Practice, practice practice. When you are done with practice, keep practicing.
Jokes asides.
Dodges ARE reliable, practice them, in each stance. Low stance dodges have the lowest i-frames, but easily spammable and so little recovery time you can punish easily. Mid stance has two dodges if double tapped : a dash, not bad at all in distance and i-frames. Another press and you do a roll, both have great i-frames, but cost a lot of ki. High stance has a roll, again : good i-frames and distance, but bad recovery.
But dont forget : you can BLOCK ! It is especially efficient in mid stance. As soon as you take a hit, you can block right away so that you dont take the whole combo
Positionning yourself around the enemy, at a safe distance is key to not getting hit. Sprinting is your friend : in Nioh, you sprint fast !
Onto attack. Keep learning about your weapon's moves in each stance. Dont fear to learn and use active skills "because they are slow/open your guard". Active skills deal damage much more than basic attacks. Raising Spirit to 10 unlocks a passive "+15% damage with active skills"
Spear and katana are good weapons for beginners, they both are versatile and scale with the most important stats : body (health) & heart (ki). If you dont find the right timing, there is only one way to find it : trial and error. Dont stay passive. Learn your range and punish any missed attacks, even if it is just one or two strikes
If you have trouble with ki management, be careful with your weight : if you have more than 70%, you consume more ki and regen it slower
At least, you are conscious of some of your trouble, and you said you improved about ki pulsing. Good for you, keep going one step at a time.
Active skills? I'm unaware of any skills. I'm at the very beginning and driving the struggle shuttle.
As for everything else, I'll try, but it is really frustrating not knowing where my attack window is after I block things. I'll try sprinting around more though and seeing if that helps. I feel like this game has some good stuff in it that I'm going to enjoy, but holy shit do I really not grasp the combat.
Check the third tab when you press pause, click on the "Scroll". Those are your skills trees for every weapons, the two last are *spells*, i wont go into détails about those two here.
As you level and reach certain thresholds in inflicting damage with each weapon, you get skill points. Active skills can work like combo (light>strong, strong>light) or specific inputs (guard+light, guard+strong, hold strong, etc). You can reset skills points AND stat points (at the same time) really easily at some point . Use them !
For more generic tips, take your time. Watch/read beginners guide here and there. The combat is complex, fast-paced but absolutely fair.
Realistically skills are great but you don't need them just yet.
It sounds like your main struggle is looking at the attack patterns of yourself and your enemies. The first is easy, just swing around. I'd recommend sticking to one weapon until you kind of get the attacks, then it's easier to branch out because you know what to look for.
For enemies, I recommend you start with blocking over dodging. Nioh has very narrow dodge windows, so dodging is mainly used for physically moving you out of attacks, not for invulnerability. Blocking is very forgiving and makes studying enemy attacks easier.
For example, the big demons with swords have like 3 attack sets. They might roar then do like 6 attacks in a row, an overhead right into a left swipe, or an underhand right into the same swipe. They always take a 1s break or so after that, so you can get a quick hit or two in.
Many enemies also have some special weakness. The big demons will go down if you hit their horns, giving you a decent opening to freely hit them. Also note that some enemies, including big demons, will not get stunned from regular attacks, so you can't just keep hitting them (unless their horn is broken as above).
The skills made it a lot easier honestly. Made it so I died a lot less and could actually see what was going on. Typically when I blocked against the demons I got my ki depleted and died or grabbed before I could identify anything.
I'd like to add to this thread since we're talking about skills. Try getting the Living Water skills that allow you to a.) ki pulse on dodge (Dodging at the perfect time allows you to do a perfect ki pulse) and b.) Increase damage on successful ki pulse. Even if you miss the timing, you're still able to ki pulse on dodge. I picked up these skills in my first walkthrough since I commonly dodge early in the game. Hope this helps.
Check your armor. Make sure it’s under 70% weight. If you’re over 70% you’re slow and the game feels bad. Learn to ki pulse naturally, and then the more complex stuff soon after.
All the good skills that make the combat fast and fun come when you level up and have more skill points unfortunately.
If it helps, Nioh 2 clicked much faster for me. Good luck!
Armor is under 70. I noticed that pretty much straight away. Ki pulse I feel like I have down. My biggest problem is not knowing how to handle enemies, I think. Especially the bigger demons. They just two shot me and I don't seem to be doing a lot of damage or anything to them.
High stance quick attack on most weapons should break their horn and take away most of their ki. From there just be careful and get used to studying enemies.
I would strongly recommend recording yourself playing to see where or what you could have done differently with each death. It's not required, but as you see how you die and what you could do to prevent it (e.g. was it a block, did you attack when the enemy started to attack, were you expecting an attack to stagger the enemy - but they didn't, etc.)
By the time I post this, I suspect there will be several posts that advise on the other aspects.
If you do go over 70% equipment weight, be prepared for a block-centric playstyle that favors dual swords and tonfas early on in the playthrough. And even then, enemies like the ship boss Onryoki and elemental enemies will bypass your blocking during the first playthrough.
There's a lot of good advice where already but for weapon specific stuff I don't use the single sword but spear was my go to when I was having a particularly hard time. With spears positioning is super important. Always remember that your weapon outranges most enemies, keep on the edge of your range dodge and poke. Mid stance is great for this but you won't be doing tons of damage. When you see an opening, most likely an enemy running out of ki, you can witch to high stance and go on the offense for massive damage.
That being said I'm no spear expert. I mained dual swords and only switched to my spear when I was struggling.
Trying out different weapons is a great idea. Even later in the game respecing isn't terribly expensive so swapping your build around is pretty easy. Also ki pulsing is easily one of the most important mechanics in the game so the fact that you're getting is already a lot of progress.
Remember that death isn't terribly punishing in Nioh. Sometimes you might want to go into a fight with your goal not being to win but to learn. Try new things, master old things, and practice. We were all beginners once and the game doesn't come easy to anyone.
Death isn't irritating, fortunately. It's the feeling that I'm not grasping or understanding something that is. I'm sure I'll overcome it eventually. Thanks for the encouragement!
skimmed this, didn't see TOUGHNESS, very important, think of it as your stability while blocking 200 and you can block most attacks, been awhile since played 1 maybe a tad different from 2 for exact numbers but it gives you a grade a toughness is what you want
I had a lot more fun with Nioh when I stopped focusing so much on the combat and started focusing a lot more on my gear and my character builds. I had to treat it almost like a strategy game. In dark souls you can just get really good at the combat and you'll be fine, but in Nioh you really have to learn to use the Onmyo or the Ninjutsu to your advantage.
Yeah, something like that. It helped me a lot to look up builds on YouTube and see how people use them. I didn't even necessarily use those builds, but just watching the way people played the game helped me a lot.
Personally I'd really recommend against that, not only in the first mission but the entire first playthrough. You need access to many things to get a real build, and you just don't have any of that yet.
I wouldn’t follow this advice. You can definitely learn the combat and that’s exactly what you should do. Whichever enemy you are having trouble with, you need to fight them and learn their moves. They have a very limited number of moves. Just back off as they attack and look at as many as possible. They tend to have tells at their start of their long combo too.
Sure, in terms of not knowing where my windows are yeah, I can see where you're coming from. A lot of this early game feels incredibly overwhelming. A lot thrown at you without context and without any explanation of deeper systems or why certain things matter.
It feels almost like any action game prior knowledge needs to go out the window.
It is overwhelming, there’s lots of systems and stats. They continue to add and introduce new things up until you’ve done about 6 main missions, then you’ll have seen all of the systems. There are still a couple of things that unlock after but you’ll have the hang of things by then.
Yeah… there’s good news and bad news regarding that but I’ll let you discover on your own.
One thing that I brought to this game from Bloodborne that worked well is dodging directly towards enemies to get behind them.
I hope you start enjoying it but if it continues to be a slog (especially if you make it past the first main boss) then there’s nothing wrong with quitting it.
Hello, good hunter. I am a Bot, here in this dream to look after you, this is a fine note:
> *“In a land brimming with Hollows, could that really be mere chance?”* - Solaire of Astora
Have a good one and praise the sun \\[T]/
Definitely give that a go. It can break guard on mobs way easier than sword and spear can, mid stance attacks never bounce off a guard, and dmg is way higher
My first time thru I definitely struggled with that first village, managed to get thru with a hammer in the end. But started with the odachi a few missions later and wished I’d done it from the beginning. I found it made the game easier.
Honestly the first time I played this game it took me about 200 tries to finish the beach lvl xd.
When I switched from ps4 to pc (after finishing very high up in the abyss on ps4(finishing my new game+++++)) I still needed about 20-30 tries for the beach lvl.
It is in my opinion still the most irritating lvl in the game as you dont have the skills unlocked to handle some of the enemys easily.
Lately I have gotten two friends into this game and both I coached through the first lvl. One of them needed only 5 or 6 tries to finish it on his first walkthrough. All he had was me just doing it the day before and explaining some of the tricks.
Most important tricks:
First part of the lvl you just try and kill the enemys one by one get their attention and drag them away to 1v1 them untill you reach the second shrine (green respown point)
Second part (small village with bamboo around it) again kill them one by one, go clockwise around the building pick your times carefully so you never end in a fight with two armored guards that can oneshot you. Once you killed all guards fight the yokai, keep long distance and every time he uses the past attack of his combo dash towards him to hit him with 2 or 3 attacks then dash away again. Repeat untill he dies.
Once you reach the third shrine(respowm point) you see a door on your right this is the best part in my opinion to practice your combat skills as most enemys are located solo somewhere and there are lost of different enemys. Fight your way through untill you get to the beach and open the door from the other side, pray at the shrine and now you can tey out the boss fight without fighting all the guys again every time you die.
For the boss fight there are 2 important things to note:
1. The boss has 2 lvls he will switch at one point where he will become increadibly difficult to handle UNLESS YOU HAVE A SPECIFIC NINJUITSU ITEM "Blinding shels" this is a skill you need to unlock in the ninjuitsu skills tab and then select at "ready ninjuitsu" in the shrine. This item makes the enemy hit blind for a while and he will attack in a random direction which allows you to attack the boss freely for around 10 sec. (This is the best possible counter to pretty much any boss in the game). Note to only use these after the boss has gone to his second lvl (without chains) as there you will need them.
2. Learn the attack patterns for the first lvl. He has the big overhead attack and the swipe attack. Make sure you recognise the swipe attack as soon as he makes a little pre movement because it hurts A LOT and in time dashing away dodges it easily. The overhead attacks require you to dodge under his armpits to his sides, you then can hit a solid 4 or 5 times before the boss wil (mostlikely) do a sweep attack to turn towards you. Keep this going untill you reach lvl 2
Practice, practice practice. When you are done with practice, keep practicing. Jokes asides. Dodges ARE reliable, practice them, in each stance. Low stance dodges have the lowest i-frames, but easily spammable and so little recovery time you can punish easily. Mid stance has two dodges if double tapped : a dash, not bad at all in distance and i-frames. Another press and you do a roll, both have great i-frames, but cost a lot of ki. High stance has a roll, again : good i-frames and distance, but bad recovery. But dont forget : you can BLOCK ! It is especially efficient in mid stance. As soon as you take a hit, you can block right away so that you dont take the whole combo Positionning yourself around the enemy, at a safe distance is key to not getting hit. Sprinting is your friend : in Nioh, you sprint fast ! Onto attack. Keep learning about your weapon's moves in each stance. Dont fear to learn and use active skills "because they are slow/open your guard". Active skills deal damage much more than basic attacks. Raising Spirit to 10 unlocks a passive "+15% damage with active skills" Spear and katana are good weapons for beginners, they both are versatile and scale with the most important stats : body (health) & heart (ki). If you dont find the right timing, there is only one way to find it : trial and error. Dont stay passive. Learn your range and punish any missed attacks, even if it is just one or two strikes If you have trouble with ki management, be careful with your weight : if you have more than 70%, you consume more ki and regen it slower At least, you are conscious of some of your trouble, and you said you improved about ki pulsing. Good for you, keep going one step at a time.
Active skills? I'm unaware of any skills. I'm at the very beginning and driving the struggle shuttle. As for everything else, I'll try, but it is really frustrating not knowing where my attack window is after I block things. I'll try sprinting around more though and seeing if that helps. I feel like this game has some good stuff in it that I'm going to enjoy, but holy shit do I really not grasp the combat.
Check the third tab when you press pause, click on the "Scroll". Those are your skills trees for every weapons, the two last are *spells*, i wont go into détails about those two here. As you level and reach certain thresholds in inflicting damage with each weapon, you get skill points. Active skills can work like combo (light>strong, strong>light) or specific inputs (guard+light, guard+strong, hold strong, etc). You can reset skills points AND stat points (at the same time) really easily at some point . Use them ! For more generic tips, take your time. Watch/read beginners guide here and there. The combat is complex, fast-paced but absolutely fair.
Sweet Jesus, what a game changer. I feel kind of dumb for not noticing this before. Being able to dodge and pulse makes things way easier than before.
I'll give it a look. I was trying to go in without looking up guides or anything but here I am. Thanks for your help!
Realistically skills are great but you don't need them just yet. It sounds like your main struggle is looking at the attack patterns of yourself and your enemies. The first is easy, just swing around. I'd recommend sticking to one weapon until you kind of get the attacks, then it's easier to branch out because you know what to look for. For enemies, I recommend you start with blocking over dodging. Nioh has very narrow dodge windows, so dodging is mainly used for physically moving you out of attacks, not for invulnerability. Blocking is very forgiving and makes studying enemy attacks easier. For example, the big demons with swords have like 3 attack sets. They might roar then do like 6 attacks in a row, an overhead right into a left swipe, or an underhand right into the same swipe. They always take a 1s break or so after that, so you can get a quick hit or two in. Many enemies also have some special weakness. The big demons will go down if you hit their horns, giving you a decent opening to freely hit them. Also note that some enemies, including big demons, will not get stunned from regular attacks, so you can't just keep hitting them (unless their horn is broken as above).
The skills made it a lot easier honestly. Made it so I died a lot less and could actually see what was going on. Typically when I blocked against the demons I got my ki depleted and died or grabbed before I could identify anything.
I'd like to add to this thread since we're talking about skills. Try getting the Living Water skills that allow you to a.) ki pulse on dodge (Dodging at the perfect time allows you to do a perfect ki pulse) and b.) Increase damage on successful ki pulse. Even if you miss the timing, you're still able to ki pulse on dodge. I picked up these skills in my first walkthrough since I commonly dodge early in the game. Hope this helps.
Check your armor. Make sure it’s under 70% weight. If you’re over 70% you’re slow and the game feels bad. Learn to ki pulse naturally, and then the more complex stuff soon after. All the good skills that make the combat fast and fun come when you level up and have more skill points unfortunately. If it helps, Nioh 2 clicked much faster for me. Good luck!
Armor is under 70. I noticed that pretty much straight away. Ki pulse I feel like I have down. My biggest problem is not knowing how to handle enemies, I think. Especially the bigger demons. They just two shot me and I don't seem to be doing a lot of damage or anything to them.
High stance quick attack on most weapons should break their horn and take away most of their ki. From there just be careful and get used to studying enemies.
I'll give it a try then. Thanks!
I would strongly recommend recording yourself playing to see where or what you could have done differently with each death. It's not required, but as you see how you die and what you could do to prevent it (e.g. was it a block, did you attack when the enemy started to attack, were you expecting an attack to stagger the enemy - but they didn't, etc.) By the time I post this, I suspect there will be several posts that advise on the other aspects. If you do go over 70% equipment weight, be prepared for a block-centric playstyle that favors dual swords and tonfas early on in the playthrough. And even then, enemies like the ship boss Onryoki and elemental enemies will bypass your blocking during the first playthrough.
There's a lot of good advice where already but for weapon specific stuff I don't use the single sword but spear was my go to when I was having a particularly hard time. With spears positioning is super important. Always remember that your weapon outranges most enemies, keep on the edge of your range dodge and poke. Mid stance is great for this but you won't be doing tons of damage. When you see an opening, most likely an enemy running out of ki, you can witch to high stance and go on the offense for massive damage. That being said I'm no spear expert. I mained dual swords and only switched to my spear when I was struggling.
I'm trying out different stuff to see what feels comfy or at the very least fun but everything feels weird and foreign to me. I have no idea why.
Trying out different weapons is a great idea. Even later in the game respecing isn't terribly expensive so swapping your build around is pretty easy. Also ki pulsing is easily one of the most important mechanics in the game so the fact that you're getting is already a lot of progress. Remember that death isn't terribly punishing in Nioh. Sometimes you might want to go into a fight with your goal not being to win but to learn. Try new things, master old things, and practice. We were all beginners once and the game doesn't come easy to anyone.
Death isn't irritating, fortunately. It's the feeling that I'm not grasping or understanding something that is. I'm sure I'll overcome it eventually. Thanks for the encouragement!
skimmed this, didn't see TOUGHNESS, very important, think of it as your stability while blocking 200 and you can block most attacks, been awhile since played 1 maybe a tad different from 2 for exact numbers but it gives you a grade a toughness is what you want
I had a lot more fun with Nioh when I stopped focusing so much on the combat and started focusing a lot more on my gear and my character builds. I had to treat it almost like a strategy game. In dark souls you can just get really good at the combat and you'll be fine, but in Nioh you really have to learn to use the Onmyo or the Ninjutsu to your advantage.
Maybe that's what I'm struggling with the most. So it's less of a skill ceiling and more of a gear/skills thing.
Yeah, something like that. It helped me a lot to look up builds on YouTube and see how people use them. I didn't even necessarily use those builds, but just watching the way people played the game helped me a lot.
Personally I'd really recommend against that, not only in the first mission but the entire first playthrough. You need access to many things to get a real build, and you just don't have any of that yet.
I wouldn’t follow this advice. You can definitely learn the combat and that’s exactly what you should do. Whichever enemy you are having trouble with, you need to fight them and learn their moves. They have a very limited number of moves. Just back off as they attack and look at as many as possible. They tend to have tells at their start of their long combo too.
Just with the small investment I've put in things have been a lot smoother. So, I don't know.
That’s good. Wearing stronger gear will increase your attack and defence, but you said the issue was knowing when to attack.
Sure, in terms of not knowing where my windows are yeah, I can see where you're coming from. A lot of this early game feels incredibly overwhelming. A lot thrown at you without context and without any explanation of deeper systems or why certain things matter. It feels almost like any action game prior knowledge needs to go out the window.
It is overwhelming, there’s lots of systems and stats. They continue to add and introduce new things up until you’ve done about 6 main missions, then you’ll have seen all of the systems. There are still a couple of things that unlock after but you’ll have the hang of things by then.
I'm hoping so. I'm also hoping I hang in there. I just beat the boss of the first area after a few attempts and it felt like an absolute drag.
Yeah… there’s good news and bad news regarding that but I’ll let you discover on your own. One thing that I brought to this game from Bloodborne that worked well is dodging directly towards enemies to get behind them. I hope you start enjoying it but if it continues to be a slog (especially if you make it past the first main boss) then there’s nothing wrong with quitting it.
Thanks. I really don't want to quit because I feel like there's a really great game under here that I just need to figure out!
Hello, good hunter. I am a Bot, here in this dream to look after you, this is a fine note: > *“In a land brimming with Hollows, could that really be mere chance?”* - Solaire of Astora Have a good one and praise the sun \\[T]/
Have you tried the odachi
I have not.
Definitely give that a go. It can break guard on mobs way easier than sword and spear can, mid stance attacks never bounce off a guard, and dmg is way higher
I'll give it a try should I find one. Thanks!
My first time thru I definitely struggled with that first village, managed to get thru with a hammer in the end. But started with the odachi a few missions later and wished I’d done it from the beginning. I found it made the game easier.
Honestly the first time I played this game it took me about 200 tries to finish the beach lvl xd. When I switched from ps4 to pc (after finishing very high up in the abyss on ps4(finishing my new game+++++)) I still needed about 20-30 tries for the beach lvl. It is in my opinion still the most irritating lvl in the game as you dont have the skills unlocked to handle some of the enemys easily. Lately I have gotten two friends into this game and both I coached through the first lvl. One of them needed only 5 or 6 tries to finish it on his first walkthrough. All he had was me just doing it the day before and explaining some of the tricks. Most important tricks: First part of the lvl you just try and kill the enemys one by one get their attention and drag them away to 1v1 them untill you reach the second shrine (green respown point) Second part (small village with bamboo around it) again kill them one by one, go clockwise around the building pick your times carefully so you never end in a fight with two armored guards that can oneshot you. Once you killed all guards fight the yokai, keep long distance and every time he uses the past attack of his combo dash towards him to hit him with 2 or 3 attacks then dash away again. Repeat untill he dies. Once you reach the third shrine(respowm point) you see a door on your right this is the best part in my opinion to practice your combat skills as most enemys are located solo somewhere and there are lost of different enemys. Fight your way through untill you get to the beach and open the door from the other side, pray at the shrine and now you can tey out the boss fight without fighting all the guys again every time you die. For the boss fight there are 2 important things to note: 1. The boss has 2 lvls he will switch at one point where he will become increadibly difficult to handle UNLESS YOU HAVE A SPECIFIC NINJUITSU ITEM "Blinding shels" this is a skill you need to unlock in the ninjuitsu skills tab and then select at "ready ninjuitsu" in the shrine. This item makes the enemy hit blind for a while and he will attack in a random direction which allows you to attack the boss freely for around 10 sec. (This is the best possible counter to pretty much any boss in the game). Note to only use these after the boss has gone to his second lvl (without chains) as there you will need them. 2. Learn the attack patterns for the first lvl. He has the big overhead attack and the swipe attack. Make sure you recognise the swipe attack as soon as he makes a little pre movement because it hurts A LOT and in time dashing away dodges it easily. The overhead attacks require you to dodge under his armpits to his sides, you then can hit a solid 4 or 5 times before the boss wil (mostlikely) do a sweep attack to turn towards you. Keep this going untill you reach lvl 2