I agree, though now that you mention it, I still have a sweet spot for some of the bosses that killed me over and over, such as Onryoki and Munishige like you mentioned. They’re just so charming!
Giant Frog might be my favorite, by the way. There’s a nice flow to it.
Finished up the main game last night. Just fantastic all the way through – easily one of my favorites of recent years. I can’t get enough of the combat system, and am looking forward to it ramping up even further. I appreciate that the NG+ isn’t just the same thing with bigger numbers, but actually introduces new mechanics.
Lots of stuff to do! I tried out the sub-missions that opened up after finishing, and you weren’t kidding about them. I did actually manage to win the one with both Muneshige and Honda at the same time, but didn’t get anywhere with the others so will save them for later. And I did a quick run through the first sub-mission in Way of the Strong – it seems to change up quite a bit, so I’m looking forward to more of it.
At this point, I’ve been spreading around my stat and skill points pretty evenly to try everything out (all stats around 20 at the moment, and have unlocked the mystic arts for everything except tonfa, which is almost there), but it’s probably time to respec and try a more focused build optimized for a particular weapon.
I should probably also force myself to branch out in terms of spirits. Since unlocking it, I’ve been using the one that automatically triggers on death, since my problem was always forgetting to use it until it was too late, but that’s probably a crutch that I should get past.
So I assume you haven’t done the DLC yet? It’s pretty good. Not the best DLC ever made of course. Once you gear up a bit in WotS it should be okay. If you beat it, you actually unlock the final mission in NG+ so you can go straight to NG++. There are even bigger differences there so I wouldn’t waste too much time in Way of the Strong.
Stat specialization helps but you still don’t need to get too crazy with gear.
That’s a good general spirit. The only annoying thing is it wastes your quick change scroll if that’s active. But it’s easy to forget to use that, so it keeps things moving along without dying all the time.
Right. Looking forward to jumping in once I’ve checked out WotS a bit first. Also have the other dual boss fights to come back to, and apparently the abyss unlocked already (I had gotten the impression it was after the other NG+ modes).
I’m totally on board for the DLC to be a bunch of new levels/bosses along the same lines as the ones in the main game, so if they improve on that standard, so much the better.
First DLC (Dragon of the North) is down. I decided to dive right in to the first level rather than doing a bunch more WotS so I could at least get a sense of how much I needed to gear up. And it turned out to be fine – the level was a pretty manageable difficulty increase over the end of the main campaign, and it was fun to see new monster types. The long-neck guys in particular are fun to fight and fill a good niche.
The battle with Date Shigezane at the end, on the other hand, was a rude awakening, and is right up there in terms of kill count for me. But having come that far, I buckled in and learned his moves, and eventually prevailed. After that, the other two levels were much more manageable, though Maria was pretty tricky. Loving the new environments to explore, and amused to get an achievement just for listening to a boss talk.
I did go ahead and respec to a pure sword build, and you’re right that the damage increase isn’t all that huge even with putting 70 points into Heart – it looks like the scaling damage is always a flat amount for a given stat level, so as gear power keeps increasing, it comes to dominate the stat scaling, so I was probably better off sticking with the 20-in-everything build to hit the softcaps for character stats rather than trying to maximize scaling.
I was enjoying Nioh a whole lot until it started crashing repeatedly in the level I’m playing. I will go back eventually, but with Monster Hunter World around the corner, it could be a while.
There’s a trick to that first boss fight. You might try it in the rematch. If you stay at mid distance so he whiffs his attacks, you can quickly close to hit his arm once or twice while it floats out in front of him. That way you avoid all his spam attacks. You have to time it but you’re safe while you practice. It’s a unique way to fight a Soulsborne boss.
I thought Maria was pretty rough. Trying to dodge through her projectile shows just how tight the iframes are. (There’s a trick to that one too though!)
The base scaling may not be extreme, but you compound it when you reforge one of the weapon traits to Change to Attack: Heart or whatever stat you’re boosting. Combine that with combat damage increase and you will do 25% more damage without even getting into the tricky build stuff. Again, that may be a rabbit hole for later. Just an FYI.
@rhamorim did you try setting to Win7 compatibility like I suggested earlier?
Oh yeah, that’s what I wound up doing – learning the timing of his attack sequence and then queueing up an iai strike so his centipede arm would swing around into range right as it went off. Still had a bit of trouble with his second phase once he goes into living weapon form, but I just did the same and bursted him down. Also had no trouble with him on the rematch.
Yeah, I’d put her in the middle tier of difficulty for me – probably 6-8 deaths before I got her down. And the projectiles were the biggest problem at first, but once I started trying to dodge through them rather than to the side, I was okay.
Went back and did a few more of the dual boss fights as well. Those are crazy but fun.
Not yet, but I’m going to. Thanks!
The trick with Maria is you can actually sprint up next to her while she charges her projectile, then simply walk around her. The tracking can’t keep up.
I really appreciate some of these outside-the-box quirks and techniques in the boss fights given that I’m so burned out on the traditional dodge and counter approach.
And done! Wrapped up the other two DLCs, jumped straight to the end of WotS to unlock Way of the Demon.
The DLC remained really enjoyable all the way through, and I liked the new enemy types to fight. Still get a feeling of bemusement from some of the stuff other than the combat. Getting stopped cold by a rickety wooden fence feels increasingly silly after the first few dozen times, and the story remains hard to follow. I actually like the storytelling technique of encountering a boss, and then after defeating them getting a cutscene with some backstory as a breather, but I still kept forgetting who the sides were and what they were fighting about. As far as I can tell, you’re still helping the Tokugawa army, but Ieyasu was said to be serving his son for unclear reasons, and neither of them seemed to show up. Not sure why the Date switched sides between DLC 1 and 2. And my favorite was the stinger at the end of DLC2, with the DUN-DUN-DUN music and slow camera pan to dramatically reveal … some guy, I guess?
The game itself remained great though. Toward the end of the second DLC I found a full set of Dragon Ninja gear, and decided to respec to that. I was doing just fine with the sword, but holy crap did this respec kick things into overdrive. I went to 99 dex, and got all the kusarigama skills, and even tough enemies just melt away in one or two heavy combos. The Hayabusa-style kusarigama gets an inherent 20% damage boost, plus another damage boost from the 7-piece set. It’s so light that I went to A agility, and the set gives both extra iframes and a ki recovery bonus, so I’m just zipping all over the place, dodging through attacks, and never running out of ki. And lots of maxed out ninjutsu items round things out nicely. In particular, groundfire traps never got prioritized on my initial build, but they’re nuts, giving an easy knockdown and chance for final blow against most targets. For the rematch against the Sanada guy with the fire spear, I think he was supposed to bring in a helper when his health got low, but he was dead before he had the chance. Managed to do a fair number of the dual fights, as well as the Grand Tournament, though there are still a few left.
I went ahead and played one mission of WotD to see how it ramps up. Everything takes more hits and hits harder, as expected, but still entirely manageable with what I have. Looks like items go above 150 now, so I should probably stop enhancing the + level of the gear I’m using, since it will be replaced soon. Red-glowing guys with 5 different icons that I assume are mutators to their capabilities, though I have no idea how to interpret their meaning. Haven’t noticed too much else so far.
My plan was to take a break here and dive into Monster Hunter, but I’m still having lots of fun, so might keep it going a bit longer. Still have a few kodama that I missed the first time through. Definitely gotten way more than my money’s worth from this one (Steam says 100 hours, though a bit of that is certainly idling when I was pulled away by something or other.)
Nice, glad you liked it.
The reveals at the end of the DLC were more relevant when they weren’t all released yet. People were able to speculate who the characters were based on the well-known historical inspirations.
I never actually paid much attention to the mutators on the enemies. I know there are some that weaken your armor and other things. But dodging and hitting things with a sword always works!
The game is very addictive and it’s just going to keep ramping up from here. That means you could stop at any time, or you might be hooked until you’re done with the game. Hah! Each playthrough is much faster now that you can pick your favorite missions and complete enough to unlock the final mission. You should be able to finish through NG+5 and about 30 levels in the Abyss in 75-100 hours.
This is where loot gets finicky since you are increasing mission level so fast. Be aware that increasing the plus level of your gear costs the same throughout the plus levels, but increasing the base level becomes extremely expensive. So if you have a 180+10 sword and you soul match with a 200+11 you will blow just about all your cash.
There are two approaches: craft new set gear (the crafting level is set roughly to your current mission level) and then soul match with lower base level gear (that has higher plus levels) OR try to farm for gear in the bonus missions. If you can get by well enough to beat a few regions you will unlock Marobashi, for example. That’s an excellent farming mission because you fight all those human weapon masters and they have high base level gear.
Of course you have to reforge to get the nice gear traits. It’s all labor intensive so it behooves you to try to squeak by with minimal gear. The enemy power increase is significant so it’s a balancing act. I’m pretty sure I got away with one major gear crafting effort per NG level. I could be wrong.
Despite briefly dabbling with forum darlings du jour Monster Hunter World and Dead Cells, I keep being drawn back to this. Went through Way of the Demon pretty quickly, doing the dozen or so missions where I had missed a Kodama, and then rounding it out with some short sub-missions. Everything goes way faster when just running from fight to fight on the direct path to the boss (and rarely dying to boot), rather than poking around every nook and cranny.
Still rocking the Dragon Ninja / Hayabusa-style Kusarigama set, though I found an accessory that reduces set requirements, so I ditched the Dragon Sword for some other random set piece that gives a useful 2-piece passive. I did spring for one big reforging of the kusarigama from 150+9 up to 178+10, but otherwise have mostly ignored gear. I’m finding stuff around level 215 now, but my damage is still holding up fine. Figure at some point it will really fall off, and then it’ll be time to respec and try some other weapon entirely.
Best item in the game! All the fancy min-max builds are based around this. Some of them use three different sets.
Way of the Wise ramped the difficulty right back up again. No margin for error in most of the tougher fights, and a number of missions where I died dozens of times, or had to give up and use a branch to escape after getting nowhere on the boss repeatedly. But very satisfying at the same time – lots of close and thrilling battles that I barely scraped through. I didn’t come close to doing a full clear, though, and the attempts at the DLC areas didn’t get very far.
Spent substantial time using a spear, dual swords, and single sword, all of which are fun in their own way. Was surprised at how much use I was able to get out of the spear skill where you run forward spinning it wildly – it . seems like it would leave you open, but in practice it usually got some hits in and then kept running past the target by the time they got their attack off. Planning to respec into the remaining weapons once a really good ethereal one comes along.
Not sure how much more Way of the Nioh ramps things up, or if I’ll manage to finish it. I’m pretty sure once I step away I’ll never come back, so I’m trying to wrap things up, maybe get the last few achievements.
I think I posted above that Way of the Nioh didn’t feel like too much of a jump because I already had a pretty optimized build by then in Way of the Wise. I also probably burned a lot of amrita stones to power through some boss fights, though that’s never a guarantee anyway.
So you stuck with a consistent build all the way through then? Part of the issue may be that every ~25 item levels, I’ve been respeccing to use the best weapon I’ve found (and having to adjust to a totally different moveset), rather than trying to soul match my existing equipment up to par. I’ve generally reforged a few traits to fine-tune the new gear, but don’t have enough money/umbracite to get everything perfect, and am generally using two different 4-piece set bonuses rather than going for the 7-piece.
And for using amrita stones, you mean to refill the living weapon gauge? I haven’t tried that, but it might be worth a shot. I’ve mostly been relying on the 3 quick-change scrolls, with one living weapon per boss fight when victory seems within reach.
I don’t remember precisely. Maybe I geared up but kept the same build.
Yeah the stones will refill your gauge. Works ok if you get stuck on a boss and want to power through. You lose LW fast if you get hit though.
Finally wrapped up my WotN playthrough and the last few straggling achievements, and am ready to call it a day, at level 481 and with 170 hours on the clock. I don’t have any particularly novel insights from this last chunk – it was more of the same, but when “the same” is such a satisfying combat system, that’s just fine.
I was able to spend a good amount of time with each of the weapons, wrapping up with the tonfa. I’d say that the kusarigama and the sword were the most effective for me, with the axe and odachi being the worst (at least on higher difficulties, where it’s harder to stagger targets, and they punish you much more for slow attacks).
Now the long wait for Nioh 2.