build for Iron Wing simply means more DPS. Moreover, if we get Occult Scrolls that allow us to use our Hardwood Missile as our main weapon, we can permanently buff Iron Wings damage even further.
Force Recovery
Gain +4 to +12 Hardwood Missile capacity and recover one use every time Iron Wing launches a few missiles. At max rank, whenever you have the maximum Hardwood Missile uses, Iron Wing’s next missile consumes one use to deal 60% damage.
Since our goal is to use Hardwood Missile as much as possible, having more charges is key for our build. On top of that, we get free charges back with Iron Wing,’ and if combined with Missile Storm, we can get a lot of charges back.
Heavy Modification
Holding the Secondary Skill allows you to rapidly launch Hardwood missiles. In addition, there is a 50% chance not to consume charges.
We want to use Hardwood Missile as much as possible, so having a rapid-fire option and a chance to use no ammo is a major plus.
Related Guide: The Best Gunfire Reborn Characters, Ranked
Alternate Talents for Nona in Gunfire Reborn
A few other strong talents to grab are Nimble Finger, Magazine Modification, Battle Pace, and Specialized Shield. Nimble Finger lowers the reload time and increases the attack speed for Nona and Iron Wing after reloading an empty magazine. Magazine Modification gives bonus Critical Hit damage for the first ten shots in a magazine.
Battle Pace increases Nona’s weapon damage based on her Movement Speed, and she gains additional Movement Speed while holding a Pistol. Specialized Shield Increases Nona’s max shield, which begins recharging immediately after breaking, and Hardwood Missile recovers extra health for Iron Wing.
Weapon Builds for Nona in Gunfire Reborn
For weapon builds, we recommend using Aura of Venom, Star Ring, Thunder Storm, or Cloud Weaver.
While our reasoning for picking these weapons is very simple, it’s the fact that Nona has synergies with using pistols. While you don’t have to use pistols exclusively, unlike other characters like Lei Luo, who loves sniper rifles, Nona does have synergies with pistols through her Ascensions. However, if you never use those Ascensions, you don’t need to primarily use pistols.
Are you fine with using whatever weapon will keep her at a safe distance because she isn’t as durable as other characters? She naturally has low shields and average health, so she’s not the best for close-quarters combat.
Best Occult Scrolls for Nona
There are many Occult Scrolls in Gunfire Reborn that can shape the outcome of your build. They can add quality-of-life improvements or have a drastic impact on your damage output. To complete our Gunfire Reborn Nona build, we recommend the following Occult Scrolls.
- Double Exhilaration: Secondary skill Capacity gets doubled.
- Wait For Good: First shot after each 10s will deal Crit DMG.
- Energy Sandals: Dash stacks 24 energy. Using Primary Skill or Secondary Skill consumes all energy and increases Skill DMG. +1% Skill DMG for each energy consumed. (Up to 600 energy can be stacked).
- Skill Booster: Crit Hit stacks four energy. Using Primary Skill or Secondary Skill consumes all energy and increases Skill DMG. +1% Skill DMG for each energy consumed. (Up to 500 energy can be stacked).
- Sucker Punch: +45% Skill DMG when your skill hits an enemy with more than 70% HP.
- Vindictive Nature: +40% weapon and skill DMG for 10s upon being hit or taking DMG.
- Magic Watch: There’s a 33% chance to reset the cooldown every time you use Primary Skill/Dash.
- Terrific Crossfire: -1s Primary Skill cooldown upon casting a Secondary Skill.
- Surprise Bonus: grants a 15% chance to double the damage of any skill.
- Untold Effort: has a 50% chance to double Secondary Skill consumption.
- Capacity Overdraft: allows the use of Secondary Skills even when Nona has no supplies; however, doing so deals damage to yourself instead.
- Rational Consumption: increases skill damage by +80% but lowers it by 5% for every item purchased from a Peddler.
- Spirit Bible: +120% Skill DMG.
Wrapping Up Our Nona, Gunfire Reborn Build Guide
Here’s our build guide for Nona in Gunfire Reborn. Nona is a unique caster-type character in Gunfire Reborn, with the ability to control a permanent companion, which we haven’t seen in any other character. While controlling Iron Wing may take some time to get used to, this deadly duo definitely packs a punch once you master controlling them together.
If you enjoyed our Nona build guide for Gunfire Reborn and want to try the other characters released with the Artisan and Magician DLC, check out our build guide for Zi Xiao.
For now, Happy Hunting!
