Nioh 2 - Turn demons into loot again

As I understand it, defense reduces the damage you take, and toughness reduces ki damage (so you spend less ki when blocking, for instance). Heavy armor has much higher toughness than medium, in average. Not sure about defense - I’ve seen light and medium armor pieces with more defense than heavy, but I’m not 100% sure they were at the same level. Too much loot. ;)

I’m near the beginning of Dream of the Demon and I’m pretty underleveled myself. It takes a long time to kill some of these bosses. I haven’t found good burst damage with the switchglaive and hatchets either.

I’ve found myself focusing a lot more on Confusion in DotD. That 50% damage boost goes a long way and there’s a clan out there that extends the duration if I’m not mistaken. I’m not running that clan at the moment but I’m tempted to transfer for that reason. Especially with how much more effort applying status can be in Expeditions with my friend.

Speaking of clans, is there a screen where I can see my current clan stat benefits? I know they scale up over time, but I want to see what my current value is. I don’t know if it reset that or not when I last transferred clans.

EDIT: Oh jeez, I just saw that Oda boosts confusion duration by 45% at max rank. Now I’m really really tempted.

I’ve just started a Switchglaive omnyo heavy armor build and very much digging the Confusion. It really is easy mode once applied.

Oda, huh? That was the name of my favorite Ethiopian restaurant in Mpls! Fate speaks!

When you are looking at one of the clan screens, press right … trigger or button, and it will show you your current benefits. If you can’t find it, I’ll get more specific when I can jump in game.

Edit: Select “Clan Battles” from the Tea House, then hit right trigger and the right side of the screen will show you.

I’m getting the hang of switchglaive and hatchets again. The switchglaive stance switching is insane against yokai since they’re unable to block. On a lot of enemies you can almost attack continuously. Their AI gets overwhelmed. I guess on higher difficulty levels they might start breaking out of it with grabs more often.

Humans are a bit more difficult for me, especially bosses and revenants. The hatchets have some nice special attacks against blocking enemies, but they’re still pretty slow.

I always love in the NG+ modes how you can unlock all the missions so early. I’m on region 3 and just played the twilight mission from DLC 2. I think I bumped my weapons and armor up 3 or 4 +levels from that one mission. It kind of feels like cheating.

Anyway, now it’s time to have fun with my favorite missions until I’m ready for Dream of the Wise and a new build.

I dont get how anyone can beat this game. I just started it and have died 8 times pretty much close to just the first area. I can kill those “precious” creatures but not the harder ones.

After I got beyond annoyed at this, I decided to try Dark Souls 3, which I bought a long time ago but never played much because of the difficulty…omg, it is so much easier than NIOH and I have confidence now I can play this one without rage quitting in 5 minutes.

I suck at these games obviously but anytime I start to get frustrated with DS3, all I have to do is fire up NIOH 2 to remember what difficult really is!

Haha! Yeah, I really struggled with the first few bosses. I mean, I think it took my an entire weekend of pretty hardcore playing to get past them. The game actually became quite a bit easier for me at that point in part because of the tools/skills that the first few maps forced me to get decent at.

First boss with those huge sweeping strikes… well, trying to play it like Dark Souls 2 or Monster Hunter World and using iframes on my dodge rolls was extremely unsuccessful. I learned to love the block (something I couldn’t do in MHW or Dark Souls without a good shield) and how effective it can be in this game. Especially the block + dodge maneuver where you block while you roll so if you mess up you still get the block and the hit to your ki instead of getting eviscerated and staggered. And speaking of staggered, that was also something I had to learn. When getting hit, I need to BLOCK, not DODGE. You can’t dodge if you’re staggered but you can cut in with a block and interrupt a combo, then dodge. Stuff like that. Combined with just learning the boss and when to open up vs. when to remain cautious, I was able to finally beat him.

The next boss, he made me use low stance for my particular weapon (splitstaff) and understand the benefits of it. Mobility and the ability to dodge well with low stance was really important in that fight. Apparently you can’t block fiery landmines and tornados so well, so I had to add to my skillset from the previous lessons I had learned as described above.

Anyway, I hear you on the difficulty. It really spanked my butt over and over and over before I got over the hump. Then it was smooth sailing for a while before the game periodically ramped up the difficulty on me. Right now I’ve unlocked all the missions on Dream of the Wise (NG+++) and am working on refining my build before moving on to Dream of the Nioh.

Yes, not only do people beat the game, there have been thousands of people with your exact same sentiment that have beaten it. All those people started where you are now.

reddit has hard drives full of posts just like yours from /r/Nioh. Plus the same amount of storage for the follow-up posts after everyone overcame the learning curve!

Nioh 2 start more dificult than many games. But is because you are strangled by the economy:

  • no stamina
  • no cool moves
  • no magic / ninja tools

after a bit of grinding all these 3 things dissolve
the game adds even more tools that push the fight in your favor

  • a rank system similar to the badass system on borderlands, that add tiny enhancements here and there
  • gear that do things for you, like heal on getting anima, that is about all the time in the game, or more damage when you kill one mob, so you can chain kills

once you start getting cool set, you can start speccing and abusing the game mechanics

heres a guy with a build the let him oneshot most mobs with his bare hands

Unlike games like Borderlands, theres not level limit, you can continue leveling forever. You can be a level 120 killing mobs level 20, by that point the power level is so ridiculously in your favor, you can streamroll.

is not unheard that some high level players oneshot many boss

Ignore the post above.

I am stuck in a boss (the one that have wells for foot) and is highly annoying. Also nobody join my game and I hate this game and the whole userbase.

I’m not sure which boss that is based off of the description but I’d love to join you and help out if you’re on PC? If so, I can send you my Steam info and we can see if we can meet up.

For real, though, helping randoms out in boss fights is one of my favorite things to do this game. I love when you join their game and they start emoting like crazy. The sense of frustration and relief at seeing you is almost palpable.

Thanks, nah… I am on PS4. I play on irregular schedules, but thanks for the offer!.

digs a bit

is kasha. is not so much the boss itself, but it takes some times to reach his arena and I don’t want to fight it atm, maybe I will do some levelup.

I am testing dual axes, and liking them a lot more than punchs. Punchys are punchy cool, pew pew pew style, but dual axes can do interesting things other weapons can’t.

NG+++ - I just fainted.

I hear you on blocking…I keep trying to dodge and realize I cant at all during those times I’m staggered. Then getting grappled by GOLLUM is frustrating…I mean, I have a long ass staff, I need to keep distance.

My first upgrade I spent on upgrading some stats including Ki…Ki seems like the most important stat to upgrade…at least at the start.

It’s like the ultimate action strategy game.

Ahhh, wheels for feet. Yeah, Kasha can be a jerk. Her soul core is a fantastic ability to add to your arsenal, though. Best of luck!

Are you using the splitstaff then? Yeah, it can be really ki-hungry. It has solid damage scaling with Courage which boosts your ki regen which is nice. During the boss fight when you’re in the dark realm, make sure to drink some Sacred Water to help with the slow ki regen there. You can get access to the Barrier spell fairly early too which also is a nice boost with the staff munching through your ki!

It will be hard but doable. Getting has much immunity to fire is going to be key, I imagine, I may even build a gear set only for that.

And yea, I saw many nioh 2 videos where people favorite this power. I like the monkwheel myself, but this one looks better since is similar but drop and forget. Mastering monkwheel let me sometimes own foes in amazing ways, but also sometimes misfire, is hard to master. Kasha core seems simpler.


My character
https://twitter.com/Teiman/status/1369034540329668610/photo/1

Weird. I beat Kasha yesterday on my first try. It helps that I have high toughness, so I was able to block almost anything she threw at me with enough ki left to counterattack or dodge and reposition.

BTW, that’s a pretty great mission, overall. And for people who like Japanese history like myself, it’s also so bittersweet.

That reminds me, did you try using firestop talismans? They are near the beginning of the tree so you might already have them unlocked. I know those talismans help a lot with a very annoying lightning boss, but I’ve never had enough trouble with other elemental damage bosses to try them.

I only managed to get to get once. I was already out of elixirs and most of my ninja kits. So no.
Not having elixirs, of course, and being the first time I saw this lady, made the fight rater short.

Anyway I don’t trust talismans much (alone) since they can run out when I am distracted, and not noticed I am getting a lot of damage from fire, that can stack with damage from other sources and kill me withouth reacting fast enough.

I will try to find has much sources of protection against fire has possible, then come back. But I will do so when I have time to put to the fight, not now that I only play 2 hours of nioh every night.

The map where she is is rather large and laberyntine. With some areas you have to clear first a yokay before you can open a door. I can skip some enemies but not all.

FEAR NOT!.. this really bad player will crush this boss once can get to it in a serius way.

That’s good but I’m concerned when you say you have to fight through enemies to get to the boss. I can’t think of a single place in the game where it isn’t a trivial 10 second run to the boss at most. At worst you may have to kill a trash enemy so you can buff in peace, heh.

This isn’t Dark Souls. The checkpoints are super convenient. Maybe you missed a shortcut or altar?