Nioh 2 - Turn demons into loot again

I’m doing a purity fists build. I linked a video earlier to it. It was surprisingly easy to get going, though I think you would need to have finished NG to be able to do the build as specified in that video.

Crazy how much nuance is in the game. I just learned that with purity weapons, you can ki pulse after you’ve blocked an attack, giving you the opportunity to gain back almost all the ki you spent on the block.

Think I’m closing in toward the end of the base game. Just reached level 100 and beat the bullet hell hydra muppet. Was really struggling with that fight when trying to wear light armor, but it became manageable with a bit more toughness.

I hope you turned your frame limit down to 60 to deactivate hyper mode. I think that’s still bugged.

!!! I had no idea that was a thing – have been at 120 the whole time. It did feel pretty ridiculous with stuff constantly flying in from offscreen at me, but I just figured it was supposed to be hard.

Trying to do even one or two attacks at the edge usually got me shot in the back, so I wound up doing a lot of running around without locking on, trying to evade everything while staying close enough to one of the tentacles to bait it into doing a burst-counterable lunge. Also helped a lot to realize that the yellow lasers, although they were super fast and almost impossible to dodge, were doing physical rather than lightning damage, and actually pretty easy to block. Oh, and taking a hand cannon potshot at the eye at the beginning of each phase helped minimize the number of times I had to go through the cycle.

Well, at least you have a war story to tell everyone after it gets fixed. Enjoy the end missions, and then on to the DLC!

When did you switch out from Ninjutsu?

Oh my goodness I did the same thing. I thought that seemed absurd how many projectiles were coming my way.

I just beat the lightning boss at the end (I think?) of the second DLC last night. It also seemed absurd with lightning just flooding everywhere with one attack chained after another chained after another, constantly. Not clear if that was the same issue or just how the boss is. I’ll need to switch down to 60fps from now on just in case.

The beginning of Dream of the Wise. Up until that point, it handled most things very easily. I used Ninjutsu for bosses and tough Yokai and the Kusa for everything else, in light armor. Dream of the Wise put a stop to it since I couldn’t do enough damage with my entire arsenal to get anywhere on the bosses.

There are some sets in Dream of the Wise/Nioh that might allow one to get viable Ninjutsu build working. I’ve been saving pieces as I find them, but I’m not sure if I’ll try to do that or not.

Not that I know of. You can handle that boss with lightningstop talismans.

I bought Nioh 2 on sale over the holidays and I am looking to play the PS5 version now. But I always feel I need to do hours of research on builds so that I don’t screw myself in the future, and that I’m driving towards a build that will be fun for me as a player. Maybe it’s just a problem with me as a player not wanting to paint myself in a corner and min-max too much.

You don’t have to worry about builds at all on NG. Pick a weapon you like, start investing in its main stat and go from there. Put a few points in magic and dexterity to increase your capacity for Onmyo and Ninjutsu and you are set until NG+.

Yeah, you can’t paint yourself into a corner, and there’s no need to plan toward an endgame build because you can fully respec.

No matter what weapon you eventually decide to focus on, you can’t go wrong starting by getting every stat to the 10-15 range to reach their initial soft caps and boost your core combat attributes.

Just jump in and try out different weapons and see what feels good to you.

Respecs are easy, don’t sweat it. Endgame gear isn’t available until endgame anyway so there’s not really any painting yourself into a corner you could be doing during a playthrough.

Ran into a sub mission that kicked my ass over and over with my current build. It’s called the Third World and is one of those meadow duels with a souped up version of a prior boss. I got him down to a sliver a number of times only to make a slight miscalculation that resulted in the shattering of my glass cannon. I’m a relatively calm gentleman, but found myself yelling and growling in hilarious gamer frustration!

This was the first time in the game I passed on a mission. I will come back and beat him later.

Yeah, that dude does some serious damage if he grabs you. And that grab is so fast.

I played the first 3 levels of the Underworld. I enjoy it a lot more than the Abyss was in Nioh 1. I do wish you could instantly go to the boss, instead of having to find at least one Kodama, but that is a minor issue.

I’ve been trying to get one piece of gear, which would give me another 30% damage, but I haven’t been lucky enough to get it yet. Then, once I get that piece I was going to swap my second weapon to a corruption fist (claw) and then start swapping from purity to corruption weapon in order to consistently apply confusion to mobs. But I need to that one piece of gear in order for me to get this going and it just isn’t dropping.

Not sure how much more I’m going to play, I feel like I’m getting close to having my fill. Really great game.

Nearing the final stages of DLC 3 and I’m not sure if the difficulty picked up (first boss already, wow lol) or if it’s the fact that I switched to a light armor Dragon Ninja build and a new weapon, but I suddenly have to be way more careful when playing than I did before with tonfas.

Not sure what to think of Katana though, it seems very bland - maybe I need some more boss drops for it? I feel like it’s made for Iai spam but I barely use that. Thinking of going back to the spear for NG+ if Katana doesn’t click with me soon.

edit: Nightbringer down! What a cool story. Now I’ll wrap up the side missions in DLC3 and move on to NG+. One of the best games I’ve ever played, major props to Team Ninja.

Defense makes a big difference, you can go from tanking hits to getting two shot pretty easily.

Sword is like a jack of all trades weapon. It has a lot of parries, maneuvering attacks, and ki busting moves. Plus the iai strike for massive burst damage.

I always miss it after a while but it’s not one of my favorites either. Probably mid pack.

Jeeeeesuuuuuuuus. This mission was absolute insanity, and what an ending!!! Loved it:

Just rolled credits on this! Great game, and I’m looking forward to diving into the DLCs and NG+ next.

Still splitting my stats evenly and rotating through the weapons, but at some point when I hit a difficulty spike I’ll probably respec into a more focused build.

It also got me to pick up a book on the era just to have a bit more context on the historical figures that are constantly coming on and off stage.

I’m up to Dream of the Demon now. This game is in my top ten of all time for sure. I’ve been pining for ages for someone to take all the good stuff from crunchy ARPGs (tons of interesting build options which the loot system feeds into, good co-op play) but pair it with much better gameplay than the click-to-move-and-spam common in that genre. I liked Dark Souls but it just didn’t quite do it for me. The builds weren’t quite what I wanted and trying to play through the game with a friend or two was a tedious ordeal.

But this game is it. They friggin’ nailed it. I haven’t been obsessed with a game like this in a long long time, I’m trying to think of anything in the past decade that compares and I’m not coming up with anything. I might have to go all the way back to the 90s when the first mainstream MMOs (UO, EQ, etc) came out and blew me away with their huge shared worlds.