Talk:Winter 2015 Event/@comment-24894280-20150213141520/@comment-25695665-20150213145635

That's a good question, and even though it's been answered, I'll respond just so you can double check.

Yes, the boss stays in 'final form.'  But since 'final form' can be a bit confusing, we'll just say that during their last tick of life the boss permanently upgrades. Once cleared, that permanent upgrade remains permanent. It's why many people opted for easier maps, even if they could clear the map at the max difficulty. Take E5 for example. The last form, while not impossible to achieve an S rank, is hard enough that you could not say it's 'on farm,' because you're more likely than not to mostly achieve A ranks than S ranks, due to the difficulty. For experienced Admirals, that's not an issue, because the potential ships that drop are most likely already acquired. For anyone else, it's worth thinking about how likely you want to return to the map after your last kill, and choose difficulty from there.