It’s so ridiculous that Rival will raise their level and stats to over double what you can have access.
My rival is a level 260 Mage who uses Magma, Lightning, and Acid (They have a 2nd Awakening), who does 400 to 500 damage per hit every second I’m in their line of sight, while also having infinite Energy and Stamina (because AO NPC) to dodge and spam spells over and over.
I get it’s supposed to be really hard but it feels like I’m fighting a freaking Dark Souls boss.
On my 2 files
I have 2 rivals in total
My first file is a savant file
I just crash when he crashes
With knockback
And somehow I land in the first hit
Also rushdown
My second file is a mage file
The rival there used snow and shadow magic
I literally just outrange them because light supremacy
And the occasional metal pulsar for area denial
No one forced you into making them overpowered
If you can’t handle lvl 260 enemies, just go to bronze sea
Already too late if you fight them at nimbus sea. Their levels pass over to the bronze sea and its bullshit to fight an NPC that is equivalent to Vimir Sea early chapters
My brother in Christ know your limit, fight other NPCs to see if you can handle the levels, if you mindlessly chase your rival until they’re OP, that is all on you
Even then it shouldn’t be like that anyway
even at that point though AO NPCs are extremely buggy and unfair. the level cap shouldn’t even be able to get that high as I think someone stated that the nimbus NPCs scale off of the max level for the nimbus sea itself and not the player level cap. There’s then the issue with all the ridiculous aimbot and access to crazy shit like 2 fighting styles and 2 magics all with ultimate arts and other crazy scaling bugs that shouldn’t exist at all.
max rival level should always be at most 33% above level cap (120 and 160, 140 and 185, etc etc)
just zone
That’s what makes them fun to hunt
all high level NPCs are like this, there’s really no strat to fighting them except running backwards and spamming attacks
i was able to beat my level 260 rival after fighting for like 5 minutes the other day
its not impossible and the fights are pretty fun tbh they feel like boss battles
just get a berserker rival
alternatively if you want a challenge get a gun knight rival
this wouldn’t be an issue if we actually got a higher level cap…
sadly, only 15 levels after half a year 
slightly unrelated, but i remember me and my friends theorizing what the level cap would be raised to and i said 160 bc that was the level of our rivals back then
oh how naive i was
no get a magic based rival with a magic that has a ton of particles
actually invisible
ash conj gun rival who uses defense armor 
Attack speed seems to help
Why are you making excuses for this?
What are you attempting to justify?
That we should be dealing with level 235980 NPCs that kill us in seconds with perfect aim and no flaws beyond being just as stupid as they are stupid overpowered?
That its their fault for DARING to have fun in the newer areas of the game?
Be honest with yourself and tell me exactly how fun fighting the level 260 poison gun conjuror with a focus on multibeam attacks is.
I never said it was fun.
I’m saying that there is no reason for you to level up your rival to level 260, or any level you can’t handle for that matter. They ARE overpowered and difficult to fight. But vetex isn’t holding a gun on your head and forcing you to fight your rival until level 235980. You can stop whenever you want, or have to.
Hunt at Bronze sea if you can’t handle Nimbus sea bounties.