Yes, it's a difficult mission and I just did it again to remember and familiarise myself with the waves again.
- Wave 1: Two small fox spirits
- Wave 2: A lighting onyudo (tongue monster)
- Wave 3: One Nue
The previous omnyo missions either gave you enough talismans, elemental shots or different element oni-bi to teach you to trigger the confusion status (discord). Unfortunately, that is not the case here (at least on this difficulty).
Let's see what they give you and how you can use them to beat the mission:
For anyone who is unfamiliar, the kekkei talisman when active automatically purifies yokai zones. The Rejuvenation talisman gives you a heal over time and the lightning stop talisman will raise your lightning resistance. The protection talisman will nullify a set amount of damage, but you will still take overkill damage if a taken hit passes this threshold.
I used single sword to beat this mission so all my tips are based on that as I am most familiar with it and dual swords.
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Wave 1: the two foxes are the hardest part of this mission. They're fast, do quick and hard damage and don't really care about your water element. However, using low stance single sword quick attacks they can be stunlocked very easily. Unlike other weapons, this is cos single sword low stance quick attack string quite literally never ends.
But still play safe during this wave. I would recommend using the protection talisman to nullify a single hit from a fox. Don't be afraid to blow both on this phase as it is the hardest. I would also recommend elixirs as being your primary form of healing in this phase. Blow all of them if you have to.
Focus on one, of course, but when you have one fox stunlocked make sure you can see the other fox and keep an eye on when it is about to attack or shoot a fireball. I would suggest equipping the swift step low stance dodge skill to easily get out of your attack string. It also has a ridiculous amount i-frames. Couple that with extend evasion invulnerability and it's borderline broken.
I would suggest holding block until you get them to headbutt you, then you can start your low stance infinite combo. However, don't go crazy and allow yourself to run out of ki. Ki pulse dodge out as you're reaching 10-20% of your ki. Rinse and repeat really, this wave will be the cause your deaths.
Sometimes, if you get lucky you can get them both stunlocked at the same time. If that the case, go ham.
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Wave 2: One Lightning tongue monster. You faced 100's, if not 1000's of these before and you know it's rather limited moveset and what it can and cannot do.
The lightning version is weak to water and at 40 magic and I could apply the water debuff (decreases his defense) on him using two water shots. Feel free to use three or even all of them on him though as you won't be using any in the next wave.
The strategy here, as with most yokai, is to do steady ki damage with quick low stance kicks and then punishing heavily when he is out of ki. You can fully block all physical and elemental damage (w/o any elemental damage from guarding effects on gear) from his sweeping and lunging tongue attacks or you can play more aggressively using low stance twirl dodge through them (anecdotally I believe they have more i-frames but I could be wrong). When he is ki-broken, don't be afraid and iai-chain him as you can get a good 3-4 iai's on him before he regains his ki. Don't always fully charge though, especially the first iai, as he tends to do a quick hand slap after he is ki-broken. Release it early if he's going to attack. Two of these cycles should be enough to kill him.
If you get hit by his tongue it probably won't one shot you but it will apply the most annoying debuff in the game onto you. I know you know this but for people who don't lightning debuff causes all your actions to be massively slowed. Movement, attack speed and even healing will be slowed.
But just take it easy and kite him until it wears off. Use a rejuvenation talisman while you're kiting even if you have elixirs left. Don't attack even if he is low on ki or ki-broken as your attacks will be too slow to adequately stun him and you're just putting yourself at unnecessary risk.
You can use sloth talisman on him if you want but I've always found that it hurts me more than helps as it really messes with my dodge timings. Maybe you can use it just before he is about to get ki-broken to allow you to iai-chain more easily.
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Wave 3: One Nue boss. Again you've fought it around 20 times before and know it's moveset.
Pop your lightning stop talisman, the kekkei talisman and the protection talisman if you have any left . He is weak to water so pop the first of your water talismans to imbue your weapon. Don't bother with the water shots as he seems to be more resistant to that. again you can use sloth but I've found it messes with my timings.
Here's an easy and reliable method to beating him that I've posted previously:
Through out the fight you will be looking to bait his lightning breath attack by standing in front of him at mid range, quickly run to his right (your left) and attack either his glowing belly or his face. You will instantly ki break it and can use a couple of big combos.
The lightning breath always travels from his left to his right, so run to his right. I find attacking his face to more consistently ki-break it than attacking his belly from the side. What I do is a full four hit mid stance combo into one fully charged iai-strike. Don't be afraid, you will stun him before he hits you with his claw. At 99 heart this does around 2500 damage with the wooden sword.
However, don't get greedy. After the iai, dash out as the boss will try to regain ki by putting down a yokai zone. When it does this two lightning strikes will occur, one on top of him and one where you are. If you are still wailing in him you'll get double bolted and will instantly die.
When you see the boss arch its back and then scream that's a telegraph for its call lightning. There's always 4, simply keep moving to dodge them. If you have the kekkei talisman popped run over the yokai zones after the lightning strikes to automatically purify them.
If you're running out of ki, try to switch stances as you ki pulse as this will be give you a net positive ki. This is called flux and really helps continuing combos or staying on the offensive when you're below half ki.
Just do this around 10-15 times and you will find this to be the easiest phase.
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Yes, you do low damage but I know you can do this given some time and practice. If you're getting frustrated, just take a break or do another mission and comeback.
All of these tips and practices come from going through all of the missions, sub-missions and most of way of the strong at level 1. It is fully possible to do this mission and others with the low damage of a wooden sword. Just takes time and practice. Hope this helps you and others.