Pardon my autism but he was nowhere near the cap when he started playing the first DLC, in fact he was underleveled both in stats and in gear. Thankfully, despite how more brutal the first Nioh was he could've just done the first base game region on NG+ and have been able to get gear that's better than what he would be able to get in the DLC and it would have been able to be more than enough to get him to where he'd need to be for the DLC, he was just too lazy to put in the extra 1-3 hours to do so.Note that when Phil hit the cap on that (around level 150, I think), he could no longer progress when he needed skill to beat the DLC boss fights.