Overview
This guide will cover everything related to Demon Fangs in Ōkami. Be aware that like probably many other guides to come by me or other players, it will contain spoilers.
What are Demon Fangs?
Demon Fangs are special objects that can be forced out of demons. Obtaining Demon Fangs requires Floral Finishers, which needs a specific Celestial Brush technique depending on the demon fought. Some demons drop more than one Demon Fang when defeated correctly. They’re used in trading with certain characters for very useful items.
Executing Floral Finishers
A Floral Finisher is a special attack used immediately after killing a demon, when its body turns grey and falls through the air as time warps and slows. If a specific Celestial Brush technique is used as a finishing attack on the demon in mid-air, it drops Demon Fangs before the body disintegrates into a large patch of flowers on the ground.
Floral Finishers do not work if Amaterasu has already struck the enemy with something else during its dying state (a different brushstroke, a Divine Instrument, or the Thief’s Glove), or if she has just killed the enemy in certain ways. Cherry Bomb disintegrates the enemy’s body upon death, eliminating the chance to use a Floral Finisher. If an enemy’s Floral Finisher is normally Power Slash, actually killing it with Power Slash will prevent the finisher from working properly. Instead, you should deliver the final blow with a different attack and slash the body in mid-air afterwards.
Bosses and sub-bosses do not have Floral Finishers, except for the Tube Foxes.
Other ways to obtain Demon Fangs
Applying the right Finisher to each enemy is an excellent way to farm Demon Fangs, but there are three additional methods to obtain more of them alongside Floral Finishers themselves.
This technique gets unlocked very early into the game and consists of using your reflector as a secondary weapon allowing you to use the Sub-Reflector Counterattack. When Amaterasu successfully blocks a direct physical attack with proper timing, she will launch into the air along with the victim and spiral back down to the earth before forcefully slamming it down into the ground. You will need to do a perfect counter in order to release a Demon Fang, if done correctly a green bagua will appear on the screen. Do not be afraid to train on demons to get the hang of it, mastering the Sub-Reflector Counterattack is not as hard as it sounds. Even if you do not get a perfect counter it will not cost you any health. The only difference will be that you won’t get a Demon Fang out of it.
The most expensive, but also the easiest way to obtain Demon Fangs. You will need to pay Onigiri-Sensei to learn the Golden Fury – and later on, if desired – the Brown Rage technique for this one. They each drop respectively one and two Demon Fangs per demon you’ve use said technique on, so they are both really great ways to obtain additional Demon Fangs during your battles. Even though not as necessary as other techniques you will be able to unlock, I highly recommend you to get both of them at least later in the game as they will be needed to get the ‘Teach an Old Dog New Tricks’ achievement.
And the final method (which also funnily enough is for me personally the hardest one to obtain Demon Fangs with) is to play the mini-games during loading screens. If you were wondering why you could skip loading screens in this game, this is the reason. There are two variations of the loading screen, each depending on how the screen is shown.
- On screens with paw prints appearing along the bottom of the screen with Issun’s silhouette at the end, tap the jump button in time with the paws that appear (making them larger). Successfully timing a press with each paw print leads to Issun’s image appearing as a Demon Fang instead.
- On blank load screens, mash the jump button rapidly to fill the screen with 50 paw prints to earn a Demon Fang.
You have to enable the mini-games through the options menu first before being able to play them.
* Both these methods only work once per demon per battle, but Floral Finishers can still be executed after using them to gain additional Demon Fangs.
Floral Finishers (Cave of Nagi ~ Moon Cave)
Floral Finishers (Ryoshima Coast ~ Oni Island)
Floral Finishers (Kamui ~ Wawku Shrine)
Fang Traders
Now that you know everything on how to get Demon Fangs, you’re going to want to know what you can get with them. There are three Fang Traders throughout the game, but I will only talk of the first two as the last one is only accessible at the very end of the game, which is a point of no return and does not give you access to any new item whatsoever.
The first one you will encounter in your journey is The Great Fang Trader Kiba, located in Agata Forest near the broken bridge to Taka Pass.
And the second Fang Trader is Emperor Takara, located in the Imperial Palace in Sei’an City. He will only trade for Demon Fangs after you defeated Blight.
You will only be able to trade for the Water Tablet after you beat Kyûbi on Oni Island. This Holy Artifact makes it much faster and easier to traverse water and renders Water Lily almost completely obsolete. It will be required to have if you want to get all the Stray Beads in the game.
Secret achievement
There is only one secret achievement related to Demon Fangs, you will need to acquire 300 or more Demon Fangs during your playthrough. One way to easily tell if you achieved that is if you bought every Holy Artifact besides the Thief’s Glove and the Fog Pot as it will cost you exactly 300 Demon Fangs to do so. There are also other requirements towards that specific secret achievement but if you want to learn more about them, then I suggest you to read DulcetRefrain’s in-depth Achievement Guide. It is a simple yet very efficient guide that perfectly explains how to unlock every achievement in the game.