The best skills in Nioh 3

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Best Skills
How to unlock new skills

The best skills in Nioh 3 will vary depending on your personal build, but ultimately there are some standout abilities that you absolutely should prioritize. Nioh 3 breaks its skill trees into two broad categories (Samurai and Ninja) and then breaks those down into sub categories based on specific weapons, like Swords, Spears, and Kusarigama. We'll take a broad overview below, to tell you what skills are best to focus on in Nioh 3 early.

All the best Skills in Nioh 3

Here are the best Nioh 3 skills that pretty much all players should focus on from an early point, assuming you're not aiming for a very specific kind of build:

Samurai style skills
- Deflect. A timed parry ability for all Samurai weapons. Deflecting lets you regain ki, and increases your Ninjitsu and Arts gauges.
- All three stance variations. You can unlock High and Low stances for your weapons, unlocking new move sets in addition to the standard Medium stance. High is a slower, stronger attack pattern, while Low is quick and rapid, with minimal Ki costs. No stance is definitively better, but it's good to have all three for flexibility.
Ninja style skills
- Evade. Dodging at the last second regains Ki, and increases your Ninjitsu and Arts gauges. It also provides a lot of invulnerability frames during that animation.
- Footstool jump. Lets you jump off enemies heads, giving a serious edge in mobility.
- Cicada Shell. Though hard to pull off, this item lets you do a timed counter that places you behind the foe. If you can master it, it's a huge advantage.

All the other abilities are specific to individual Nioh 3 weapons, or at least weapon types, meaning you should choose skills based on the weapons that you're comfortable with. Ideally though, you should aim for skills that are used frequently. Many abilities can end up being contextual and consequently aren't used especially often, though considering you can respec for free from the menu at any point, that's not a huge issue.

How to unlock new skills

Nioh 3 skills are unlocked through finding items called Samurai's Locks and Ninja's Locks, both of which grant one skill point through their respective half of the skill trees. These are found in all manner of places, including, but not limited to:

Mission rewards
Defeating bosses and minibosses
Found in treasure chests

Basically, playing Nioh 3 generally should provide you with a steady stream of Locks and skill points, no matter what path you take. It's also worth establishing that certain skills will be locked off, even if you have the points and have completed the tree leading up to them.

It should tell you in the description of the skill what requirements are needed, though you may need to do some exploring. For example, some high level skills require a specific Martial Arts Guide, which are normally dropped by the Chijiko that serve as hidden collectibles. However, it's not revealed which Chijiko you need to find, so you'll have to go out and hunt until you find the right one.

CATEGORIES

Joel Franey is a writer, journalist, podcaster and Very Tired Man with a BA from Brunel University, a Masters from Sussex University and a decade working in games journalism, often focused on guides coverage but also in reviews, features and news. His love of games is strongest when it comes to groundbreaking narratives like Disco Elysium, UnderTale and Baldur's Gate 3, as well as innovative or refined gameplay experiences like XCOM, Sifu, Arkham Asylum or Slay the Spire. He is a firm believer that the vast majority of games would be improved by adding a grappling hook, and if they already have one, they should probably add another just to be safe. You can find old work of his at Eurogamer, Gfinity, USgamer, SFX Magazine, RPS, Dicebreaker, VG247, and more.

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