Need to kill all minions for each miniboss every attempt?

[🌈❤️Jasmine ❤🌈]

This game started of great and I am loving the world and combat but I am on the fence of just dropping this game. I am a big souls fan trust me I even bought a ps4 just to play bloodborne (And have 100% achivements on all demonbloodsouls titles) but this game has one problem I just cant overlook. In order to upgrade my character I need to kill the minibosses but they are all surrounded by a lot of minions. So I take my time to stealth kill them and then I get recked by the miniboss because I am confused half of the time.

I can parry a bull the size of a dinosaur running at me but I cant parry a horizontal swing from a big man? So I die lots and lots. And that is fine but having to clear the area slowly each time is getting very very tedious six hours in and it is just not enjoyable anymore at this point.

I love the combat the world the vertical map design but this tedious loop of clearing the area for 5 minuts to have a shot at the mini boss is just making me question if its worth it. Because that is half of my playtime right now. Killing the same easy enemys to have a shot at a miniboss. Other half was great I love all the other stuff. But if there is no way around this I cant see myself continue.

[Evilsod]

Diposting pertama kali oleh OCTDUMPUS:

Agreed, she seemed like a wall at first, but then I find out you just need to be even more aggressive, with the good ol' Lazurite Axe, she can go down in a minute. Almost everything can overwhelmed with enough aggression in Sekiro

Curious to know. I've never really put the Lazulite upgrades to much use because they never seemed all that effective.

[🌈❤️Jasmine ❤🌈]

Diposting pertama kali oleh grandma_moses:

Following this thread for a while now and I still do not know which minibosses you speak of that are so tedious to clear around.

The ONLY guy that comes to mind is the dude on top of the stairs to Ashina castle, and he is surrounded by four adds. That is the most adds any miniboss has ( not counting the dog dude in 2nd hirata as you can fight him without dogs or the drunk in 1st hirata as you have an ally with you ).

You talk of a miniboss with dogs, bell guys, hammer guys and normal enemies...is he the one when you revisit the moon-view tower? The one you can stealth around and deathblow him while pulling only like one of his adds with him, having a lot of fighting space to the right of the moon-view tower? I'm not saying he isn't one of the harder minibosses, but clearing everything up to him - I can see that becoming tedious, no doubt about that.

I have the nagging feeling that you do not embrace or even make use of the stealth side of the combat and the game design itself at all, instead complaining about the tediousness of it all because you feel compelled to clear everything leading up to a miniboss every time. Everything on the main route to the boss. It's not the game that's making you do that, you do that to yourself.

And another thing, I've seen you write '...the boss I have to kill...' in numerous variations multiple times. You do not. If you find a miniboss and clearing around it feels too tedious, why not just skip it and clear it later on in the game when you feel more comfortable in your own skills? When you realize how you can circle around the enemies, stealth deathblow basically every miniboss and beat every one of them in under 30 seconds, adds including?

The only minibosses you absolutely have to beat to progress, afaik, are the ogre, Saze, giraffe centipede, armored warrior, the okami lightning wielder and the two Snake-Eyes - and guess what, none of them comes with even a single add.

I guess what I'm trying to say here is: Don't be so hard on yourself slamming against optional content you do not enjoy. Just skip the tedious minibosses until the game clicks for you, then you will have a good laugh when you return to your former nemeses and wipe the floor with them.

I do use stealth, especially to clear the enemys because I want to attempt the mini boss with full health. And I do not want to skip them because I need what they drop for upgrades so skipping them would make it harder right?

[🌈❤️Jasmine ❤🌈]

Diposting pertama kali oleh OCTDUMPUS:

Diposting pertama kali oleh Evilsod:

Then just as you think you're getting it, you get a boss like Corrupted Monk who takes almost no posture damage until you get her to about 1/3 hp.

Agreed, she seemed like a wall at first, but then I find out you just need to be even more aggressive, with the good ol' Lazurite Axe, she can go down in a minute. Almost everything can overwhelmed with enough aggression in Sekiro

Diposting pertama kali oleh 🌈❤️Jasmine ❤🌈:

Right now I decided to put the game down for the moment. I really want to learn and get into the combat but the next miniboss I have to fight is a giant spear samurai which has 2 big hammer dudes near him 3 gunman 2 wolves 4 normal enemys and a bell guy.

There's a way to get to him directly, you can jump off the right side of the path and grapple on to ledge next to spear guy. Stay relatively close to the tower and you can usually avoid enemy attention.

I will try this thank you. I guess I overlooked something then. And this is exactly why I started this topic. I thought I was doing something wrong and couldnt believe fromsoft would do something stupid like surround most minibosses with mobs. But if there is a way around most of the mobs instead then im all good :)

[Evilsod]

To be fair, if you kill them first time, it doesn't matter if you had to take a little time to clear out the mobs.
It just becomes an issue when you fail repeatedly.

[🌈❤️Jasmine ❤🌈]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Evilsod:

To be fair, if you kill them first time, it doesn't matter if you had to take a little time to clear out the mobs.
It just becomes an issue when you fail repeatedly.

Yes after clearing enemys for 5 minutes 5 times and still dying to the miniboss you lose a lot of motivation. Reason it takes me so long to clear everything is because I do it with stealth and dont want to lose hp or estus flask before the mini boss

[I-Chi]

I'm seeing people regularly say that deflection is key. I would say that there are multiple ways to fight, and certain ways may be more effective for a particular (mini) boss. For the general mini-boss at Ashina, I stayed far away most of the time to avoid his attacks, then chase-slice with shuriken when I find an opening and close in. I did do posture damage from one of his sweep attacks (yes I'm proud when I manage to do it), but I just chipped away at his vitality. I also think it's more fun to experiment with attacks, the game has so many skills and tools to make combat interesting.

[Evilsod]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Butt Stallion:

I'm seeing people regularly say that deflection is key. I would say that there are multiple ways to fight, and certain ways may be more effective for a particular (mini) boss. For the general mini-boss at Ashina, I stayed far away most of the time to avoid his attacks, then chase-slice with shuriken when I find an opening and close in. I did do posture damage from one of his sweep attacks (yes I'm proud when I manage to do it), but I just chipped away at his vitality. I also think it's more fun to experiment with attacks, the game has so many skills and tools to make combat interesting.

There are multiple ways to fight, but the reason most people say deflection is key is because breaking your enemies posture happens long before you'll drop their vitality bar in a straight fight. That applies the vast majority of non-beast minibosses/bosses.

There are ways to do both though. I steamrolled through my PT3 (Shura) and half of PT4 with heavy use of Flame Vent + follow-up to make most minibosses burn even through guard which lets you land even more free hits, dropping both vitality and posture together. By the time most they recover, they're so low on health their posture never regenerates and a few more deflects, they're dead.

Or you can go for the really passive, sprinting around and diving in with Nightjar to land chip hits approach. I've done that, its horrifically slow and is really detrimental to getting a proper grasp on the game mechanics.

[OCTDUMPUS]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Evilsod:

Curious to know. I've never really put the Lazulite upgrades to much use because they never seemed all that effective.

Yes, she is a illusion and therefore its very vulnerable to the axe, I like to use one right off the bat and after dodging her big glaive slams, wears her posture and health down like magic :)

[LightLance]

Diposting pertama kali oleh 🌈❤️Jasmine ❤🌈:

Honestly I have finally killed one of the minibosses I was stuck at. I really kept trying to do the deflect and be hyper aggressive playstyle but one mistake and he 2 shots me in a combo so I decided to take a dark souls approach and chip away at his health and dodge his attacks. Got him first try. I am truly confused now. All his attacks almost look the same but have different parry times and I cant afford to take a single hit because if I get hit and back up he regenerates all his posture. I really cant see any other option than play like a coward OR be perfect. you cant be ok in this game it seems like. I am truly lost now. I feel like if I would play it like souls I would just delay the unavoidle moment ill have to get good at the new mechanics.

If you do not master the basic mechanics, you really will not taste this game. You cannot feel this incredible feeling of dancing blades and rhythmic metal clanks. And you don’t understand what is Sekiro. Mastering deflection is the key to this. I would recommend that you practice your first purple ninja in Hirata Estate. He's not even a mini boss. You can reach him without killing anyone along the way. He has not kanji sweep attack, but he is very good for training mikiri and deflection techniques. But you definitely need to defeat him that way without cheese.

[OCTDUMPUS]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Evilsod:

There are multiple ways to fight, but the reason most people say deflection is key is because breaking your enemies posture happens long before you'll drop their vitality bar in a straight fight. That applies the vast majority of non-beast minibosses/bosses.

Exactly. Like another guy in this post said, the game rewards the ability to deflect effectively by allowing you to be even more aggressive against weapon wielding bosses especially.

For the beasts, its harder but possible nonetheless with the right prosthectic, i.e. You can posture kill the bull with the lotus umbrella with timed deflections. The ape is again a bit harder but possible with firecrackers and hyper-aggression alone, with the flame vent and high damaging combat arts like Mortal Slash or Ashina Cross I imagine it will be easier, it just takes time adapting to deflecting fists instead of blades.

I would even argue you can get a posture kill off the Demon with enough practice.

Diposting pertama kali oleh LightLance:

He has not kanji sweep attack, but he is very good for training mikiri and deflection techniques.

He does have a sweep, its a follow-up after the leg slam attack, he is a really good training partner(?) though.

[LightLance]

Diposting pertama kali oleh OCTDUMPUS:

Diposting pertama kali oleh LightLance:

He has not kanji sweep attack, but he is very good for training mikiri and deflection techniques.

He does have a sweep, its a follow-up after the leg slam attack, he is a really good training partner(?) though.

Sorry, yes. He has. I forgot about it becouse i never jump this sweep, because it is interrupted with a sword, if you have already performed a deflection just before it.

[🌈❤️Jasmine ❤🌈]

I finally killed seven spears after throwing myself at him for 3 hours. Yes there was a shortcut and I am so happy someone pointed that out! It was just not that obvious and I wasted a lot of time by killing all the enemys near him. Then I also killed the longswordsman in the cave near him. Then I did some backtracking because I felt like I missed something. I found the fire prostetic and a bell that got me into a memory. I crushed that area. Killed both minibosses in 1 go. Seven spears was good practice. Then I got to lady betterfly. After my 2nd attempt I killed her but then I discovered she had a 2nd phase xD. Killed her for real on my 5th attempt. (seven spears took like 50 lol) I loved the fight. Parrying 4 attacks in a row felt very ♥♥♥♥. The combat in this game is very ♥♥♥♥ I am really loving it now. Hitboxes of danger sign attacks are really off and frustrating sometimes but thats all I have to complain. I swear I was behind seven spears when he killed me with a thrust attack so many times I almost lost it.

I was a bit stupid aswell. I thought I had to deflect everything all the time and then when I got hit once and had to heal they regained everything so that didnt work. Now I make them half health firtst. Then I focus on doing posture damage. This works so much better.

Fun fact seven spears took me more attempts and time then anything else from demon souls , dark souls 1 & 2 and bloodborne. Only the twin princess and the nameless king took me more time/attempts.

Seven spears is so cursed I swear xD Either he falls of the map and despawns, throws me of the map or the camera gets stuck in the tree. I fought him at a small ledge when I won because 50% of my deaths was because the camera decide to go into a tree.

I think I made the breaktrough

[Evilsod]

Deflecting then Mikiri'ing the entire kick combo from Lone Shadows is extremely satisfying just because of the sound alone. Once you get that down its free posture damage.

Lol, yes taking down bosses to discover an unannounced next phase is both frustrating and awesome at the same time.

[🌈❤️Jasmine ❤🌈]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Evilsod:

Deflecting then Mikiri'ing the entire kick combo from Lone Shadows is extremely satisfying just because of the sound alone. Once you get that down its free posture damage.

I made him half health first by dodging and counter attacking. Then it was not too bad because he didnt regain posture so fast so If I had to heal I could do that without having to do all posture damage again :) The wise lesson is dont just deflect all teh time but make their hp lower first. because it is very frustration to do 80% posture dmg , get hit , back up to heal , see it drop to 10%

[Evilsod]

It shouldn't regenerate that fast unless you have to keep breaking from combat multiple times because your one mistake led to you getting hit while healing, or you couldn't find an opening so took ages. It varies between enemies, but I think it depends on the last time you landed a hit of any kind that damage posture, hell, even throwing a shuriken should stop it regenerating(I honestly don't know actually... I never considered it before?).

I can also guarantee that in the time it took you get him to half health by dodge counters so you could 'start' your fight, regular combat would have killed him.
Though things do get a lot quicker on PT2+ when you have the skills.
I still had those bosses to do, so cleared the area, backstabbed Seven Spears, hit him with Flame Vent + Living Force, then two swings to set him on fire and did some more damage so he was half health/posture before he even got an attack in. A few deflects and a couple of mikiri's later and he's dead. Then dropped in on Lone Shadow for the deathblow, flame vented + living forced him too and set him on fire, deflected a few combos and he was dead too.

(then ran to the next drunkard and failed miserably 1.5 times)

Also I realised why the Lazulite Axe hits so hard... it's because the Monk is an illusion and it combines the effects of the Axe with Snap Seeds. It also explains why it doesn't do the extra damage after the third (fourth?) one, but it does make it a lot easier to break his posture.