Nioh 2

[NJClaw]

Does anyone have any tips for quickly boosting your damage. Is there more to it specific to higher difficulties than just upgrading your divine weapon to +10?

Dream of the Demon introduces two mechanics to drastically improve your character: divine graces and star effects.

Divine graces are fairly simple: every divine weapon and piece of armor that doesn't have an innate set bonus gains a grace, and whenever you equip two or more items with the same grace you gain its bonuses (just like any other set bonus). My favorites are Inari's Grace (+20% damage every time you buff your weapon with a talisman or an Oni-bi soul core) and Benzaiten's Grace (use six pieces of this one if you want to greatly improve your damage, Versatility is the best buff you can get through a set at this point in the game).

Star effects are just very strong special effects that can appear on any item (even accessories) but can't be tempered through the blacksmith. You have to get lucky with your drops or spend some time exchanging your accessories with the big sudama scattered around the world (the "tall" versions of the purple guy that exchanges your items). You can find a complete list of the available star effects for each item type here. To boost your damage, you can get melee damage vs zero-ki enemy and melee damage vs. [status] enemy (both go up to +20%) on both your accessories and melee damage/active skill damage/elemental weapon damage on your armor pieces.

To go through Dream of the Demon I used a sword/dual sword lightning build, with 5 pieces of Grace of Benzaiten (for Versatility), 4 pieces of Warrior of the West's Honor (for +15% melee damage vs electrified enemy), and +19.9% damage vs electrified/zero-ki on both my accessories. With two weapons it's easy to always keep your versatility stacks at 7-8-9, and you can easily melt any boss as soon as you break his ki.

 

[Wunderbar]

You have to get lucky with your drops or spend some time exchanging your accessories with the big sudama scattered around the world

are big sudamas worth meddling with on Dream of the strong? Each time i give him something, the guy just gives me some garbage like a lantern fruit in exchange.
Plus he nulifies +1 bonuses on items, making them regular lv 150-160 instead.

 

[NJClaw]

You have to get lucky with your drops or spend some time exchanging your accessories with the big sudama scattered around the world

are big sudamas worth meddling with on Dream of the strong? Each time i give him something, the guy just gives me some garbage like a lantern fruit in exchange.
Plus he nulifies +1 bonuses on items, making them regular lv 150-160 instead.

You have to drop two accessories (or soul cores) and he will give you back the first one with new special effects, while the second one disappears. You can also drop him weapons/pieces of armor, but he will give you a different one.

 

[Wunderbar]

You have to get lucky with your drops or spend some time exchanging your accessories with the big sudama scattered around the world

are big sudamas worth meddling with on Dream of the strong? Each time i give him something, the guy just gives me some garbage like a lantern fruit in exchange.
Plus he nulifies +1 bonuses on items, making them regular lv 150-160 instead.

You have to drop two accessories (or soul cores) and he will give you back the first one with new special effects, while the second one disappears. You can also drop him weapons/pieces of armor, but he will give you a different one.

i dropped two accessories, but he just took one and left the other one on the ground.

You can also drop him weapons/pieces of armor, but he will give you a different one.

i dropped a lv150 weapon with +2 modifier, and got a regular 150lv in exchange. Seems like a waste to me.

 

[NJClaw]

i dropped two accessories, but he just took one and left the other one on the ground.

That's very strange, never happened to me. Is it possible that one of them wasn't of divine rarity?

i dropped a lv150 weapon with +2 modifier, and got a regular 150lv in exchange. Seems like a waste to me.

I haven't rerolled many divine weapons because I didn't care much about their star effects, but in Dream of the Wise you can get stuff like Transform Bonus, Mystic Dyad, and Rarity Inheritance, and that's worth losing a random weapon + value.

 

[Wunderbar]

Just noticed that i've been playing the whole game with mystic art switched off

 

[cvv]

Just noticed that i've been playing the whole game with mystic art switched off

Just as me. Just as one streamer I watched.
Is there anyone who didn't do that?

 

[Sheepherder]

I fucking love the Axe. Still on New Game, and Axes were starting to feel a bit lackluster, but then I figure out how to apply the custom skill modifiers from the Samurai skill tree and now everything is great once more. Axes are so much fun to use.
I run around in the low stance and whack enemies with Rumbling Earth every chance I get - this deletes their stamina, then once they're out, I go into high stance and delete their health. It's great.

Best feeling was when I finally managed to consistently defeat the bird demon and the titty snake without getting hit. They gave me so much grief before.

The demon bosses are fun. Human bosses, not so much.

 

[Wunderbar]

Minamoto No Yorimitsu's grab attack animations are pretty cool.

Spoiler

 

[Lyric Suite]

Just noticed that i've been playing the whole game with mystic art switched off

Not as bad as me as going through 70% of DS3 before realizing there was such a thing as weapon arts lmao.

 

[Suicidal]

After killing the odachi wizard optional boss in 3 attempts on normal and 1 attempt on Strong, I spent a good 2-3 hours fighting him on Demon. A lot of his attacks are actually pretty hard to deal with and because I couldn't just rush him down this time I had to learn all of this shit.

 

[Correct_Carlo]

Doing the DLC for the first time on NG+. I'm using a poison spear + ninjitsu build, with unlimited ninjitsu on all my gear, plus the stuff that increases accumulation (poison and burn) damage. It works very well. I don't bother with poisoning my weapon, I have poison accumulation buffs on some of my gear, so 1 to 2 poison shuriken is enough to poison everything I need to poison. The same poison damage buffs also work with fire, so I set shit on fire with bombs as much as possible too. I also have +melee against poisoned enemies increases as well, but probably not as many as I should. I literally never, ever, use shinobi boxes, so I have thousands. I should rightly just replace all the unlimeted ninjitsu with damage buffs and rely on Shinobi Boxes to replenish, but my unlimited ninjitsu is so high I can lob shit endlessly.

I liked the DLC fine. It's not as good as Nioh 1's, but it has lots of bosses, which is nice. I just finished the Dragon Clan 1v1 fight, and holy shit. That was insanely difficult. I had to mix up my ninjitsu multiple times and try different strategies. The fucker jumps all over, so it's incredibly difficult to poison him. I eventually figured out that if you lay a groundfire trap, it will explode and knock him down. Then you can quickly fire 3 poison shrukens into him while he's on the ground and poison him. After that, I just run around like an idiot and toss bombs at him whenever he stops to fire off his lame wind spell that has no reach.

Two rounds of poisoning and some bombs later and he went down. This was the best fight so far in the entire game. I love fights that are so difficult that you have to try different strategies and get creative.

Doing a 100% achievement run, so I have the final DLC to finish, then I need to rush through NG++ to prepare for "Against All Comers," which is the final achievement.

 

[Wunderbar]

"Against All Comers"

this mission made me realize that i've been brute-forcing through a game with a shit build.

Struggled with a double Otakemaru fight (i think it's a penultimate wave?) for hours. Fuck it, i'll just grind some equipment on DotW.

 

[Wunderbar]

Still not sure why devs bothered with dream of the strong/demon/wise. It's just a filler between the main campaign and the endgame, it does nothing except pad out the game and withhold the good stuff (build wankery). Everyone beelines dots/dotd/dotw straight to Otakemaru anyway. Was it to sell DLCs and keep the game in a sort-of live service mode for a year?

 

[Suicidal]

I'm playing DotW right now and it feels much less of a filler than the previous 2 modes. The difficulty of the fights skyrocketed (I'm struggling a lot on bosses I've been killing in 1-2 tries until now) and the new orange gear tier made finding new item drops exciting again. I'm planning on playing through all the mission on this difficulty and then giving the game a rest because from what I've read the last difficulty doesn't have any changes to enemy and boss behavior and I'm not very interested in grinding the underworld dungeons.

Looking forward to fighting the Lightning God for 5 hours. I struggled with that boss even on normal and I haven't played the DLC missions on Strong and Demon so I've forgotten all about them and their bosses.

 

[Wunderbar]

Suicidal i think DotN worth checking out, it introduces yet another type of graces, as well as "plus" sets (i.e. regular sets like Warrior of the West or Valiant Wanderer now have a new eight bonus, usually it's something new like Ultimate courage, Mystic dyad, etc).

 

[Suicidal]

Suicidal i think DotN worth checking out, it introduces yet another type of graces, as well as "plus" sets (i.e. regular sets like Warrior of the West or Valiant Wanderer now have a new eight bonus, usually it's something new like Ultimate courage, Mystic dyad, etc).

I know about that but I'm more interested in fighting the enhanced version of enemies and bosses than creating the perfect build. As far as I know, DotW is the last difficulty that makes any changes to how the enemies behave.

Also, with how little damage I am currently doing, I doubt DotN will be feasible for me unless I first optimize my build and grind for the perfect item bonuses, which I'm not very interested in. DotW is already testing the limits of my endurance because some bosses can take me up to 5 minutes of non stop fighting during which I can die instantly if I mis-time a dodge or run out of stamina at the wrong moment. I already considering quitting first on the owl, then on the tentacle house and recently on Yoshitsune.

 

[Deflowerer]

Still not sure why devs bothered with dream of the strong/demon/wise. It's just a filler between the main campaign and the endgame, it does nothing except pad out the game and withhold the good stuff (build wankery). Everyone beelines dots/dotd/dotw straight to Otakemaru anyway. Was it to sell DLCs and keep the game in a sort-of live service mode for a year?

I focus on one or two weapons per playthrough, so I don't beeline at all.

 

[Correct_Carlo]

I beeline. You get much higher level equipment just from beating the first mission of the next NG+ cycle than you will get from playing through every single mission of your current NG+ cycle. You can spend mission after mission grinding out your weapon and armor, or just play one mission and level it to the basleline of the next NG+ cycle pretty much instantly. You'll also get insane amrita from the first few missions, so will level like 3x per mission at first.

You really only need to level your gear enough in your current mission cycle to beat Otakemaru, which isn't hard. You will likely have strong enough gear to beat him the instant he unlocks. It does make replaying NG+ cycles kind of boring, though, as you will end up replaying the same sequence of early game missions over and over on each cycle. I wish they'd unlock everything at the start, except for Otakemaru, so that you can pick and choose which missions you want to play to unlock him.

 

[Suicidal]

Lightning God took me like 3 hours instead of 5, but this is the first boss I couldn't beat without preparing counter shit and blowing through half of my supply of herbal remedies. To be fair I did beat it within 5 tries after I started using proper countermeasures (anti-lightning talismans, anti-status consumables). The fight is ridiculous on DotW without using items. You get hit once, you're most likely dead. And many of his attacks are very difficult to dodge, especially considering that most of the fight takes place in darkness and you run out of stamina really fast.

Unfortunately I'm very stubborn regarding consumable use and it took a few hours of sodomizing to make me correct my dumbass habits.

 

[Suicidal]

Aaaand I did it. Thought Nightmare Bringer would take me 10 hours but using fire + water + lightning resistance talismans made the fight very manageable. Playing through the game on DotW made me realize how shit I was at dodging because up until this point I kinda brute forced everything by stunlocking bosses and face tanking hits. On this difficulty I had to re-learn how to play the game, because I could no longer kill any boss by just constantly attacking and draining their stamina and face tanking 2-3 hits meant death. They really should have made stunlocking harder on normal difficulty as well.

Maybe I'll check out a bit of DotN but I'm ready to give the game a rest for now, and come back later, try a different build. Still, this is one of the very rare games that made me play for so much after having completed it once.

 

[Deflowerer]

Hatchets are gut:

 

[HoboForEternity]

I beat the 2nd story mission. It's pretty good. Maining glaive and hatchets cos new weapons. So far its far better than than the first. The new system is cool and you can attune to different yokais.


Burst counter is cool, but too easy to pull off? Can't really judge because i am only few hours in. Apparently it's harder than the first game, but i find the early parts of nioh 2 is easier than early part of nioh. That could be because i remember the mechanics well from nioh 1 and still have muscle memory of it i guess.

 

[HoboForEternity]

so when does this get hard? or it's generally just easier with all the new toys you can play with? i am in the 3rd region and just killed the owl boss. burst counters are pretty much OP and not that hard to do. yokai abilities get me out of many pinches. i killed a lot of bosses in the first time including the owl one.

finally fully committed to switchglaive and the shift sticks and have omyo build. spells like laser melee beam is pretty OP.

but still top notch action game IMO. the combat is even more satisfying even though it's easier.

 

[Suicidal]

so when does this get hard? or it's generally just easier with all the new toys you can play with? i am in the 3rd region and just killed the owl boss. burst counters are pretty much OP and not that hard to do. yokai abilities get me out of many pinches. i killed a lot of bosses in the first time including the owl one.

finally fully committed to switchglaive and the shift sticks and have omyo build. spells like laser melee beam is pretty OP.

but still top notch action game IMO. the combat is even more satisfying even though it's easier.

People are pretty split on the difficulty of this game. Some say it's easier than the first, for others it's harder. I think it depends a lot on build/playstyle/experience with the first Nioh. Even minor things like type of guardian spirit can impact the difficulty a lot, cause each one has a different type of burst counter that can be easier/harder to perform under specific situations. For example, I used the red guardian spirit that has the burst counter where you have to backhand an enemy as it's charging up its burst attack. On some enemies, it was impossible for me to do, because the charge up animation was too quick or they did it outside of my attack range and then lunged at me, so I had to have either pixel-perfect reaction time to interrupt them mid lunge (which is extremely fast) or predict the attack in advance. So because I used this spirit, some of the bosses for me were harder than they probably were for a lot of people.

Personally, I found Nioh 1 easier than 2 (if we don't count the ridiculously unbalanced DLCs, but in this case Nioh 1 is significantly harder than any other 3rd person action game I've ever played). In 2 I struggled with more bosses than I did in 1 and 2 also has a lot more dangerous normal enemies with complex movesets.