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I just like how there's a "skill" to breath underwater. Like, Sekiro just reads a paragraph in an old manuscript and goes "Huh! So THAT's how it's done!" and he now knows how to breath underwater.

I think Ichimonji and the Double upgrade need to be included here as well, not just for their ability to punish dodged attacks with big posture damage, but because they quickly and significantly reduce YOUR posture meter as well, which is just as important in some boss fights. If you perfect deflect you won't get posture broken, but Ichimonji can keep you away from the breaking point, which I think can be very helpful for a first playthrough while gitting gud.

You pronounced one of the boss name incorrectly. His NAAAAAAME. is GYOUBU. MASATAKA. ONIWA!!!!!!

Firecrackers into ichimonji double can really turn the tide when u get pressured against bosses to regain momentum.

If you get Ichimonji: Double and Mid-Air Combat Art, you can punish sweeps even more effectively than Senpou Kicks. Do the jump-punish as normal, and start ichimonji in the air as the enemy flinches. It will almost always land, and unless it is a rare enemy with massive hyperarmor, the second Ichimonji will land as well, and even if the enemy blocks both ichimonjis (many bosses will) at least you'll clear out your own posture bar all the way if below 80%

Really not even mentioning literally the best skill in the game? Your lord and savior Ichimonji.

I love the "reverse nightjar slash" it helps you leap toward enemies with an attack or get away with an attack. Very useful..

Mikiri is a MUST-HAVE. Get it first. Ascending Carp and Descending Carp ASAP.

Fun fact: I had to see a doctor about my ichi monji once

Mid air combat arts plus ichimonji double is way better than using the kick on sweeps

I can’t tell you how many times the ichimonji double skill saved me in this game. It should’ve definitely been included in this video. It deals heavy posture damage while also regaining some posture at the same time. A must have!

While suppress presence is a must have, you can get through the game without suppressing sound. It’s nice but there are other places for your points.

Ichimonji double is easily my favorite combat art, one of the best, can be used to punish and regain posture, and even works with mid air combat arts well.

Whirlwind slash is great Alot of people think it's useless cuz it's the first skill that you obtain or it doesn't cause much damage but it's truly perfect for enemies who do don't usually deflect.(like monks,lady butterfly,ashina elite guy etc..) and it's useful when you are fighing multiple enemies.

Combat arts and prosthetics are good but I find myself just using attack dodge and block for entire fights and I forget about everything else

Grinding is a labor of love in this game, I really enjoy practicing my stealth and my deflection timing while picking up some extra skills along the way. Kinda surprised that there's no mention of the Ichimonji here though, I recently picked it up and I love it so far. Really punishes a whiff, hard.

Can’t wait for the advanced guide!

Mikiri Counter Breath of Life: Light Ichimonji: Double Emma’s Medicine: Potency Emma’s Medicine: Aroma Devotion Those are the ones I'd focus on getting again if I went through the game again without NG+.

you mentioned all those skills that are important to increase posture damage and you didn't mention the OG ichimonji

on my 3rd NG I rushed the prosthetic ultimate art that allows to enhance your sword with fire for a short time. Imo it's one of the strongest upgrades in the game, makes so many bosses a lot easier, since you can burn them, which also stuns them and gives you somewhere between 6-8 free hits in, on top of some nice vit and posture damage

I also really liked praying strikes as those are extremely fast to perform and many enemies give you a very short time window to attack them. Praying strikes can do some posture damage, and they can often give you enough time to get a chop in with kusabimaru.

Just stumbled across your videos and DAMN they’re good!! Thank you

Hey! I just want to say Thank you so much for the Time Stamps!!

Thanks for this wonderfull tips bro it help a lot

Ichimonji is like Dark Souls Zweihander power attack. It just stops nearly anyone's anything. So good.

Breath of light first, then you can grind the hirata estates area and get the rest of that very quickly.

Awesome guide. Thanks man

I think that Living Force is also very useful, because it cause so much damage and when you take the final fire cannon, you don’t need to use divine confetti

I personally love using Shadowrush. it's one of my favorite combat arts, in both style and effectiveness. I know Ichimonji is good but it doesnt look as cool as shadowrush. haha thought note to anyone who doesnt know yet, dont use it against Owl in either of his fights, he mikiri's the shit out of your ass.

In my opinion night jar slash and reversal best combat art it closes gaps so well, which is important for staying up in the opponents face

for anyone looking through new for anything...new to know Anti Air Deathblow you buy it from am merchant and it lets you one-two shot a CERTAIN dark magic caster if combined with divinity damage buffs

Firecracker, ash and some deflect combos always open way for one and just one hit at a time. The spin which deals damage even blocked should be use after each of this hits to maximize damage to the enemy hp. At least for the 100 to 50% of each enemy bar. Making said spin the best skill in the game, after the bar reaches half you might want to switch to ichimonji and maximize posture damage, but always go after hp first.

Spiral Cloud Passage got buffed as of the most recent patch, making it one spirit emblem every 3 cycles. Combine that With bestowal ninjustsu, divine confetti, living force, whatever your preference, and it melts bosses.

I personally find living force an excellent skill. It has a lot of combos that make it good for any point in the game. Plus it saves your confetti, and allows you to coat your blade with the confetti effect without the long animation. That’s saved me against a headless more than once.

On my second playthrough (technically third as the first one the save file got corrupted after the Blazing Bull) I went into the second Genichiro Ashina fight with Breath of Life: Light, the Mikiri Counter upgrade and BOTH Ascending and Decending Carp. Third boss BTW so getting the Shinobi Eyes skill early on is very much doable, I did grind 10 Skill Points for the Mikiri Counter upgrade and the Breath of Life upgrade, but it didnt take that long. I went through the other areas to a degree, I got both the Gourd Seed and loose Prayer Bead (I had 3 health and posture upgrades) in the Sunken Valley, killed the Lone Shadow Longsword to get to the Ashina Depths Idol and got to the Senpu Temple area, but only to the first Idol. As you'd expect the fight went by quickly at a little under seven minutes WITH the cutscene included (Intro, mid and end) as a result.

The only reason I even bother to invest skill points in ascending and descending carp is so as to get Double Ichimonji. Hands down one of my favorite combat arts (along with High monk), and is a force to behold when you perform it immediately after Mikiri counter.

Ichimonji and double are number 1 in my book, and Ashina cross is a close second. Ichimonji doesn't cost spirit emblems which is HUGE in this game. But also I love the cross because it deals a crazy amount of health damage (second only to the mortal draw and empowered mortal draw from my testing); and what's more, it's treated like a piercing attack meaning it'll still cut through and deal damage to enemies who are guarding. Maybe it's just my play style, but being able to hop back and ready an attack for when an enemy leaves themselves open to punish them with big damage is really nice. Makes Owl and even Isshin look like a joke

Floating carp was my favourite combat art from the dude in the water , also you can get a second text from the rat guy by killing all rats , last rat is black badger , but then you miss out on him in temple. His second text is the same as the end game one

Actually, i am on my first playtrough and aside of training timing and read enemies atacks i am working on unlock those skills playing alot on places i already defeated. It turns out that some skils are awesome help for us since they can do massive damage do posture like ichimonji double, and using with prostetics and itens like, oil and dust, can make a fight that i was stuck now doable. And also the passive ones to get more uses, parry on air, atack art on air, and so on.... they can make the first playtrough less difficult, and also get us training alot.

Save the skill points, complete the mask, raise your attack power with the skill points. being 5 attack powers ahead all the time makes a huge difference in the endgame.

Great job ! But what about ichimonji and ichimonji double ?

Replaying right now after 3 years, Mikiri and Shinobi eyes are my first buys, then I grab Ichi-double asap, insanely overpowered, or grab the mid air combat arts for even more broken punishing, but I mostly remember how to cheese 90% of the boss fights anyway

I love the floating passage technique. Enemies will just stand there as they get beaten senselessly, even if they counter.

the first skill you should get is mikiri, save your skill points if you have any and get the esoteric ashina text or whatever it is from tengu/isshin, do the rat quest and spend your skills in that tree. it has abilities like more damage done to enemies on deflection, less damage taken to posture from swords, and ichimonji/ichimonji double. definitely some of the best skills to pick up early, idk why you'd waste them on suppress sound. idk that just doesn't make sense to me

THANK YOU SO MUCHHH

Best skill is Empowered Mortal Draw because it is the ultimate Getsuga Tenshou

Great info - excellent voiceover. Subbed.

The suppress sound and presence are godly for taking out multiple enemies near each other along with the ninjitsu from genichiro

This is last in the skill tree, but I would recommend getting Living Force (prosthetic art) as soon as possible. If you use it with the flame vent and oil, it does massive damage to mini bosses and most bosses. Not only does the art buff your sword attacks with fire, but it burns and stuns enemies for a short period allowing you to continue your combo.

Heh, my old school jrpg grinding mentality has me maxed out in shinobi, prosthetic, ishina and temple arts on my first play through and ive yet to beat genichiro...mibu village really is that good.

Ichimonji is decent skill to cheese out the game. Also mid-air deflect can save your life. Also the suppress sound is not very helpful. Most enemies don't have the time to react and most bosses don't care about the sound. If they do just press Alt or pop a candy to surpresa presence.

Double Ichimonji is a no brainer. Used this one during all the game, from ashina castle to end game.

I can't believe you omitted ichimonji (double) on this list; it is the best skill for bosses. It has severe posture damage and reduces your posture meter; Isshin was a piece of cake with this skill.

Getting SLK before Genichiro seems tough. So you just farm a ton? Or you don't get other good skills instead? Or is it for NG+?

The best combat art is senpou leaping kicks or high monk it really helps a lot with posture damage

The Temple Skill that makes cookie buffs last longer is a very good one in Late-game/NG+. Without it I never used these buffs because it made me play overagressively to "make use" of the buffs. Also, on NG+ or more where you have an almost unlimited number of cookies, it's very useful. The stealth buff can make you almost invisible, so you can go through hard areas without difficulty. Also the puppeteer ninjutsu makes late game areas where there's many hard enemies much easier... sometimes I can make my little army of 2 to 4 puppets

Thank you so much for this guide. Sadly, I just defeated Guardian Ape at skill level over 80, and I do miss a lot of these useful skills. Alas, maybe that’s part of the reasons I really suffered during my first play-through. Thanks again.

Supress presence is only good as a skill to bypass in order to get other skills. Its not bad but definetely not essential especially considering the fact that you can use an invisibility candy.

Floating Passage is one of the best.

Yo ichimonji and its upgrade are legit amazing for a combat art. Probably one of the best skills before you get mortal draw. Even then ichimonji still is useful because it doesnt cost any paper dolls

well I do not have problems with the game, but that skill templat I didn't know about and I didn't know that water creature so thanks hahah

I already deafeated O'rin, is it still worth getting the skill? do they stack?

If you know your way around the game you can get all the Esoteric texts very early. You can get all but Mushin arts after the first boss, Gyoubo. Mushin you can get after Genichiro.

Senpou temple archmonk's kicks is my favourite move in the game. I killed count less rats with it.

Just putting this out there I suck at using Ichimonji so I mainly use shadowrush and at some point I'm gonna try to get the shadowrush that allows me to do this cool descending attack on my opponent

i think its best to only get skills that actually help you in combat: mikiri counter, ascending card, descending carp and flowing water would be the only ones that i would pick up, the rest of the skillpoints are way better spent on increasing your attack power with the mask right before the most diffcult bosses in the game, where you need it. you can have like 17 attack power without grinding right after youve beaten the true corrupted monk, making double ape, owl father, sword saint ishin and demon of hatred way easier. all the other skills that he recommended are like nice to have until then, but make barely a difference ultimately. the surpess presense and surpress sound skills are useless since you can just use a green sugar instead, also you have infinite of those after you beat the headless in mibu village. giving mikiri counter a little more posture damage is also not worth the investment, not every boss uses thrusting attacks and having more attack instead gives a bigger increase anyway. breath of life is also bad, the more gourd seeds you have the less useful this gets, early on where you would most need it you cant have it so whats the point, once your low on health you should rather use a gourd than gambling on deathblows, the lower you are the more risky it becomes. the healing increases are nice, but i rather have 2 more attack power instead, they are just too expensive to be worth it. leaping kicks is also worthless since the only combat art you should be using is mortal draw anyway.

Does purple spark stack with upward and downward carp?

Breathe of light life is the best skill in the entire game, I worked my way to it after Mikiri

Thanks. Good vid 2021-08-01 🥳🥳

Ichimonji.more of a crusader night stance but ye sound i use it alot havent tried the double yet been rocking with nightjar slash reversal; a good bit 2. mikiri counter - shinobi eyes iv used a cuple of times other than that sortin as many passive ability's as i can. its my first play through been at it about 5h, in the middle of that crazy bull fight past the ashina castle gate iv done hirata estate im hoping the games just startin but i hurd its not as long as dark souls 2 or 3

Best ability is the mortal blade. It consumes emblems but it works even after you finish them. Even if the boss deflects he still gets a bit of damage and it's really a life saver.

Ty

My question is, is it worth grinding the last art for the upgraded attack or grinding attack power? I was grinding for that skill that requires Ashina arts and the monk tree end skills but was wondering if it's worth it.

I dont understand why I cant see ascending/descending Carp in my ashina arts section. Anyone can help me?

You should definitely mention Flowing water, which is an amazing skill that decreases all posture damage taken while you fight enemy with a sword. Taking this skill will greatly help with a ton of minibosses, genichiro, shinobi owl and isshin.

I personally really enjoy mortal draw and ashina cross. Draw has insane range and sweeps out to multiple enemies for crowd control plus it does great chip damage through block.. ashina cross can get you in better than nightjar has 2 hits and gas chip damage comparable to mortal draw. Ichi monji double is also pretty good but i personally think its to slow and is kind of a worse mortal draw imho. Maybe im dead wrong and it just does so much more posture damage it justifies itself but mortal draw just seems like a solid upgrade all around. It just sucks it eats spirit emblems for some reason even though ypu can do it with no spirit emblems just fine...

Breathe of life is worth grinding out early. Ascending carp and descending carp and top off your spirit emblem.

Not talking about Ichimonji, which people already need for the descending/ascending carps - that's a paddling. Combine Ichimonji with mid-air combat art, for the ultimate bonking experience. Jump + bonk has range and gets rid of the wind up. Enemy tries to stab you - mikiri + bonk. Enemy tries to sweep you - stomp on their head and bonk. The Enemy is staggered - big, slow bonk. Enemy is staying away, edgewalking - jump + bonk. The Enemy has built up your posture - throw a bonk. It's the most versatile combat art, costs nothing and restores your posture every time it's used. Downright broken, if you ask me.

So what order do you recommend i get these in?

High Monk is an incredible skill in my opinion, better than senpou leaping kicks at least. Just have to time it right

4:55 Final Boss spoiler...

I've just been banking up skill points lately, and farming xp for them. It can get a tad boring, so I only do it about 2 hours at a time. But I've banked 11 so far lol.

Its all about high monk for me. Its a counter to sweep attacks

I like the unblockable Shadowrush basically really good against any humanoid enemies.

In the Second play trough you start fresh?

Was it just me that grinded all but one upgrade on the combat art. As well as grabble attack before gyoubu.

Where is Ichimonji (double)? by far the best attack skill in the game?

Senpuo kicks over double ichimonji??? I gotta get it

Using Ichimonji is my second favorite thing to do in Sekiro. The first is Mikiri Countering them.

Thanks for casually dropping boss spoilers with zero warning.

If you need to top off a level before a boss battle or need some money heres the trick......Spawn at Gun Fort, back stab the shotgun guy around the corner, run back to idol, rest and repeat. You get 300xp and 52 yen.

Fextralife, your lack of faith in my ability to grind all the skills is dissapointing. The art of the grind was taught to me at the lotheric castle bonfire

Ichimonji is the best combat art.

I went through the whole game not even getting the two carp skills cause I didn’t put any points into the tree

cool, do you know any good location for mining skills points?

Agree, sempu kick Rocks!!

I am playing now with as few skills as possible to put my skill points into AP. Have only bought mikiri so far. As a conclusion: you don't really need any of these skills. I replace ichi with mortal blade and you also get heal-passives from bosses. Try it!

What about Living Force, you can make your sword on fire and dive

Imagine this video also includes and where to find them.