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Unlike it's predecessors, Nioh 3 features an open world that's not too expansive, but packed with side activities and challenges as you make your way to new missions. Once you arrive in the Warring States Era and the tutorial ends, you'll be able to do a few different things, and we've compiled the best tips for Things to Do First in Nioh 3.

Learn Where to Find Samurai and Ninja Locks

In Nioh 3, you'll be able to learn a lot of different moves and abilities through Martial Arts and Ninjitsu, but you won't get points to assign just by leveling up at a Shrine using Amrita. Instead, you'll need to locate specific unique items called Samurai's Locks and Ninja's Locks. When found, these automatically become skill points that can be assigned to either the Samurai's Martial Arts and associated weaponry, or the Ninja's Ninjitsu and relevant weapon arts.

The best way to find these items is to take the time to explore the open world and seek out points of interest. When you open your map, you'll be able to swap through region options by pressing R2/RT to see your current exploration level, and a list of collectibles in each area.

Each region has a hefty amount of collectibles known as Valuables which often include Samurai or Ninja Locks, but the chest icon is a little misleading. In reality, Valuables can take many forms:

• Large treasure chests that appear on your map when you draw close, or reach Region Level 4 (small chests that only appear on your minimap do not count)
• Shooting down friendly spirit balloons called Chijiko (who will also unlock specific weapon skills to be purchased)
• Looting specific corpses often guarded by formidable foes
• Defeating certain Crucible Bosses

In addition, Samurai and Ninja Locks can also be gained by completing certain Side Quests or rewarded by increasing the Exploration Level of a region. Because of this, it's well worth your time to explore before taking on certain grueling main missions.

Unlock the Most Important Samurai and Ninja Abilities

Once you have a few Samurai and Ninja Locks, we highly recommend first using them in the main Samurai and Ninja skill trees to gain some essential abilities before you get too far in the game:

• The Samurai's Deflect allows you to perform what are essentially perfect parries. Without them, your blocking in the Samurai Style will lower your Ki over time. With Deflect, you can actually make blocking a viable strategy to completely negate incoming attacks while also restoring your Ki instead of lowering it!
• Similarly, the Ninja's Evade makes your dodge equally as useful when timed correctly. It allows you to quickly reposition yourself in the Ninja Style giving you back Ki and providing a limited amount of invulnerability in the process.
• Unlike previous Nioh games, you'll only start with one stance while in Samurai Style, and you'll want to unlock both Low Stance and High Stance to give your attacks more variety and adapt to fights. Low Stance lets you fight more evasively and conserve Ki, while High Stance expends more Ki to deal massive damage.
• If you find yourself using the Samurai Style a lot but struggle to retain Ki, you should also aim to unlock Flux 1 and 2 quickly. It allows you to regain a lot more Ki during a Ki Pulse if you swap stances during the act!

Gain Kodama and Jizo Blessings

A returning feature from past Nioh games, you'll find hidden little green spirits called Kodama all over the map. In Nioh 3, finding them will earn you Kodama Merit, which allow you to put the merit toward increasing the level of various blessing the Kodama offer at Shrines. The same goes for sculptures known as Six Jizo Statues that can be found in other regions.

For those who constantly find themselves low on health, taking the time to locate wayward Kodama and unlocking Jizo statues is incredibly important. Being able to unlock blessings like increasing Elixir Drop Rate or Efficacy can make the difference between walking into a boss fight with 3 Elixirs vs 8. Plus, the more Kodama you find, the more your minimum amount of replenishable Elixirs will grow, which helps a ton against bosses you may find yourself struggling with for quite a while!

Uncover Secret Skills

The abilities you unlock in the Samurai and Ninja Skill Trees aren't technically skills -- they are Martial Arts and Ninjitsu. Nioh 3 has a different category alltogether for what it calls Secret Skills.

Once you've found one, you'll be able to apply them in the Skill Management menu at a shrine. Sort of like Perks, many will impart a passive bonus that can affect your playstyle in numerous ways. You'll only have a limited amount of capacity to assign Skills that cover either Samurai Style, Ninja Style, or common skills.

To find and unlock Skills, be sure to take the time to explore the open world: clearing points of interest, opening treasure chests or looting specific corpses that count toward a region (or mission's) Valuables, and also checking the wares of the tiny purple Sudama merchants. Make sure that you’re taking the time every now and then to take a look at what skills you have, what make sense for your build, what’s worth keeping, what’s worth replacing, etc.

What To Do With Loot

And finally, let’s just really quick cover some tips about loot. There’s a handy dandy auto-equip feature in the gear menu that you can use to very quickly put on the gear that has the highest gear score. Rely on this throughout your first playthrough, and I promise you’ll have a better time without getting bogged down by numbers and tiny bonuses that ultimately mean very little in the grand scheme of things.

If you find a piece of loot that has exceptionally good stats or special abilities (these are usually marked with a star,) you can lock it in your inventory so that you don’t accidentally scrap it. You can do the same for weapons or pieces of gear that parts of sets, which give powerful set bonuses if you manage to collect the other pieces of the set. These more valuable pieces of gear can be held on to and eventually soul matched at the blacksmith to bring up to your current level, but again, do not worry about this until you’re in New Game+. Otherwise you’ll be wasting resources that could be better used for pieces of gear that aren’t going to be outleveled in just a few hours of play.