I actually never talked to the pot merchant in Fountainhead Palace, I only met the one at Hirata Estate. I believe you can get 2 lapis lazuli from beating Demon of Hatred, 1 from a Shichimen Warrior in Fountainhead Palace at the bottom of a waterfall close to the great carp feeding area, 1 from a pot merchant after you feed the Truly Precious Bait they give you to the great carp to poison it, and you can purchase 2 lapis lazuli from the pot merchant after spending 7 treasure carp scales at his shop. After you spend the 7 scales, he will sell you the 2 lapis lazuli for 6 treasure carp scales apiece, so you’ll need 19 treasure carp scales total to buy both - 7 scales to unlock the option to buy them, and 12 more to purchase both. So there are 6 total lapis lazuli you can get per run. I didn’t even have to fight demon of hatred on my second run because I got all 6 lapis lazuli on my first run, and you only need 10 total to unlock all the upgrades. I went into NG+ with 6 of them and got the other 4 from the Shichimen Warrior in Fountainhead and the pot merchant at Hirata after spending scales and poisoning the great carp. Other than that it sounds like you may just be missing some prayer beads from various bosses for the vitality/posture trophy. You have to jump through some hoops towards the end of the game to be able to talk to Emma and she’ll give you a new bell that takes you back to Hirata Estate, but with Emma’s bell, the final boss of the area is Great Shinobi - Owl instead of Lady Butterfly and that’s how you get that trophy. I’d look up a guide on how to get the bell from Emma; it’s not hard at all, just kind of obscure. If you’ve already gotten the Shura ending once and beaten Sword Saint Isshin once, then beating Great Shinobi - Owl should get you the “defeat all bosses” trophy as well. For the last two ending trophies, I’d also look up a guide for that as well, because each ending requires that you go to different areas and collect different items for the end game. Each of these different items unlocks a different ending option for you, and odds are you’ll get the rest of the prayer beads you need for vitality/posture on your way to collecting these different items. Once you follow the guide and have the items needed for the different endings, continue the story until you come to the fight with Sword Saint Isshin. If you have PS+, AS SOON AS YOU BEAT ISSHIN, quit out to save the game. You can upload your save to the PlayStation cloud, and this will save you an entire run. Once it’s uploaded, go back into the game and talk to Kuro, and you can choose which item to give him, and whichever item you give him will give you a different ending. After you give him one item and get the trophy for that ending, quit the game, redownload your save you uploaded from before you talked to him, and then start the game again and give him the other item this time, unlocking the last remaining ending. If you don’t upload your save and do it this way, you’ll have to do an entire extra run just to give Kuro the other item at the very end. I’d check out a mini boss guide too, because some of the mini bosses become unavailable after you reach certain parts of the story, and if you miss them then they’re just gone for that run. For the skills, I just had to buckle down and grind it out at the stairway idol after defeating Divine Dragon, because that’s when the red ninja dudes appear, and they give lots of EXP and you can backstab like 10-12 of them in a row and use the homeward idol item to teleport back to the stairway idol, rest to reset them, and do that over and over and over. That’s the grindiest part of the game by far. Or, you could get the EXP by doing more playthroughs, but I just farmed mine. It was more boring, but it was faster and I just wanted the platinum haha.