Sekiro: How to Beat Ashina Elite

How to Beat Ashina Elite in Sekiro

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is full of mini-bosses you can encounter throughout the game, and the Ashina Elite is one of them. Here’s how to beat the Ashina Elite in Sekiro.

As you’re making your way through Ashina Castle for the first time, you’ll find the Ashina Elite in the dojo. He’s not a mandatory mini-boss, but you do have to beat him if you want to unlock the convenient shortcut to the Genichiro fight.

This mini-boss serves a very specific purpose in Sekiro: teaching you the importance of how to parry and deflect.

In fact, this is by far the best and most effective way to deal with the Ashina Elite. This mini-boss has very quick attacks that will break your Posture quickly if you’re just guarding. However, by pulling off consecutive deflects, you’ll break his Posture instead.

Each time the Ashina Elite is about to attack, you’ll see a quick flash at his sword. The moment you see the flash, start deflecting. Keep repeating this strategy until you’ve broken his Posture, and he’ll be dead in no time.

Cheese Strategy

Now we haven’t been able to test the following strategies ourselves, so take them with a grain of salt. The Sekiro community’s figured out a more efficient ‘cheese’ strategy that will trivialize the fight with the Ashina Elite.

With the Whirlwind combat art, you should be able to hit him repeatedly while taking minimal damage in return. This strategy requires you to tank a few hits, but if your health gets low, just back off and heal before going back in for the Whirlwind spam.

Alternatively, if you have the Sabimaru upgraded to its poison variant. You can repeatedly hit the Ashina Elite with poison attacks and kill him that way. The mini-boss will take poison damage even if he guards against your attacks, so you can just poison him and leave him be till death.

That’s all you need to know about how to beat the Ashina Elite in Sekiro. Be sure to check our Sekiro guide wiki for more tips and information on the game.