Farming Weapon Hidden Skills

[Witcher]

Anyone knows if there are probability diffrerences farming for weapon hidden skills in NG or NG+ missions?

Edit: Getting bored fighting same boss over and over again for Art of Combat skill to drop.

[orthostatic]

Data are not published for it, and most of what you'll find online or regurgitated here is superstition. Among the varied superstitions are shared beliefs such as:

- Maximize your luck. Relatively easy to get +200, but much much more can be had with effort.
- Probability unlikely to increase with difficulty, so level up until you can farm multiple kills per minute and then come back to it.
- Let's be honest; they put a trait called Luck in the game that you can specifically boost with tempers and whatnot. It must be relevant, right? ;)

Other beliefs I've observed or practiced, with varied levels of dissent and absolutely no proof or disproof from either, or superstition as I've termed it:

- Recipes are considered items, so boosting item drop is valid and imperative.
- Items and equipment compete for slots in awarded loot, so minimize equip and maximize item.
- Kodama "Hunter" blessing boosts likelihood of recipes.

I farmed all of the lootables with hunter blessing on and with about +240 luck. Some of the weapon skills were bloody annoying at 70-120 kills, but most skills and texts dropped in less than twenty kills. A few of them seem dependent on mission context, like Kato's texts. I say "seem" because I did over 200 Kato kills on Winds of Ruin and had all but the wooden fists. A few dojo kills later, I had wooden fists. Correlation isn't causation, but it does seem likely for this case. Same goes for weapon skills that weren't available until DLCs came out, rendering the pre-DLC Otakemaru and post-DLC Otakemaru loot tables as differing.

The game doesn't tell you why something did or did not drop, so unless you're debugging it and understanding what you're reading, you won't know. I've yet to see any bit-bang analysis of it, and I stopped looking since I have everything except for the rewards dependent on progression specifics.

[Witcher]

Yea, my first Splitstaff hidden skill dropped in NG around 10 attempts. Second Odachi skill dropped in NG+ around 20 tries but 3rd Dual Swords skill hasn't dropped in NG+ after close to 20 tries.

I have got Kodoma blessings max'ed and selected but my Luck is not that high - trying to avoid wearing Kodoma helm

[orthostatic]

My starting set (samurai->strong->sorta demon) was kodama helm and shrine maiden with luck and item drop tempers. Dying was so easy, heh.

I neglected to mention that at least 90% of the text/skill drops I farmed were on lowest difficulty. I encountered no reason to believe that higher difficulty increases drop rates, but as I did most of my farming before exercising that prospect I genuinely cannot say. I can say that everything seems to drop "readily" on the lowest difficulty, so it's painless to grow your character beyond it and return for insta-kill farming.

Kodama helm has so much value. Can't imagine why you would avoid it. :) Just think, if your build and play strat can kick butt with that helm on, just imagine how much better it is once you're ready to let it go. :)

[Doroti]

I, personally, recommend you farm those on high level scrolls (around lvls 650-670).

An acquintance of mine killen Otakemaru (First samurai) a couple of times but never got upgrades for Demonic Forms (There are 3 of them in total), and I got 3 in 3 attempts on the scroll, out of nowhere, when I was farming a specific scroll stat.

I have Item and Equipment drop on all my Gear, as you can NOT really get anything better besides non-star stats, and no specific blessings for Items drop, as luck is luck and there is no sense in maximazing it as it depends on your personal luck as a living creature :)

[Mander]

As previously mentioned, we don't have any "hard data" to use, only our experience.
That said, my experience suggests that higher cycles of NG help with drops: the chance of obtaining rare drops (smithing text especially) grows with difficulty. Same thing should be true for Secret Technique, but I can’t be so sure about the correlation here, mainly because I’ve farmed too many times a couple of bosses in Dream of the Samurai. Therefore, any other secret technique I’ve obtained in higher difficulty is a welcome present I wasn’t looking for.
I’m saying this because I was using hardcore farming setup in DotS: Gamo clan, spider guardian spirit, any accessories with + Luck…
I’m finding things in Dream of the Strong which are as rare, but much more easily and without a farming setup.

Also, in farming secret techniques, I always suggest to avoid Dojo mission whenever possible: they are a pita to farm. Go for winds of ruin instead: it’s a boss rush, but it’s a lot less painfull.

[Witcher]

Originally posted by shket916:

I, personally, recommend you farm those on high level scrolls (around lvls 650-670).

Do you mean farming same boss in Picture Scrolls instead of in game mission?

Originally posted by Mander:

Also, in farming secret techniques, I always suggest to avoid Dojo mission whenever possible: they are a pita to farm. Go for winds of ruin instead: it’s a boss rush, but it’s a lot less painfull.

Yea, I have pretty much given up on fighting Mumyo in Dojo (both NG & NG+). Have tried maybe 5 or 6 times in Wind of Ruin or what ever where Mumyo is the last boss to fight.

[Mander]

Originally posted by Witcher:

Originally posted by Mander:

Also, in farming secret techniques, I always suggest to avoid Dojo mission whenever possible: they are a pita to farm. Go for winds of ruin instead: it’s a boss rush, but it’s a lot less painfull.

Yea, I have pretty much given up on fighting Mumyo in Dojo (both NG & NG+). Have tried maybe 5 or 6 times in Wind of Ruin or what ever where Mumyo is the last boss to fight.

The important difference, is that in winds of ruin you can use your gear, instead of those pesky wooden weapons and no burst counter...
Even Kintoki, with his "never winded" bull. is quite a different beast there. And the less I talk about Shisenin Kosen the better, with his 50/50 on sword attack and remapping techniques on the fly... cheating w**re

[cybercybercybercyber4]

just farm on ng. there shouldnt be a difference. also you can restart the boss fight by closing the game. which will help in some cases.

Whatever, please think about wether you really want to use the hidden skill, some of them hollow the weapon type. An example would be the hatchet secret skill which turns an interesting weapon into just another attack spam tool, making them boring as f..k to use.

i use hatchets and ill not touch that crap.

[Witcher]

Originally posted by cybercybercybercyber4:

just farm on ng. there shouldnt be a difference. also you can restart the boss fight by closing the game. which will help in some cases.

Whatever, please think about wether you really want to use the hidden skill, some of them hollow the weapon type. An example would be the hatchet secret skill which turns an interesting weapon into just another attack spam tool, making them boring as f..k to use.

i use hatchets and ill not touch that crap.

Thanks for the good advice, I originally used Hatchets too but then liked the cool combat animations of Splitstaff. I also like the animation of Hatchets' Art of Combat but gave up trying master in dojo.

Just recenlty picked up dual swords to master it to unlock trophy and sub mission for last Guardian Spirit, and was surprised how good it is at killing enemies in NG+ despite 24 points in Strength only which I remodelled them. I know I fall for cool combat animations like Spinning Dragon ;)

Dual Swords were my first weapon but I got bored b/c Spinning Dragon didn't exist then.

[Mander]

Originally posted by Karhrandras:

What would be the best place to farm for Hanzo's Tonfa Skill?

Maybe the mission which puts you against him and Honda, and with Mumyo helping you? Can't remember the name, sorry.

[Witcher]

Originally posted by Karhrandras:

What would be the best place to farm for Hanzo's Tonfa Skill?

Watch this - unfortunately in a dojo.

https://youtu.be/VyK1BHrKufo.

[Sir_Knight_Arthorias]

It's completely up to RNG

For me Swirling sniw dropped after 167 Magara Naotaka fights
But then I got Ultimate Sign of The Cross and Double-Headed Slice both dropped at the 5th Tokichiro fight

If I'm not mistaken there are people digging through the files to see if they can find exact numbers on all the RNG related stuff, so I guess we'll have to be patient and hope they can find smth

[Witcher]

I have fought Tokichiru maybe 50 times now and will settle for any text ;P Initially, he dropped lots of text including Kingo twice but he's not dropping any text now. Game trolling me to persist?

[Sir_Knight_Arthorias]

Originally posted by Witcher:

I have fought Tokichiru maybe 50 times now and will settle for any text ;P Initially, he dropped lots of text including Kingo twice but he's not dropping any text now. Game trolling me to persist?

texts can't drop twice.. ?

[Witcher]

Lol, he finally dropped the Art of Combat with 2 other texts.