The Gaming Den

Playing through it, got to the first two actual boss fights and enjoying the challenge (haven't beaten them yet)

Some spoiler free advice for starting...

- Resurrecting on the spot doesn't count as a death, only deaths that make you lose sen (money) count as an actual death, death count affects gameplay in a way...

- The whirlwind combat skill does chip damage through blocking opponents (except shields), it's a great skill to pick up early on

- The 5pt "regain vitality when doing deathblows" is a really strong ability you should grind for as soon as possible, you only get X healing items per rest and that power throws that healing restriction out the window

- Enemies have very simple AI and forget where you are if you run and hide for a few seconds.

- Mini-bosses often have allies nearby you can rush in, kill, then hide so they de-aggro. Mini-bosses can also be deathblowed before they notice you

- To kill a fish you need to wait for it to be at the surface, then hit it. The lockon camera can make it hard to judge depth so unlock and see if you can see the fish at the surface tilting the camera to the horizon

- holding down L1 is a heavy thrust attack that seems to do the most damage per second of your moves if you repeat it

- If a samurai keeps on parrying you, try setting them on fire

-As far as I'm aware, resurrection still affects Dragonrot.

-Minibosses' posse can generally be sneak attacked before engaging the miniboss.

-Don't get too hung up on the fish - you'll learn to dive underwater later on.

-If a samurai keeps on parrying you, deflect their attack.

Overall, the biggest hurdle of Sekiro is to get out of the Soulsborn mindset. Sekiro punishes dodges and keeping distance and rewards parrying and measured constant aggression.

It seems to be that Resurrection on the battlefield will fill the badstuff meter, but only dying (having to be revived at sculptor's idol and losing sen) will apply penalties

OgreBattle wrote: - If a samurai keeps on parrying you in case of doubt, try setting them on fire

Fixed that for you.

Just realized the game pauses when... paused

So the quick item menu doesn't need to be cluttered with recovery items, you can apply them from the pause menu instead of scrolling while on fire.

The thing about Sekiro that I don't like but do like, is that actually, you aren't supposed to git gud. You are supposed to do the one specific thing that cheeses each miniboss and boss. Every boss is a really long slog of a fight even mini bosses, if you don't know their associated cheese, and then once you do figure out which mechanic to use to cheese it takes like 5 minutes.

I strongly disagree. While yes, it is possible to cheese out most bosses (de-aggroing Chained Ogre and abusing the Corrupted Monk spring to mind), you absolutely can git gud and figure out deflection and patterns. The bosses don't even take all that long. An entire Headless fight lasts like a minute, and I think my successful attempt on Guardian Ape (the boss I spent the most attempts on, like 30) was maybe five minutes. And I completely smoked the Ape when he came for a rematch with a buddy.

I'm not saying it is "impossible" to git gud, you can always git gud at anything. What I am saying is that the game has a very specific way you are supposed to beat each and every boss with some specific thing. IE, I'm not talking about stealth killing the Chained Ogre, I'm talking about how if you Fire him twice so he's burning you can kill him basically instantly. Or how you can try to learn how to git gud on giraffes, or you can just blockdance and win instantly. You can git gud on the bull, or you can run behind it getting free attacks while it never attacks you.

And in all these cases the game really wants you to do the second one.

Ah. I see that as a part of gitting gud, rather than cheese.

Kaelik wrote:The thing about Sekiro that I don't like but do like, is that actually, you aren't supposed to git gud. You are supposed to do the one specific thing that cheeses each miniboss and boss. Every boss is a really long slog of a fight even mini bosses, if you don't know their associated cheese, and then once you do figure out which mechanic to use to cheese it takes like 5 minutes.

If any of the fights are taking 5 minutes or longer you're playing too passively. Remember that even hits your enemies block are progress towards winning the fight.

Killed horse guy Gyoubu on my first play of the day, a good night's rest really helps. I actually thought he had one more health bar left, but apparently I had removed his deathblow immunity while guard breaking him at the same time.

Killed the blazing bull by dodging under it's charge to the left, then I remembered "oh fire crackers" and stunned it to death.

Fought the Seven Spears miniboss that's at the beginning area of the game, did well then set him on fire at the end when he got me down to 1 Resurrection.

The longest fight I've had is against the big hat short ninja, axe and fire didn't break his guard and they're so little it's harder to tell when their attacks are landing. I ran away and backstabbed when they de aggro'd.

So it seems like charged R1 stabs are the highest damage per second attack, am I correct on this?

Are there any combat skills that are useful for just wailing on a stunned enemy? The flowing strikes I got from the jar guy seems useless (I hear it's mostly there as a tax to learn a better combat skill)


There's an awesome longsword purple scarf dude in the well, I talked to him and he fought me, I then ran away. I get this feeling that I shouldn't just kill him with a sneak attack. Does he have more story progression if I don't try to kill him?

GYOBU MASATAKA ONIWA! is a great boss.

As far as I'm aware yes, charged stab does a lot of damage, though not as much as Mortal Draw or Ashina Cross.

Combat Arts are... not great, generally. I mostly found them redundant and/or overly niche, with Senpou Temple skill tree being my favorite:

* High Monk is probably my favorite overall because it has the extra utility of punishing swipes with health damage. It's also good against some bosses overly reliant on low swipes. You can bully the Ashina Dojo miniboss with it for example, by jumping over most of his attacks. The art says it's good against airborne targets, but that's bullshit because you can just do instant air deathblows on airborne targets so why would you ever use High Monk.
* Praying Strikes are decent, because they are fast, and do a ton of posture damage even when blocked. Pretty good against ministry mooks in mid-late game.
* Ichimonji and especially Ichimonji: Double do good damage if you can get an opening. They are good for punishing bosses.
* Ashina Cross and Mortal Draw are both mid-range attacks that do good damage, but most of the time I prefer spending my emblems on shinobi tools. Ashina Cross can do absurd damage if you get a good strike, but most bosses have a cap on how much damage you can do in a single strike. I don't know if Mortal Draw has special buffs against the undead and ghosts, but I like Ashina Cross more overall.

The Longshadow Longswordsman (purple dude in the well) is a mini-boss and you'll see a lot more of his ilk. He has two health bars so you can't just kill him with a sneak attack. But you should kill him. There's nothing special for leaving him alive.

There is some talk about adding an easy mode option to Sekiro, which would obviously ruin the game for all those people who don't choose to use it.

Defeated lady butterfly and longswordsman with the magic of running in circles and dash attacks

I was doing well against headless then it seemed to clip through the floor and kill itself... but didn’t count as my kill. Man divine confetti farming is tough with those skillful Ashina swordsmen

OgreBattle wrote:Defeated lady butterfly and longswordsman with the magic of running in circles and dash attacks

I was doing well against headless then it seemed to clip through the floor and kill itself... but didn’t count as my kill. Man divine confetti farming is tough with those skillful Ashina swordsmen

You can ring the bell to get a higher drop rate then from the antechamber bonfire stealth kill 3 of them and reset over and over.

Lady Butterfly has a weird problem where like 9/10 of her responses after blocking a Nightjar Slash result in her either being hit by the next one or blocking it, so you can literally spam one move and grind up her posture with only 1/10th of responses even requiring you to deflect (it's the on where she jumps back).

Thaluikhain wrote:There is some talk about adding an easy mode option to Sekiro, which would obviously ruin the game for all those people who don't choose to use it.

People always ask me this about Dark Souls. I ask them if they've tried using Sorcery. Is there a similar thing in Sekiro?

Longes wrote:GYOBU MASATAKA ONIWA! is a great boss.

As far as I'm aware yes, charged stab does a lot of damage, though not as much as Mortal Draw or Ashina Cross.

Combat Arts are... not great, generally. I mostly found them redundant and/or overly niche, with Senpou Temple skill tree being my favorite:

* High Monk is probably my favorite overall because it has the extra utility of punishing swipes with health damage. It's also good against some bosses overly reliant on low swipes. You can bully the Ashina Dojo miniboss with it for example, by jumping over most of his attacks. The art says it's good against airborne targets, but that's bullshit because you can just do instant air deathblows on airborne targets so why would you ever use High Monk.
* Praying Strikes are decent, because they are fast, and do a ton of posture damage even when blocked. Pretty good against ministry mooks in mid-late game.
* Ichi

I like how his horse decides to fade away too

I don’t have the Senpou skills yet, with skill points costing more and more ive been saving up in anticipation of finding the scroll

Ah I wish two combat arts could be equipped at once... though with the pause menu one can just switch mid battle yeah

Aside from whirlwind which is great for crowds and can stunlock some enemies, like the Ashina Elite, the only other combat art I've ever wanted to use is ShadowRush, which is also a free way to kill basically any enemy in the game including any boss.

I've beaten Owl (Father) yesterday. That man is a one insanely tough bastard. Probably took me 3 hours.

Dangit let’s try to avoid spoilers, I’m only at sunken valley

Ichimonji double is great! Smashed through swordsmen’s posture

It seems like certain bosses and enemy types are really weak to certain combat arts, like butterfly losing to nightjar slash or just dodge follow up slash

Man I was confused at how to get to the rest of Senpou temple, I had only reached the bell. Turns out I only knew the 'side route' and totally missed the 'normal' route.

I also totally missed...
Ashina Castle: Merchant hiding from soldiers

I think I've found everything I can before the "fight with that guy on Ashina castle roof"

Things to still do...
Kill the headless in the illusion woods
Kill the special named headless in the Ashina dungeon pit

Fighting Genichiro is roughly midgame. Absolutely don't fret about it. Well, past the midgame now that you've been to the later areas and can just teleport to the end.

Shichimen Warrior in the Abandoned Dungeon is not a Headless.

I'm at the fountainhead now. I like how the enemies there are deadly archers but not as good as ashina swordsmen, a nod to how heian era was less focused on formal sword dueling compared to sengoku jidai japan.

I really like watching enemies fight each other, got the shinobi hunters and red hat shinobi to fight the chained ogre.

Samurai General vs Ministry Ninja Purple is always fun to spectate.

I've been doing kendo and feel it's improved since playing Sekiro hahah, the timing and mentality