I thought the first DLC would be more challenging than this. It's not like I even got far into NG+, only the second mission to get enough divine stuff to make new armour. Maybe a bit overlevelled from farming for text drops, but...
Yeah, definitely no Nioh level difficulty spike (I was DEFINITELY overlevelled when the DLC first came out and I forgot subsequent runs).
Oh that means I can go right into it after beating the main game.
I just farmed the second to last boss for a while to get texts. Almost have everything I want. Also started tackling those interim missions.
I found Restless Spirits pretty easy. I actually farmed the Revenants there for a bit since I found one that had DLC gear like Otakemaru’s dual swords.
Disgusted, but not surprisedHere I am trying to not mention any of the DLC stuff and you start talking about its equipment.
Otakemaru's gear confuses the hell out of me. It buffs corruption but it has elemental effects...
But yeah, you can just go straight into DLC. As I said, I'm probably a bit overlevelled—150's—but I've also dumped myself down to C Agility and I'm not touching onmyo or ninjutsu at all, so this is way below optimal. My gear's like 160+2, so that's also a bit overlevelled but the DLC itself drops Divine stuff with +'s on it, so that's fine for upping stuff. Darkness In The Capital will probably be a bit harder and I know the boss fights in The First Samurai will be.
Edited by RainehDaze on May 28th 2021 at 7:16:57 PM
Still haven't gotten to that last mission yet. I've been farming for various things and grinding the Dual Sword instead for that last side mission. On the way I also finished the last Dojo mission for Onmyo as well. Trying to fight a gauntlet of enemies including an Onryoki at the end was an experience.
I decided I might as well multitask and leveled up Dual Sword proficiency by using my new dual swords mentioned in my earlier post against the second to last boss so I could get some more farming for texts done too. Doing this, it didn't take too long to get proficiency up to 120,000.
So by the time I finished that one sidequest, I ended up getting three achievements — one for getting a Mystic Art for Onmyo, one for getting a Mystic Art for Dual Sword, and one for getting all of the Guardians in the base game (the one from the sidequest was the last one I needed).
Edited by M84 on May 30th 2021 at 2:54:49 AM
Disgusted, but not surprisedThought I'd do The Blue-Eyed Samurai a few times to get basic proficiency with a sword. Accidentally selected Calamity Pulse instead... as I thought, doing that with a weapon you don't have any skills for or the ideal stats is pretty bad. First two bosses? Fine. The third one that spawns? Much more painful.
Alright, beat Otakemaru. Due to a combo of having an unusually powerful Blue Phantom and being overleveled, the fight was a cakewalk. Bit of a letdown, but at least it was cool. Gonna farm it for more of his Soul Cores and more Smithing Texts. Divine stuff drops too, which is nice for the fragments.
I respecced some to get 99 Stamina so I could equip Tatenashi without going into C Agility. So far I'm liking it. I'll probably forge Divine versions of it once I get more Divine Fragments. I've already forged a Divine Shuten Doji's Club and a Divine Firefly Blade.
Out of curiosity, I forged a set of Birthright armor to see if I could equip it and still be in B Agility. Even with 99 Stamina and 40+ Strength I was over 70%, so no go. I guess maybe you need to have 99 in both Stamina and Strength to get it down to below 70%, so that's gonna take a while.
Edited by M84 on May 30th 2021 at 4:18:04 PM
Disgusted, but not surprisedOh, I can probably avoid messing with super high stamina then. I'm just using it as a placeholder because it's cool and I haven't really thought about armour sets yet.
Also, "I used a blue phantom and it was easy"? Yes, putting it on easy mode does that. Go do Calamity Pulse without using phantom cheese.
Otherwise, though, yeah. It's a cool fight, and I like that Tokichiro is back to being, well, Tokichiro without the stone corruption. Rounds everything off the way it started (and neatly deals with the Nioh 1 plot).
I'll try it without a Phantom once I get the Texts I really want, like the Lightning Odachi and the Fire Axe. I'm just using a Phantom to speed things up a bit.
On a side note, it's kind of funny how much of the last level you can just run past to get to the boss. Not that I mind, of course.
Edited by M84 on May 30th 2021 at 4:32:04 PM
Disgusted, but not surprisedRemember that the mission's actually really straightforward to run through. Ahead down the stairs, drop down in the dark realm, keep going forward to the platforms outside, up and into the house then up through that, run past shrieking lady, use shrine. No need to actually stop and do anything to get to the end.
Why must you edit that in whilst I'm writing the post.
Edited by RainehDaze on May 30th 2021 at 9:32:33 AM
Yeah, I knocked Gozuki into the water too. Actually, Mumyo and William did while they were beating the shit out of him.
Mezuki didn't go into water, but he did fall down the cliff so I had to jump down after him to finish him off.
I'm actually kind of surprised the devs didn't stick another dual encounter with them in the last level.
Edited by M84 on May 30th 2021 at 4:42:03 PM
Disgusted, but not surprisedAlright, fought Otakemaru a few times solo. Not by choice mind you — there just weren't any available Blue Phantoms.
Still pretty easy. I'm really over-leveled at this point. I haven't even gone full cheese and forged a Divine version of my Tatenashi set yet.
Still farming him to get the Lightning Odachi text. I think at this point I've gotten almost every text from him but that one. At this point I quit and start over if I don't get at least one text from him.
Edit:
Just looked up his text drops. Nope, I've still got a long way to go before I get everything from him.
Edited by M84 on May 30th 2021 at 9:08:17 PM
Disgusted, but not surprisedOtakemaru's soul core Broke the game entirely on launch. 3 elements at once, easy confusion debuffs on enemies, and damage in the thousands per hit.
It has been nerfed to still be relatively top tier but not gamebreaking since.
Watch SymphogearYep.
Ironcially, his stronger form might have a worse Soul Core, from what I recall.
Watch SymphogearBack to voicelines.
You know how I mentioned Shuten Doji's unique in that his Soul Core voiceline is in regular human speech? It's notable that the other two Yokai who speak using regular human speech in the game, Lady Osakabe and Otakemaru in his Kashin Koji guise, use Yokai Speech in their Soul Core voicelines.
Disgusted, but not surprised

Yeah, Yoshiie's Birthright. The effects aren't super amazing as sets go but it's pretty nice for tankiness and it supports guarding and timed guards, so it's pretty nice for odachi builds. Very heavy, though. I bought a bunch of eyes using glory to make sure I could smith it with +1's so I won't have to do any armour replacement for a while (just soul match everything up).
It's amusing how much Genji-related stuff you can wear seeing as the Saito claim descent from the Fujiwara.
Edited by RainehDaze on May 27th 2021 at 7:34:51 PM