Nioh 3 refines the franchise’s brutal formula by blending its signature high-speed combat with a vast, interconnected open world. As you navigate the Yokai-ridden landscape, a plethora of lethal encounters will serve to remind you that Team Ninja‘s latest demands more than just quick reflexes. That’s where our starter guide comes into play, prepping you to navigate the game’s ambitious new systems, from the fluid Dual-Style combat mechanic to the strategic nuances of the exploring the open fields, ensuring you have the tools necessary to survive against the rising Yokai threat.
Dominate the Dual-Style System
Nioh 3 has evolved into an open-field action RPG, introducing a major dual-style system that changes how you approach every encounter. When you are just starting your journey, you must master the art of swapping between Samurai and Ninja styles during combat. The Samurai style is focused on direct melee, heavy damage, and Arts Proficiency, making it ideal for parrying and breaking enemy Ki using traditional stances. In contrast, the Ninja style emphasizes agility and hit-and-run tactics, utilizing double-jumps for verticality and stealthy assassination tools like kunai and caltrops. Play around with both and get comfortable shifting between both playstyles. And if one truly resonates with you over the other, there’s nothing stopping you from maining one style. Newer players may find Ninja’s lack of Ki pulsing and stance switching to be a more welcoming introduction to the Nioh universe.
Don’t Overthink Early Stats
There’s a lot of trial and error, experimentation and understanding embedded in the first 10+ hours. For this reason, players may be apprehensive to lock in those stat boosts at each level up before they have fully decided how to mold their character. Fortunately, Nioh 3 doesn’t make those choices permanent. Shrines (and Bodhisattva statues in Crucibles) offer the ability to fully reset stats, enabling players to redistribute those points to different attributes if they wish to optimize their build or align with the scaling of a new weapon type with which they have fallen in love. This fluidity acts as an incentive to try out all types of approaches to identify which playstyle most harmonizes with each player.
Explore and Enhance
The new semi open world structure introduces Exploration Levels, which help smooth out the progression path. Clearing areas throughout each region grant base stat increases and provide helpful items (e.g., Samurai Locks). As you raise your level in a specific region, you will eventually reveal the entire map, helping you locate collectibles and tough Crucible Wraiths. Throughout your travels, continue to look for friendly spirits like Kodamas and Scampuss. Kodamas offer buffs while the round Scampuss cats will bestow rewards. Clearing the map and racking up the regional bonuses not only makes the player stronger it better prepares them for the Crucible boss waiting for them at the conclusion of each major area.
Unlock Essential Mobility and Defensive Skills
In Nioh 3, skill points are not gained through traditional leveling but are instead earned by finding Samurai and Ninja Locks hidden throughout the world (and rewarded in certain instances). Two of the most critical early-game unlocks are the Samurai’s Deflect and the Ninja’s Evade. Deflect acts as a perfect parry for all Samurai weapons, allowing you to negate damage and restore Ki simultaneously. Similarly, Evade enhances your Ninja dodge with more invulnerability frames and Ki recovery. For those seeking verticality, the Footstool Jump skill allows you to leap off an enemy’s head, which is perfect for repositioning or initiating aerial strikes. If you find yourself overwhelmed by a boss’s attacks, the Cicada Shell Ninjutsu is a “get out of jail free” card that teleports you behind your foe upon a timed counter, granting you an immediate opportunity to strike their back for massive bonus damage. The gameplay flow before and after receiving these initial upgrades is transformative, and will lay the foundation of combat flow for countless hours to come.
Ranged Tools Are Invaluable
Shurikens are far more than simple chip-damage tools; they have incredibly short recovery times, making them a great way to stagger human-sized enemies early on or bridge the gap between two incomplete combos. And they come in added flavors, like fire to add a bit of explosive heat to encounters. But it’s not just widening the gap mid-fight that make ranged options so important, they can be employed before a fight even breaks out to even the odds, or end the whole thing immediately. Ranged weapons, like the bow, open up the ability to attack enemies before they even know the player is there. A quiet arrow to the head of a standard enemy may be enough to outright eliminate them from the group, leaving others in the area none the wiser (assuming they didn’t watch their friend’s head fly off). Picking off weaker foes, like rifleman and bowman, from a distance can drastically reduce the hostile headcount before you move into to face off with the most resilient of their ranks.
Optimize Through Titles and Prestige
Once you have cleared the Crucible for the first time, you will unlock Titles, which provide a separate progression track called Prestige Points. By completing specific combat challenges—such as defeating a certain number of Yokai with a specific weapon—you earn points that can be spent on permanent, incremental stat boosts like increased Life, Ki Recovery, or Gold earned. These bonuses might seem small individually, but they are essentially free stats that do not count toward your level cap, making them rather valuable for fine-tuning your build as you progress.
