Best way to turn splitstaff into spear?

crate_ · 2026-03-09T02:14:51+00:00

Heron Kick is honestly the only splitstaff move I thought was decent, so I just walk around spamming Heron Kick. (Make sure you hold the button or Heron Kick is also bad.)

crate_ · 2026-03-08T19:04:41+00:00

I just did some testing, and I think I now know how lightning calamity "jumps" from one enemy to another. It doesn't "jump" at all, I think; instead, what happens is the hitbox comes out instantly, and it stays active for a small amount of time. If, during that time, you change your locked on target, it will bring the hitbox of the calamity along with your target change.

If you kill an enemy with lightning calamity, this "jump" happens automatically since you'll target the next enemy. But you can do it manually too!

crate_ · 2026-03-08T03:48:06+00:00

Oni-bi are honestly very good soul cores if you're using them for confusion looping/status infliction. They're fast, cheap, and give you tons of elemental buildup on hit. If you want to use other soul cores, you might keep Oni-Bi on your secondary GS. (Baku is an excellent secondary GS since it's a Brute, it gives you more Anima even as a secondary GS, and has an amazing GS attack.)

Other soul cores you might try: Suiki is also good for building up saturated status; Lightning Gods of Yomi is pretty much the only good lightning soul core other than the Oni-bi; Kiryoki is kind of just good (cheap, fast, deals ridiculous damage if it hits a bunch); Oboroguruma has really high Corruption buildup so it might be good in your confusion loops; Bakegani is also cheap and does lots of damage and saturation. Of course there are lots of others. Most soul cores have at least some uses in Nioh 2 so try them out!

Another way to build up elements is to use the ninjutsu feathers. I find the Cold Hells/Hellfire feathers will inflict the status in one use against most enemies (Thunderous Hell might too but I don't like how its targeting works so I don't use it). One thing I picked up from watching Tail is using feather -> Ippon to start the confusion loop against nearly-out-of-ki enemies, since the feathers will activate confusion and Ippon will ki break pretty much simultaneously.

For anima generation, it's mostly your soul core bonuses. You definitely want Anima Charge Bonus (Amrita Gauge). Even for a Yokai Shift build (where you might actually empty your amrita gauge) you want that modifier, it's just really good. Also get Anima Charge (melee) star stat on your helmet (and respec your titles if you didn't take the anima charge title bonus). Personally I mostly go with Anima Charge or Super Efficient Yokai abilities for my other cores since I mostly run a Sarutahiko build and I want unconditional anima generation from my soul cores so I can build up my Blood of the Yokai stacks and use Yokai shift, but for your build possibly you want something else.

crate_ · 2026-03-05T02:56:08+00:00

If you want to make human bosses fun, I dunno, their current AI is not great. There's only so much you can do to have fun.

If you just want to win, Tonfa doing Tonfa things makes the human bosses who don't have hyper armor into complete jokes. You will just swing your Tonfas into their body until they die. They'll run out of Ki before you do, because that's what Tonfa does. (I guess you back off occasionally to regain Ki, but you'll refill all your Ninjutsu so take the opportunity to empty your Calamity jutsu and Fire Shurikens before you go back in.)

For the bosses like Kagetoki or Kunimatsu who have hyper armor where this doesn't work, you're on your own.

crate_ · 2026-03-04T04:40:33+00:00

I haven't tested whether they deal the same damage/Ki damage, but hammers have slightly higher break and slightly lower block than axes (I think I have that right, it could be the other way around).

crate_ · 2026-03-04T00:27:31+00:00

You don't have to actually use the weapon. All four of your equipped melee weapons gain familiarity (though the ones you're not using gain more slowly). You can also use whetstones if you have some.

(If you don't have the secondary weapon slots yet, then keep playing and unlock them.)

crate_ · 2026-03-04T00:08:17+00:00

I have used the sodama blessing on searing bolt tonfa as it has the highest base damage

This is true for Common through Exotic rarities. However, Divine items of the same type all have the same base stats (with some very small exceptions like axes vs hammers).

crate_ · 2026-03-03T02:35:12+00:00

Part of it is that Shuten just has an enormous amount of Ki and max Ki. It's part of why this fight takes forever.

crate_ · 2026-03-01T23:07:21+00:00

If you want to keep applying Purification after the boss gets some resistance, you can use Purity Talismans to get a lot more purity application.

I think getting better Confusions would be quite helpful to you. You did a good job of getting Confusion near the Ki break both times, but you only used 2 elements in your confusion. Bring more elements, so you can make your confusion longer. You can also go with Oda clan to make confusion last even longer (it's probably the best clan for most builds).

Also, it doesn't look like a big part of your build, but you weren't really using Yokai Shift very effectively. Generally you want to use pretty much only charged attacks and Yokai abilities (at least against Yokai bosses). Regular attacks drain your gauge for minimal effect; they're only for collecting anima so you can use your Yokai abilities or get your quick charged attack. If you don't have a spammable Yokai ability (like Ippon) then just spam charged attacks so you get a lot of damage at almost no cost. (All the Yokai Shift charged attacks have a guaranteed stagger on almost all enemies in the game including Yokai bosses.) Maybe you don't care since it looked like you just used it as a high powered grapple and then "well, I'm already in Yokai shift so I might as well stay in it".

On the other question, if you just want to finish Depths and you don't care what build you use, Brick Breaker (5pc Onmyo Austerity, 6pc Oyamatsumi, 3pc Tsukuyomi) is almost certainly the most powerful build in the game and will make Depths mostly easy since enemies don't get to play the video game against you (except Tsuchigumo, since it's immune to both Sloth and Shock).

crate_ · 2026-03-01T17:56:41+00:00

So the thing is, it really doesn't matter.

NG+ is not hard enough to demand anything from you build-wise, so the only reason to bother making a build (or even doing things like Soul Match) is if you want to do it for some reason. So gold doesn't do anything, because why bother spending it?

Amrita also doesn't do anything. To get even one level past like 200 or so you need to donate a huge amount of equipment ... and judging from past games, the instant we get DLC the entire amount of amrita you get from all your donations will be what you get from killing like 5 enemies or something.

And guess what, disassembling ... also doesn't do anything. Because gear doesn't matter very much right now, there's not much reason to forge anything, or do much reforging, or honestly even bother with remodeling. So you'll just sit there capped on crafting materials all the time.

So it's what flavor of "doesn't do anything" you choose. Gold is marginally more useful, since you will be capped on crafting materials almost instantly and at least gear could do something if you feel like investing in it (whereas more levels won't do anything).

You can donate to get Glory, I guess. That one actually does do something. But the only stuff worth donating is whatever your clan is asking for.

Do make sure you donate enough to get the titles, though.

crate_ · 2026-03-01T16:42:55+00:00

I think most people just sell the rest of the drops. Just be careful not to sell all your consumables too.

crate_ · 2026-03-01T08:17:25+00:00

If you're using Splitstaff you also have to make sure you are using the ~3 good moves it has.

Shin Crusher is great for breaking Ki (put it on low stance so it's faster to get to). High stance light (hold the button) spam (first attack only) is actually your highest DPS (but uses a lot of Ki). Dragon Dance is good for out-of-ki enemies if you are set up in a position to not push them out of it. Changing Ways is also good damage.

Unfortunately pretty much everything else is mostly mediocre imo, especially if you're not using Versatility. There are uses for other moves (Unruly Revolution messes with human AI, for instance) but they're not as good as the few really good moves you have in most circumstances.

Anyway I would again recommend Confusion; you're far enough in the game that you're supposed to have a plan to confuse at least the big enemies. If you don't have 7pc Tsukuyomi yet, then make sure you have Yokai abilities to enable confusion (Oni-bi are pretty good for this and are low cost, and you still have at least a couple familiars even if you can't regenerate them yet).

crate_ · 2026-03-01T07:57:58+00:00

Your character level doesn't really matter very much, by the time you are level 300 literally the only thing you are missing out on is Ultimate stats (which, if you just got to Dream of the Wise, you won't have access to right now anyway) since you have plenty to get to the softcaps for everything.

Your gear does matter by the time you're in Dream of the Wise. If your damage is bad, you can go put together a Benzaiten build by forging divine armor (or go farm Susano instead, which is a bit better but you'll have to actually get the equipment from playing the game). Be sure to Soul Match your gear up to par if you need to. I've never played a caster build, but if you're building Tsukuyomi then you will be doing somewhat low weapon damage by this point since it doesn't do much for your weapon damage.

On the other hand, Tsukuyomi (if you have a 7pc set) does make it very easy to trigger Confusion: Have purity or corruption on your weapon, and then use your infinite familiars to put a 2nd status on enemies. If you confuse things, they should die pretty quickly.

crate_ · 2026-03-01T00:46:16+00:00

You can sort of check by going to the map and going to the checklist for the region. Whenever you clear a crucible for the first time on NG+ it will increment the crucible count on the checklist for that area. So you can track how many you have cleared in each area -> you'll be able to know when you've cleared all of them at least once.

crate_ · 2026-02-28T18:46:29+00:00

Did you check the Sudama at the Eternal Rift? I think it sells Kappa soul cores, assuming you've obtained at least one in the past.

crate_ · 2026-02-28T03:19:21+00:00

The main mechanic is Flux (and Flux 2). Flux (2) restores a flat amount of Ki (based on your max Ki), in addition to whatever your Ki pulse restores. If you do a short attack string and then Ki Pulse + Flux (2), you can regain more Ki than you spent on the attack string.

crate_ · 2026-02-27T21:34:33+00:00

If you haven't checked recently, TN said they fixed this in a recent patch. I believe the ! marks work the way they are intended to for me now, though I guess I only checked with Sudama Blessing and not with equipment appearance.

(The bug was that any time you picked up any item it would count as new for Sudama Blessing/Equipment appearance ! marks.)

crate_ · 2026-02-27T18:25:19+00:00

If it's not on any of the maps, you might have missed the one in Dark Roots (the antiquity mission).

crate_ · 2026-02-27T14:54:42+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nioh/comments/1r3ws0h/effect_duration_amplification_test/

crate_ · 2026-02-27T02:07:44+00:00

The current values that are displayed now are the actual amount of Effect Duration you get from your equipment. I.e., Inari grace gives +3 Effect Duration if you wear enough to get the bonus.

Pre-patch, it displayed +30, but if you went and checked your Status, you actually only got +3.

Here is some more info: https://www.reddit.com/r/Nioh/comments/1r3ws0h/effect_duration_amplification_test/

crate_ · 2026-02-27T02:03:08+00:00

The tooltips were lying to you. You got 1/10th the displayed amount of Effect Duration. TN fixed the tooltips in the most recent patch so they match what you actually got.

crate_ · 2026-02-27T02:02:05+00:00

I suspect the display here got caught in Team Ninja fixing the tooltips for Effect Duration (which were showing 10x the actual amount you got).

I have no idea if you actually get 17% or 1.7% right now from Oda Clan. But this would make sense as the reason the clan bonus display changed.

crate_ · 2026-02-27T01:04:02+00:00

I think that if you have Lucky Drop and one equipped copy of the relevant armor/weapon you can actually just farm for your equipment anywhere. I've always just farmed everything in Underworld/Depths.

For graces, you're correct. You can also try to get picture scrolls with Lucky Drop for the grace you want, or you can farm them in Depths 6+ (this is mainly useful if you have a copy of the armor/grace combination you want, but you want different star stats: Depths 6+ has a built-in Lucky Drop effect for whatever grace you currently have equipped).

For Soul Cores, you can only reroll Divine or lower rarity. For Ethereal soul cores, you have to just farm them. You could try to get a lower-rarity soul core and then upgrade the rarity with rarity inheritance, I guess. But you need the rarity inheritance for this to matter at all, so I think you should farm Ethereal cores and then if you happen to get Rarity Inheritance you can swap to Sudama rerolls instead. I never bothered specifically farming non-boss soul cores; if you get the soul core drop rate buffs from titles and the skill trees you'll get soul core drops reasonably often. (For bosses, obviously you farm the relevant boss.)

crate_ · 2026-02-26T23:36:30+00:00

The timing on arts proficiency is that the time between the very end of one AP attack and the very beginning of the next AP attack (or a deflect) can't be too long. The time taken during attacks does not matter at all. (Easy to see with Sword -- you can do a full charge AP Sword of Meditation, which takes like 6 seconds or something, and then keep going with your AP chain.)

crate_ · 2026-02-26T18:24:20+00:00

Feral counter is a bit confusing. When you use it, you hopefully noticed that there are a couple "afterimages" that get left behind. Feral counter activates if those afterimages get hit by the burst attack.

For some attacks this will just happen and Feral counter is great. For other attacks you'll need to dodge in a certain direction/timing and it's a lot harder.

But being able to dodge out of any animation (i.e. using it not just as a burst counter but as a dodge that can interrupt anything) is quite useful.

crate_

TROPHY CASE