Overview
This guide should help new players which reach way of the wise or way of the nioh to get a decent endgame build.
About this Guide
This guide is meant for new players who reach the endgame (Way of the Wise, Way of the Nioh and the Abyss) and should teach them how to create and get their own endgame build. It is not meant for players who are experienced in this area. I might suggest some things that don`t apply to all situations and if you know what you are doing its fine to ignore them. I don`t claim that doing it the way this guide suggests is the best way especially since there are so many build options in this game. Once you have a general understanding of how to create a good endgame build you can also try out different things that are not covered or contradict some things mentioned in this guide.
What is important in the endgame and what is not important
To create a good build you need to know what is actually important in the endgame. This game has hundreds of different stats and most of them are actually pretty useless.
Defense
The most common mistake players make when they reach the hardest difficulties is that they think their defense is to weak because they die with 1-2 hits from any enemy. The fact is that they die in 1-2 hits to those enemies no matter how good their defense is, simply because the enemies deal so much damage in those difficulties. It doesn`t help to invest into defense. The only 2 stats that really help you survive more hits are % elemental damage reduction and % Firearms damage reduction. You can get those stats to quite high numbers and with some sets even to 100%. Even 80%-90% firearms reduction is enough to survive multiple hits from any projectiles without much trouble. All other defense stats are pretty much useless in the endgame.
Elemental Damage
Something else that becomes more useless the further you get in the game is elemental damage. While in the first difficulty elemental talismans provide a nice damage boost and apply useful status effect, they become pretty much useless later on (and elemental damage as a weapon effect is even worse). In the endgame all enemies have such high elemental resistance that its almost impossible to apply status effects on them (at least with elemental damage from weapons, other things like Guardian Spirit talismans with Paired Raiken apply status quite effective even on bosses). Also the additional elemental damage is minimal compared to the overall damage. if you use a decent build with good damage the enemies are usually dead before you can apply any status. And for bosses you mostly use LW which overwrites elemental effect on your weapon anyway.
Damage
What is most important in the endgame is your damage. Dealing good damage is a requirement for anyone at this difficulty. When you want to create an endgame build this is what you will focus on.
Weapon and Armour stats
In general the weapon and armour stats (attack multiplier, defense multiplier, parry, break, toughness, weight) don`t matter much except for toughness and weight. Toughness is important to be able to block hits without losing much ki and weight is important to stay within your desired agility. Attack multiplier, defense multiplier, parry and break are not that important. Defense in general is not very useful and those stats don`t vary much between different weapons. So if you use a weapon with less attack multiplier the actual difference will be very small.
Another aspect that is armour/weapon specific are fixed effects that cannot be reforged. But those are in almost all cases bad and in general its better to use equipment that doesn`t have it.
Sets
Because of the reason mentioned above the most important factor to decide which piece of equipment you want to wear in your endgame build is its set. You want to combine sets(and graces) in a way to get the best possible set bonus from your equipment.
Living weapon
Bosses are using it and so should you. in the later difficulties you often want to charge your LW before a boss fight and start the fight in LW. Using a guardian spirit with good LW stats (most important are Might, Recovery and Action but others are useful too) makes a big difference. But not only your GS is important for LW. Accesoires can also improve your Living Weapon (increase damage, duration etc).
Also be aware that when you get hit during LW weapon, how much the bar drops depends only on the might of your guardian spirit, not on your defense. this makes the use of carnage talisman very strong during LW.
Omnyo
Omnyo is also very important for the endgame. Very important skills are extraction, leeching and carnage talisman. sloth and weakness are useful too but require either a lot of magic or extend duration(sloth) rolled on your glove and on your accessories to last for a significant amount of time. the passive skills are always good.
Ninjutsu
Get all 3 quick-change scrolls and the mystic art to use ninjutsu instantly. This is like 3 extra lives that are replenished at every shrine. Other than that use what you like and get the passives.
Weapon Choice
All weapons are pretty well balanced and can be effective in the Endgame. Use the weapon you like most and focus on this one. I would not recommend to try to fit multiple weapons into the same build except duals+single katana or tonfa+kusarigama. Those weapons scale from the same stats.
You can use a different secondary weapon but create your build around your main weapon and don`t sacrifice the effectiveness of this weapon for a secondary weapon.
Different weapons usually also focus on different aspects of the game and this reflects in how you create your build: Axe and Odachi often use heavy armour and strong attack, tonfa usually uses light armour. Dual swords usually uses skills. be aware on how you want to use your weapon to know which stats are important for your build.
Sets
Deciding which sets you want to use is one of the most important things for a good build. You want to combine different sets in such a way that you get as many good bonuses as possible. In general you want anything that increases your damage. It is better to use different damage bonuses than stacking only one type of damage bonus. But you should also avoid combining damage bonuses that don`t fit together well (for example Izanagi provides a damage bonus when you get healed and Sanada Crimson increases your damage when your health is low/critical).
Bonuses that don`t increase your damage are usually not relevant.
Almost every set has a 4 piece bonus of about 10% close combat damage (it can increase depending on the level of your equipment). This is one of the most important bonuses and you want to get it at least 2 times from different sets.
You can equip 9 pieces of equipment that can have a set or grace (2 melee weapons, 2 ranged weapons, 5 armour pieces) and with a Yasakani magatama as accessories your set bonus requirement is reduced by one.
Usually you want to include at least one grace with at least 3 pieces (to get the 4 piece bonus) into your build because you can put a grace on ranged weapons and there are no useful sets with ranged weapons.
The only set which only requires 3 pieces (2 with Yasakani magatama) to get the 10% close combat damage bonus is Seven Misfortunes, Eight Hardships.
When you decide to use a set also think about which bonus you really need and equip only as many pieces of this set as needed to get the required bonuses. Most sets have some pretty useless bonuses that are not worth equipping additional pieces for.
for example Izanagi grace: it has among the best 3 piece bonus (attack buff when you get healed) in the game and also the usual 4 piece bonus with 10% close combat damage. But the 5 piece bonus (change to attack (spirit) A, not very useful because spirit is not worth getting more than 34), the 6 piece bonus (attack damage surge timely guard, not very useful because it lasts a very short amount of time and usually you don`t use timely guard very often and if you do there are better options. Also it can be rolled on armour) and the 7 piece bonus (close combat attack life drain, useful to constantly trigger the 3 piece bonus but it can be rolled on weapons or you can roll bonus for amrita absorbtion (auto-recovery) on torso) are all not very useful.
so while Izanagi is a great grace to equip 3 pieces of (to get 3 piece and 4 piece bonus thanks to Yasakani magatama) its usually not worth it equipping any more than that.
If your set includes a weapon with a fixed effect on it, you usually dont want it as your main weapon (almost all fixed effects are bad). in this case (or if the set has not the weapon type you want/no weapon at all) you can include your main weapon in a grace. this allows you to choose a good weapon with no fixed effects.
list of all sets:
https://nioh.wiki.fextralife.com/Set+Bonuses
list of all graces (and also more information about Graces/the abyss if you are not familiar with them yet):
[link]
When deciding on a set also check the weight of the set pieces to make sure you can stay in the desired agility with your set choice.
Agility
In general it is suggested to use A agility (equipment weight ratio up to 30%) or B agility (equipment weight ratio up to 70%).
A agility is better for dodging while B agility is better for blocking (heavier armour has more toughness. The additional defense is irrelevant in the endgame).
A agility is more restricted to choose sets as it cannot use sets that are too heavy. For A agility Graces are very useful because you can find them on any ethereal armour that is not part of a set such as the pirate armour (lightest armour in the game).
Sometimes it is even possible to stay A agility even when using some heavy armour. Boots, gloves and helmets are the lightest pieces and weapons have 0 weight. If you want to include a heavy set into your build while staying A agility its usually best to include its weapon, gloves and boots. All accessories have a weight of 0.1 (0.2 for both together) which you should not forget when calculating your agility.
To calculate your agility you first need to figure out how heavy your armour is. if you use sets you can simply add the weight of your setpieces. if you use graces you have to check out which armour you want to put the grace on. for the start calculate the weight if you would use pirate armour and if you see that you are well below the max. equipment weight for your agility, you can try with heavier armour which provides more toughness.
Then you need to know which max equipment weight you have. This depends on your strength and stamina stat.
If you use a weapon that scales with one of those or both of those stats, you want to have the stats your weapon scales with on 200 (max). Otherwise you want to keep them as low as possible to safe skill points that could be invested in something more useful. If you do need to skill stamina even though it doesn`t scale with your weapon, don`t skill more than 100 stamina as you barely increase your equipment weight after that. Only skill as much stamina as is required for you to stay in the desired agility.
If you invest no points into stamina or strength your max equipment weight is 29.5 which means 20.6 (=29.5*0.7) for B agility or 8.8 (=29.5*0.3) for A agility.
Those links help you to exactly calculate your equipment weight depending on how you are skilled (or help you figure out exactly how much stamina you need to skill in order to use the set you want in the desired agility.)
[link]Skilling Main Stats
Once you know which weapon you want to use, which set you want to wear and how much stamina you need, you can decide how you want to skill your character. The max level is 750 so in total you can distribute 749 points. You will start with 5 points already in each stat and 1 additional point in 2 stats depending on which weapon you chose at the start of the game. This allows you to max out (200 points) 3 stats.
First you should get your ninjutsu and magic to 30 each which will max out your capacity for each of those. Then you should get your spirit to 34 which unlocks all passive abilities from all Guardian Spirits.
Putting any more points into spirit is not worth it. It only increases your defense (not useful in the endgame) and how fast your amrita gauge fills as well as the cooldown after the use of Living Weapon. It does not make you stronger in any way while using living weapon.
Now you should distribute just enough points to meet the requirements for your armour and to reach the needed equipment weight.
All other points should be put into the 3 stats which scale with your weapon.
Unless you had to heavily invest into stamina (and your weapon doesnt scale with stamina) you should be able to max out (200 points) all 3 stats which scale with your weapon.
Any points left can be distributed the way you want. In general I would put all of them into magic to increase the duration of omnyo magic (especially sloth and weakness talisman).
When you first reach the last difficulties and make your endgame build you probably won`t be level 750 yet. This is not a problem, just get the requirements for your set as well as the required stamina, 30 magic, 30 ninjutsu, and 34 spirit. Put the rest into the 3 stats that scale with your weapon and continue doing so as you level up until you can max out those stats.
Effects on your Equipment
With tempering and reforging you can change the effects of your equipment. It is very important to choose good effects. Some effects exclude each other and cannot be present at the same time. In general you want everything that increases your damage. There are star effects which can sometimes be quite strong, but they are not required for the endgame. they cannot appear when reforging so you can only get them if your equipment already has it when you find/forge it. For the first endgame build its fine to go without them. Once you have a decent build you can still optimize it later by exchanging pieces with star effects. Also most star effects wont be very useful for your build.
Effects from your secondary weapons wont apply while you use your main weapons (both ranged and melee). If you don`t plan to use them in combat the only relevant thing about the secondary weapon is its set/grace.
Here a list of important/useful effects. Which one you choose also depends on your build. The values listed are the max value they can have at 0 familiarity.
Melee weapon:
Important effects that you always want on your melee weapon:
Change to Attack (one of the 3 main stats your weapon scales with) A-
Familiarity Damage bonus A-
+15% close combat damage
effects that i would highly recommend:
close combat attack ki reduction
other useful effects:
weaken torso armour, weaken melee weapon, final blow damage
Ranged weapon:
Depending on whether you go for light or heavy armour you either want Agility damage Bonus A- or Equipment weight damage bonus A- (only appears on cannons as far as i know). Those stats will also increase the damage of your melee weapon. The only other effect from a ranged weapon which affects melee damage is +13.9% Fire damage (only on cannons). This however is not that important but if you use a fire Guardian Spirit it`s still fine.
Which other effect you use for ranged weapons is up to you.
Armour:
Some effects appear on any armour piece, some appear only on one or two types of armour.
Those effects you want on one of your armour pieces (it doesnt matter which one):
shorten recovery time (out of ki), tenacity (recurrent damage).
Headgear:
Important effects on headgear:
Bonus for absorbing Amrita (increase attack)
10.9% Received Firearms Damage
not important but useful:
Enemy sense
+2 toughness (this is useful for light armour users. if you use heavy armour its not needed)
14.9% weight reduction (you should only use this if its the only way to stay in the desired agility)
Torso Armour:
Important effects on torso:
Extend Evasion Invulnerability
10.9% Received Firearms Damage
16.9% Received Elemental Attack Damage
not important but useful:
+2 toughness (this is useful for light armour users. If you use heavy armour its not needed)
14.9% weight reduction (you should only use this if its the only way to stay in the desired agility)
Gloves:
important effects on gloves:
+[ItemLevel / 15 + 10] Attack
Close Combat Attack Increase (not useful for axe or odachi but useful for other weapons)
Not important but useful:
+2 toughness (this is useful for light armour users. if you use heavy armour its not needed)
14.9% weight reduction (you should only use this if its the only way to stay in the desired agility)
Leg Armour:
Important effects on leg Armour:
29.9% everlasting Ki
15.9% evasion ki usage
9.9% running speed
Not important but useful:
15.9% Dash endurance
+2 toughness (this is useful for light armour users. if you use heavy armour its not needed)
14.9% weight reduction (you should only use this if its the only way to stay in the desired agility)
Boots:
Important effects on Boots:
29.9% everlasting Ki
15.9% evasion ki usage
9.9% running speed
not important but useful:
15.9% Dash endurance
+2 toughness (this is useful for light armour users. if you use heavy armour its not needed)
14.9% weight reduction (you should only use this if its the only way to stay in the desired agility)
Inheritable effects:
Inheritable effects are very important for armour. They allow you to put an effect that would normally only appear on a certain armour type onto other armour types. Not all effects appear as inheritable effects. The two most commonly used inheritables are 10.9% Received Firearms Damage (get headgear or torso armour with this inheritable and soul match it onto gloves, leg armour and boots). This way you can have it on every armour piece) and +[Item Level / 15 + 10] Attack (get gloves with this inheritable and soul match it onto headgear, torso, leg armour and boots).
Accessories:
Important effects:
Set bonus requirements down -1 (this effect is absolutely required. Yasakani magatama has it as a fixed effect, other ethereal accessories can have it too as a rare effect. It is not stackable so equipping 2 accessories with it doesn`t help)
other useful effects:
Living Weapon attack enhancement
Yokai close combat damage
Received Firearms Damage
Received Elemental Attack Damage
Increase attack (+value)
Onmyo Magic Duration (sloth) A
Living Weapon duration
Durability of Living Weapon
Accessories cannot be reforged so you cannot change their effects. They can however be defiled to increase their level, +value and rarity. you should always look out for accessories with better effects than your current ones.
List of most (but not all) effects (effects that are in the same group conflict with each other and cannot appear at the same time):
[link]
This is an example of a good sword: it has perfect close combat damage, change to attack a- from one of its scaling stats, familiarity damage bonus a- and perfect close combat attack ki reduction. it also has the star effect skill damage (sign of the cross) which is very useful but also quite rare and not required for the first build. the effect close combat attack life drain is usually quite bad but in this build it is used to trigger the 3piece bonus from izanagi which provides a damagebuff whenever you get healed. This sword has also no fixed effect but still all effect slots.
Guardian Spirit
In general i would say use whichever guardian spirit you like but the fact is that some are clearly better than others.
For a Guardian Spirit to be good it should usually have at least 2 of those 3 characteristics:
- a good Guardian Spirit talisman
- passive effects that increase your damage
- good Living Weapon stats
Examples of good Guardian Spirits:
Kato: Probably the best passive effects and good LW stats. you can never go wrong with using Kato
Tengen Kujaku: Great LW stats and a strong damage buff (especially is you regularly use high stance).
Paired Raiken: Great LW stats and a great Guardian spirit talisman (it can reliably electrify enemies including abyss bosses. Also stunlocks them during the animation.)
Those guardian spirit are only good in one of those areas but probably the best there:
Daiba-Waishi: Great Guardian Spirit talisman if not the best. Throws all human enemies including bosses onto the ground which allows for a guaranteed deathblow. Can also be used to start a Iai loop or Sotc loop. Not very good LW stats or passive effects.
Kara-jishi: Has a great buff which triggers whenever you use a samurai skill and increases the damage of samurai skills significantly. Doesn`t have very good LW stats and not as useful when using Guardian Spirit talismans.
For some builds other Guardian Spirits might be better but usually the ones mentioned are the best options.
Forging
Now that you have planned your whole build you need to get it. Because your equipment requires specific characteristics it usually takes multiple tries to get the correct one. For this reason the best option is to get the smithing texts and forge the equipment with the blacksmith.
You want to forge divine equipment. anything below divine is not useful. Forging ethereal equipment is not possible but you can later turn your divine equipment ethereal.
For weapons you want to get a weapon that has no inheritable effect (unless your weapon has a fixed effect in which case it doesnt matter. But most fixed effects are bad so you want to avoid weapons with fixed effects). This allows you to put one more effect onto your weapon than it would normally have. You can soul match an inheritable onto your weapon with no inheritable which will add the inheritable effect additionally to the others.
For armour you want to get it with an inheritable effect. Because all armour has at least one fixed effect (% damage reduction) it will have all effects slots full so if it doesn`t already have an inheritable you cannot add one. You need the inheritable to replace it with an inheritable from another armour piece that naturally cannot appear on this piece (for example soul matching an inheritable +attack effect from gloves onto headgear.)
For pieces that are part of a set you just need to forge one piece each (with inheritables in case of armour and without in case of weapon).
For pieces that you want to put a grace on you need to forge multiple pieces each (about 5-10). Each of those should have an inheritable if its an armour piece and no inheritable if its a weapon piece.
If you want to get a specific star effect on your equipment you need to forge until you get one with the wanted star effect and also with or without inheritable (depending on if its a weapon or armour).
Defiling
Now you need to defile your equipment. This can only be done in the abyss.
probably you have not been in the abyss yet but don`t be scared. The first floors are actually easier than missions in way of the wise or way of the Nioh. From floor 21 its way of the wise difficulty and its possible to get ethereal gear. Once you reach way of the Nioh you unlock floors 31-999. It is possible to get/defile all your endgame equipment already on way of the wise (floors 21-30) but on way of the Nioh the chances are higher which makes the process faster.
First some general information about the abyss:
Each floor consists of 4 planes with each representing a debuff, and the crucible where the abyss boss waits. If you find the kodama in a plane, the corresponding debuff is removed. It is advisable to remove all debuffs before fighting the boss.
If you die in the abyss you GS protects your grave as usual. But if you fail to retrieve your Guardian Spirit and die without it, you not only lose all your amrita but also all defiled equipment and get expelled from the abyss.
You can choose which floor you enter the abyss but you cannot choose a floor higher then the highest reached floor.
To progress in the abyss I highly recommend using the following onmyo magic and ninjutsu:
suppa scroll and catwalking scroll: if you use both at the same time enemies wont notice you unless you touch them or they are foxes/dogs. This allows you to run past almost all enemies in the planes and go directly to the kodama (almost) without fighting.
Earthfolding talisman: this talisman teleports you back to the last shrine. This is very useful if you die in a fight against an abyss boss and your grave is in the crucible. You can run into the crucible, retrieve your grave and use earth folding talisman to go back to the shrine. This way you can start the boss fight again with a fully charged guardian spirit (if you pop some spirit stones).
In the abyss you have the option to defile items. By defiling an item you can increase its rarity (for example turn divine items into ethereal items) and increase its level and +value.
If you turn any divine equipment that is not part of a set ethereal, it will acquire a grace.
All needed information about defiling, graces and the abyss can be found here: [link]
Tempering
After defiling you need to reforge to get the wanted effects on your gear. The best way to do this is the tempering option. Before you start tempering make sure you have some umbracite of each rarity. It does not require to have a lot of them from each rarity. This ensures you always have the maximum number of options to choose when tempering.
Check out if one of the options has the effect you want (and with its max value). If it does, choose it and continue with the next effect. If none of the wanted effects are among the options just choose one of the two effects from the umbracite type you have most of. This will reset all the options also for the other umbracites.
This way you should be able to easily get all the wanted effects on your gear (except inheritables). When reforging be aware of effects that conflict each other and cannot appear on your gear at the same time. If your sword already has agility damage bonus you cannot roll familiarity damage bonus onto it for example. If your equipment has an inheritable that conflicts with one of the effects you want to put onto your gear, you need to wait with this effect until you soul matched the correct inheritable onto your gear before you can temper this effect.
Here again the link for a list of effects. It also shows which effects are conflicting (effects in the same group conflict with each other and cannot appear at the same time):
[link]
If you need more umbracite you can get it as a guaranteed mission reward from twilight missions once per day (which rarity of umbracite you get depends on the difficulty of the twilight mission, for example on way of the Nioh you get divine umbracite. You can do both twilight missions on each difficulty once per day to get a total of 2 umbracite per rarity per day).
Soulmatching
Soulmatching serves two purposes: leveling up your gear and inherit effects onto it.
To put one inheritable effect for a piece of equipment onto another piece of equipment, you choose the one you want to put the effect on as basis and soulmatch with the other as material. The material which has the wanted inheritable effect needs to be at max familiarity (can be maxed out with the consumable items whetstone or nikawa glue). Be careful about conflicting effects. If you equipment already has an effect that conflicts with the inheritable you want to put onto it, your equipment won`t change. In this case you first need to temper/reforge the equipment to get rid of the effect which conflicts with your inheritable.
If you don`t already have equipment with the inheritable you want, a good place to farm equipment with good inheritables are the graves in the mission “spirit stone huntress” in way of the strong. There you find inheritables with perfect +15% close combat damage (on weapons) as well as perfect +20 attack (on gloves, +20 is perfect for a glove level 150 with 0 familiarity), perfect +10.9% firearms damage reduction and other useful effects.
Once you have all the gear you want with the right grace and effects on it, you need to level it up. This you can do with soul matching. Until +50 you can soul match any equipment that has the same level or higher as your gear onto it to increase its +value by 1. Once you reach +50 the only way to further increase its +value is to soul match gear with the effect soul matching(+value inheritance) onto it. This will imidiatley raise the +value of your equipment to the level of the gear you used as material. Once you reach floor 50 and 70 in the abyss, you will be able to forge weapons and armour with this inheritable. You can forge them, defile them on your maximum abyss floor to get them to a higher level, and then soul match them onto your equipment to raise the level of your equipment (you could also directly defile your equipment on the highest abyss floor but its not recommended. It`s more risky as defiled items will be lost if you fail to retrieve your grave and also you might need your equipment to fight in the abyss).