Sheesh, everyone and their date for prom is wearing the stuff in Way of the Strong (new game+). Even like over 90% of revenants are wearing the stuff, and most aren't even using spears.

It feels like no-one knows how to forge new stuff...

@notsosneakyguy: for me is a s Way of the West.

Also I personally don't know how to forge cause the stuff I make, despite unique and rare materials, comes out piss poor. No idea how to make high quality stuff.

@humanity: purple materials and random numbers. Most i get is 35% chance, and then reforge stats i dont want. My issue is when i dont get enough traits, only get like 4 including the transferable trait most times(for weapons).

Everyone is wearing Way of the West and Red Demon because of how easy they are to get with how effective their stats are at face value. Both have ~30% elemental debuff damage bonuses and high % for close combat damage increases. It's like the Vengarls armour from Dark Souls 2, if you're wearing it it's a clear indicator you're probably a bad player. Once you get to Region 4ish you'll see less of them and start seeing more Kingos and mix matchers with the Magamata charm.

@humanity:There's really no point forging anything in the game before NG+. You will always get better gear a mission or two down and you'll be rolling in duplicates that will probably give you better special effects too. Basically though it's deck your materials with purples and you'll get a higher percent for purple weapons. If you are in NG+ then you need to make sure to hit Triangle on the Forge button to use Divine fragments otherwise you'll always get shitty purples and below.

@oursin_360: I was crafting kingos and hardly get anything to must be missing something

@humanity: all purple materials? With all purples i get uo to 30-35% chance for the purple gear but still like 25-30% for common. Might just be unlucky with rng

@ivdamke: thanks for being the first person to be in this thread as "cliche souls bro". Just like all those people who tell others when they're playing the games "wrong".

I don't want to tell you what saying this is a clear indicator of.

@humanity The materials used in forging also have rarity. There is one of each rarity, from common to exotic. You need to use exotics (purples). If you don't have any, you can craft them by using multiples of lower rarity materials to craft a higher rarity one under Tools.

Why does this matter...like, at all? Some people just like to Fashion Souls it. And Naomasa's armour is pretty cool.

Why worry about Red Demons, the armor is bad both in style and in stats. Kingos are definitely worse once you get far enough to see them.

The bonuses for it are just too good not to

Also a (much more concerning) Sloth epidemic. 1 4 Piece + 5 Piece + Yasakani Magatama and maybe a few extra 2 pieces is definitely better than Red Demon; especially if you're using Kingo.

Alright, just a sec though... you guys realize they might not actually be wearing that armor and it is just refashioned right?

@zevvion: Not when I'm picking up like 10 sets of the stuff. There's also a symbol on a item telling you it's been refashioned.

The more I think about how revenants work, the more interesting I find it.

Hypothetically, the perfect build would not leave a bloody grave, and likewise the worst build would always be seen. So there's this, reverse-Darwinistic replication of items of people who have failed. But for those items to become prevalent, people have to kill the revenants, choose to use those items, and then subsequently die with them. So it's not the best or worst item builds that get passed around, but the most tried and failed?

@notsosneakyguy: Everybody dies. Even elitists. When you're deep into NG+, it would be naive to assume the person had no clue what they were doing with their build. Especially this 'early' on in the game's life. Just because someone died doesn't mean their builds are failures. If I finish this game start to finish dying 5 times that's still 5 blood stains across the game that can be pulled for you with my perfect build.

@zevvion: @sammo21: Oh come on, I was making a joke about the prevalence of those armour sets showing up in blood stains. Which is obviously because of the popularity of the armour and not player skill as I was jokingly implying. Nothing to do with "you're playing it wrong".

the 25 percent faster ki replenishment is enough for me to keep it well into new game plus.

@ivdamke: It was hard to tell because this wasn't there.

@ivdamke: lol, OK. I'm glad I was wrong about your intentions because I've seen that attitude WAY too much online and social media, even on GB. To be fair, its far easier to tell sarcasm in a post if you at least include a smiley or something.

I was also using Red Demon armor but I found a set of Iga armor and now I'm using that with the matching kusarigama.

@chekhonte Fairly certain my set bonus on Iga has that much ki replenishment as well.

Red Demon, Way of the West, and Way of the East are waaaaaaaaaaaaay too common. If anybody comes across one of my bloody graves, it'll have all 7 pieces of the Iga set.

I have been paying attention to the drops since this thread and yeah, 98% of people wear Red Demon. I'm not sure why, because most of them don't use spears or fire elemental damage. Seem like highly un-optimized builds to me.

Well, I have to say, I'm currently grinding for the Righteous Strategist set since it complements my playstyle well, but man. Pound for pound, no set is better than Red Demon now that I look at it. 25% damage buff when an enemy is on fire is insane. Up to 50% faster ki regen too?

You can't fault anyone for wearing it really. It's pretty hard to validate not using it actually. My only reason for still wanting Righteous Strategist is mostly because not everyone and their mom is using it. But Red Demon would almost undoubtedly be better. They should address this.

Man some people really care about how others play this game. That includes everyone who's shitting on people for using Sloth. I stopped using that spell ages ago because it took the fun out of fights. But so what if someone uses it?

Does all this stuff affect you so much that you feel the need to take a dump on people who want an easier time on boss fights or maybe just like the bonuses of a certain set?

This isn't aimed at OP. This is aimed at some of you who I've seen in other threads on your egotistical high horses claiming other people are 'bad' because they don't play like you.

Also I'm not sure what most of you are on but the set bonuses for Red Demon are great.

@strangestories: Yeah, but Red Demon is so good that everyone uses it. I have seen 88% of players wear Red Demon, 10% King's Kongo or whatever and 2% something else. That needs to be addressed. Whether they nerf Red Demon or buff everything else is a discussion Team Ninja should have.

Also, I think it's less people shitting on people that use Sloth and more shitting on Sloth directly. It is OP right now. Though farming for Righteous Strategist made me realize the game is kind of build around it though. There are a boss or two in the game where they expect you to use some type of slow whether Sloth, lightning affliction or Caltraps.

My issue with it, is that I want to see the other armor sets and weapons I've missed during my playthrough and try them out.

I used to look forward to see a revenant's set of items, but now it's just Red Demon Armor, and if I want to see something else I'll have to grind it myself.

And now that the game has been out for a couple of weeks, Red Demon Armor has now been seeded into the game's online "culture" so to speak. It'll probably be the easiest set to get for people pick up the game from now on, encouraging more of its use.

The PVP DLC they have planned will probably be when all this shakes out, and would be my guess if they ever do anything about item/skill balance. I wonder how the pvp metagame will go.

Revenants are a cool twist on item trading between players. It just seems like a shame that what feels like the majority of people want to use and subsequently share one set of items for the most part.

@ivdamke said:

I'm not going to tell you what armor I wear, it's a secret for us pros. Suffice it to say that it is a clear indicator of how I'm way better than you and how you suck at games.

I'm not using that set but I did go with a spirit build so it doesn't really make sense for me. I did refashion my armor to look like the set once but quickly grew bored and got a new look.

@zevvion: I think it's powerful for basic enemies but I haven't had a lot of luck setting bosses on fire to get that sweet sweet damage bonus. You really need long openings to wail on them in low stance to get it going. You can do it with sloth easily but I'm not using that spell anymore so I might need to rethink my armor. The spear bonus is pretty good against human bosses who you can put into the final blow loop.

Idk I'll have to look at all the sets and decide what I like best. Unfortunately I think the other spear sets are heavy armor and I have very little in carry weight or strength.

I think all sloth needs is to get weaker with subsequent uses (I can't think of the word for the life of me right now). And maybe not stack with other slowdown effects.

@strangestories: If you use a spear and deal fire damage regularly, you have no reason to use anything other than Red Demon. In fact, I'd argue that if you deal fire damage but don't use a spear, it's still the best armor set. 25% flat damage bonus is craaaaaaaaaaazy in a game like this, especially with such an easy to fulfill requirement. By contrast, Power Within in Dark Souls was deemed so insanely OP that From Software straight up said they wouldn't do that again like that. It was a flat 40% damage buff with the drawback that you continuously take damage, easily killing yourself if you didn't heal on time and effectively costing you two Estus Flasks to use, yet everyyyyyyone used it. That's how powerful a flat damage buff is.

25%, no drawback, minor requirement is nuts. Make no mistake, I am not blaming anyone for using Red Demon at all. It is easily the most powerful set in the game. I just don't think it's healthy for a game to have a definitively 'most powerful' set like that.

I still wear whatever the numbers dictate. Got no time for matching sets.

@meptron: read my other comment in the thread.

It's fine that everyone likes Red Demon, they're not using the real OP set, Obsidian.

I think people wear it because the full set is easy to get and it's a light armor. Lots of better options for non spear users. As a Sword and Kura user I really dig the Iga Jonin stuff.

Can't find anything about that set. What does it do?

Maybe people just use what they like? I like my spear and I like heavy armor so I'm using the full Bull set. This game and other Soulish games let you do what you want. Not everyone is crunching numbers or more likely just copying what they see other people are doing for the "best set".

@zevvion: Just a really good set for Axes drops from the Obsidian Samurai, it's actually called Warrior from the South or some such.

Get 99 stam, the mystic art that increases damage when your attacks deplete all your ki, and lumber chop for days

I'm still rocking the Iga set way into NG+. Most of the pieces are at +3 and one of the pieces is at +4. My kuri gives off 25% damage to revenants, does wind damage, scales at A+ with Skill, and some other stuff. The dual swords are of the Righteous Strategist. They're currently boosted to +3 and do fire damage.

I wear it mostly because I am geared to use a lot of Fire and spears. It's the perfect set if that's your build. Especially since I use enko too

The issue is the general set imbalance and more importantly crafting costs, in terms of required components.

Red Demon set is not only easy to get in terms of plans, it's light and very flexible, since you can still use other weapons with it and bonuses are both good and generalist. As an additive effect if every phantom is wearing it, it's easy to keep updated and upgraded with your level, thus making it easier for other people when they kill your phantom, and so the circle continues. And crafting it is super easy too.

Compare that to let's say for example the Iga set, it takes up both weapon slots basically pigeonholing you into 2 specific weapons. Then it's a total bitch to get crafting plans for the 2 weapons. But the most important issue is that it requires Spider Legs or mandibles or whatever for each piece! and that doesn't even grantee you a good roll, you can spend 10+ of those things to get a decent set going. And you need to farm that shit, that's not a guaranteed drop. I did it twice during my playthrough, all I can say is FUCK THAT noise. Don't get me wrong I love that set and it's super powerful. But the shit i had to go through to put it together a few times is not something I would recommend and is totally not nearly worth the effort as you can just play the game in any old random pieces anyway. Maybe if I decide to go into NG+ (but lots of good games coming out around now-ish) it would be worth it to do one more time, maybe.

So, yeah, I totally get why the majority of people just run around in the red demon set.

I'm reading all of this a month later while playing through Nioh with a sword and spear build while wearing the Red Demon set. I'm really happy with this set mostly because of the fire damage bonus and because I don't have to sink my gold into upgrading this set since there's a 50/50 chance that fighting a revenant who's around or above my level will drop an upgraded piece of the set that I can slot in. If the developers wanted players to use other sets that offer bonus buffs if that player wears more pieces of the set then they shouldn't have gated those sets by requiring rare materials that those same player's can't easily buy or get by disassembling unwanted equipment.