Ghost of Tsushima – Tips and Tricks

Things You Should Do First

• You can pick up supplies with R2 While riding your horse
• Talk to a Trader in villages to get a Traveler’s outfit – making it easier to find collectibles when equipped.
• Follow yellow birds when traveling to find a variety of hidden places, including Pillars of Honor, Haiku spots, Singing Crickets, and more.
• Find places to write haikus to unlock custom headbands
• When an NPCs tells you to follow them, they’ll usually start walking, but if you start jogging, or even sprinting, they’ll match your run speed. Also, if you have a lot of distance to cover, call your horse, and the NPC will summon their horse as well.
• When you see the marker that shows that NPCs have something to tell you, They’re almost always giving you a point of interest to go to on your map
• Before you upgrade a piece of armor, take a look at the possible benefits you’ll get by maxing it out. You’ll get more pieces of armor in the future that utilize the same upgrade resources, so if the perks of an armor don’t fit your playstyle, consider holding off on upgrading until you get a new set of armor.
• Whenever you see wild boars or bears, always hunt them down. They’re the main source of predator skins, which are needed to upgrade your armor. Be careful hunting them on foot, as they’ll charge you, but boars will run if you’re on horseback.
• Kunais are fantastic for hunting boars, as they auto-aim, can kill multiple enemies at a time, and will usually bring down a boar in one hit.
• Look for smoke stacks – larger ones are signs of a mongol-controlled settlement, while whiter smaller ones are signs of side quests and small camps. Even spouts of steam let you know you’re near hot springs to gain more maximum health.
• Always check inside houses, in the attics, and even crawl underneath to find extra supplies, resources, and ghost weapon ammunition.
• Some settlements cannot be attacked outside of quests – you’ll be warned in advance that you’re facing overwhelming odds, which means you can expect to be cut down by arrows long before you get close. Instead, look for nearby quests that may lead to taking over the place.
• If you’re planning on collecting all of the Mongol Artifacts, before you leave any mongol controlled settlement, equip the Traveler’s Attire and do a quick search for an artifact. They are only found inside Mongol Settlements.
• Along those lines, Singing Crickets are found in graveyards.

Combat Tips

Over the course of the game you’ll learn four stances, each with their own strength versus a specific type of weapon. The starting Stone Stance is adept at dealing with swordsmen, both of the single and dual wielding variety; the Water Stance is good at breaking through the guards of Shield wielding enemies; Wind Stance can easily knock down and kill spearwielding enemies; and the Moon Stance is virtually required to stagger the big brutish enemies.

Switching between these stances is an absolute must in the mid to later combat encounters of Ghost of Tsushima, so it’s very important to know which stance does what. Just think of it like this, each of the face buttons correspond to a different stance, right? X is like two crossing swords, so it’s the stance for dealing with swords, circle looks like a shield, so it’s the stance for dealing with shields; triangle is like the tip of a spear, which makes it the stance for dealing with spears, and the brutes are big and boxxy, like a square.

• You can’t Parry spears at the outset of the game, and will have to invest in techniques and new stances later to combat this.
• Try to keep your health topped off – especially early on when you haven’t learned anything else to use resolve for.
• If you’re low on resolve when approaching enemies, face-off against one before you’re fully spotted and win the fight to replenish your resolve.
• The mongol army color code their fighters based on tiers of difficulty. Early enemies and bandits won’t have any colors, Mongols with red armor will begin appearing early in Act 1. Enemies in green armor will have more combat moves and defense and appear later in Act 1. Yellow armored enemies will use even more tactics and be much stronger in Act 2, and so on.
• Enemies can hit their friends with bombs. When one tosses one, try and lure his friends to it so they get exploded instead.
• Your Kunai can his archers that are shooting you from high up if facing them.
• While a lot of missions give you different upgrades, doing Yuna’s mission first is the most vital as it gives you the ability to perform stealth takedowns. Don’t do any open-world stuff until you unlock this!
• Remember you can use your horse to your advantage. Slash enemies you meet out in the open or jump off your horse while riding full speed to make a grand entrance, get the jump on an opponent, or leap over a fence into enemy territory.
• When you max your standoff, you can strike down three enemies effortlessly. After the first successful kill, wait until the charging enemy raises its weapon before you hit Square or Triangle and you’ll get it every time.
• Try to prioritize taking out archers first. They typically can only withstand two hits from your swords and don’t have the ability to block you like other weapon wielders do.
• Archers will always let out a yell two seconds or so before they fire. If you can’t see an archer, but you hear the yell, be ready to block (Assuming you have the skill that lets you deflect arrows) — Dodging in a random direction works too
• Look for environmental hazards to make quick work of enemies. Explosive barrels can be ignited by any type of arrow (not just flaming), hornet nests can be rattled to kill whoever is next to them, dry grass and fields of flowers can be ignited with flaming arrows, and certain lamps can be shot to explode in a ball of fire.
• Looking for enemies crawling around and make sure to “End their suffering” it’s a free point of resolve
• You can sometimes pre-determine who you face in Stand Off by trying to look at them and isolate a target before hitting the prompt. Try to circle your foes if you have trouble against certain types of attackers to take them out first in one hit.