I wish I'd learned to read Ghost of Yotei's open world before I got lost in it

There a sprawling world to explore in Ghost of Yotei, broken up over several large open areas to investigate and full of clues to draw you in - things like different colored trees poking out in the distance, or wafting columns of steam or smoke inviting you to see what's causing them.

It's an amazing experience to wander the plains and work out how to read the landscape ahead, but it can lead to a few blank spots if you miss a trick and fail to associate some environmental clue with what it leads too. Especially as so much of your character progression is tied to finding things like hot springs and altars to use for various stat boosts.

In fact, out of all the things I've learned from playing Yotei, where to find everything is probably the thing I wish I'd got a grip on sooner. There are birds to guide you, maps you can buy and NPCs to give you hints, but there's definitely a few cases where I did not register how important something was for a while.

So while there's plenty here about skills, weapons and all the usual stuff. It's learning where to find everything that I wish got to grips with faster. Once you know that, you have so much more control over levelling up and mastering the various weapons you have to extract your revenge. So, here's what I know now, that I wish I'd known when I started.

The Basics

If you want a good early grounding in everything to come then these Ghost of Yotei tips cover a lot of the basics. It's such a free and open game that there's plenty of things you can completely miss until hours in, so make sure you avoid that.

In terms of early things to know there's stuff like the whole Ghost of Yotei horse thing, where you have to pick an animal at the start that you'll have for the entire game. So no pressure there. Linked to that are the black bars in Ghost of Yotei that appear whenever you're riding that can be turned off if you don't want that cinematic effect.

One thing you probably do want to know if you're getting started is what sort of journey is ahead of you, and especially just how long is Ghost of Yotei? Spoilers: with this much freedom the answer is quite variable.

Weapons and gear

There are six Ghost of Yotei weapons you can unlock for your main choices, with a range of quick fire and throwable tools to mix things up. Probably the biggest thing to know up front here is that you can pretty much head out and unlock everything before you touch the main plot. It feels like it should be story gated but all you need to do is unlock the relevant areas and then you can go straight for whatever you want.

As you are getting all your gear together you'll want to get as much Ghost of Yotei money as you can to help upgrade it all. That is story locked to some degree, so it's good to know when it's worth trying to upgrade and when to wait - Ghost of Yotei gun parts for example, are a late game resource that will limited your final upgrades.

And, finally, while there's a lot of armor to find I really wish I'd known about the Ghost of Yotei Undying Armor sooner as it's some very powerful gear considering how early you can get it. You will eventually find better stuff but that will get you off to a good start.

Where to find everything

What and where everything is in the world is by far the thing I wish I'd learned about sooner, as all your abilities are upgraded by finding specific things as you explore. So Ghost of Yotei Altars of Reflection let you upgrade your core abilities when you find and pray at them. The points you get here can be applied across a wide range of skills, powers and weapons. So knowing what the best Ghost of Yotei skills to upgrade are is very useful.

After that you'll also want to find all the Ghost of Yotei hot springs as each one you find and bathe in will add a bit more to your health. There can be some long, drawn out fights in Yotei so the more staying power you have the better.

Finally, one of the harder things to find are the Ghost of Yotei wolf dens. That's partly because your wolf companion is introduced slowly and largely a random occurrence for quite a while. These locations are also the easiest to miss as it's just a small rocky hill with a tree on that's easy to overlook until you start to recognise it's shape from a range of angles and distances.

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