Before I begin I want to make clear that this is a guide for Bow Users. I have no experience with any other weapon. After it was announced that CBT would be extended till 19th June I lost my motivation to help people through Izumo, so here's a guide instead, from someone who reached Kyoto in 3 days at level 16 solo. Since this game is still in CBT there are plenty of nice people who will gladly help you through some of the toughest parts between Level 1 and Kyoto, so this guide may be obsolete. Once OBT arrives on the 1st of July I may expand this into an actual guide.

Update History
1.0.0 Thread Posted
1.0.1 Edited with SeekerFate's remarks
1.0.2 Updated Partner details
1.0.3 Improved Formatting

Contents

1. Character Creation ー Tutorial
2. Meeting Shizuka ー Kishinden
3. Quick Bow Guide
4. Kishinden ー Sakurajima Depths
5. Yamataikoku ー Room of Rites
6. Izumo Rest Stop ー Ooikazuchi Cavern
7. Oonaobi Shrine and Yomotsuhirasaka

Character Creation ー Tutorial
You should start with a Cautious-typed character. You get some Status Points as soon as you get past the Character Creation page, you'll want to put those into Dex. The same goes for every time you level up. Dex Dex and more Dex. Clear the tutorial using the Bamboo Bow (Lightning Arrow, Rapid Shot, Spin Kick) you're given at the start by holding F and moving your mouse to select the bow. ??? is a joke, you should handle it without encountering problems. It's relatively tanky and its charging and fireball-spewing are great manuevouring practice. You'll find a stronger version of this boss later on. After he falls, you will find Lady Shizuka with you for reasons which I have completely forgotten. She'll carry all your monster drops (don't sell them, you'll want them for quests and crafting) and identify items with her all-seeing eyes.



Meeting Shizuka ー Kishinden
The storyline should guide you after the tutorial, try to clear as many side quests as you can along the way. The experience and items you can get from these can be significant, especially Magatama which will come in handy. Up till Kishinden the game is relatively easy, don't be fooled by the suggested levels- as long as you don't charge into a pack of 10 enemies or something you'll be fine. Somewhere here while clearing the Onigashima Training Grounds you meet Yoshitsune (whose name isn't censored, it get capitalized to Yoshitsune even). She enhances, smelts, crafts and repairs weapons. Get your Bamboo Bow to +10 through her ASAP. If you've got any luck at all at least one more Bamboo Bow will drop. Use these to get your first Bamboo Bow to +20-40 for more damage, but +10 is workable. Make sure to max out your partners' friendship points or whatever they're called and summon them to your aid, as the damage increase they give is while not significant, useful. In addition, doing so will grant you access to higher enhancement levels and more success when identifying, and other interactions with them in town.

BOSS FIGHT ー CHIEF DARUMA
The Chief isn't all that tough, on Normal (which you should do every dungeon on unless grinding) the few skills you should see if you're attacking from maximum range are:

• Smoke- Breathes smoke at you which does insane damage. Fortunately it seems to have less than 10m range, meaning he's wasting his time using this.
• Daruma Bombs- Throws some exploding Daruma at you, either Block with Shift or Tumble left / right as soon as you see his animation start then start running in that direction. Raises his Pipe into the air before casting, just like Homing Daruma Bomb.
• Homing Daruma Bomb- Throws a Daruma at you which tracks you down. Blocking is the best way to deal with this, though if you run around enough it gives up.

Stand as far away as possible and just shoot freely, his attacks are telegraphed more than a second before they land.


I hope you've gotten a feel for the Bow by now, but if you haven't here's a quick combat guide
The maximum range of a Bow is 14.0m. Any further and your arrows won't land. This applies to most bow skills. I'll refer to these ranges when detailing boss fights. You can alternate between targets with Tab, which will highlight the current target with a red crosshair. Keep in mind that it will actually toggle to targets outside of range so be careful when using this feature. If the selected target goes off-screen you will automatically deselect it, you'll have to retarget it which is quite troublesome at times.

Initially most enemies won't be hard to deal with, but starting from Kumaso Village (explained below) you'll start to feel much weaker, defensively and offensively. Don't be alarmed, at this point you want to take enemies on one at a time using a skill with preferrably 14.0m range, I recommend (Poison) Rapid Shot personally, but things like Venom Arrow and Cursed Arrow will do as well. Don't draw the attention of other enemies as it's difficult to kite more than one enemy at a time. If your weapon is strong enough it shouldn't take more than a full Basic Combo and a skill to take down each enemy. This can be durability intensive in certain dungeons which I'll discuss later.

Bossing becomes hard in around the same area, but most bosses are fairly predictable and easy to dodge. I'm only going to explain the bosses which are hardest in my opinion. Most of the time staying as far away as possible is the best choice, sniping from afar. However there are exemptions from this rule such as Beelzebub.

Magatama are the main reason why you want to clear side quests, as their bonuses can prove useful in clearing many dungeons, whether it be keeping out of OHKO / 2HKO range or dealing more damage. Try to optimize your defensive stats using these, at low levels with limited Chakra, the only offensive Magatama you should be looking at is the Rausu Magatama (16% Bow Affinity, 2 Dex). I think a quest gives it to you, if not you can have Kaguya craft it after reaching Izumo Rest Stop.

As for Weapons, I find that the basic Bamboo Bow will suffice until Level 10 with minimal enhancements, where you should replace it with a +30-40 Fledgling Sparrow Bow as soon as you're ready for Tiamat. After which you'll want a +40-50 Greatbow at Level 17 to give you the damage you need to take care of the final two dungeons of Izumo, which is the final stop before Kyoto. However, if you're short on money or just plain unlucky you can settle for the Dark Fledgling Bow instead, which comes with a built-in Cursed Arrow III, which combined with either Venom Arrow or Rapid Shot can take down almost all enemies instantly. You'll be able to find these in Kishinden.

(I'll add a list of bow skills from the JP wiki later, these are the skills I'm familiar with)



Kishinden ー Sakurajima Depths AKA Tiamat
After clearing Kishinden, you'll leave for... some reason involving Kamikui and stuff. I'm not the best with storylines. You depart towards Kumaso Village through Sakurajima, meeting Ibaraki Douji along the way, who loves to drink yet never really seems all that drunk. At some point she'll sell you Moon King, a type of Liquor that will greatly boost your mobility. Great for bossing, saving time, literally everything. In Kumaso you'll help the town chief with a couple of dungeons here and there, none of which should be too difficult. Eventually you're asked to defeat Tiamat, the First Kamikui. Now the grind for Level 10 begins. Head back to Kishinden and look for a party doing it on Normal or Hard (or Hell if you find a party that can handle it). Get those Fledgling Sparrow Bows with Rapid Shot and perhaps Venom Arrow / Cursed Arrow to +30-40, you'll need them for Tiamat as well. Keep the Bamboo Bow as durability becomes an issue in Tiamat, and use it against easy enemies like the Gama or Rock Stickies. Take care of those pesky Baby Mukade from range, their burrows do mediocre damage but they have some sort of melee attack that hurts. I think.

BOSS FIGHT ー TIAMAT
Tiamat is considered to be one of the more difficult bosses in CBT. He also happens to be completely predictable. You ought to attack him from the sides, where most of his attacks don't hit:

• Charge- Charges forward, most of the time casting an Aerial Firebomb immediately afterwards. (my skill naming sucks)
• Aerial Firebomb- Jumps into the air and rains down painful fireballs. Only hits directly in front of him. Also deals damage around him when he lands.
• MultiFireball- Shoots 5 fireballs from each of his heads at intervals of ~1s, rotating either clockwise or anticlockwise. Painful as well. You can run between the fireballs and should try to move where his heads aren't going next so that you can start doing damage again.

You want to be far away enough that his fireballs and aerial attacks are evadable, and you also want to stand at his sides as opposed to his back as there's a tail swipe which also hurts plenty. Of course, being in front is fine too since he doesn't charge particularly fast and the fireballs aren't all that hard to dodge.

BOSS FIGHT ー CURSED MOMOTAROU
Guess what, it's a 6-handed-blue-skinned-sword-wielding freak. He loves all sorts of interesting animals too. And, he wants to kill you. If you played Tiamat right you should still have those three free revives. Those Soul Eggs are still precious so use them sparingly.
Skills:

• Dash Slash- Charges forwards then attacks. Happens to put himself in a position where his melee attacks hit as well. I won't list those, you just have to know that you don't want them to hit. Run around him so that you're not hit by this skill while dealing damage.
• Dash Combo- Immediately after dashing at you, he'll follow up with another slash, then use
• Poison Fang- To finish off his initiation. Successfully evading these attacks will give you a 1.5-2.0s window of opportunity to deal damage to him.
• Below ~50%- makes a clone of himself and gains some sort of wave-like skill that spreads in all 6 directions. You should try to block it if you're too close to evade it, but you ought to be far away enough to dodge. While he's casting his wave-like skill, you're free to deal damage as long as you're not in line to be hit by it. It's much more difficult to kite two targets at once, so make sure that you're safe before attacking. After taking down either the clone or Momotarou himself, the remaining one will be much easier.

The strategy here is, deal as much damage as possible without dying, and if you do die, eat some Nigiri to heal up ASAP after reviving. Honestly he's a little too fast to kite all the time, but he isn't that tanky nor does he hit particularly hard. After defeating him he joins your merry band of merry people. He'll evolve your skills which isn't particularly useful, and later on lets you extract skills which is very useful, particularly for getting double Rapid Shots (Rapid Shot I + Poison Rapid Shot II) on a single Bow.



Yamataikoku ー Room of Rites
If you've defeated Tiamat, reaching the Room of Rites shouldn't be an issue at all. Chinji Cavern and the four other caverns don't have that many difficult enemies, though once again it's still not advisable to take on more than 1 at a time. The Room of Rites is full of traps... that do absolutely no damage at all. Yes, I mean they do 0 damage.

BOSS FIGHT ー AHRIMAN
You should be able to DPS freely from range here until you see any sign of an attack by Ahriman. Once you do, move sideways in case he casts his Frontal Lightning to dodge it. If you can't react in time or have high ping, run around in circles (do you have Moon King Liquor here? I can't remember) until he uses a skill, which you should have evaded running around so much, then counter with a skill of your own. Then start moving again, sometimes the delay on his skills is really short although most of the time he doesn't attack again until about 3s later. What skills?

• Frontal Lightning- Zaps a line infront of him with dark lightning. Instantly kills you. Unless you're ridiculously tanky which you aren't.
• Downwards Zap- Ahriman decimates the are underneath him with dark lightning. Probably instantly kills you. You're never in range to get hit by this.
• Homing Ball Lightning- I'm not sure if he has this skill on normal. If he shoots 4 balls from the top, bottom, left and right of himself, run left or right until they go away. Instantly kills you.

I think that's it for Ahriman. Pretty simple boss, with pretty terrible mechanics. His skills are hard to read and all that, so you have to resort to the wait-for-them-to-attack technique. In my opinion Ahriman is the worst boss in CBT, given how his OHKO mechanics are not matched with the decreased exp (is it a 2HKO in JP? Can someone verify?). Kaguya joins your party. Mysterious in mysterious ways, she is. She crafts, dissolutes and performs ornamentation on Magatama, which can be item-wise, costly.



Izumo Rest Stop ー Ooikazuchi Cavern
You'll need to craft a Purity Magatama with Kaguya before entering any of the dungeons in Izumo. This will probably mess up your configuration a little, but there isn't much you can do about it. Remember to always aim for the eggs over the flies, as this will remove the flies. Instantly. If there are not-fly enemies between you and the eggs that you can't get by without aggroing though, take those out first. Keep in mind that Ooikazuchi Cavern requires you to break some walls, especially when you first enter you want to walk along the right wall and destroy the first wall you encounter, as all the eggs are behind it.



Oonaobi Shrine and Yomotsuhirasaka
Wait what happened to the dash? These are the last two dungeons seperating you and Kyoto. They happen to be the toughest dungeons as well.

This is where you want to go grind for a +40-50 Level 16 Dark Fledgling Bow or Level 17 Greatbow, as well as for the levels to equip those bows. Once again, Kishinden is one of the best places to head to, dropping both of these bows and giving decent experience (Byakkou Cavern is better for pure exp, but you need weapons too). You should have no problems handling Hell with a competent party at this point. When he creates his barrier, kill the spawned Daruma to get rid of it. Once you're Level 16/17 with that new Dark Fledgling / Greatbow, you're all set to finish the final two dungeons.

Oonaobi Shrine, home to the giant bronze statue whose name I cannot remember
For the first two stages of this dungeon, employ the same strategy used in the rest of the Izumo dungeons, that is, eggs first flies later. However, the third stage has flies which only despawn after killing off the other enemies in the area. You should kill off these enemies first, then make a mad dash for all of the eggs to make your life a little easier. Be careful of the Toudaiki in this area, their fireballs hurt, and it's hard to get to them without attracting some flies. Hopefully you've made it to the boss without dying.

BOSS FIGHT ー STATUE DUDE
Alright, here's the plan. You get his attention, then attack from maximun range. And only maximum range. If he gets closer, move backwards so you're always attacking from maximum range. Lure him into where your cutscene ended, he will eventually teleport back to his original spawn giving you the space to kite once again. There's only one attack to watch for, but here are all of them:

• Slash- Pretty much just slashes forwards with a long reach. Shouldn't get hit by this.
• Dark Slash- Occasionally casts this after a Slash, or just on its own. Once again, shouldn't get hit by this.
• Ground Slam- Occasionally casts this after a Dark Slash, or just on its own. Shouldn't get hit by this.
• Spinning Charge- Tilts his body 90 degrees and spins fowards. If you see him starting to cast this, RUN SIDEWAYS IMMEDIATELY SO YOU DON'T DIE. The rest of the skills might not instantly kill you but if you get caught by this and you're not far enough to one of the sides such that you only get grazed by a single hit, you're doomed.

After running back and forth for about 2 minutes or so the statue falls and you're victorious. This guy is (presumably) the hardest boss before Kyoto.


Yomotsuhirasaka and the Lord of the Flies, Beelzebub
Okay. Nothing has changed here. Keep on doing what you've been doing all this while. Break some eggs, kill anything in your way (one at a time) and jump down holes of exposed flesh and bone. The first area where you enter in is once again somewhat confusing. Kill the Baby Mukade then break down the wall behind them. The crosshair will be positioned a little weird, but if you're doing one damage to something you're golden. There are more eggs here, destroy them all and the flies are gone. There's also a cliff with 2 chests in the second stage, below the cliff there are enemies which you can snipe from atop the cliff. After wiping those out you can fight the boss, Beelzebub.

BOSS FIGHT ー BEELZEBUB
Hey, it's the Lord of the Flies, the second Kamikui you'll encounter. Don't worry, he isn't as hard as that statue guy.

• Aerial Assault- He uses this when you're within about 9m of him, flies into the air and starts spitting green poison flies down to the earth below. This is what you want him to do, so stay within 9m of him all the time. You can hit him freely while he's flying, and the green poison flies aren't that hard to dodge. Just watch out where he lands, he deals a significant amount of damage where he does.
• Poison Spray- Sprays green stuff sweeping left and right. You shouldn't get hit by this if he uses it, has a range of about 8m.
• Poison Flies- Shoots green coloured poisonous flies forwards, just tumble sideways and a little and you won't get hit.
• Pink Charge of Almost Certain Death- Turns pink, moves backwards a little, then smashes himself into the ground. Has an insane range, more than 14m for sure. Almost definitely instantly kills you if you take more than 2 hits. You can abuse this as well, if you're like 20m away and he charges, you get some free damage in. But if you do this constantly your damage will suffer since you can't constantly hit him.

Once you're done there will be some cutscenes yada yada yada, do some talking and you can enter Kyoto. Yay. Oh, and Susanoo who's a god or something wants to follow you around too, and apparently people send duels to you through him, free exp for doing nothing. Now you can either spend your days doing something else or clearing Kyoto, but you can't get to Sekigahara as CBT won't allow it. If you have trouble with a boss, analyse it and keep trying. For example, it's not possible to attack Kyoukotsu at maximum range like other bosses, instead you should bait out a melee attack and attack while he's hitting nothing.


FAQ
to be updated

Feel free to ask questions below, I may or may not answer depending on the question. Feedback is welcome but I'm poor with harsh criticism. Help with formatting is also welcome. I don't want to hear things like exp or gold in this thread, as there is nothing to be said.

Credits
Kokone and Azalea for proof-reading my guide and giving me feedback
SeekerFate for tips on fighting Cursed Momotarou and Ahriman

I'd like to note a technique that I personally use when fighting momo. When I fight Momo I tend to kite him (for as long as I can anyways) because he has a very predictable interval that is very safe for doing any action as a ranged. This interval is when he dashes once towards you, performs another dash, then uses a poison jab. At the end of this poison jab he has about a 1.5-2.0 second interval in which you can either cast a skill, hit some basic attacks, or even eat some items if you need to. Of course it gets slightly more difficult if you're soloing and have both of the momos chasing you in which you have to wait for the shadow momo to do some derpy stationary attack far away from you.

Also when I fight Ahriman, I tend to maintain a 10-11m range from him as it leaves a good range for me to fight at and I can reasonably defeat him by predicting roughly when I should attack and when he will launch his attacks even without the +50 movement speed sake to assist. If I'm lucky then I can even get away completely unscathed.

Thanks for the clarification on Momo, Seeker! I'll update the guide accordingly. Personally I haven't had success with that strategy against Ahriman, maybe it's just my high ping. I'll add that in as well.