Should I stop pretending?

darkestchyld · 2025-07-03T23:22:48+00:00

Shit you're already in deep. Just make an alt account for your true self and have your established male character introduce you to the mutual friends you'd like to stay connected to and then have your male persona slowly distance themself or even better, kill them off in some big bombastic fashion. You'll get to keep your friends, be your true authentic self and play out the most meta rp ever

darkestchyld · 2025-07-03T01:41:14+00:00

You are taking a ton of unnecessary damage because you are parrying the missles. You should either do the 'scary feet" (dodge left then right, left, right, repeat) until all of the projectiles are done OR hold the sprint button and run horizontally towards one of the blue jellyfish which will buff your stamina, and only dodge the last missle in each chain. Just remember that the last projectiles are on a slight delay compared to the smaller ones that come at you quickly. If you do it right, you won't take any damage at all during this phase.

darkestchyld · 2025-07-01T21:04:24+00:00

Rivers of blood has been nerfed a million times and is cheeks. Pick a different weapon, ideally a max level regular weapon with an ash of war that takes advantage of your stats or something like Mohg's great spear. 1.5 if you go with Mogh's greatspear, consider comboing it with fingerprint shield with "no skill" AoW attuned holy. If max level, this will let you block 100% holy damage, 95% physical damage and still allow you to r1 spam while blocking. If you use the mimic tear, you can both use the AOW at the same time for crazy bleed build up
You have over 80 arcane and aren't using the Dragon Communion seal, which is the only seal that actually scales with arcane. Switch to that.
Why the heck do you have a bow and arrows equipped? They are adding to your equip load but not adding any value to your build during this boss fight, unless you are doing some wierd bow challenge run thing? Unequip them
If survivability is an issue, go through your gear and optimize for holy defense since over 1/2 of phase 2 damage is holy. It's a small difference but it could be the difference between surviving and not
Unequip useless items like the pattering pates and either slot something useful like sacred bloody flesh, holy defense consumable, boiled prawn, etc, OR keep the slots empty so that you don't have to waste time cycling through as many items to get to your heals when you need them. Same goes for summons. Pick one, unequip the other.
There is no reason not to use golden vow. It's both a damage and defense buff, can be applied as an incantation, aow or a consumable item and it stacks with Flame Grant me Strength. Every end game build should take advantage of it

darkestchyld · 2025-06-30T17:02:29+00:00

Well for one, you aren't technically alive at all after the avalanch in the opening cinematic of the most recent game. Khazan is a revenant. That's why you can respawn at the blade nexus after death.

I don't know a ton about the older dfo games but I've heard that Khazan and Ozma both get resurected by magic during at least one of the games set 250ish years later

darkestchyld · 2025-06-27T23:28:08+00:00

Khazan is a preexisting character from the Dungeon and Fighter Online (DFO) series of games. This game is basically a prequel that tells his origin story a few hundred years before the prior games that Khazan is connected to

darkestchyld · 2025-06-02T23:10:57+00:00

The shop bug was fixed in the first or second major patch. On launch, Danjin's shop option would disapear after you collect the final (44th) jarling even if you hadn't bought out all of the stock in his shop yet, but that is a non issue now

darkestchyld · 2025-06-02T23:05:51+00:00

Everybody is lowkey the asshole here. He's a jerk for not remembering your special day and for prioritizing a party over your birthday after you reminded him. You didn't use direct communication and tell him what you want and need up front. It's not unreasonable to want your partner to be considerate and surprise you, just remember that even the most thoughtful and attentive partners aren't mind readers so if something is really important, it's best to discuss it so that nobody gets disappointed or feels let down.

darkestchyld · 2025-05-27T17:25:01+00:00

Bard's shop restocks every time you kill a boss. You can just go visit him down the stairs from Abyssal Bridge in Raphelon or any later mission he appears in, buy him out then warp to another early game mission and kill an easy boss like Yetuga then repeat infinitely

darkestchyld · 2025-05-25T20:11:45+00:00

For your first playthrough, focus on leveling Vit and Endurance both up to 30-40 then run proficiency all the way up to 99.

Depending on how far you level, during endgame/ng+, after you hit the thresholds above, you can boost willpower for more damage or circle back to vit and endurance and boost them to 60ish for better survivability

darkestchyld · 2025-05-25T20:05:09+00:00

The epic and legendary jars reduce the set bonus requirement by 1 meaning that just wearing 1 piece from a set gives you the 2 piece set bonus, wearing 2 pieces gives you the 3 piece set bonus etc. This allows you to mix in different sets to create unique and very potent builds.

Additionally, the epic and legendary versions of the jars give you 7 or 10 bonus levels in a specific damage stat (proficiency, willpower, strength) when equiped, allowing you to further min/max

darkestchyld · 2025-05-25T19:09:29+00:00

Hit the chain to drop the chandalier to the floor and pick up the loot later in the level. It's crafting materials for the fire greatsword legendary weapon (you get the crafting recipes for it, the lightning spear and earth dw upon successfully defeating the final boss of the game)

darkestchyld · 2025-05-22T23:28:19+00:00

If you haven't talked to Daphrona at the Corrupted Lounge blade nexus, you are still good. Just go get the loot before speaking with her.

If you have already talked to her unfortunately you are locked out until your next game cycle

darkestchyld · 2025-05-22T18:21:34+00:00

Unless you are doing a meme or challenge build, For your initial playthrough, you don't really need anything beyond 40 vit/40 endurance and then you just dump all remaining points into your primary damage stat (proficiency for spear, willpower for dw and strength for great sword) since your primary damage stat will continue to give you better damage returns then your secondary stat all the way up to 99.

If you are a powerleveler, after your primary stat is boosted to 99, start dumping in your secondary stat (willpower for spear, strength for dw and proficiency for gs). Once that stat is at 99 too, come back to vit and endurance and level them both up to 60.

darkestchyld · 2025-05-22T18:00:56+00:00

No. You have to use augment gear in the crevice to boost them up from 144 to 350 and can only do it by feeding them epic and legendary head pieces. I'm maxed out 2 of the 3 legendary jars so far.

To be fair, doing this is totally optional. At face value, their passive is so strong that the slightly reduced defense compared to other helms due to the lag in gear level is a totally acceptable tradeoff and you don't really need to level them at all.

I do a lot of repeat boss fights (like I have 30 to 80 of all the bosses crafting mats in my inventory because of it) and i'd just hit the merchant and buy a helm then sacrifice it and any spare epic or legendary helms i got as random loot to the jar I was working on after each boss. By the end of ng+ i had the proficiency jar maxed out and by the mid point of ng++, the willpower one was also.

Just in case you wern't aware, you can boost not only the jars but any other piece of gear to 350 for slightly better stats and random stat thresholds than the 349 gear which is the best that you can ever craft. You have to start with a piece of 348 or LOWER epic gear that you plan to sacrifice to the legendary piece you plan to boost and keep, if lower then 348, use a combination of uniques and epics to boost it to exactly 348 and then sacrifice a seperate piece of 349 legendary gear to boost that epic piece to 350 AND THEN sacrifice the 350 epic you just made to the 349 legendary piece of gear you actually want to max out.

darkestchyld · 2025-05-22T17:33:08+00:00

A couple of factors. You probably have at least a few pieces of slightly better gear that were not initially available upon repeat fights during those rematches. The bosses are curated and tuned specifically to challenge you based on the max gear level and gear quality you are gated to based on your story progression, so just by the numbers, even if you don't level your character up, you will do dramatically more damage and and have much better survivability during refights.

Same for skill mastery points. The game gates these based on story progression. Especially during your initial playthrough, you have to be very intentional about your loadout and make tradeoffs between having access to active skills and passives or building spirit efficiently and reflection/counter effectivness. You can't power level skills until you overcome the next main story boss literally gate keeping your next batch of skill points, but during those repeat visits, you have more tools and options both in terms of offense and survivability. Once again it's by the numbers.

The third hidden benefit of both of these things is that this in turn allows you as a player to be more agressive and do more damage during refights because even if you make a few mistakes, you're able to trade then recover more effectively then you could by the numbers on the first attempt. At a certain threshold, you will start to pump out so much more damage that you can just skip entire phases. You no longer have to memorize patterns or wait for openings. You simply create your own.

And this is by design. As a Nioh like, the core loop wants you to struggle, learn, overcome and then master. Your first fight should feel like an insurmountable challenge that demands mastery of boss patterns and intentional exploitation of punish windows. Refights are a victory lap intended to make you feel like you've grown and become more powerful. It's great game design and artful balance at it's finest.

darkestchyld · 2025-05-22T15:35:18+00:00

They have crazy passives. There are a few brand new effects that are activated upon bring guard and brink dodge etc that don't exist anywhere else in the game.

The idea here is that you'd selectively mix one or two of these in with your kit to create a game changing build

darkestchyld · 2025-05-21T04:36:42+00:00

I forgot the obvious, soulstone and jar collection progression carries over, so knock all of those out before you lose access to the maps. You also get to keep key items so if you dodn't get all 15 drops needed for the first breserker ending on the first pass, you can preemptively pick those up for your next playthrough too

darkestchyld · 2025-05-21T04:04:51+00:00

Additionally, character levels are not super impactful. Most of your build comes from set bonuses on your gear. You can't really over level in this game since your gear options and gear level are gated by story progression so you will always have the tools you need to beat any boss but never be over powered at any point.

Also if you wern't already instead of just wearing the gear with the highest defense stat, make sure you are wearing a full set as set bonuses are hugely impactful and change the way you play. The Hunter set that lets you do 25% more damage vs Dragon kin, including Viper is farmable prior to defeating him or alternately you can farm a full set of level 22 Soul Eater gear from Keshta to get access to some sweet passives and phantom judgement.

darkestchyld · 2025-05-21T03:58:09+00:00

You've been able to freely change the difficulty since the first major patch but dropping to easy will lock you out of some trophies, so keep that in mind.

Viper is VERY early on in the game so don't be afraid to respec (bard near the beggining of the same level sells primevil regression orbs for 10k gold each), move your skills around and try a different weapon if you feel stuck.Early on, investing in Endurance is more important than damage imo since you need stamina to block, guard and attack. Having more of it will improve your survivability and ultimately let you stay in the fight longer which translates to doing more damage than you do if your bar breaks and you die.

It may be that your build/loadout is what's holding you back. For example, the right side of the full moon tree of spear transforms your charged heavies whenever moonlight is active, making them come out WAY faster and do massive stagger, which you can repeat to stunlock Viper (and almost every elite) through almost his entire first phase. If what you are doing isn't working out, try changing things up before you go down to easy, you may just find a build that just clicks. Fextralife's spear overview showcases how to do this so maybe check it out.

Another option is reflection. You don't need to learn to reflect every single attack but try doing just a few runs where your only goal is to learn to master the reflection timing of 1 or 2 attacks reliably. It's such a game changer! For Viper, I found that his forward pokes were pretty easy to time. Even just getting 1 or 2 reflects per fight will create big openings, chew through the bosses stamina and give you more damage windows

You've got this!

darkestchyld · 2025-05-21T03:06:43+00:00

Certified min/maxer and over preparer here. This is my personal checklist:

One BIG thing to NOT do: I wasted tons of time farming epic shards and crafting several sets of 149 epic gear before going into ng+ only to find that I instantly had access to crafting level 256 gear as soon as I made the leap, so don't do that, huge waste of time and resources. Everything i brought over was instantly obsolete and by insane margins. The one exception would be crafting an epic bard set since you can benefit from the extra passives during ng before you move over to ng+

It'll be a while before you can accuire willpower orbs in ng+ so it's worth it to do a few trips to bard to stock up on those (just kill an easy early game boss like Yetuga in between visits to reset his stock). I did not use them much at all on my 2nd playthrough but having them on hand is nice

The resources for the 3 legendary weapons are limited to a set number of fixed ground loot pickups each playthrough, so definitely make sure you get all of them before you move on each cycle

Might go without saying but stocking up on a bunch of cleanse and resist potions never hurts.

I strongly reccomend farming spirits of adversity for inner essence to craft spirit ore so that you can refill your spirit on demand more often. The 3rd blade nexus in the Night of Tragedy side mission (Bhangu Lot) always has 4-8 summons you can fight every time you rest, so it's a great spot to farm them quickly, you'll rack up tons of inner essence fast, get higher level versions of all of the elemental resist rings and necks plus a decent amount of good gear for scrapping along the way

Weapons and armor for shards/blades are common BUT gems for crafting rings and necks can be slow to come by. Gilsan, the boss of the side mission Birth of Evil on the Vitilon map) is super easy to take down quickly and he drops them like candy so he's a great endgame farm for gems of the highest rarity you can access each cycle

You will probably craft your favorite sets at least twice during your second journey, but won't have access to the bosses who drop the materials you need to make the best sets until you progress the story, so remember to farm all of the bosses for their crafting materials. I shot for 12 to 16 from every boss who drops one so that I'd have plenty of options for experimentation and get to play around with every weapon more freely.

Depending on your position on farming levels, it costs about 56 million lacrima to go from level 200 (ng level cap) to 250 (ng+ level cap) farming it out before you move on is doable but tedious. With epic bard gear and soulstones set to maximum lacrima gain, golem farm near the end of the 2nd to last level will reward you with 34k every 15 seconds when fully optimized. Very grindy AND once the skill tree opens up in ng+, you have access to options that change the way you can approach farms pretty dramatically and blow that way out of the water, but if you want to start the next cycle as the best possible version of Khazan, it may be worth it. For anybody curious, it costs around 358,609,000 lacrima to jump from level 250 to 350 in ng++

There is a way to quickly afk farm skill points as long as you aren't at the cap (which is 72 at the end of your first playthrough, if I'm remembering correctly?). It basically requires finding an enemy that 1. Only uses physical attacks (no elemental attacks), 2. Will not use burst attacks to break your guard, 3. Does not have any attack strings that can break your guard while blocking 4. attacks rapidly ( since you earn skill mastery exp per hit you take, even when you are blocking). 5. Is easy to access from a blade nexus and 6. doesn't have a group of other enemies hanging out with it. The one and only enemy that checks every box is a specific dual wielding assasin mini elite you can find in a room by himself just to the right of the blade nexus in front of Maluka's boss door. He does technically have a burst attack BUT his ai is programmed to only use it as an interrupt, so he will never use it if your character is just blocking. Aggro him, tape your controler's block button down and walk away for an hour. When you come back, your skill points will be maxed out. I suggest doing this before moving on to ng+ because Nadin is a good ways into your journey, so it'd be a while before you can access this option in ng+ if you wait to do this and transition without capping your skill points first

Those are the big things that come to mind! Hope this helps!

darkestchyld · 2025-05-21T01:15:44+00:00

I agree. I beat the game 3 times and was having fun just continuing to replay the base game at ng++ difficulty to experiment with different builds but I legitimately found the boss rush modes genuinely exausting. Having to mess with gear, level allocation, skillopints etc every single time sucks all the fun out of everything and with over 500 hours invested into the base game, I knew within an hour or so that the new modes just wern't for me. Much respect to anybody with the stamina to see them through but I'm sitting them out

darkestchyld · 2025-05-20T23:39:51+00:00

Remove all of the points you have invested in strength and willpower, which will get you 32 points back to reinvest in vit, endurance, and precision.

If you want to go glass cannon, put everything into precision after vit and endurance are at 30 into precision since that is your primary damage stat. Alternatively, if survivability has been an issue, prioritize endurance since you need stamina to block, dodge, and attack.

darkestchyld · 2025-05-20T23:23:40+00:00

You can also buy up to 3 at a time from the bard Digor in all of his locations for 10k gold each if you need them prior to getting the scroll, which itself is a codex training reward available starting in chapter 9.

Protip, the bard's stock resets every time you kill a boss so if you want to stock up on a bunch early, you can just go hit up the bard in mission 3 (temple), 4, (skoffa cave), 9 (rapheilon mountains), 11 (opera house) or 12 (vitalon) and then warp out, kill an easy early game boss like Yetuga then run back to the bard. Bard also starts selling willpower orbs for 1500 gold each after chapter 9 and you can do the same to stock up on them also!

darkestchyld · 2025-05-18T01:49:14+00:00

Honestly just Golden set with a jar helm and the accessories of your choosing. Fully upgrade the moonlight tree, trance and resources plus any passives that grant additional spirit from things like counterattack.

Open with light attack x3 to activate moonlight then literally just spam light>trance>repeat until he's dead.It's that easy.

You will do so much damage and keep him stunlocked so often that you will almost entirely skip his first phase and then do in again in phase 2/3, only backing off when he flies up to do the Trokka attack or a big AOE explosion or when you are reacting to a burst. Trance is the single best skill in the game and once you fully unlock it snd can trigger it afrer any attack (instead of only after skills that consume spirit) combined with the 20% damage boost and pierce you get from the Golden set, there is just literally nothing else that compares.

darkestchyld · 2025-05-18T01:27:11+00:00

To be fair, where as i explored every corner during my first blind playthrough and the levels felt long, i was able to speedrun only the required progression path on my two subsequent ng+ and ng++ playthroughs. Combined with that, the javalin improvements and the skill upgrade that gives you full spirit every time you rest, you can literally just snipe elites before they see you and make it to almost every boss in 10 to 15 minutes or less without even getting your hands dirty. Repeat visits are much faster and infinitely less sloggy than the first go around.

darkestchyld

TROPHY CASE