Sekiro is not Dark Souls or Bloodborne, but it has the bones of both. It’s not a stealth game, but you should play it sneakily. It’s not a role-playing game, but it has RPG elements. It is, in short, a FromSoftware game. It’s weird, brutal, fun, infuriating, and immeasurably satisfying — as long as you persist and don’t throw your controller at a wall. Like its predecessors before it, Sekiro has the advantage. Our beginner’s guide will help you meet its challenges without ruining or spoiling the fun. We’ve designed this guide to teach you Sekiro’s language — and the faster you become fluent, the better. What happens when you die If you’ve played a FromSoftware game from the last decade, you know that death brings a significant penalty. The idea remains the same in Sekiro, but the penalties (and opportunities) for dying are different. There’s a lot going on, so we’ll break this section down into chunks that deal with the three big concepts: Resurrection, death penalties, and Unseen Aid. Resurrection When you die, you can press a button and come back to life right where you fell. This is called Resurrection. Two pink circles at the bottom left of your screen show Resurrection’s availability. As long as at least one circle is full (one refills like a pie chart), you can resurrect. There’s a cooldown after you resurrect, so you’ll have to wait a few minutes or kill some enemies before you can do it again. You can’t resurrect back-to-back, and you’ll know when it’s unavailable because there’s a black slash through the resurrection icon. Every time you rest at a Sculptor’s Idol, you’ll get all of your resurrection uses back. Death penalties If you can’t (or choose not to) resurrect, you’ll die. When you die in Sekiro, you lose two things: Half of the experience you’ve gained toward your next Skill Point Half of the sen (the currency you’ll use to purchase most things in Sekiro) you were holding Losing half of what you had also means that you’ll keep half of what you had, so death isn’t a total loss. If you were carrying 100 sen, you’ll arrive back at the most recent Sculptor Idol you visited with 50 sen. You can’t recover the other 50 from the place where you died. If you die again before collecting any more money, you’ll arise with 25 sen. You can’t recover everything you’ve lost unless you receive Unseen Aid. Unseen Aid Receiving Unseen Aid means that you keep the Skill Experience and sen that you’d normally lose when you die. When you arise again, you’ll see an unambiguous overlay that tells you that you’ve received Unseen Aid. How do you receive Unseen Aid? It’s basically a roll of the dice. As you can see in the image above: We have a 13 percent chance of receiving Unseen Aid. If we were to die, there’s a bit more than a 1 in 10 chance that we’ll arise again with … the 703 Skill Experience that we’re carrying and … the 284 sen we’re carrying. If we don’t get Unseen Aid, we’ll arise with 352 Skill Experience and 142 sen. Rot Essense As you die in Sekiro, Unseen Aid’s percentage decreases. It starts at 30 percent, giving you effectively a 1 in 3 chance to recover your sen and Skill Experience. When you resurrect a lot, you’ll occasionally receive an item called Rot Essence. There’s a story-based explanation for this, but each of the Rot Essence items you receive lowers Unseen Aid’s percentage. In the screenshot above, you can tell we’ve died a bunch and received Rot Essence items because we’re only at 13 percent. Explore everything and everywhere Sekiro may be the friendliest FromSoftware game, but that’s relative. It won’t hold your hand, and it’s your responsibility to explore the world. Here’s a practical example of how that works: Early in the game, you’ll confront enemies holding enormous shields. You could avoid them. Or, with a ton of persistence, you could defeat them with your standard sword. But if you’ve explored the area leading up to your encounter, you’ll find a new weapon that makes the shields a non-issue. Your browser does not support the HTML5 video tag. That’s how Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice operates. It’s not an open world game, but you’ll be exploring wide open areas. There’s not something around every corner or behind every wall, but you should explore to find everything. Sure, you can sprint past optional areas, but you’ll miss out on a lot of helpful items. Be curious. Enter every building. Climb every ledge. Talk to every character. You’ll find items and get hints. They may not make the game easy, but they can make it easier. Vitality, Posture, and Deathblows Health in Sekiro works basically like you’d expect, but with a bit of a twist. Everybody has a Vitality bar for health and a Posture bar. Vitality drains as you take damage, but Posture fills as you do things like block or get grabbed. For your enemies, it drains when they block, too. When an enemy’s Posture damage gauge is full or when they’re unaware of your presence, they’re open to a Deathblow — you’ll also see a red dot appear in their chest letting you know. A Deathblow is almost always fatal. Stronger enemies like mini-bosses and bosses might require multiple Deathblows, but they’re rare, and you’ll see two red dots over their Vitality bar. The system takes a second to grasp while playing, but understanding — and using it — will help you know how to fight. For example, if you have an enemy whose Posture damage fills with only a couple hits, you know you don’t have worry about timing your attacks — you can just swing away until you drop them. Always balance offense and defense Throughout Sekiro, you’ll learn new moves and gain new tools for your fights. Your job is not just to learn to use them, but to learn how to mix them into your repertoire. Skills evolve and compliment each other. You’re never going to stop using the sword you start the game with. Every new tactic, skill, move, and tool is additive. Applying the fundamentals is the key to winning, even dozens of hours in. Each enemy has an approach that works against them, from the first guard you fight to the final boss. And Sekiro will tell you — sometimes subtly, sometimes with a sword to the face — what works. Watch your enemies’ Vitality and Posture gauges, and watch how they move. Watch for things like: If your first attack fills their Posture damage halfway, you’re probably safe to press the attack until you get a Deathblow. If they shrug off your Posture damage, it’s time to deal some Vitality (health) damage. If their attacks cut through your defenses, you should probably be dodging instead. If they rely heavily on sweeping attacks, use them as an opportunity to deal Posture damage with a Jump Kick. Plan your attacks and think vertically Direct confrontation is almost never the best way to approach a fight, and rushing in will get you killed. Instead, survey the area first, preferably from a rooftop or similar vantage point. Come up with a plan, and then execute it. Sekiro rewards a considered approach. Focus on the low-level guards before you tackle a boss. Take out the archers or gunmen around the periphery of an arena before venturing into the open. Use Ceramic Pieces to draw one at a time away from groups so you can fight one-on-one. Think about sightlines and plunging attacks. Dropping onto an enemy will almost always take them out of the fight, but it won’t do you any good if it also alerts his friends nearby. Start around the edges of a fight and work your way in. Take the long way around and attack from behind. Sekiro isn’t a stealth game, and fighting earns you skills One of the earliest questions we had about Sekiro was whether you could play it like, say, a Metal Gear game: super stealthily. The answer is not so much.<doc-sep>Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is an exercise in masochism, but a more compelling one than any Soulsborne game before it. The rules are hard to parse but ultimately fair, and the adrenaline-pumping reward for mastering its many systems is a deeply rich feeling. Yet, when you start out with the game, it can be an abrasive slog as you come to terms with the new features on the table. That’s where we come in. Here are five beginner's tips you should know before you start to avoid falling into Sekiro’s tricksy pitfalls. Stealth is often the answer This is easily the most important thing to consider when starting out. Stealth is such a brand new dynamic in Sekiro that it can be easy to forget about it and approach all combat like its Dark Souls. Unlearn this muscle memory. Sekiro is all about using stealth to get an advantage, and this is especially important when you face off against minibosses. You’ll know who they are when you see them as they have two health bars. Think about how you can shave that off with a sneaky deathblow if you find an angle on them. That’s half their health gone in an instant! Look for routes around groups of enemies or ways to scale a building and get the drop on them. Think outside of the box, don’t just race into a group of enemies, systematically stealth kill them, leave the head honcho on their own, then perform a deathblow to make the fight half as hard as it should be. There is always a way to break through battles that look like brick walls, you just have to get tactical. Be careful with Dragonrot Dragonrot is a brand new mechanic in Sekiro that functions like a curse that hurts every NPC in the world when you rely on the resurrection mechanic to win battles. This also takes away a mechanic called Unseen Aid, meaning you’re less likely to recoup your fiscal and XP losses when you die. Follow the early Dragonrot questline by collecting a blood sample for Emma at the Dilapidated Temple and she will give you your first Dragon’s Blood Droplet. You can crush this at any Sculptor’s Idol to restore the entire world to health and continue the questlines of the afflicted NPCs. However, be careful about this. Dragon’s Blood Droplets are a finite resource. You can buy most of them from the world’s vendors, but outside of that, only a few are found in the wild. Crush them only when you’re sure you’re not going to hit a brick wall and be forced to rely on resurrection. Conserve your cash This is another one that can easily ruin your playthrough if you don’t consider it. You may see vendors selling coin purses for a slightly inflated price. 110 sen for a coin purse that holds 100 sen, for example. You may scoff at this, but if you think about it, it makes total sense. You lose money when you die in Sekiro, but you don’t lose collected items. If you ‘bank’ all of your earned money by purchasing coin purses, you can redeem it when you want like the collectable souls in the Dark Souls series. If you find yourself with lots of money in your pocket, always find a way to bank it so you can have some vital cash when you need it most. Heed this warning, as if you’re dead broke in the mid-game, it’s hard to claw your way back. Crucial items like Gourd Seeds and Prayer Beads can be purchased to give you an extra edge when you’re struggling, so always keep your mind on your money. There’s always another way Sekiro’s linearity is deceptive, in that it plays out like a cohesive story but is still a branching open-world game like Dark Souls. The benefit of this is that you can fast travel between Sculptor’s Idols (basically bonfires) from the start of the game. When you’re struggling to succeed in one location, I’d urge you to try another area. From what I’ve played there is always a secondary area to visit when you’re going through the ringer with a certain boss. That path may also lead you to a new Gourd Seed so you can bolster your health, or enemies that offer a refreshing pace that might help you train and unlock better skills so when you return to the egregious boss, you can wipe the floor with them. Don’t slam into the brick wall ad nauseum if you know you’re not up to it, go somewhere else and cool off! Don’t forget about prosthetics Ah, the Shinobi Prosthetic. The bane of the one-armed wolf’s life, but also his greatest tool! Seriously, don’t forget to use this when the going gets tough. It can be easy to forget about it and let the spirit emblems that charge it pile up in your inventory. You will find these emblems everywhere in the world, so don’t treat the prosthetic like a last resort. As you explore and find more materials and fit new tools, you will open up new avenues for success. The Loaded Axe makes short work of enemies with high posture bars and shields, and the Flame Barrel combined with a pot of oil can decimate a miniboss when you’re struggling, especially if they’re susceptible to fire. Other prosthetics like the Firecracker can be used as a reliable stun, and the Loaded Umbrella is essentially an impenetrable shield! Experiment and look out for Shinobi Materials in order to bolster your arsenal and have an answer to every difficult question that the game seeks to pose. (Image Credits: FromSoftware/Activision)<doc-sep>Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is fun and also challenging. There’s a lot to take in, both in and out of combat, and several aspects of the game require real concentration and attention to detail. I’m here with some tips to help you learn better and faster. Advertisement There are lots of boss-specific strategies in this game, since the fights are dynamic and unique. To avoid spoilers, I won’t go into great detail about those, but here are some basic tips to help you get acquainted with the world of Sekiro more quickly. Following those are tips for a few of the game’s first bosses—spoilers, obviously. You’ll run into plenty of tutorials organically, both in-game and on loading screens, so these tips are designed to get you a little more detail—and hopefully, save you some deaths. Visit The Dilapidated Temple Often, Especially Early In There are lots of reasons to visit the Dilapidated Temple in the early game. It’s where you unlock and upgrade skills and prosthetics, and there are often new abilities you can practice with Hanbei. You’ll also tend to find new story beats and ways to progress early on. Stealth Will Save Your Life Learn Your Surroundings: You’ll quickly learn that even basic enemies can quickly deplete your Vitality. Get caught in a group of them, and it’s curtains. Scope out as much of the layout as you can. Finding high ground via your grappling hook or good old-fashioned climbing is worth it. Use tall grass for cover as you look around. The first thing you’ll want in most situations is an escape route in case things go south. There are often hidden enemies, and it isn’t always possible to see all of them your first go-round. Beyond this, just be vigilant. Assume there might be an archer or gunner if you see high ground, and if there are multiple routes through an area, try to check them out. There sometimes isn’t a way to avoid being spotted, but you can at least avoid being overwhelmed and caught unawares. Be Strategic: Be smart about which enemies to take out first. If you can, it’s good to take out large enemies with lots of power and reach, or spear-bearers, who tend to have a little more in their arsenal than swordsmen. And it’s never a bad idea to kill something you’ve never seen before learning what they can do the hard way. As you engage more with enemies, you’ll get a better grasp of how they are in a one-on-one fight; if I see a swordsman and an archer close together, for example, I’ll usually take out the swordsman first, because an archer is pretty much blade fodder in close combat. Use a stealth deathblow for the regular enemies you have trouble with, and engage the ones that are manageable to you. Stealth Deathblows: There are a few types of stealth deathblow you can use, each with advantages and disadvantages. The opportunity for a deathblow, in combat and out, is shown by red dot indicators on the enemy. It’s often possible to get a stealth deathblow on a mid-boss, removing one of their two deathblow markers and making the fight drastically easier. Just be aware that you can only remove one dot this way; if you go far enough that the encounter ends, they’ll have recovered by the time you come back. Advertisement Challenge Yourself While mid-bosses are challenging, the rewards they yield are generally worth your time, providing things like Gourd Seeds and Prayer Beads for upgrades. I’ve also found that the more I fought mid-bosses, the easier the rest of the game got; it was through learning more complex patterns while fighting mid-bosses that encounters with basic foot soldiers went from difficult to almost mindless. It can be tempting to run right past skippable fights, but it’s generally best to test the waters and see what you can pull off. Advertisement Know When To Block, Deflect, Dodge, And Run It’s important to learn the ins and outs of Sekiro’s Posture and Vitality systems early, and part of that is knowing which way to respond to enemy attacks and when. Blocking and running are both good strategies when you don’t know what an enemy or boss might do. That much is obvious. But there are some cases—like fighting huge enemies with immensely powerful attacks—where blocking and parrying will drain your posture meter quickly. The same is true of relentless combo attacks. Paired with the fact that some bosses need their Vitality lowered before you can even make a dent in their Posture, you’ll want to mix things up and just retreat sometimes (hold your dodge button down to sprint). You’ll also want to create distance from time to time to let your Posture meter lower. Be patient. Advertisement The lower an enemy’s Vitality, the slower their Posture recovers. Once it’s down to a quarter, it won’t recover. Don’t be ashamed to hit and run until it seems possible to get that deathblow. You want to eventually get up in your opponent’s face for the kill, but there’s no reason to jump the gun on that. You’re playing as a shinobi, not a samurai; the point is to win tactically. Do Not Let Yourself Get Too Good To Use Syndrome Use Items Wisely: There are always different ways to deal with enemy formations, and the game gives you tools as well; the Ceramic Shard, for example, can be good for baiting a single enemy out of a room or formation. It tends to be especially useful paired with the wall hug deathblow. The Fistful of Ash temporarily stops lots of enemies, including some bosses, in their tracks. There are lots of stat-boosting items, too; those are good for tougher fights, but resources are limited, particularly at the start of the game, so they’re best used when you feel confident that you’ll be able to finish a fight out. Also keep in mind that most items that heal status abnormalities also increase your resistance to them; it’s often a good idea to use one as a booster shot before engaging an enemy who can afflict them, particularly for terror or burn. Advertisement Get Yourself Some Skills, Starting With The Mikiri Counter: You can access shinobi skills early in the game, as soon as you get your first skill point and return to the Sculptor. There are three basic types: latent skills, combat skills, and shinobi martial arts. Many of these skills can vastly change the dynamics of your gameplay and often deal more damage than regular attacks, so make an effort to build and collect skill points without dying and losing them. The Mikiri Counter is essential to start with, making it possible to counter otherwise unblockable thrust attacks. The game offers it to you early, so take advantage. Other combat techniques vastly expand the sorts of tactics you can use and tend to do more damage than regular attacks. The Whirlwind Slash, for example, can help with crowd control, and once you can access the Nightjar Slash, it’s great for closing distance, grabbing a quick hit, and running away. The Grappling Hook Attack provides similar benefits and can be extremely helpful for bosses. You can always practice these skills with Hanbei to get a feel for them, so take advantage. Advertisement It’s important not to ignore latent and shinobi skills, though. Run and Slide, for example, is helpful for closing distance to enemy with a ranged weapon. Suppress Presence makes you harder to detect even while in stealth, even if you’re not concealed in cover. Know Your Prosthetics: In addition to skills, knowing the ins and outs of your prosthetics is important. The game generally provides hints on how to use them; figuring out timing is the next step. The Firecracker, for example, is great for neutralizing beast-type enemies and can provide an invaluable opening for an aggressive foe; they generally have to be used up close, though, and within the enemy’s field of vision. Dodging or parrying and then countering can work well and will open up a somewhat wider window than either would on its own.<doc-sep>
In our Sekiro beginner’s guide, we covered some broad ideas to help you start the game. Here, we’re getting specific with more advanced tips and tricks to help you become a better shinobi. Be thoughtful and considered It’s not that Sekiro is a puzzle game, but it does help to treat each area, encounter, and boss fight as a puzzle (admittedly, a puzzle you solve with swords and stabbing, but the analogy holds). Each piece of the game has a logic to it. Once you figure it out, that becomes your advantage. Never take the obvious approach Fights can get overwhelming fast, but you almost always have control over Sekiro’s battlefield. The best way to exert control is to choose the smartest path through — or maybe around — your enemies. Single them out, and take them down. Never, ever fight a group of enemies (unless you want to die a horrible and frustrating death). The area above is a great example of how this works. Look though the gate, and you’ll see five enemies — including a guy at the top center with a canon. If you were to just stroll right though the gate and head up Main Street, they’ll swarm you, and you’ll take damage from every angle (for the four seconds you survive). Look for other paths instead. Up and to the left of where Wolf stands in the image above, you’ll find a grapple point. Beyond that is plenty of cover running along (and above) Main Street. You can sneak your way past everyone and take the canon guy out with one Deathblow. Then you could ignore the rest of your enemies and move on to the next area, or (better) use height and stealth to your advantage, isolating and killing the enemies below one by one. This is just one area at the beginning of Sekiro, but the principle applies throughout the game. Don’t take the obvious approach. Look around. Look up. Plan your approach. Isolate your enemies. Take them by surprise. Run loops to practice, earn loot, and make money You can always visit Hanbei the Undying to hone your skills, but you should also consider doing that out in the world where you can earn items and sen, too. We put this strategy in place near the Outskirts Wall – Stairway, an early-game Sculptor’s Idol. (It’s the one closest to the Chained Ogre.) As you can see above, in less than a minute, we practiced our plunging attack, Consecutive Deflections, and catching a spear with the Mikiri Counter Shinobi Art. We could have done all of that with Hanbei, but we wouldn’t have made money or collected loot. Buy Coin Purses We mention this in our guide about the handful of best things to buy in Sekiro, and it’s worth repeating here. For hours, Coin Purses seemed like a classic FromSoftware troll to us. Why buy a Light Coin Purse that holds 100 sen for 110 sen? And then it dawned on us: Coin purses protect sen. You’ll likely lose half of the sen you’re carrying when when you die, but the sen in Coin Purses stays with you. For a 10 percent surcharge, you can bank 100 (Light Coin Purse), 500 (Heavy Coin Purse), or maybe even more sen. Point is, once sen is in a Coin Purse, it’s safe. Die all you want. (Die all you don’t want, for all we care!) It’s not going anywhere. One more thing to note, though: Merchants have limited quantities, so don’t go wild. Save Coin Purses for a time when you really want to (or need to) keep your money. Organize your Quick Items If you’re anything like us, you’ll spend a lot of the early game tying your fingers in knots as you panic to load and use your Quick Items. Here’s a tip for making that a bit easier: Always put things in the same place. For example, we keep our Healing Gourd in the leftmost (first) slot, and we put Pellets just to the right of that. Our Homeward Idol lives in the slot all the way to the right. (It’s great for getting out of serious trouble.) That leaves us two open slots for anything we might want to use in any situation — and if you’re not going to use something, don’t keep it in a slot. It’s a lot easier to cycle through and keep three things in your working memory than it is to juggle five.