Ghost of Yotei is here.
And it’s a big open world, filled with secrets and fun things to try and discover. There are some things that the game doesn’t really spell out for you, or it might be unclear or easy to miss. So here are some tips and tricks to get started, jumping into the world, with 10 things the game doesn’t tell you.
No story spoilers here, but I am going to give you some early game hints, some stuff you might want to stumble across for yourself, but if you’re just looking for a little help, or where to get started, this won’t spoil any mid or late-game stuff for you.
What Skills to Get?
That’s always the biggest question with these types of games. Where do you get started in a game with a bunch of skill trees, and a bunch of options? Well, “Yotei” is definitely a good example of this because there’s a skill tree for basically everything in this game. There’s a lot of stuff you would expect here, like dedicated skill trees for your offensive capabilities, your assassination capabilities, your ranged capabilities, and like a basic survival, kind of all-purpose stuff. But then, there are skill trees for all of your individual weapon types you swap to. Along with that, a couple of skill trees related to horseback riding, and a whole revenge thing, a skill tree for your wolf abilities, which we’ll get to in a little bit.
Like in “Ghost of Tsushima,” you earn new skill points by exploring the environment, finding special altars, and bowing at them.
Chain Assassination
So top level, some early skills I can recommend worth unlocking that really change things up for you, the first is in the assassination skill tree. You’re gonna wanna unlock chain assassination. If you play even a little bit stealthy sometimes, early on in the game before you have all your tools and stuff like that, stealth can feel kind of incomplete, like you’re just missing some basic stuff, and chain assassination absolutely helps with that, because you’re gonna go into so many enemy hideouts and encounters, and just see two enemies just standing next to each other. This ability, if you’re not familiar with from the first game, you’re able to assassinate one guy with triangle, and then the camera will quickly flash to the next guy, and you’ll be able to assassinate them too. This is really, really helpful when you’re trying to be sneaky, because like I said, guys are standing next to each other often, and without the skill unlocked, you would assassinate one guy, and then the other guy would see you, and it would all fall apart.
Disarm Counter
Another one is disarm counter. So enemies will do all types of glowing attacks at you, like a red attack, that you know you gotta dodge, a blue glinting flash attack that you know you gotta parry, but every once in a while, they’ll rev up a yellow glowing attack, and this can mess you up pretty badly, typically disarming you, meaning you gotta run around and scramble, and find your sword. But if you see this yellow glint, if you unlock disarm counter, all you gotta do is hold triangle, and then release, before that enemy finishes their yellow attack, and then you will get a good hit on them, disarming them. The more you play, the more enemies will throw this type of attack at you, so it’s good to have this early on.
Roll and Perfect Dodge
Unlocking roll is also very important, it’s a pretty obvious one, but double-tapping circle allows you to roll out of the way of enemies, which you know, pretty early on, especially if you played “Tsushima,” and you’re used to that one, you’re gonna miss this right away. So get that, that’s an early one, as well as perfect dodge.
Avoid Onryo’s Will
If you’re looking to save points and be very strategic with them, I would actually recommend avoiding Onryo’s Will. This is like a thing where you spend your spirit meter in order to revive yourself from death, but early on, the game actually gives some other opportunities to revive you that I don’t really need to spoil here, but basically, you’re not gonna need this early on, when enemies are pretty easy. So save your points for something else.
Where to Start
Next at number nine, just generally, if you’re looking where to start with this game, it’s a good question to have, because the game pretty much just dumps you in the early region, and gives you some options of where to go, and very quickly starts throwing a lot of stuff out at you. You’re gonna basically automatically start picking up clues for which Yotei Six members to hunt down, and you’ll suddenly realize, you have a lot of cards, and a lot of different directions to go, with very little skills or tools, or any ideas.
Each kind of landmass or region, or biome in the game kind of has their own Yotei Six member, as well as a bunch of other things, and sub-stories, and vibes, basically. But whoever you pursue first, or whatever you’re pursuing someone, it’s best to, once you get to that local area, yes, familiar yourself with the region, but the most important thing, I think, is to seek out your local sensei.
Senseis and Weapon Types
A lot of these regions have a sensei that you can go and seek out, and learn something from. Most importantly, these things you learn are completely different weapon types. Weapon types in this game, you swap around a lot, and they’re kind of like the substitute for stances from “Ghost of Tsushima.” So you’re gonna wanna have as many of these as possible, before jumping into some heavy stuff, because you’re constantly facing enemies, with different weapon types, and if you, with just the basic katana stance, there’s only so much you can do, so you’re very quickly gonna want to seek out these senseis, do their little side missions, and unlock weapon types that make you much more powerful.
I would recommend doing that before actually directly trying to go after a Yotei Six member, and for that matter, even duals against ronins, like I would avoid that stuff until you have some good weapons in your back pocket.
Who to Start With?
From there, if you’re asking like, “Well, what’s the best Yotei Six member to start with?” I think it’s up to you. The game gives you a couple of options, but I think the Oni is a good one. It’s tricky with their fire abilities, but just story-wise, I think it introduces you to some really cool stuff that I was glad I experienced kind of early on. Again, that part’s gonna be up to you. Thankfully, the game is fairly flexible, which I’ll talk about in a bit.
Wolf Dens
Next at number eight, wolf dens. Wolf dens are very important, because in this game, Atsu gets equipped, semi, with a wolf friend. This wolf friend doesn’t follow you around constantly like an NPC, but it tends to pop up in convenient moments, and as the game goes along, without spoiling anything like mechanically, you just get more empowered, and have more ways to take advantage of this wolf. Along with that, the wolf does have its own skill tree, which I think is pretty important. It’s one of the big game-changing elements of the game, other than the weapon swapping.
So like “Ghost of Tsushima,” you’re gonna be running around following birds, you’re gonna be looking for hot springs to increase your health. You’re gonna be doing bamboo strikes to slowly increase your focus meter. You’re gonna be following foxes around to get little talismans, of course, but the newest thing to seek out in the environment is wolf dens.
Now all of these things, like in the previous game, are generally identified by a certain tree color or smoke, or something that you can see from the distance. So with wolf dens, look out for a bit more of like a more snarled or curly, maybe even kind of spooky tree. I’m not a tree guy, I don’t know what to call this type of tree, but a tree that looks a little bit more distinct, a little older, a little more twisted, atop a rock. At the base of that rock, you’ll find a wolf den, and then that triggers a wolf sequence that will allow you to unlock a new point in your wolf’s skill tree. And again, you’re gonna be glad you have that wolf. So thank us later. Or really, thank the wolf.
Use Your Periscope
Next at number seven, your periscope is your friend. This is something that early on, I kind of neglected to use, and realize that it was actually pretty useful in exploration. You tap up on the D-pad, and this is essentially your binoculars. You can look around the environment, and mark stuff. Early on, I would just use it when it told me to, and in certain story sequences you’re gonna scout out the environment, but I just didn’t realize how useful it is when you’re out in the open area, exploring.
“Ghost of Tsushima” and “Ghost of Yotei” do a good job of not just giving you map markers to pursue. But ultimately, it does have that, but the game really does encourage you not pausing and constantly checking your maps and menus, and just going along for the ride. The periscope does a really good job identifying things, because of the way it feels. It’s hard to explain, but just like the way it controls, and the feedback that controller gives you, it helps you identify things when you point it around, even if you’re in a very dense area, when it looks like there’s a lot of trees and tree cover, and you can’t see a lot, your periscope will actually still end up showing you stuff. Even when you feel like you’re in an area where there’s absolutely nothing around you, I’d recommend pulling out the periscope, give it a quick pan, seeing what’s around, because you’d be surprised. Usually, there is something around.
Throw Everything
Next at number six, throw everything. This sounds like really obvious, but I wanna point this out, because it was something I avoided doing sometimes, because I don’t know, maybe every player is different, but I very much thought it was the easy way out. But ultimately, the game gets pretty tricky as you go through, and the game also gives you tools right in front of you, to take the easy way out with some enemies, look for a glowing blue thing in the environment.
Enemies will drop their weapons and also weapons will be in the environment just available to pick up, from spears to extra swords, whatever. Picking these up with the right trigger, you can quickly throw them at the nearest enemy with square, and this is awesome. It absolutely smokes low-level enemies, so it’s always good to whittle out the crowd with these things, trust me. Like I said, early on, I thought it was like the easy way out, so I avoided it, ’cause I wanted to engage in the combat, but very quickly, the game pushes you to like, “Oh, you’re gonna need to do this. You’re gonna need to use all the tools at your disposal.” Atsu isn’t like Jin from the previous game, where he’s focused on like, you know, walking the line between honor, and you know, following the samurai code. She’s just an assassin, so she’ll just do whatever. So pick up everything and throw it at enemies.
That also includes sake jars. Sake jars are everywhere in this open world, I don’t understand, like I don’t, do people in Ezo have a drinking problem? There are sake jars everywhere. You can pick these suckers up, and throw them in stealth to distract enemies, but also, it’s good to throw at enemies mid-battle, because it might open them up for a couple of quick hits.
Wander Off the Critical Path
Next at number five, don’t be afraid to wander off the critical path. It can be fun to just absolutely mainline the story as much as you possibly can, without some hurdles the game throws at you. But there is a lot of stuff in this world, and I would say that it is absolutely more densely packed than “Ghost of Tsushima.” So be prepared for that. It’s very consistently throwing things at you to distract you from the main path, but a lot of it is actually worthwhile.
There are a few things in the game I encountered, from side missions and side activities and stuff like that, that felt like a waste of time. They always either netted me something, or just were entertaining and interesting, especially, because you’d be surprised how much stuff is missable. If you just see, walking through a small town or village, an NPC in the corner leaning up against the building, make sure you walk close to him because you might realize that he’s somebody that you can click on and talk to, and get a pretty in-depth side mission.
- Welcome, traveler. I see you come well-armed. We have need of that.
- [Atsu] If it comes with coin, I’m listening.
- A regular customer of mine, Chika, kept beating Saito’s men at the tables, they didn’t like that. He took her away.
- [Atsu] Sore losers with a taste for blood.
- I can’t have my customers worry that winning is a death sentence. Find Chika, and I’ll make it worth your while.
- [Atsu] I’ll see what I can do.
And you could have just completely walked past that sucker without even realizing. This happens quite a lot. So make sure when you’re around civilians and NPCs, walk up and check to see if they have a thing where you can start talking to them. I know it sounds obvious, it’s video game 101, but it’s not always clear if you’re just riding by on your horse.
Also in this game, it actually seems better, if you take a break between missions, because narratively, the game seems to kind of account for that. A lot of times I would do a mission, like a main mission, and then leave, and mess around with side stuff, and then come back, and do the next main mission and writing, dialogue, story-wise, it felt like a little time had passed, so it all kind of makes sense anyway, so again, just don’t stress it.
- [Atsu] Are you all playing ku-e shinok?
- [Child] You know the game?
- [Atsu] I played it, once.
- [Child] Were you any good?
- [Atsu] I don’t quite remember.
Map Stuff
Next at number four, let’s explain some map stuff. The map stuff is a bit more in-depth than in “Ghost of Tsushima,” and maybe my brain was just broken, I don’t know, there’s just some things that took me a little while to get the hang of, get grips on, so I’ll explain it for you here.
In the map screen, on the bottom left, is your card system. I know they talked about this a lot pre-launch, but when it’s actually in front of you, it’s worth noting that you have all these stacks of cards, right? And up and down on the D-pad keeps track of the categories of these cards, whether it’s cards dedicated for bounties, you have tracking, cards dedicated for the Yotei Six themselves and story missions, cards dedicated for tales or myths, that will, like in “Tsushima” let you find like, say, a cool magical robe or a funky sword, and tracking senseis, but also the side missions that senseis will give you. You move up and down to scroll through all these, then you move right and left to go through all the different options within that category.
Look, that’s basic tutorial stuff, the game kind of tells it to you, but I don’t know, I just had trouble really figuring it out for a second, so I figured I’d pointed out.
The bigger thing is the traveler’s maps. These are small maps that you unlock, you can access them with square on the map screen. You get these by buying them from a cartographer, but don’t get it twisted. You’ll also stumble upon these occasionally in the environment. When you click on these, they let you kind of move it around on the map, and place, and try and guess where it actually is. When you get the right spot, it will then lock in, and become an actual marker on your map.
But I struggled with these a little bit just because of how low-key the map is. The the art design, the look of the map, it’s very low on detail, so sometimes it’s hard to kind of line things up. The early ones, you just line it up with a river, and it’s easy. But later ones, there’s a bit less going on than them. Some will only have a tiny faint line representing a river, and also, I just struggled visually with the identifiers, like seeing like what, is this ocean? Is this a landmass? Is this, what is this? It sounds like I’m being silly, but like when you get them in front of you, you might feel the same way, so it’s worth noting, look on screen here, not only are you looking to match up these faint river lines, but also the more faint lines that actually represent, I don’t know, borders or something.
Again, you might be confused, because the map also shows a little bit of like the fog of war that you cleared, that tends to look kind of like landmasses, as well as these lines just being very faint. So just look very closely. My brain is trained with video games, it just kind of looks for the obvious patterns, but very quickly, you’ll realize that you gotta look a little bit more between the lines with these guys.
Switching Armor Visuals
Next at number three, switching your armor ranking visually, this was something in “Ghost of Tsushima” that was also a bit missable, but I’ve already noticed some people on social media pointing this out, like, how do you do this? And it took me a little while to figure it out, but if you don’t know, like the previous game, you find cool armor sets, right? And then those armor sets you actually are able to progress, either through missions, side missions, or most notably, typically spending resources at an armorer or to level them up. The leveling up gives that armor set more benefits, but also visual tweaks, usually. However, sometimes like ranking it up to the best maximum level gives you some over the top, crazy-looking armor. You might wanna pair it down to something more low-key. There’s a lot of visual options in this game.
So to be able to do that, like I said, it’s easy to miss, but when you’re looking at all your armors, and you’re looking at a ranked-up one, press square to change the color dye for that armor set, and then you might not notice, like right on top here, again, it took me a second to notice this, but on top, R1, L1 switches back and forth between the different visual ranking style. When you choose a lesser-ranked visual style, you still have all the benefits of your fully ranked-up armor.
Cash In Your Bounties
Now at number two, make sure to actually cash in those bounties, because you might not realize, how many dudes you killed. Very quickly, when you see your first town, there’s a bounty board, you can go pull bounties off the board, and then get set, and go out, and find these guys, and kill them for money. But like I said, this game is so dense with side activities, and so many things happening all around you, and so many ways to distract you, that it can be very quickly, easy to lose sight of what you were actually doing. Plus there are a lot of bounties out there, and sometimes, you’re just gonna stumble across a dude and kill him, and not even initially realize that he was a bounty. The game will give you a visual indicator, but you’ll quickly very move on and forget.
The bounty enemies are pretty rewarding, like very satisfying to kill, yes, and I kind of just rode on that, and forgot that you actually gotta go back to the dude standing next to the bounty board to cash ’em in. I know that sounds obvious, like in video games and stuff like that, but it just wasn’t really clear in this game. So make sure you go back to this guy, because you’d be surprised, the amount of times I went back and talked to this guy, and realized I was sitting on three bounties, and then got an instant huge cash payout. Also, the more you visit this guy and cash in bounties to him, he might throw you something a little more interesting every once in a while, a bit more of an interesting bounty mission, so it’s worth yapping at him.
- Ah, you crossed off One Eye Moritaka!
- [Atsu] Guess he didn’t see me coming.
- Good one.
Ranking Up the Onryo Armor
Now at number one, the main armor, you know like the box art armor, the Onryo armor, it’s the armor you start out with, but there’s clearly cooler looking levels to it. Like a lot of the armors in the game, you rank it up, you get more benefits and visual tweaks, but this is the one quite a few hours in, I could not figure out how to actually level it up, how to increase its ranking, and its visual ranking, because all it says to rank it up on the main screen is follow the ginkgo tree leaves, which, what? I didn’t know what the hell was going on here. I visited the homestead, and looked at the ginkgo tree there, and tried to follow the leaves, flowing in the environment, ultimately, I came up short, I searched for a long time, until I realized that I was spending so much time on side quests and stuff like that, basically, the way the progress the Onryo armor is to tackle main mission objectives, or basically, go after members of the Yotei Six, it’s that simple, but the game did not spell that out for me, it did not tell me how to do this. So basically, I just wanted to save you a couple of minutes, save you some time you banging your head against the wall, trying to figure out what “Follow the ginkgo tree leaves” actually means. There you have it, that’s what you gotta do.
Also, it’s worth noting that you are homestead in the game, where you can kind of swap between young you and old you, it’s worth going back and revisiting here and there. Not as often as you would think, it’s pretty slow in its progression, in like when things happen there, but after doing a lot of main missions, it’s worth jumping back here.
Final Thoughts
Anyway, those are 10 things that the game doesn’t tell you, or you know, it doesn’t quite make things clear. Just tips and tricks for you guys to get started. So let us know in the comments if you’re jumping into this game, any other secrets or fun little tips you found, it helps other players if they’re looking in the comments section. We appreciate that. But as always, thanks for reading, and we’ll see you guys next time.