KATANA KAMI A Way of the Samurai Story Guide V0.1

– For any reference to button input notation, I will use the X box controller notation with default configuration. I play this game on PC and I use an X Box controller because it’s the only thing I can find at my local store.
X – weak attack
Y – strong attack
A – confirm
B – dash
Up – throw item
Down – use item
Left/Right – change item
LB – draw sword
RB – block
LT – bring up sub menu
RT – prostrate
R3 (pressing down on Right stick) – lock on enemy- This game uses autosave function with only 1 save slot (Yes, it sucks). If you start a New game, there’s no way* to keep your previous save’s progress. Try not to start new game if you don’t want to lose your progress.
* I think it’s possible to export save data from somewhere, but I never attempted so I’m not quite sure. If someone knows please correct me.

– All names, besides Donald Donatelouse in this game are [Last name] [First name], as how the game is translated.

• Protagonist

‘A ronin from parts unknown. He witnesses the moments the swordsmith’s daughter was taken as collateral for debts. He cooperates with the swordsmith on the condition that he will take his daughter for his wife.’
Game description

• Dojima Gunji

‘He owns and operates a smithy and Ipponmatsu at Rokkotsu Pass. He has a huge amount of debt, but he would buy anything for his daughter Nanami, having raised her as a single father.’
Game description

• Dojima Nanami

‘Dojima’s only daughter. She’s adorable, but a bit unstable in personality. She displays a wide array of emotions and insists on marrying someone who accepts her for who she is.’
Game description

• Kitcho

‘The head of the Akadama clan. He was the eldest son of the Kurofu Family, but left home when he was 14 to England. He developed anti-government sentiments and founded the Akadama Clan in Rokkotsu Pass, waiting for the right time to attack.’
Game description

• Chelsea

‘Born in England, she met Kitcho when he was wandering around Europe and they became lovers. She abandoned her home country and family to come with Kitcho. She has no interest in the philosophy or ideology of Akadama.’
Game description

• Shiretoko Soichiro

‘Originally a tutor for the Kurofu Family, he took up the role of advisor thanks to his skills with the sword. He’s willing to do dirty work to prove his loyalty. He is the acting head of the Kurofu Family.’
Game description

• Tsubouchi Hachiro

‘Nicknamed “Tsubohachi,” he’s the head samurai of the Kurofu Family. He earned his position with raw talent. He’s an aggressive daredevil interested in Suzu. But she hates his guts.’
Game description

• Suzu

‘After her parents died in the war, she was adopted by Kurikichi from Amaguri. Now that Kurikichi is old, she is running the restaurant in his place. Many customers come here just to visit her.’
Game description

• Donald Donatelouse

‘Originally a worker that came to Japan to construct a furnace for the Kurofu Family, he was influenced by the way of the samurai and decided to take up permanent residence. His role model is Miyamoto Musashi. He is secretly in love with Suzu.’
Game description

• Sensei

‘A mysterious swordswoman who instructs new ronins who visit Rokkotsu Pass. No one knows her true identity.’
Game description

• Beniya Kakube

‘A money lender from Beniya Enterprises that is extremely affluent. He’s a bit happy that he gets more screen time this time around.’
Game description

Upon starting the game, your character will walk into Rokkotsu Pass. Go east and there will be a cutscene. Some merchant (Beniya) is taking away a damsel in distress (Dojima Nanami) as collateral for her father’s (Dojima Gunji) debt. After the cutscene, talk to Dojima (Gunji). Doesn’t matter what dialogue options we pick, but I recommend being nice to everyone on our first playthrough. We will also get to input your character’s name here. After the conversation, go inside and sleep on bed.

When we wake up at night time, leave the smithy and head to the tree in the middle of the map. Hold A to enter Jikai (Ipponmatsu Cave).

The only sword you have now is Heiyoto. We can easily clear this first dungeon with just the combo:
X X X forward B X X X etc
Most swords can do this and it is very effective. It uses vitality rapidly, but vitality is rarely an issue in this game, and Death God will not appear in these tutorial first dungeons to chase after us.
If you’d like, let’s take our time and explore the dungeon. Break the breakables for drops.
Take the escape portal to return to surface and talk to Dojima.

Not much else to do on the surface so let’s go to sleep and repeat the above step again 2 more times.

On our third trip to Ipponmatsu Cave, we will fight a Debris Golem at the end of the dungeon. I recommend for newer players to take some time to practice Kiwami against it. Kiwami is described in details in the next section.

After returning from our third trip, our player character will appear in newspaper. From this point onward, we can proceed to Night Labyrinth Forest after the Debris Golem. And if our vitality reaches 0, Death God will appear and hunt us down, so let’s be careful.

Our goal is to pay 100,000 coin debt to Beniya, but we are allowed to pay in installments and our first installment is only 100 coin. We can easily pay this as (I think) we start the game with 100 coin, so let’s pay him.

Beniya comes every 4 days, but we can call him and make him come to collect debt the next day by pressing start > second tab > pay debt > press back (back button on X Box controller, for other controllers please check the buttons).

The main source of money in Katana Kami comes from sword commissions. As you progress through the ‘tutorial dungeons’ as described in the previous section, the three factions in the game will send out 1 commission each at some point. After fulfilling the commissions, they will immediately send another one the next day (unless special circumstances and conditions are met). There will be no shortage of commissions.

To send swords to factions, we must first have swords in our inventory. This is where things get confusing.

• Inventory

Press A to interact with the furnace, choose inventory. This is a space that can store 999 swords. Do not place any important sword that you want to keep in this inventory. Dojima randomly sells swords from this inventory during the day to visiting customers. To send swords to commissions, the swords that are to be sent need to be in this inventory.

Later on, when Dojima can craft swords, after crafting swords, the game will say swords are sent to storage. This is a mistranslation(?), crafted swords are stored in inventory.

• Storage

A sword safe at the back of the smithy, where we can safely store up to 300 swords.

Let’s never confuse storage and inventory.

• Account book

A book next to the furnace. Commissions received will be shown here. We can also send gifts to each faction to increase customer’s satisfaction.

Select Order list for commissions, select a commission for fulfilling it.
Here, we can switch between delivery box and stock with bumper buttons. Stock is inventory, delivery box is what we will send to the commissioner.

First few commissions are very easy and do not have any special requirement. We can send them blunt swords, which we get a lot of from dungeon crawling. We can send blunt swords, but absolutely never send fake swords to anyone.

We can send more swords than the commissions required and still get paid for those. Choosing the correct swords for the commission will increase the service rate. The max possible rate is 150%. We do not need to always aim for this. But let’s try not to have less than 100%. Higher service rate will increase customer’s satisfaction.

We can go above 150% service rate and still get paid for the swords. Only the service rate is capped.

There is still a duplication glitch in the game, which we can perform as follow:
1. Put a desired sword into delivery box.
2. Go to delivery box, press A, and before the animation ends, press RB to switch to stock.
3. Press RB again, and we will see 2 swords in the delivery box now.
We can easily reach 999,999 coin this way and pay off any debt.

Note: this is an exploit.
Note 2: even if we put one duplicated sword back into stock and deliver the commission, the sword will still be lost, so be careful.
Note 3: if we did this duplication and then exit, the inventory will still only have 1 copy of the sword.
Note 4: swords we sent on commissions will be used by the commissioning faction members. If those members die, they drop the sword and we can pick up multiple copies of. This means that real duplication is still possible (actually owning multiple copies of one sword), and is the only working duplication I know of.
Note 5: Mob members of each factions can randomly overwrite the first sword title with a useless title.

Sword price goes up as durability goes up. In addition, the higher tier swords will sell for more than lower tier swords (Blunt swords sell for very little and Mutsumata-no-Tachis sell for a lot).

As mentioned in one of the previous sections, the
X X X forward B X X X repeat
combo is very potent and can easily be used in almost every situation. It is like a bread and butter combo.Locking on an enemy will make only that enemy attack us. Projectile attackers such as Skeleton archers and Snow woman can still shoot at us. Dog God enemies, which seem to be melee, can also attack us when we lock onto a different enemy. This is still very important to do, to prevent our player character from being swarmed by too many enemies at once.

Let’s use draw buff as much as possible. If we keep our sword sheathed for long enough in Jikai, it will start glowing. Now we can draw our sword and do double damage on the first (I think 10) attacks. This is important for killing bosses. We can also perform draw bomb once we have draw buff, by holding LB and pressing X/Y to do a powerful AOE attack.

Let’s practice watching out for traps. These are the little devices laying on the ground that do various negative things to player character if stepped on. We can disarm them by kicking them, or standing still close by and picking them up. Some of them can be useful, like konjac jelly, weakening enemies and making them taking more damage. Every single trap can be thrown at enemies, but most enemies have resistance… I think that for the most part, throwing traps at enemies are only for fun and rarely has practical use.

If we are on low HP and there aren’t too many dangerous enemies around, we can sheathe our sword and wait, or run around to use vitality to recover HP. Make sure not to summon the Death God accidentally while not prepared for it.

Every time we enter Jikai, we start at level 1, and we recover HP and vitality every time we level up, as well as increasing HP cap and vitality by 200 each level. It’s actually quite hard to run out of vitality.

I think that even without Kiwami, with only the above tips, anyone can clear Night Labyrinth Forest without too much trouble.

It’s important to learn to do Kiwami. Kiwami is a counter attack that does very high critical damage to enemy. It is performed by guarding with RB or dodging with B at the last (as taught by the game tutorial, but the timing is quite lenient) possible moment and attack with X or Y. If we slay an enemy with Kiwami attack, we can perform another Kiwami attack on a close-by aggressive enemy (not blocked off by some obstacle), and we can keep doing this for as long as our Kiwami attack timing is right, or an enemy survive our Kiwami attack, or no appropriate enemy left. I recommend practicing Kiwami using retrievers in Night Labyrinth Forest (B1-B3), Debris Golems (Secret Night Labyrinth Forest 3 B2), Yomotsu Grunts that use Abikyoukan weapon (the one-handed stick thingy, Night Labyrinth B 16), Oni Woman using Kitchen Knift (one handed knife).
Every single attack that isn’t a projectile or a throw can be Kiwami’d. We can perform Kiwami against unblockables like Snow woman’s breath attack.
Kiwami can be hard and require some practice. But eventually we should be able to comfortably counter harder things. But there are still things in the game that are too hard to counter consistently… and there are forbidden floors which disallow Katana time and Kiwami. We will need to watch out for that.

There still exists the glitch in the game which makes Kiwami attack does abysmal damage. It seems to be caused by accidental throw the player character performed somewhere that seems to confuse the game. I find that kicking the opponent with RB + X fixes this issue every time.

And another beneficial glitch that still exists in the game is the glitch with critical attack. If the player character does critical hit, there is a hitstop in contrast to non for normal hit. If we input dash within the hitstop, the attack will hit again. And it is possible to sustain this if these conditions are met:
– the last hit was a critical hit
– dash was input within hitstop
For players who would like to play around with this, highest base crit weapon I know is Raikou, but it doesn’t work with projectiles, so second highest is Sekishin-shorin-ken at 8%. Best title for crit gives 15%, from level 50 Rokusaburo.

Once allowed to marry Nanami, spooning her will give 2 random buffs from 3 possible buffs. If you lack damage, aim for damage to enemies +50%. I have no idea how long this buff lasts for because the game never tells us, and I don’t lack damage to bother with it anymore.

• Boss killing technique

Requires either Asaemon or Sekishin-shorin-ken. Asaemon and both of the blue prints drop from Mysterious Man at Jikai’s Ipponmatsu, an area after Night Labyrinth Forest B20, and 3 orbs of Katana Time.

Make sure the attack Heart Slash (Forward B Y) is unlocked. Use a Secret Medicine (grants invincibility for an amount of time) if HP is not sufficient.

Of course, let’s reinforce the sword as much as we can comfortably afford. Maybe give in Hunter (+200 sharpness) and Dead (+44% sharpness) titles if we can. Cutting (+60% orb acquisition) is also very helpful.

1. Kill enough enemies to get 3 orbs of Katana Time.
2. Get draw buff by sheathing the sword and wait for it.
3. Once done preparing, unsheathe the sword and meet the boss. Lock onto the boss, activate Katana Time (I have had times where I got glitched out and heart slash couldn’t come out, I find that doing things in this order prevents that from happening).
4. Do Heart Slash.
5. Watch things melt.
6. Repeat if needed.

I don’t think that Heart Slash hitting like 6 times in Katana Time is a glitch, since it doesn’t work on 1 Katana Time orb. So let’s use this technique without any guilt feeling.

Most boss floors spawn 1 boss and multiple mob enemies. If needed, let’s kill the other mob enemies to gain Katana Time orb, then run around with sheathed sword to get draw buff.

Besides Demon God request boss, every other boss in Mahoroba die to 3 Heart Slashes performed as above with a 471 sharpness Asaemon + Nanami power of love buff. With secret medicine, we can take on Death God any time.
Though unlike other dungeons, Mahoroba has boss floors with no Katana Time and Kiwami, so let’s not be over reliant on this technique.

This technique works on everything. The only weaknesses are that it cannot be used on surface/forbidden floor and can be glitched out as described above (but I have never seen the glitch again doing things in that order). Maybe Kinugawa can grab us in the middle of Heart Slash but I’ve only seen in once and we can still use secret medicine.

• Boss killing technique 2

Requires Chiyo-Yachiyo or Yakumo. Chiyo-Yachiyo drops from Ghostly Metropolis Boss B30. Yakumo and its blueprint drops from Mizuchi in Mahoroba. Chiyo-Yachiyo blueprint from Mysterious Man after giving him a Chiyo-Yachiyo sword. Needs sufficient HP to tank hits or Secret Medicine. As high sharpness as possible. Unlock Evil Beam attack.

Recommended titles are Hunter (or that +250 sharpness title I never unlocked)/Dead/Flash.
Get draw buff.
On bosses whom we can throw (Kinugawa and Gamuran in Mahoroba), RB + Y throw on them to knock them down, then Evil Beam (backward B + X) them to death, and repeat.
On larger bosses whom throw attacks don’t work on, knock them down in corner with ether Evil Rage (backward B + Y) or Y X Y combo (Yakumo also has another long and very damaging combo to knock enemies down). When they are down, Evil Beam them to death.

Evil Beam is an attack that we can extend by mashing X continuously, hitting for an absurd amount of damage even outside Katana Time. At 920 sharpness, I don’t really bother with draw buff most of the time, so with the easily achievable 400 sharpness + drawbuff and Nanami power of love buff, it’s possible to slay almost all tough enemies in the game this way (besides the Demon God which we should use Heart Slash on, I tried doing this on it but always got pushed out too far away).

This technique is weaker than Heart Slash in Katana Time (by not much), but it has the advantage of not needing Katana Time.

What do you even need in-depth Boss guide for? Just Asaemon Heart Slash bro

Of course, the boss killing techniques mentioned the above section work on all* of these bosses, but it’s still fun learning how to fight things in-depth.

• Waira

It has slow attack that we can easily dodge. Its damage isn’t really that scary, just make sure to mash A if it knocks you down to perform an ukemi (standing up quickly) and prepare to block a dangerous dive attack. Never stand behind it because it can turn around and do a double slap that hurts a lot. It can also be easily countered, but hitboxes can be strange and requires some spacing to do correctly.

• Nue

Not that different from Waira. It has projectiles attack shooting 3 orbs doing about 60 damage each, and they don’t stagger or stun, not very scary even if we got hit by all 3 of them. If we stand close, we can avoid them all or just get hit by 1. It can teleport around, and approaching it carelessly after the teleportation can make it do the double slap like if we stand behind it (probably because the game is confused).

• Mysterious Man

He has a counter throw. He would hold the sword with both hand, unsheathe it slightly and some visual effect happens around him, absolutely do not attack him during that, or he will counter with a devastating attack. It’s possible to Kiwami him comfortably since he doesn’t have any guard break or dangerous throw, but it can be hard for newer players. Since his weapon Asaemon is extremely strong, it’s worth trying to fight him. If it’s too much trouble, I recommend a weapon with a good throw attacck like Gama (drop from Oni woman). Try to get at least quality 4 and reinforce its sharpness until it requires Tamahagane (white crystal thingy). The bnb is New Year > Snow flake (Y Y). It’s an attack that enemies who can be thrown in the game cannot deal with, and it does good damage. It also knocks down so maybe we can get a few X attacks in. Repeat until he dies. Just make sure to block things properly and not attack him during his counter throw.

• Black Mask

Eh, frankly I think he’s too easy to Kiwami that I don’t really bother with strategy against him.

• Orochi

Same as above, although let’s watch out for his Evil Beam projectile. Also he’s a larger enemy and cannot be thrown, so let’s not bring Gama against him (at this point I think Gama with the quality that they drop at shouldn’t be used anymore anyway). Despite what the Snow Flake attack looks like (a dash through slash), it’s actually a throw(what?), so it won’t even come out if we try to use it on Orochi.

• Kinugawa Onsen (Cold Blood one-handed)

An angry Kinugawa from Way of the Samurai 4. Actually, I don’t recommend fighting any version of Kinugawa without Asaemon Heart Slash in Katana Time at all. All 3 of his versions are nasty and hurt like hell.

Kinugawa with Cold Blood is very easy to counter and Kiwami attack, but it still requires some learning. He has an unblockable that if mistimed (and it’s very easy to mistime it due to startup animation looking like another attack), can hit very hard and will outright kill on violence floor. He also has a throw that comes after the double horizontal attack. If he does the double attack and we failed to counter it, let’s step far away, because the throw that comes after will hurt a lot. It will also outright kill on violence floor. Even if we use Boss Killing Technique #2, let’s be careful of when we time our throw. Fortunately he doesn’t like spamming OP moves and prefers to do a lot of easily-counterable attacks.

• Kinugawa Onsen (Ryumachi mid)

He has a 330 damage in total throw, the highest in the game by far (that I know of). The second strongest throws are at 150 damage from Ukikumo-Kodachi and Ippatsumaru. Absurdly broken. In fact, it’s probably the highest damage combo in the game, but we don’t get to abuse it as much as he does because it’s a throw and doesn’t work on larger enemies. Make sure to space well, and be prepared to dodge backward when he’s about to do a sweep kick that goes into guaranteed kill, and he does that a lot. And that’s not even the only throw he has. He has a stabbing attack which if we failed to counter, we will get thrown by the following move, but this throw doesn’t hurt too much. There’s a guard break attack, too, if you’re confident, counter it, if not, step away.

• Kinugawa Onsen (Shinkeitsu side)

Despite how absurd the previous Kinugawa version seems, I think this version takes the crown for the hardest boss in the game.

He has 2 throws, and while they don’t hurt as much as Ryumachi, they have a stupidly long range. And he’s very good at grabbing us with them. Requires even better spacing and faster reaction. The throw that he performs on the spot isn’t so bad unless it’s violence floor, but the throws he performs after a spinning step really really hurts, and it’s harder to dodge that than it looks. Of course the better throw attack will outright kill on violence floor. He has an unblockable breath attack but it’s not really so threatening.

• Gamuran

He spams a lot of projectiles. Let’s block them all. He does a jump kick that’s easy to counter. He has a dangerous throw similar to Cold Blood’s throw after the double horizontal attack, but he doesn’t like doing it much. He spawns on floor with fire foxes that constantly weakens us, but I never got one-shotted by him. Comparing to Kinugawa he’s really quite underwhelming.

• Mizuchi

Exactly the same as Orochi, except he spawns on floors with negative effects, and he uses Yakumo instead of Chiyo-Yachiyo. On Violence floor, he can one-combo-KO (He doesn’t like doing it though), but he has no dangerous throw like Kinugawa, so he’s only slightly harder than Orochi.

• Demon God

A boss that randomly appears with Sensei’s Warning request. Has the highest HP in the game, underwater-speed attack. Upon encountering, it starts counting to ten, and does guaranteed damage to player (like 200 million damage or some absurd number that cannot be tanked). I think it’s possible to survive it with secret medicine but I didn’t try. It’s basically a DPS test. 920 sharpness Asaemon’s Heart Slash in Katana Time will kill it easily. But any 920 sharpness with draw buff swords should be able to take on it.

• Death God

Appears when player’s vitality is 0. And will leave if vitality is not 0.

It’s random whether this guy appears in huge size or normal size (I think). Can use either a Deathrattle or a Seikimatsu.

Huge Death God is angrier, faster, more damaging. (I think even normal size Death God is immune to throw attack?)

I don’t recommend taking on huge Death God, especially when it wields Seikimatsu without sufficient HP/secret medicine and Asaemon’s Katana Time. Even if it can’t throw, it’s too fast and can reach angles that player character cannot turn around fast enough to block. Finding a corner to turtle helps with blocking its attacks that can come from weird angles, but it’s still very risky. It’s possible to counter it, but it puts player character out of corner and leaving him susceptible to attacks from different angles. A smaller size Death God is far more manageable and doesn’t hit from weird angles as often. If it uses Deathrattle, it likes to spam the attack that causes it to fall to the ground. Use that chance to attack. If it uses Seikimatsu and it’s huge, well, all hope is not lost, but it takes a lot of practice. More than the game seems to like to allow us, since reviving with miracle medicine makes it go away. It’s possible to Kiwami huge Death God wielding Seikimatsu to death, but sufficient HP is still required.