Nioh 2 The Village of Cursed Blossoms Walkthrough

The Village of Cursed Blossoms is the 1st main story mission in Nioh 2. This walkthrough will guide you through all areas of The Village of Cursed Blossoms Main Quest.

Recommended Level: Level 1
Region: Awakening
Requirement: Available from the start
Reward: Longbow, Sacred Arrow x4, High-Quality Leather Platelet x3, Red Spider Lily x1, 2800 Gold, 1200 Amrita

Shrine 1

At the start of the level, head up and activate the shrine, then continue forward on the path. You’ll see a door in front of you which is the shortcut you can open later, and then the left path which you should head down. You’ll see your first Yokai enemy of the game, a Gaki, down by a body.  These are your most basic Yokai enemies. They like tossing rocks and swiping at you, but they’re relatively harmless on their own.

Grab the item of the body, then continue forward. In the next area, you will see another large Yokai dragging a club around, named a Gozuki. Unless you’re feeling extremely confident it’s better to ignore this enemy for the moment, you don’t need to deal with it to progress. If you kill it here it will drop a Village Cemetary Key which you can use to get through the nearby door and skip a bit of the mission as well as give you the trophy Bold Wrangler, but you’re better off leaving it and coming back to do this mission again later. What you should do instead of dealing with it is hug the right wall, and follow it around up top. You should see Kodama #1 on the left by a tree and another body. Interact with it to guide it back to the shrine.

Head back to the split and go down the other path, you will see another Gaki by a body, and then the shortcut door behind it, that you can interact with to open back to the first shrine.

After you’ve opened the shortcut and been back to the shrine, go back and head down the path going over the wood bridge to progress further. You’ll encounter another Gaki, then forward more there will be a split in the path. If you go down the right side you will come out beside the hut, where there will be two more Gaki and an NPC revenant summon point. Deal with them (and summon the revenant to fight if you want), then you can go inside the hut here to loot the chest and body. You can then head back around the path again to come out at the front of the hut, where you will see your first instance of the Yokai realm fog.

When you step close to this fog it will spawn an Enki type Yokai. These are one of the common medium-sized Yokai you will encounter throughout the game. They use a spear to do a variety of lunges and jabs at you while jumping around. Sometimes they will stand themselves up on the spear to get higher into the air, then will throw the spear down towards you, which you can avoid easily by just stepping to either side. If you see a red aura appear around them, they are starting to wind up for a burst attack, which if you have at least 1 bar of Anima (purple bar under Health and Stamina) you can press + to initiate a Burst Counter, which will block this attack and stagger the enemy for a short time. If you aren’t able to do the Burst Counter these attacks are normally quite hard to dodge and can be devastating if they hit you. Once it’s defeated it will drop a Soul Core, and the Yokai Realm Fog along with the Enki won’t respawn if you come through this area again.

Continue forward now and you’ll be at a 4-way crossing in the road. First, hug the left wall and continue around this path. Kill the two Gaki, then past the body around the corner you will find Kodama #2.

Head back to the 4-way and this time go up to the right side. There are two Gaki up here to kill, then you should head over to the far side where the body is. From here you can drop attack onto the two human enemies instead of alerting them by going at them directly.

There is the one enemy on the top level, the one guy walking back and forth, then one more guy sitting just to the left of where the one guy walks. I’d recommend dropping the first guy and the sitting guy as you should be able to kill them instantly with a drop attack, then you only need to deal with the third guy on his own. This enemy is a little tougher than the other two. He has heavy armor and an axe, and will also launch Burst Attacks at you like the Yokai will, so you can counter him in the same way if you see it coming. If you time it so the axe guy is walking in the other direction you can kill the sitting guy, then get away without the axe guy noticing, then drop from above again to hit him if you want. Otherwise, kite him around and watch for his large swings.

Continue down the path, then you should see the next shrine ahead of you. Before going to it, head left and follow the path down the fence. Take out the enemy then grab the item at the end, which is a Gourd accessory you can equip. Then you can go back and use the shrine.

Shrine 2

This next area is a large village you need to get through. Looking to the left is a broken bridge with a shortcut door at the end you can come back through later. First head down the path, take out the enemy on the bridge, then the two in the courtyard. Note one of the two is an archer, so he’ll shoot you from a distance while you’re fighting the other guy if you don’t put something between you and him. If you go near that archer there will be another on the roof of the building, but you can ignore him for now. Go behind the building and you’ll come to a cross in the road. To the left is the locked door, up the hill there is a ladder you can kick down which takes you back to the first area with the large Yokai you could have ignored prior. Heading up the cliff path you can get up on the roof of the nearby building but first, if you look down near the side of this building you shoot see Kodama #3 on the ground, which you can jump down to.

Head back to the rooftop, then head over and deal with the other archer. The nearby body will drop a bow which you can use to make dealing with out of reach archers a little easier now. If you then continue to the next rooftop past this, there is a nearby ladder you can kick down. Go down here and deal with the two human enemies.

The building the spear guy is in the doorway of will have a Harakiri Sword item in it for you to pick up. If you go to the other house in this area there will be an item sitting on the floor, then a chest inside which drops some gear. Loot the other items around here, then head across the next bridge with the enemy on it. You can drop onto the boat just off the bridge and head into that building, which allows you to deal with the guy sitting in the doorway without alerting the armored axe enemy outside. One on one this guy isn’t too bad to deal with, as he has very long windup on his attacks, so you can interrupt him before he swings. After he is dead you should see a ladder to the right on the building corner. Go around to the front of this building and go inside, and in the corner by the door you can find Kodama #4.

Just ahead there will be another Yokai Realm fog to the left of an open building. Inside this building will be a chest along with two Gaki on the floor. You can get in here and agro these two enemies without triggering the Yokai spawn. Head up to the second floor, then if you haven’t gone up to the other rooftop yet you can shoot the two enemies with arrows to deal with them from far away, though there isn’t actually anything up on this set of rooftops. Go back down and trigger the Yokai spawn, and you will face a new Yokai named Yoki. These are another of the common medium-sized Yokai you will face throughout the game. They typically perform large swinging combos with their swords, and if you stand close to them for a time they will kick towards you or swing their open arm. Their burst attacks function similar to the Enki from before, where they wind up then charge at you, which you can counter using your Burst Counter.

After it’s defeated head left around the building and break through the boxes blocking the path behind it. Here you will find Kodama #5.

Head back out to the main path, to the right is the shortcut door back to the second Shrine. If you look at the house to the left you should see the silhouette of a man in the window. If you speak to him twice before continuing he will give you a Lantern plant Fruit.

Continue down the main path and you’ll run into one enemy leaning over a body. If you go left you’ll run into a dead-end with an NPC revenant summon, so head right to continue. At the archway you can see a human with an axe on ground level, then an archer above him.  There will also be one more enemy on the ground behind the round fence area that you won’t see until you’re near him. Shoot the archer to kill him first, then move forward and deal with the axe human on his own. If you look to the immediate right of the path just past the archway you will also see Kodama #6.

After grabbing the Kodama head around to the right, taking out the last enemy if you didn’t before. At the top of the stairs you should see a glow, and when you go near it wakes up a small animal creature. This is called a Scampuss, and is a Yokai that will follow you around and replenish your Anima bar for a short period when you interact with it.

Heading forward up the stairs you will see fog in the middle of the archway. This will be your first instance of the larger Yokai Realm areas. Inside these areas all Yokai become stronger and gradually regain health while you take longer to regain stamina. You will need to find and destroy the source of the corruption inside to dispel the Yokai Realm from the area. Heading up to the central area go left past the shrine (you can’t use it until you dispel the Yokai Realm). In this area there will be 3 Gaki you need to deal with, carefully as they come stronger now, and if they agro together they can actually combine into a larger Gaki. If you loop around the left you can drop on top of another and grab an item on a ledge, then go back into the main area and go towards the building.

Beside the stairs you see a chest that has a red growth on it with things flying around. This is a locked chest that will appear sometimes in these large Yokai Realm areas. To open them you need to kill the nearby Yokai that are locking it, which in this case is the Yokai in the building looking in the corner. This is another Enki, and you need to defeat it to clear this area of Yokai Realm. I’d advise bringing it backward off of the wooden floor areas, as you don’t have a lot of room otherwise. When in the Yokai Realm area the Enki will swing far more wildly than it did before, and will use it’s Burst Attack more frequently, so be prepared to counter that with your Burst Counter. A real simple way to kill it is to attack it from behind once or twice, then run away until it stops following you, backtrack to attack it again from behind and repeat to whittle down its health.

Once the Enki is killed, the Yokai Realm is dispelled and will not return to this area, even if you die. You can then go inside the building and search the body, which gives you the Inner Shrine Key that you need to progress through the level. You can now head back over to where you came in and use the now available shrine.

Shrine 3

Use the key on the door just beside the shrine to continue. On the other side will be one final Gaki to deal with who will probably immediately spot you. Once you kill it, turn around and look to the right of the door you just came through, to find Kodama #7, your final one for the mission.  You can then head up the stairs to the door at the end, where you will then face the boss fight for this mission.

Mezuki Boss Fight

Mezuki is a monster that looks like a horse and attacks with a long sword, which allows it to hit very far. Sometimes it will use grapples from up close or shoot skulls that home in on you from afar. The key to winning this fight is to break Mezuki’s Ki bar (the purple “stamina” bar at bottom of screen), this will stagger him. Then you can attack freely for a few seconds to deal massive damage without any risk. First, just spend some time studying his move set, keep your distance and don’t even worry about attacking. Watch it 2 or 3 minutes until you have all its combos memorized so you know which is the last attack in a combo. In particular, after it finishes a 3 strike combo is a good time to attack its head. Land 2 High-Stance attacks, then run far enough back that it can’t hit you. You will need to get a feeling for how far it can hit with its attacks. Try to bait it into attacking by being within its attack radius but quickly run back to avoid the damage. When it finishes a combo, land 1-2 High-Stance hits and retreat. Another hugely important thing to watch out for is the charged-up attacks with a red glow. Whenever it’s about to land a red glowing attack counter it with + (“Burst Counter”). The timing is important, hit this combo just as the boss is about to hit you. It consumes some of your purple bar (“Anima”) but deals massive Ki drain to the boss. Always exploit those red charged attacks against him until his Ki is depleted! This is the major difference to the first Nioh, it’s much more about countering in Nioh 2 than it was in the first game. You should also use a Soul Core attack + / + when his Ki is nearly deplete. One of these should be enough to finish off his Ki bar. Then be ready to attack in high-stance. If he goes on his knees, attack from behind for double the damage! Use KI Pulse with between attacks to recover Ki, which helps to maximize your damage output.

After his Ki is depleted the first time, he will summon a Yokai Realm that slows your Ki regeneration and he will get stronger. Just exploit his red charged attack with Burst Counters + and land a hit when it’s safe. When his Ki is depleted the second time he will usually go on his knees so you can attack from behind for double the damage (note: attacks from behind give +200% damage multiplier on all bosses). After this he shouldn’t have much left. Just use Burst Counter on his red charged attacks and land single High-Stance hits when he missed a combo.

Also remember you get 3 Elixirs with every respawn for free, by default they are mapped to to restore your health (these are infinite and you always get 3 when you respawn, so use them, they are for free). To increase the number of starting Elixirs you must find the Kodama in this level. The way it works is that every region has 25 Kodama. Every 5 Kodama found gives you +1 Elixirs when you respawn (so if you found 5 Kodama you will always respawn with 4 instead of 3 Elixirs). This makes bosses a lot easier as you have more health recoveries! There are 7 Kodama Locations in this mission so be sure to grab them all right away to get another free Elixir Slot and keep doing so for future levels.

 

Upon defeating the boss, interact with the golden glowing orb that spawns. This finishes The Village of Cursed Blossoms main mission in Nioh 2. Now the mission The Beast Born of Smoke and Flames becomes available.

For all other Mission Walkthroughs, check out our complete Nioh 2 Walkthrough.