Alcina Dimitrescu dominates the battlefield with overwhelming strength, elegant brutality, and powerful Thrill-based abilities. Her attacks combine high damage, wide reach, and crowd control, making her one of the most destructive characters in Mercenaries mode.
Alcina starts with the following abilities:
Alcina slashes enemies with her elongated claws, dealing fast melee damage.
Alcina unleashes a devastating throne burst attack, dealing massive area damage.
Alcina summons a swarm of insects to harass and damage enemies over time.
Alcina cannot obtain additional weapons during Mercenaries stages. Her natural abilities form her complete kit:
Alcina slashes enemies with her elongated claws, dealing fast melee damage.
Alcina unleashes a devastating throne burst attack, dealing massive area damage.
Alcina summons a swarm of insects to harass and damage enemies over time.
Alcina excels at overwhelming enemies with raw power and Thrill-based scaling. Her melee attacks are fast, wide-reaching, and extremely damaging, allowing her to maintain combos with ease on most stages. Insect Swarm provides reliable chip damage and combo support, while Ornate Vanity delivers devastating burst damage for elite enemies.
Her offensive toolkit is built around aggressive close-range combat. She can perform a powerful dual-hand slash that deals significantly more damage than a single swipe, and she can lunge forward with a stabbing strike that quickly closes distance. Alcina can also rush toward enemies, grab them by the neck, and slam them into the ground—creating a damaging shockwave that hits all nearby enemies. These abilities allow her to clear groups efficiently and maintain combos even in chaotic situations.
Summoning her daughters is one of her strongest tools for maintaining combos. Each daughter attack deals around 1000 damage and can strike enemies that Alcina herself cannot immediately reach. This makes them invaluable for preventing combo drops during movement or when transitioning between enemy groups.
Thrill is Alcina's unique resource system, and mastering it is essential for maximizing her damage. Thrill builds as she defeats enemies or deals damage, and higher Thrill levels significantly increase the power of her attacks. The more aggressively you play, the faster Thrill builds—and the harder she hits.
Some of Alcina's strongest abilities are Thrill-gated, meaning they can only be used once she reaches specific Thrill thresholds:
This creates a natural rhythm where Alcina becomes more dangerous the longer she stays in combat. Playing passively causes Thrill to decay, while staying aggressive keeps her abilities available and her damage high.
A helpful comparison is the Warrior Rage resource from World of Warcraft. Just like Rage, Thrill is generated through combat and fuels your strongest attacks. Maintaining momentum is key: keep attacking, keep moving, and keep your Thrill high to unleash Alcina's full power.
In normal stages, Alcina benefits greatly from an efficient first shop visit. To maximize her early power spike, sell the following items immediately if they appear in your starting inventory:
These items are far more valuable as Lei than as consumables in normal stages, especially if you plan to pick up Gruesome Gourmet later.
Your first purchase should be Thrill Keeper, which increases the duration that Thrill remains active. This makes it significantly easier to maintain high Thrill levels during movement or between enemy groups.
After that, upgrade Lady's Nails Power to Lv. 4 and Thrill Value to Lv. 3 (max). These upgrades dramatically increase your melee damage and Thrill scaling. Finally, upgrade Insect Swarm Power to Lv. 2 to improve its combo support and chip damage.
After the first area, focus on the following upgrade order to maximize Alcina's damage and consistency:
This upgrade path ensures that Alcina's melee and Thrill scaling reach their full potential early, giving her overwhelming power in most stages.
The following ability orbs are especially strong for Alcina, listed in order of priority:
If none of these are available, Thick Skin is a solid defensive fallback that reduces incoming damage.
In Hard Mode, you should keep items like Sanguis Virginis and Lady's Lipstick. Enemies hit harder, take longer to kill, and maintaining Thrill is more difficult. These consumables become significantly more valuable in tougher stages.
Despite her overwhelming power, Alcina does have notable weaknesses. Her ranged options rely on cooldowns, which can leave her briefly vulnerable if abilities are used too aggressively. Additionally, her height becomes a significant disadvantage in the Factory stage, where she must crouch under low obstacles. This slows her movement dramatically and makes it easy to lose combos, making Factory the one stage where achieving S Rank with her is noticeably more difficult.
In short: upgrade Lady's Nails early, maintain high Thrill, use Insect Swarm to stabilize combos, and prioritize powerful ability orbs like Break Shot and Blood Sacrifice. With proper routing and aggressive play, Alcina can dominate nearly every stage with ease.