Boss skill farming

[Tetrapackable]

So i wanted to try to get some boss skills & recipes for my char by farming Imagava in his side mission, but so far i did not get even the smith recipes not to mention boss skill.

What am i doing wrong?

Got some equipment with luck & item drop percentage, kodama bowl & blessing and luckbringer talisman.

Anything else i can try to improve my chances or do i just have to beat the boss 100 times xD?

I just found out tea cups increase luck as well if you put the in your house.

[Drybonz]

The skills seem to be super rare. I think I have only got three the whole time I've been playing.

[きょすけ]

Having very high luck and item drop rate will help you into getting the skills and smithing texts. Also be sure to farm the boss in the lowest difficulty possible, as higher difficulty does NOT influence those drops.
Unfortunately it will take some time.

[OldWhovian]

1. Make sure to set your tea set in the hut to maximize luck (you can appraise collected tea sets at the Hidden Teahouse); try to also minimize tea drop rates as they can take an Item slot
2. Have an equipment set that is specced for Item Drop Rate, Luck, and Item Drop Rate (Yokai Shift) (just make sure to kill the boss in yokai shift mode if you use these).
3. Use soul cores that have Item Drop passives
4. If you don't get any desirable drops, you can quit to main menu and load instead of exiting and restarting the mission (mostly helpful if you don't have a mission or picture scroll available to let you grind easily)
5. Kodama Blessings don't help with recipe/skill drops as both are classified as items rather than equipment According to commenters here and on Reddit Hunter's Blessing does work despite the wording in game

[orthostatic]

OldWhovian can you confirm or prove re: kodama blessings? Scuttlebutt everywhere is that hunter blessing increases item drops which implies that kodama helm and SC can positively influence drop rates.

[OldWhovian]

Originally posted by orthostatic:

OldWhovian can you confirm or prove re: kodama blessings? Scuttlebutt everywhere is that hunter blessing increases item drops which implies that kodama helm and SC can positively influence drop rates.

Hunter Blessing does increase item drop rate but only for Materials, specifically those used in crafting. Nothing in the help description or any other official literature suggests it would increase drop rate for anything else. If anything, it could be harmful for farming skills/recipes as materials likely take up item drop slots. That being said, I don't have any empirical data as I already have all the skills and recipes; I also lack the time and, frankly, interest, to make a new save and grind 10k times with and without the blessing to get acceptable sample data to create an inference. I just trust the wording and descriptions of the game and worked off that for my grinding. For myself, I never had to grind any boss more than 10 times for all their skills. Many more times for all the recipes though as a couple bosses have several possible drops.

[Melusca]

Stack soul cores with "item drop rate yokai shift" and "luck yokai shift" passives on Ninetails + Itokuri. Yokai shift when the boss has a sliver of HP left to ensure you kill him during yokai shift.

[Farsha]

Originally posted by OldWhovian:

Hunter Blessing does increase item drop rate but only for Materials, specifically those used in crafting. Nothing in the help description or any other official literature suggests it would increase drop rate for anything else. If anything, it could be harmful for farming skills/recipes as materials likely take up item drop slots. That being said, I don't have any empirical data as I already have all the skills and recipes; I also lack the time and, frankly, interest, to make a new save and grind 10k times with and without the blessing to get acceptable sample data to create an inference. I just trust the wording and descriptions of the game and worked off that for my grinding. For myself, I never had to grind any boss more than 10 times for all their skills. Many more times for all the recipes though as a couple bosses have several possible drops.

From what I could google Hunters blessing effects smithing text drops and skll text drops as well. It was same in first game. It's still RNG but it's still implied hunter blessing + Kodama bowl does help a bit.

[orthostatic]

Originally posted by OldWhovian:

don't have any empirical data as I already have all the skills and recipes; I also lack the time and, frankly, interest, to make a new save and grind 10k times with and without the blessing to get acceptable sample data to create an inference.

LOL, nobody would blame you for that. I was hoping perhaps someone else had done that and you could cite. So much of what is "known" about this is rooted in confirmation bias and superstition that I wouldn't seek to argue your position based on a lack of data. For all of the recommendations I've read on text farming that encourage hunter blessing, yours is the very first I've seen to recommend against it. Piqued my curiosity is all.

We differ on our trust of the UI dialog. Still... all the texts. Must've been fun. ;)

[OldWhovian]

Originally posted by Farsha:

Originally posted by OldWhovian:

Hunter Blessing does increase item drop rate but only for Materials, specifically those used in crafting. Nothing in the help description or any other official literature suggests it would increase drop rate for anything else. If anything, it could be harmful for farming skills/recipes as materials likely take up item drop slots. That being said, I don't have any empirical data as I already have all the skills and recipes; I also lack the time and, frankly, interest, to make a new save and grind 10k times with and without the blessing to get acceptable sample data to create an inference. I just trust the wording and descriptions of the game and worked off that for my grinding. For myself, I never had to grind any boss more than 10 times for all their skills. Many more times for all the recipes though as a couple bosses have several possible drops.

From what I could google Hunters blessing effects smithing text drops and skll text drops as well. It was same in first game. It's still RNG but it's still implied hunter blessing + Kodama bowl does help a bit.

Yeah I followed up on google and people are saying it's true on Reddit. I haven't seen any actual official confirmation or primary data source for this; but I'm not about to try and prove the other way so I edited my original response

[OldWhovian]

Originally posted by orthostatic:

Originally posted by OldWhovian:

don't have any empirical data as I already have all the skills and recipes; I also lack the time and, frankly, interest, to make a new save and grind 10k times with and without the blessing to get acceptable sample data to create an inference.

LOL, nobody would blame you for that. I was hoping perhaps someone else had done that and you could cite. So much of what is "known" about this is rooted in confirmation bias and superstition that I wouldn't seek to argue your position based on a lack of data. For all of the recommendations I've read on text farming that encourage hunter blessing, yours is the very first I've seen to recommend against it. Piqued my curiosity is all.

We differ on our trust of the UI dialog. Still... all the texts. Must've been fun. ;)

Yeah I'm seeing a lot of confirmation on the blessing so I updated my original response to reflect that. A lot of the other wording is so specific and reflects it in function that I figured they wouldn't use misleading phrasing; but I've seen it said that under the hood they're considered materials.

It wasn't that bad, I waited on the bosses that had lots of texts until I was well over-leveled and over-geared for it anyway

[orthostatic]

Originally posted by OldWhovian:

It wasn't that bad, I waited on the bosses that had lots of texts until I was well over-leveled and over-geared for it anyway

About the same for me, though I invested a lot into it during NG because I thought practicing troublesome encounters would better prepare me for upcoming difficulties. In some cases this is true but I've had better results going back to NG with +50 weaponry and bulldozing. I'm down to 17 texts left now, and they are all proving so troublesome that I'm willing to consider human sacrifice if someone posts telling me it works.

Hell, I'm repeating Winds of Ruin with as much +item and +luck as I can find, and even doing all of the kills using only Reckless Charge since I bound Mercenary Strike to it. Just not having any luck. It's rage-worthy but I've started to reduce my time spent on boring repetitions (nearing 300 kills on Kato) to sets of 10 or 20 per day.

I labor for this under the belief that the smithing recipe for hundred night incense lurks behind a complete farming run of texts, and only there.

[Melusca]

Originally posted by orthostatic:

Hell, I'm repeating Winds of Ruin with as much +item and +luck as I can find, and even doing all of the kills using only Reckless Charge since I bound Mercenary Strike to it. Just not having any luck. It's rage-worthy but I've started to reduce my time spent on boring repetitions (nearing 300 kills on Kato) to sets of 10 or 20 per day.

Which texts are you missing? Some of them don't drop from Winds of Ruin, like the wooden splitstaff (dojo only :/) or the tonfa stuff (farm Hanzo + Honda duel instead).

[orthostatic]

jikkyu matsutada
dodanuki masakuni
usumidori
tarobo kanemitsu & rapier
slayer's axe
suwa myojin sickle
ryomen sukuna's sword
lost kingdom tonfa
wave cutter hatchets
splitstaff
benkei's splitstaff
dragon king splitstaff
five-man bow
marksman's bow
mount fuji helmet
linked ring helmet
ichi-no-tani kabuto

Just looted the text for wooden fists. Dojo kill, not Winds. I was worried that some of the drops might be limited to certain instances of bosses, but have seen many folks profess that they were somehow equalized. (Fails to account for Otakemaru's skills only dropping from DLC Otakemaru)

[Melusca]

Most of these are either from DLC bosses or uniques in Cherry Blossom. AFAIK Jikkyu can only drop from NG+ Nobu, or at least I farmed him a lot in NG and got nothing, then farmed him in NG+ and got it in 10 minutes :x

[bzcharkl]

For what it's worth, I don't think Yoshimoto's boss skills are that good, at least for the way I play. Windswept is decent but nothing amazing, and Punish the Proud is just straight up garbage. I personally wouldn't say either is necessary for the weapons in question, unless I'm missing something big.