biggest cheese strat is to run back to the slope going to the water mill idol.. there are tons big rocks there. if you can pin her there in one of those rocks, you can spam her with r1, she will only defend your attacks until her posture breaks. you wont even take 1 hp of damage

Best place to farm - puppet jutsu the taro troop with the bell and let him farm the XP for you.

i'm a basket

This area is well below the level of the whole game so far. It's still great game but I'm so annoyed with Mibu Village. 1. Ninja assassin that actually the best but unpleasant farming spot. 2. Easy respawning enemies make whole area just go around slay them again and again until you loot everything. 3. Mini boss that annoyingly repeats the same ass-move all the time (hard hitting attack, fly away with invincibility and posture recovery, repeat), until you use sabimaru or divine confetti and fight becomes trivial (don't even mention ceramic shard trick :D). 4. Illusory corrupted monk that is just boring festival of cheesing and dodging. Meh.

I strongly believe the 4 Apparition Nightjar Ninja enemies appearance after killing the second watcher is triggered by killing the Guardian Ape. It's the only difference between mine and my gf's playthrough. They did not appear to me before, and I farmed there a lot before.

Where is the Gourd seed?

you aren't required to fight the headless ape if you grab the hidden forest idol before killing the guardian ape

I love the creepy atmosphere, but I wish there was more to explore, especially since there's not much to do here on NG+ if you got the pine resin. The 5 scales from the priest are nice, but they become obsolete after 2 playthroughs.

Dollar store Fishing Hamlet