Demon Bell in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice can be rung by the player to increase the difficulty of the game. However, you will be rewarded with better item drops. The effect of the bell can be removed using the Bell Demon item, which you will automatically receive once you have rung the bell.
Demon Bell
What the Demon Bell Does Exactly
- It makes your game harder by increasing all combat stats of enemies:
- Higher vitality damage;
- Higher posture damage, your posture will be broken easier;
- Higher vitality damage resistance;
- Higher posture damage resistance;
- Enemies' loot pool is now extended
- They drop additional (new) loot
- based on next game cycle (NG+...)
- Loot quantity increased by up to x2 for uncommon items (this is only yet confirmed when Virtuous Deed is active as well - maybe not required)
- Increases Item drop frequency
- Does not affect the gathering of Spirit Emblems
- Has no effect on skill point or sen quantity gained
- **Negative effects do stack with not having Kuro's Charm. (Source)
- **As of most recent patch, the Demon Bell's burden DOES STACK with the Hardship penalty that is incurred if you give back Kuro's Charm. It does, however, seem that the raw penalties of the Demon Bell omen are reduced in strength if Kuro's Charm is not in your inventory.
Where to Find Demon Bell
- Located up the hill from the Shugendo Sculptors Idol, before fighting the Armored Warrior and through a barred door.
- Can be accessed easily afterwards through the Bell Demon's Temple Sculptors Idol.
- This area is also found via a hidden wall behind the first Headless in Ashina Outskirts. Just sprint jump down to the Headless and sprint around and behind the Headless and you should be safe from its attacks. Run up the ramp, turn right into a corridor.
Notes About Demon Bell
- Applies 'Sinister Burden' and places Bell Demon in your inventory. This item can be used to remove the effect, and reapplied at the bell.
- Using the Bell Demon next to any of the pious woman gives you an Ungo's Sugar.
- Pious woman can be found:
- On the bridge right before Ashina's Castle
- Right before the bottomless hole
- Outside of a building in Senpou Temple, where the kite is supposed to be when flown
- Right next the Sculptor Idol of Bodhisattva Valley
- Pious woman can be found:
Anonymous
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"This must be why the game is so hard, I must have had it on this whole time!" Nope. It was off, I'm just bad and demon of hatred is absolutely smoking me
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As much as i see posts of “i accidntally beat the game with it on” i had the opposite experience, dying to owl like 20x then remembered to take it off and got it next try, worth noticing that red dot under the health bar…
- Anonymous
makes the game easier imo, ez item drops and you dont have to runback all the way just to get rid of it. cov of champs but better
- Anonymous
Everytime I couldn't complete no death run, I would activate the bell and do charmless as a punishment.
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Ah i remember on my first run I put this on then immediately took it off sinister burden kinda in the name
- Anonymous
So, as a Sekiro first timer, I somehow got lost and ended up ringing this bell. Had to look it up on this wiki about what does this bell do, when I found out you can get better loot, I decided I won't remove this bell from the inventory. Doesn't care how many time I have to suffer as long as I can farm upgrade materials a little bit easier.
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I'm convinced that the people who "forgot" they had demon bell activated are either illiterate, braindead or looked up 'dementia' on google to see the links purple.
- Anonymous
Can we all agree that if you put it on past new game++ (depending what endings you got and if you grinded for prosthetics), your doing it for an OP sen thrower?
- Anonymous
Beat the game a few times now. My Dualshock controller is broken; as an alternative, I have been using the Rock Band drum set. Lulz didn't realize what activating the bell does until i got to Ng++.
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LOL! so this is what it does, just finished my first playthrough with this on... idk was expecting game to be a bit harder
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Realized I was using this while facing owl and that's why it was hard. Took it off and still was getting my ass beat lol I suck.
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Oops I accidentally activated the demon bell lol! Couldn't finish the game tho. Been trying to beat headless but he's doing a no block no parry run on me by spamming that fisting attack. Pls nurf uwu.
- Anonymous
Wow, I had no clue what this item did on my first playthrough today (game took about 6 hrs), but I used it as soon as I got it and didnt notice much. I dont think this item makes the game harder as it is a relatively easy game
- Anonymous
Accidentally beat the game blindfolded with my feet with Bell Demon no Kuros Charm no blocking/parrying, no attacking all bosses no upgrades.
- Anonymous
Oopsie doopsie it appears I have activated the demon bell and I completed the entire game without even noticing. XDDDD. LMAO. ROFL! Get on my level bozos.
if i see one more comment like this i swear i will punch my monitor
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help me im being held hostage on the fextralife wiki page for the demon bell from sekiro
- Anonymous
LMAO i RaNg ThE BeLL aNd aCciDenTaLLy bEaT tHe GaME guEsS I'm jUsT tHaT gOOd siLLy mE.
give me a break.
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oooooh so that's why the game was harder, i used that bell but i didn't read the item description. I completed entire game with this XD
- Anonymous
oooooh so that's why the game was harder, i used that bell but i didn't read the item description. I completed entire game with this XD
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If there is anyone still playing in current times I had found a way to further increase difficulty on yourself and it has become the only way I prefer to play the game.
Go into your settings and change your HUD to "Always off". You think this wouldn't do much but you have to be fully aware of everything about the game, you can't see your health, your posture gauge, nor the enemies. You don't see the finishing blow indicator. Hell, you can't even see grapple hook indicators. It May take some getting used to at first but it is the best way to play the game in my opinion.
I had just recently started playing again so thought I would share.
- Anonymous
If I ring the bell more than once, will it get harder and give more loots? Or it's just 1 level?
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Its f##kin funny to read these comments "forgot to dispell sinister burden before boss fight" XD. Do some testing, Demon Bell only applies to regular non "BOSS" enemies.
- Anonymous
is it worth it? pls don't boast about how easy it is for you with it, just curious if anyone deems the added loot and sen wortht the struggle
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Didn't know what this does and played through the game with it. Silly me XD. Also accidentally gave away kuros charm, didn't see any difference in difficulty. Guess I'm just that good XD
- Anonymous
Bell Demon is weird, it's a noticeable increase on NG but it doesn't really scale, so by NG+7 it's a tiny, nearly unnoticeable increase.
- Anonymous
Not a slightest bit of difficulty increase. Kuro's charm is a different story though.
- Anonymous
I love that one my first playthrough I ring the bell and forgot to check the thing I got from it, so I spent my whole first game with a difficulty buff, man was I confused on my second playthrough when bosses were going down way easier...
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Use it inside gauntlets if you have problem with inner boys :))
- Anonymous
So my question is, does it effect also Gauntlets of Strength in a same way? Like increased dmg and healt of bosses?
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This bell is actually really good, especially at ng+7, where there is pretty much no increase in difficulty from it, and you get more item drops. Niceee
- Anonymous
This game is ok but repetitive, clunky and underwhelming, Nioh is the real deal combat-wise, it ruined all souls games to me :3
- Anonymous
I don't remember ringing this bell and don't remember reading this pop up and don't remember having this icon under my health bar and don't remember my moms name and don't remember who I am and... where am I?
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i rang the bell and have been playing w it active for about 2 hours and i notied better loot i already have a ton of prosthetic upgrade materials but i dont notice a change in enemy difficulty. is it a bug maybe?
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I used it, immediately sat down at the idol and soft locked, fixed itself after restarting the game
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The amount of mixed likes and dislikes here are both hilarious and disappointing to me because half of them are from MLG assholes, the other half are people just trying to adjust to the difficulty of the normal game. Way I see it? Play your way and adapt your style to the challenge. It takes time but it works. Enjoy it for what you love and forget what anyone else thinks.
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This is not THAT hard maker compared to giving kuro charm away
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This is without a doing a reference to the previous games from Fromsoft. It is literally a BELL that makes the game HARDER. It’s a DEMON which loves Into your SOUL.
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I completely forgot that I had even rung this thing and then I hadn't played for a few days after. Didn't notice much of a difference in game play as most of the enemies at this point were new, so I couldn't compare their difficulties to a previous run anyway lol.
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A few players have stated that they didn't know what the bell did when they rang it and they played through the game and didn't notice the difference. Not to undermine the skill of these guys, it makes me wonder if they just read the memo on the bell without actually interacting with the hammer that rings it. The note simply tells you not to ring it but when you actually activate it a prompt fills your screen telling you basically, "You have activated the bell and you are possessed by a demon. Enemies are tougher now and drop rates have increased" as well as the little demon appearing below your health bar indefinitely. I find it hard that anyone that rings the bell doesn't notice this.
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I highly recommend people use this. Honestly, I rang the bell, didn’t realize what it actually did and just kept on trucking. I feel like I got a lot better at the game very quickly because of it.
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In a way this is a good 'git gud' tool for people to use if they're struggling with the game forcing you to learn the mechanics faster than you usually would.
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The burden may be linked to additional dark-apparition type enemies spawning in specific locations, e.g. on the bridge to corrupted monk and at the gun fort shrine.
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Doesn't really make the game that much harder, tbh. I toyed with it in the early game and then from genichiro to the end just kept it on permanently and really the only part I noticed was the increased posture damage, but that's easy to manage with ichimonji or sugars.
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Just beat the game and went to google "Kuro's Charm" and got led to this. I just realized I beat the game with this thing active for most of it without reading what it did. I'm such a dummy XD
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Im just finished my last ng+7 run,its hard to test without numbers but i feel like this works even on ng+7,i run plenty of tests on the dude next to seven spear boy in ashina castle reservoir,he have enormus amount of hp and posture,i do kill him faster without bell,same goues for charm,without both of this i kill him like twice faster.
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Couldn’t find anything mentioning the bell’s impact on loot drops on mini and regular bosses. Are those drops predetermined and unwavering, or does the number of materials — for example — increase when killed with the Bell Demon in inventory? If not, and since it can be activated/deactivated at will, I would think that turning it on to get through regular mobs would: 1) massively improve loot drops, and 2) increase player skill quite dramatically. But is there any point in taking on bosses with this on, at all, other than for a difficulty increase? In my case, increasing the difficulty for major bosses is not something I need or would find enjoyable lol — not unless the reward became worthwhile.
- Anonymous
I think the demon bell affects the item drop frequency. When I farmed some upgrade materials I realized I got a lot more than before. I had struggles getting scrap iron. Killed the enemies in the area of the first Mob. Within 3 killcycles I had over 20. That's more than I got in my playthrough up to that point even though I killed a lot of those. (posting this as the point is currently crossed out)
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Does this Demon Bell increase experience gained from defeating enemies?
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Feels as if even when I get rid if the burden it still stays in my game? I went through the hidden village on another save without ever using bell demon and some "phantom" enemies such as the shuriken guys on ashina castle never showed up. Not sure if its glitched or what
- Anonymous
This DOES stack with not having Kuro's Charm, contrary to what this page and its source states. The testing in the source was done in NG+7, which is the likely reason why it contradicts with my own testing, done in NG+2 (since NG+7 is where the difficulty caps in general). In my testing, you would still receive the negative effects of the Bell, even if you did not have Kuro's Charm on. At least for damage taken, since that is all that I tested. Don't think I am allowed to post links as Anon, sadly.
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Maybe I'm just retarded but I haven't noticed a difference between normal enemies or mini-bosses before or after I got the bell demon. I'm really starting to stuggle though so maybe I ought to get rid of it for a while.
- Anonymous
After playing with this bell active in most of NG, and all of NG+1, NG+2, and NG+3 - I've learned a few things. In the first game, it appeared to nearly double vitality damage taken by me, and halved vitality damage taken by enemies when I tested it. It also affected posture by about 50% or so. In NG+2 on the other hand I tested it again on the final boss of the game - and at that point it's only affecting the vitality damage and posture by about 10%-20% or so depending on the attack (hard to get exact numbers). Enough to make a difference, but not nearly as game-deciding. This makes me think that the bell de-buff must be a fixed value of some kind, and that the buffs you get from attack damage and your increases to vitality from maxing out your prayer bead necklaces cause the relative difficulty to not be affected as much.
- Anonymous
Call me retarded, but I genuinely believe it shortens certain charge up animations. A certain fiery creature of bad emotion also 100% had its everything improved as that was the fight where I turned it off after playing the entire game with it. It made a huge difference. Enemy posture regen seems to be affected as well, basically impossible to accumulate posture damage as long as some enemies have more than 50% health.
- Anonymous
Someone should mention that the debuff doesn't stack with kuro's charm (you still take chip damage but the vit, str etc increase is the same) i've been testing it for 2 hours and it's literally the same with just charmless vs demon bell and charmless whh welp.
- Anonymous
I'm not scared turning the bell on in whole game, what I scared for is giving kuro charm, cause I suck at deflecting and enemies can get cheap vitality damage if you haven't time it right!
- Anonymous
Fought several bosses and got to "Demonhead" palace before realizing i still had this active for no reason. guess im just leaving it on?
Using this when the game gets easy is great. I kept it on from the beginning of the game, till after Ashina gets sacked. I had to remove it at that point in the game. For me, the basic enemies at that point are too difficult with the bell demon, especially those damn duel wielding samurai monkeys. Having two of them on your ass with the bell demon is game over
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Hoping that somebody can do enough testing to find exactly how the math is done for the bell stat changes. In my first game it appeared to double vitality damage both ways ,and increase posture damage to me (plus increase enemy resistance to it) by 50%, but I have a suspicion that attack power increases or differences between various enemies might make this number different (I'm currently fighting Sword Saint Isshing in NG+2 with the bell and charm active, and he seems to be taking more vitality damage than I remember).
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You can get to this immediately after the chained ogre fight, by going past the ''cannot behead the headless'' note. When you get to the very dark headless mini boss arena there is a hole in the cave wall down near where the headless is that leads to a wall you can hug and turn and the other side is the demon bell idol.
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Does it stack with Kuro's charm return debuff? Playing with both right now and i didn't notice any significant difference with bell or without it if you already have Kuro debuff.
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You can get to the demon bell by leaping off a cliff near the location of the white pinwheel, catching a ledge on the fall down, circumventing needing to go through Armored Warrior. -urpwnd
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Using the bell demon next to a pious woman by COMPLETE COINCIDENCE and getting extra dialogue from her and an Ungo sugar was a real from soft moment, love those obscure details
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Does beating the boss with demon bell gives you any special reward
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It 100% effects mini-bosses. They pretty much always 2-shot you and ***** up your posture within seconds. This is a pretty krwzi amount of difficulty, but I am going to attempt it.
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Forgot to turn the debuff off so I did the genichiro boss fight with him being beefed up. xD
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I think this gives you both “more” and “better” drops. Farming the elite in Ashina’s upper Antechamber, I not only increased the rate of dropped divine confetti and scrap iron (which I was getting before), but am now also getting scrap magnetite and even lumps of fat wax from the old lady walking around. Must ring for farming purposes as far as I’m concerned.
Does it only increase the item drop rate or does it also cause enemies to drop better items?
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"Causes aditional ghost-like enemies to appear (such as greyjar shinobis in the trees at the beginning of Mibu Village and a Samurai on bridge after O’Rin of the water)" This is incorrect, I ran into these enemies without ever using the Demon Bell. I think they might be triggered by beating the second Guardian Ape fight?
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I don't know if this has something to do with the demon bell, or if it's based on my story progression. At the abandoned dungeon at the end where the bottom of the elevator is, I encountered a 'ghost' samurai there. He was aggressive but also blind to me sneak attacking him because the area is dark. Gotta test this again with the demon bell off.
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Started getting yellow gunpowder from the enemies in the poison pool which i didn't seem to get from them before. I have "Virtuos Deed" & "Most Virtuous Deed" as well, not sure if that plays a role in that. No change in XP or Sen
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Yeah, you take quite a bit more damage. Tested it on the second Ashina Elite mini-boss near the end of the game. His fast two-hit combo would kill me at full health if it connected, even with 8 prayer bead necklaces. Happened multiple times. Tried removing the demon and fight again. Now i could survive it with about 20% health bar left. Healed up and let him hit again a couple of times to make sure it wasn't a fluke.
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The effect DEFINITELY applies to bosses. I was fighting [The Last Boss]* and with the bell pretty much every three attacks broke my posture, and when they hit me they did my entire health bar. Without it I can survive entire combos with blocking without regaining posture and his hits do about 50% less damage. I have no idea how I made it this far with it. *Message edited by moderation
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Don't know the exact difficulty modifier, but is is noticeably harder - at least 1.5x dmg received, maybe more hp on enemies, and much more posture dmg received.
Absolutely agree with the item rates being higher from my tests, the enemies don't seem that much harder. They might inflict a little bit more damage to posture per failed deflection, but it's quite small in relation to the ominous warning the bell has on it. Perhaps it has stacking/increased effects in new game plus ie. if you have the Bell Demon when you go in to NG+, you can get two Bell Demons and so forth?
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It also seems that when you ring the demon bell and bring some 'precious bait' you can trigger a boss fight with two guardian monkeys in the big cave after the poison pool.
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that moment when i ringed the bell and ther read it thinking that i *****t up and the game will be harder for the rest of the game
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I was the poster below , I missed that to remove the buff actually have to go into the inventory and use the item . good to know +D
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My buff wont remove with a 2nd ring , so im kinda stuck with the debuff =-/
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I have been playing with it on for some time and definitely noticed that enemies have more posture which takes more time to build and less to deplete, as well as an increase in aggression. This is especially apparent in the "large hat swordsmen" in the early game
- Anonymous
I've been farming with it on and off. When's it's on, I get a lot more items to drop. Exp and gold are the same whether it's on or off.
I forgot that sinister burden was on, couldn't beat Isshin so I decided to take a break. Stepped outside and a piano fell on my head.
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