Seven Ashina Spears - Shikibu Toshikatsu Yamauchi | Sekiro Shadows Die Twice Wiki

Six Ashina spears... *whips out spear* AND HERE GOES THE SEVENTH! *Thrust*

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Killing the guys before him was harder than the actual boss lol

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Don't approach this fight like it's a ganksquad, because it's not. Do the secret route you took in the opening of the game to skip most of the combat, aside from some stealth deathblows, and approach him from behind for a 1-phase fight instead of 2. Also, do not sit around and wait for him to attack. Just get in his face and smash him until he deflects and counterattacks, which are all telegraphed and relatively easy to counter. The way you lose this fight is by fighting on the backfoot, trying in vain to heal or run away. It's Sekiro! Just hit him and block the attacks! Stomp on his dumb little spear when he runs at you! Hard boss but not as bad when you approach it correctly.

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I remember when you cld cheese this guy by hanging of the ledge of the temple stairs and swipe his legs. Now you got to fight it out. I beat him but it took like 15 tries.

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Fun boss ruined by his location. It's so bad it feels overlooked by the developers.

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you're gonna learn how to handle perilous attacks with him or else. I think I died to him more than to any boss in the game (exept for DoH and Inner Isshin) cuz I relied on deflecting too much. His moveset consists mostly of those attacks which is really brutal for a begginer. This dude alone taught me how to gid gud. Thank you for quick Genichiro, Monk, Father and Isshin wins, bro

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Staying a medium distance away (just out of reach of ordinary attacks) to bait the perilous thrust attack works pretty well.

Mikiri counter the thrust, then if you're close to him he'll quickly attack again which you can deflect to stagger him for a couple of seconds and do a lot of posture damage, so get some hits in and move away. If you get pushed too far away he won't follow up immediately, so you won't be able to stagger him. He might try some other attacks, stay just out of reach and he'll soon do the thrust attack again.

The amount of posture damage this method does means it's quicker than simply deflecting ordinary attacks. Just don't miss deflecting that follow up.

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found this guy really fun even though I actually died to him way more times than I care to admit lol. but once you dial responses to his moveset you can get a pretty cool flow in this fight

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I love these kinds of solo bosses

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This guy and his little gank squad (stairs, cliff, tree, cabin - yes, I'm counting the cabin, I got shoved back in there while fighting him once, and no, it was NOT a good time)

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harder than lady butterfly

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I think I'll just come back here later

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Mortal Draw wrecks this guy. Turns a tricky mini boss into a cake walk.

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This miniboss is an equivalent of Draconic Tree Sentinel in Farum Azula (Elden Ring)

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You can get to this guy without fighting enemies or pulling any. Sprint forward from the idol to the first grapple point, jump from the roof to the roof on the right near the cliff, then jump to the grapple launcher to the grapple point. Boss will walk forward and you can jump onto the stairs to stealth deathblow before he gets into enemy range. Then fight him in the area where you grappled up or anywhere enemies can't see.

Also I went from getting smoked every attempt to beating him first try with a new strategy of umbrella deflects. Good luck.

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Do not ignore Mikiri counter, if he follows it up you get an east deflect and he’s staggered, don’t get to far away or he’ll do the upwards thrust, stay in the middle not the stairs. And take the path you took at the start at the game to get to him without interference from mobs. AND DON’T IGNORE YOUR CANDY!!

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Sekiro may have the best combat system, but it has the most top 10 worst mini bosses in all soul series. Their movesets always have an unpredictable move, 5 guards minimum and take 90% HP from the attack you can’t react from!! Still gonna play though.

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One of the worst arenas, possible one of the worst designed bosses… c’mon, you get sneaked up by ogres.

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I found him pretty easy first playthrough, but when I fought him without Kuro's charm...

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straight up the worst enemy in the whole game

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mikiri counter is a trap the moment you do it you get staggered then he pulls his scythe up and oneshots you

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Took about 20 tries. When I finally beat him, I did not use any potion and fight took 2 minutes. If you learn his attack and time your mikiri correctly, you can deflect, mikiri every attack of this boss. There is an attack that when deflected will make him stumble, 2 hits him then keep deflecting/mikiri to keep posture high. Master the mikiri counter and win this.

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Sekiro's guide to miniboss difficulty:
- Give miniboss a relatively easy moveset
- Give miniboss attacks that one shot you if not 100% health instead of designing actual challenging moveset

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FYI for anyone having trouble with this dude, mikiri countering him is a noob trap. Your recovery animation afterwards is so long you WILL get hit if you go for it. It's basically training not to over-rely on it.

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This game's obsession with putting a full battalion of enemies between the minibosses and the nearest spawn point is pretty tiresome. Like I get that its a reward for using the stealth mechanics but damn if it doesn't add 10 unnecessary, unfun, repetitive minutes to every miniboss fight attempt. I've only just beaten Genichiro and so far this nerd, General Matsumoto, Shinobi Hunter, General Tenzen, and that drunk dude all required minutes on end of algorithmically (yet also somehow brainlessly) killing cannon fodder before the actual fun could begin.

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Genichiro=10 tries, kinda fun fight(especially lightning mode)
this man=20 tries(not a fun fight at all) and I still haven't beaten him

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dude this guy feels so satisfying to destroy if you get his skills down, some fancy spin crap? boom deflected, you wanna do a thrust right after? sit down boy, after the thrust you wanna swipe at me too? i think not, you might aswell just jump off the cliff you pathetic slow geezer

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This was a really satisfying kill with base vitality and attack power in NG without using any skills including the Mikiri Counter crutch. Max vitality and attack power on NG+7 without Kuro's Charm and Demon Bell feels like a cakewalk compared to this. You really feel the hurt of the lack of HP and posture and this guy will show you the meaning of the word pain when you fail to deflect. Respect for anyone doing that without Kuro's Charm and with Demon Bell active. Now I need to wash off the shame and do this again without the first stealth deathblow.

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Did you know that "Yamauchi" in Japanese means 'inside mountains', which makes sense because Ashina is a mountainous country.

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I accidentally did a thing where I slid down a cliff and then he jumped off and killed himself, I did not get the prayer bead, am I missing something?

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I really hate this guy

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Fought and lost against him 20 times or so. Did other Bosses in the meantime. Only he was left on my todo list and I did the following.

- Sneak left into the house and put a Deathblow from behind
- set him ablaze with spring loaded flame vent
- while he is burning, double jump at him, 2x normal attack when on the ground, double-jump again, repeat

- if you got away and he's chasing: set him ablaze again, double jump and normal attack

I finally beat him. God I love these bossfights

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If I were to make a demo for this game, it would be the entire Ashina Reservoir area leading up to this miniboss fight. Such a good demonstration of the game's stealth mechanics in the area, and the one-on-one fight mechanics on the miniboss.

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trivia: I f you get him into the house, he cannot leave until unaggroed

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It's kinda funny to think about now how incredibly difficult he was in my first run. I died to him probably more than to any other enemy or boss (excluding The Sword Saint and normal Isshin), even with just one healthbar. But as I've gotten better in the game, I've started to really enjoy the fight and now it feels like I'm making as big of a fool of him as he did of me on my current playthrough. As a tip I can basically just say that keep low to medium distance and all other attacks are pretty good for parrying and/or punishing except for the big jumping slam during which you simply have to quickly move to his side and you actually do get a few hits worth of punish that he won't be able to block. Also, as opposed to what some people are saying here, the mikiri is super-useful, even if he usually does another hit right after it, because if you parry that second hit, he goes stumbling for a moment when you can easily get some nice punish in. So all in all, don't get mad if he's still super-hard for you, when you get better at the game, I promise you there will be a time when you can dish out all the bent up aggression on him.

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You don't need to clear out all the nearby enemies. You can just sneak past them and then stay near the little building with the item in it and you won't be bothered (at least for Yamauchi, the other guy has a body guard right next to him but you can just stealth deathblow him anyways)

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This boss totally annihilated me, 360 attacks, long reach, tracking, and about 90% of HP lost on every hit, insane.
The only way I were able to kill him, is by throwing oil then using flame vent, then hitting him a few times, wait until flame effect ends, repeat.

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Fistful of Ash + 2 attacks + Loaded Axe works well.

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Why is there enemy spam around every single ****ing miniboss in the game? I could count the amount of bosses that don't have 5+ guards around them on one hand -- this guy especially sucks becase he's pretty hard, the fight would be fun if I didn't have to take 5-7 business days to clear out the arena every time I die if I don't want to risk a random musket shot in the butt or a sudden katana lurching from the side of my screen.

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Do NOT mikiri counter against him. When he throws you off the spear it will stun you for a little bit, and that couple miliseconds are enough for him to get a whole another attack in.

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I really just wish falling of the edge didn't reset his deathblow markers. You get one marker off, get his health low, use a couple gourds but still have plenty of healing left --- and then he spear****s you off the side of the cliff and now, even though you are alive and still have a resurrection left even, you have to start all over.

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Yeah you can't stunlock him with the axe, spring loaded or otherwise thanks. Ungo's sugar makes zero difference.

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imagine if guys like him really existed in sengoku era

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from should learn where to place their "bonfires", even if you avoid them, one can still spot you while doing the deathblow to him. i dont have any problems agaisnt the boss, just those 2-3 minutes wasted each time i retry

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why does this boss always deal an unholy amount of damage

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I cheesed him so hard and beat him on my first try. When I went to the temple, I didn't see him at the steps and proceeded to enter via the hole in the wall to see if anything was different from when you free Kuro. I was about to exit the front and was like who TF is this boss and got the stealth deathblow. Then I left back throw the hole and attacked him from the cliffs on the side by tossing oil and roping to the anchor point on the cliff and quickly using flame vent. I'd get a few slashes in, hop back over, then rinse & repeat. He didn't even attempt to dodge the oil, and fire really got his posture meter up, so this was a pretty quick & easy cheese.

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God I wish mikiri counter had its own icon. Some things that are clearly thrusts don't work for mikiri counter, other things that aren't thrusts do.

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Mobs everywhere that will annoy you during combat. High-range hits that will kill you instantly if your health bar isn’t full. Pretty painful boss you wanna quit fighting after 3 tries, unlike most bosses in these games which you want to keep fighting

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This guys arena makes capra demons look like heaven

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I killed him by spam 2 hit double jump lol.

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I miss the first time he terrified me and gave me headache. Now he's one of the easiest miniboss I have no hit in ng+1 and ng+2. Same story with ashina spears 2.

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fricking mikiri counter misses half the time other than that it is a fun fight but its just so tedious to time the mikiris and it missing just frustrates me

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This guy is very overrated on difficulty. Mikiri = win.

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This guy legit took me longer to beat than any of the actual bosses, but that's mainly because of the time of the game during which he appears. Even when you get a stealth blow off, he has a fat vitality bar, fat posture bar and nasty combo's with long reach that absolutely **** you up when they connect. Blocking doesn't really help because he plows through your posture like a madman. If you dont deflect and respond to his perilous attacks properly, there's no chance in hell that you're beating him without cheese.

Though I must say: Nothing felt quite as good as revisiting this guy when I had more practice and realizing that he had become easy.

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I do 1deathblow on him and then 1 can of oil then fire and attack him then i run in to the house where kuro was he is just out side the doorway then i throw oil on him and the fire and attack do this untill he is dead works great for me if he comes in to he house go out the back side go around till you get to the door if he is stil in the house just throw oil on him then fire and attck til he is dead.

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Really hard fight, and I think I would like it quite a bit, if he didn't do so much damage. Strategywise, I found that trying to cheese him with tools was pretty fruitless since he recovers posture pretty fast, so I ended up just attacking him very aggressively, forgoing most of the opportunities for mikiri and instead dealing vitality damage. Most of his perilous attacks can be interrupted and the only thing that caused trouble was the non perilous sweep, which you can just jump over.

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I found this guy way harder than butterfly even with sneaking on him.

Lol

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good pics

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Use blue sugar then keep spinning your axe, he will go down fast.

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I didn’t kill him the first run, got every other prayer bead doing the purification route, and then went to ng+. I went back to him and I didn’t get a prayer bead... later in the game I killed the other one after ashina is on fire and didn’t get a bead (my thought process was that maybe the bead would be on the 2nd one killed, idk lol). So with every other bead collected, idk why I couldn’t get his in ng+. Anyone got any ideas?

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He’s super easy if you have the spear. Run him to the double doors to the area. He’ll start backing away. Use the spear to pull him and roll back as he attacks. Rinse and repeat until he’s through the door. Then walk to the opening of the door and attack in the direction of the other door. You’ll corner him there and he’ll keep trying to walk away. Just spam R1 and he’ll just sit there and take it.

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With the jumping strategy- how do you know if he's gonna raise his spear? Cos it's a very fast paced action.

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A little fun translation note; "Shikibu" is actually a title basically meaning "Minister of Ceremonial Affairs" (referring to 式部省 / "Shikibu-shō", or "Ministry of Ceremonial Affairs").

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Spammed fistful of ash and spiral axe. I have no shame.

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Miriki counter DOES NOT WORK on the stairs if you are below him, tested multiple times and he hit through the counter any time I was below him. Hopefully this saves someone the brain aneurysm this caused me.

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Pull off the backstab, then pull him up to the stairs, then jump down. He will try and attack from above but won’t be able to hit you, and can’t seem to work out how the stairs work. You can just jump slash him from the side of the stairs until he’s ready for the second deathblow.

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he followed me off the edge. it didn't count :(

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These guys are like black knights but more badass

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So.... where are the remaining 6 of the seven spears of Ashina?

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You guys don't need to do all of this cheesing and stuff. All you gotta do is dodge INTO him on pretty much everything. His spear's range works against him this way. The tactic with the axe works too, but I wouldn't recommend that unless you're doing a speedrun. Fight him legit, it's more rewarding.

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The amount of invisible walls where you fight him make the battle *****ing laughable. If you keep him on the stairs, BOTH SIDES are invisible walls, along with how small and restricted the room already is, and how many grapple points there are to run and get a breather. Only difficult thing about him is his long chain that breaks posture in the first few hits and his ability to counter the Mikiri Counter till his posture is near breaking.

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I jumped on the tree branch to the left and used the spear to drag him onto it, he instantly slide off to his doom.

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If you continuously press circle to dodge into him, then almost all of his spear moves move below you, so it’s easy to kill him if you sneak up behind him and take out his first deathblow, then destroy his posture and attack whenever you have an opportunity.

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A really fun way to fight this guy in NG+ is to clear out all the people below but the one samurai guy facing the wall at the bottom of the stairs, then puppeteer ninjitsu him and fight him 2 on 1. You could even do that in a first playthrough if you wait long enough in the game to fight him. Pretty much as close as we can get to a DS summon in Sekiro.

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They sure do love that spear. . .

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I accidentally found out that the basic attack from the Loaded Axe interrupts his winding up attack. The "flourishing" he starts doing previous to his three hit combo that usually won't stop no matter how much you attack him with your basic katana.

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I don't know if anyone has already posted this but I found a very easy way to beat this guy without any special tools. Once you sneak round behind him and get a backstab to remove one deathblow run back up the stairs towards the tower and wait for him to follow you. Once he has followed you most of the way up the stairs jump off them and hide beside them. You are completely safe here though he will continue to spam attacks in your direction. When you feel it is safe jump once and slash twice, it's painfully slow, but you will wittle his health down, eventually you'll be able to death blow him again, this is the hardest part ... And it's pretty easy, just jump up and rebound off the wall to get on top of the stairs then just line up the red dot of awesome death and cut away. Enjoy your bead :)

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Beware; he ran himself off the cliff and I didn't receive a prayer bead...

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After the first deathblow, use hit and run tactics. Going at him head on is usually too risky since his attacks will break your posture easily even if you do a good job partying and dodging his huge spear is a crapshoot due to its range. Mikiri is almost useless here since he pushes you away and often follows with a counter. So just run around and bait him and hit him whenever he slams his spear into the ground. If you're low on life and managed to get him to maybe half, you can cheese the rest of the fight by tossing oil and then hopping off to the left and lure him to the grapple point, grapple and blast him with fire as soon as you land and smack him a couple of times and jump off again. Repeat a couple of times and he's basically done.

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I found that being hyper aggressive killed him the easiest the only attack he could poise through was his sweep attack like thing not the actual sweep attack but some strange other attack but even then just move to the right and he can’t hit you so just do Ds3 pvp rules on him basically

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I can’t beat him

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I'm on NG+ and I didn't kill him on NG, so I killed him now instead but he didn't drop the last prayer bead.. help

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He gives 465 XP on NG

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I found a super cheap cheese method where you bait him up the steps and then you go to the ledge next to the door of the tower on the side with the tree and wheelbarrow and ledge hang. From there you just swat at him and do chip damage until he's down and jump up and do a deathblow lol Super cheap though, found it on youtube and thought I'd mention it for anyone who's lost their patience with this guy lol

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Just a heads up, for rewards, he gives a prayer bead, 465 xp, and 117 gold in NG

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The reason why this damn boss is so hard is because the game tries to shove in Mikiri counter as a "LEARN THIS OR DIE" move and then once you have the move down, introduces bosses like this that counterattack for 3/4ths of your health when you Mikiri counter.

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I've been struggling with this guy for a long time. I tried some of the cheese strategies here in vain. So, I went back to legit fighting. What got me thru was jumping firecrackers and attack, then jumping ichimonji when firecrackers run out. Got him.

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You can also poison him w sabimaru. Once he is poison jump off the side to where he cant hit you until the poison wears off and climb up and do it again.

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Strategy 4: kill everyone down by the gatehouse except one of the fat dudes, hide until said dude loses you, sneak into the tower, stealth Yamauchi’s first life, run down to the last fatso (granted you’ve timed it right and he’s facing away from you in his walk cycle), puppeteer him, then watch as Ornstein and Smough turn on each other. Refresh the puppeteer as needed (stand behind your ally for another backstab), and try to fit in some hits to Yamauchi’s back between their attacks. Just be careful that you don’t get hit by his backhand, or worse, by your own ally’s maul. Proven to be just slightly effective, if not mildly entertaining!

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The hitboxes on this boss are so stupid. He's killed me through the stairs, and even if I cleanly jump over an attack the game is all "that was a thrust, not a sweep, you get hit anyway."

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This dude is harder than almost every boss of the game, sick mother*****er.

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Throw an oil jar to interrupt his attack then flame vent attack. As hes stunned give him three thwacks. Rinse and repeat easy cheesy

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Guys, just use spiral spear (OP). Its the only thing that makes this a fair fight, look at his weapon! His attacks arent that distinguisable from a sweep or a thrust. So the close combat is hard. What works is use spear run around him and play the sevenspearlord yourself. If youve chipped him enough off his HP you can start circling him while running, so he misses almost everything except his triple thrust. As soon as he misses attack him from behind. Especially on his overhead swing you can get 2-3 hits. Btw when ashina is burning you can fight him again. Use puppetninjitsu on the other guy while using gachiins sugar. Then there is another guy right behind your puppet use your bestowalninjutsu on him. After youve done as much dmg as possible and youve lost your puppet do the spear and circle tactic again. Spiral spear is better that leaping flame on single target enemies: cost 1 spirit and dmg vitality even when guarding. GL & HF

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My tip that worked like a charm for me is to use both Persimmon + Gokan sugar for reduced posture damage. After that focus on mikiri/parrying and the occasional spear until he is dead, dont forget to sneak up on him for the 1st deathblow ofc:)

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I resorted to upgrading to Shadow Rush, made him a lot easier.

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When i first tried to fight this guy i realized how difficult it was gonna get so I ran down on the cliffs to the left of the temple to escape. 5 seconds later Shikibu fell off the cliff. At first I laughed so hard but then I realized I didn’t get my prayer bead. I thought it was impossible for enemies to fall off cliffs and such but now ill never get that one bead :(

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You know it's a Soulsborne game when the strategy guide for the hardest bosses are filled with cheese strats

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If anyone is having too much trouble, I tried something that worked well and is risk free. I cleared everyone in the area, except for the big guy with the hammer. Proceeded up to Seven Ashina for the first deathblow from behind. Immediately ran to the Hammer guy to mind control him. He agrooed the samurai and kept him busy while helping with vital/posture damage as I attacked the samurai from behind. To avoid getting hit by the hammer I sniped the samurai with the charged phantom kunai while he focused on the dude with the hammer. Proceeded to deathblow. Finished.

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This suggestion worked like a charm, made the fight trivial:

One other way: 1) pop a protection/attack sugar 2) stealth kill him to take on e 3) normal attack twice, attack with the axe once - repeat until he is dead

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Cheesy way to beat him: Clear the entire area out, go up the left for the free deathblow, then lock on and literally sprint away, run back to the flat open area. When he gets down there, sprint around him out of range, as he finishes a combo, sprint towards him (if his side is open sprint during his combo), and hit him with a Double Ichimonji. If he doesn't block the second attack, just hold sprint and sprint away from him, if he does block the second attack, dash backwards and be ready to deflect/block, when you're safe out of range start sprinting again. I was making barely any progress on him, stumbled on this and beat him without taking a single hit, doing nothing but sprinting and Double Ichimonji.

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