Anayama at night

[Exp HP]

So apparently I unwittingly entered a point of no return. It is now night, and now all the places I wanted to come back to are locked off.

I never had a chance to talk to Anayama the peddler, and I really wanted to do his questline. How the heck do I reach him now?

[Sasha Mason]

NG+.
There's no other way. To finish his questline, you were supposed to do the questline of another NPC before the Divine Dragon. Btw you can technically reach him. Go to the Old Grave idol and run down to the now not so broken bridge. Then you can go across and back to Ashina Outskirts.

[Exp HP]

That's awful!

The game really failed to communicate that I was going through a point of no return. I thought the path on that mountain kept going up further and that praying at that little cave would just be part of a sidequest. :/

(and that point of no return just *had* to be guarded by the easiest boss in the entire game...)

Sigh...

[Sasha Mason]

I mean, those NPC questlines are completely pointless to do and in all of the Soulsborne games, those NPC questlines failed for a lot more arbitrary reasons than what Sekiro is doing.

Also, how would you even think that the Divine Dragon is part of a sidequest despite the Divine Dragon, Fountainhead Palace and Dragon Tears being common things mentioned in dialogue with Kuro? You know, the entire reason you even went to the Fountainhead Palace in the first place and collected all that stuff for Kuro?

...

Seems like you've just skipped through dialogue and pull the "Oh no the game didn't tell me" card.

[Exp HP]

No, I thought praying at the sanctuary was a side quest.

Then I killed the divine dragon because I didn't want to lose my XP. :/

(also, I thought the fight seemed too easy and figured there was probably a second form that would kill me)

[Exp HP]

Reading your comment again... apparently I can reach him?

If so, maybe all hope is not lost? I already gave the other NPC the red-and-white pinwheel.

[Sasha Mason]

Just explore Ashina Castle some more. Ashina Outskirts is reachable. Just not through the way that you know.

[Exp HP]

Okay, thanks, I found the Outskirts: Stairway Wall Idol and am searching vaguely around the area where he's supposed to be. (wiki says he moves to the other side of the gate, but both sides of the gate are in flames... I'll keep looking)

Or maybe it was necessary to progress the peddler's quest to some point once before I could send Kotaro over? I can't quite remember what my dialogue options with Kotaro were after giving him the pinwheel...

[Exp HP]

Ahhh... nope. It's too late. Kotaro's still sitting there at Senpou Temple, and my only option is to donate his body to science.


Science it is, then...

[Nanashi]

Originally posted by Exp HP:

No, I thought praying at the sanctuary was a side quest.

How did you even come to that conclusion? You go there to get a dragon tear. That path is far beyond anything that could branch off into any other direction.

I mean I give you that. I thought there'd be more way after the cave before the boss but it was very obvious that this would be the path to continue the main quest.

Originally posted by Exp HP:

Ahhh... nope. It's too late. Kotaro's still sitting there at Senpou Temple, and my only option is to donate his body to science.


Science it is, then...

Actually... If you give him the correct pinwheel you don't have to send him to "science". You might have missed that I guess. The quest of Kotaro has three different outcomes. To send him to Anayama you definitely have to start NG+ though. I'm not sure if you've found him yet but there is no point in sending Kotaro to him anymore at that time :(

[Exp HP]

How did you even come to that conclusion? You go there to get a dragon tear. That path is far beyond anything that could branch off into any other direction.

There is grass on either side of it and on top of it, so when I first approached it and saw the shape of the grass I thought it was possible to walk around the cave and keep going. I went inside thinking I would either talk to (if she's living) or examine (if she's a statue) the lady figure there. But as soon as you press the action button it begins a cutscene (with no confirmation menu!) and thrusts you into battle.

Later I came back, saw that there is indeed no way to get on top of the cave, and that the action button prompt was labeled "pray."

[Sasha Mason]

I mean, it's not like that's really super critical anyways. None of the NPC questlines give you items that are really worth it.

[Exp HP]

Mmmm. You're right, none of the rewards are good, it's just frustrating to have opportunity taken away from you unexpectedly. Personally, I'm a completionist; I like to see all of the content I can find in a game. I'm the kind of person who picks an obviously wrong dialog option in a game just to see what happens (and then resets to see the others!).

For Sekiro, I'm not too interested in playing through multiple times for all the endings, but I figure I would at least do what I can do in one playthrough; i.e. get the most complicated ending, and do all the minibosses and sidequests that are available to me on that playthrough.

So... meh, I guess. There's still the secret boss and plenty of minibosses left. If anything the bigger diasppointment right now is that I no longer have anybody with which to share all of this sake I've accumulated...

[Sasha Mason]

I mean, NG+ doesn't really take all that long. I've beaten the game four times all with a single save file and after my first playthrough, the other three playthroughs were much faster because I knew where to go and avoided pretty much all enemies.