With Ghost of Yotei finally out today, players are jumping into Sucker Punch Productions’ acclaimed open-world action-adventure and sequel to 2020’s Ghost of Tsushima. Like its predecessor, the game doesn’t waste much time throwing you into the deep end, opening up the world for exploration. It might seem a bit overwhelming at first to grapple with the game’s various features and systems, so we’ve compiled a list of tips and tricks before you can get started.

Make sure you read our full spoiler-free review.



Ghost of Yotei – Tips and Tricks Before You Get Started

1. Tweak The Settings

It should go without saying, Ghost of Yotei gives you multiple options to tweak the game’s settings. Apart from tinkering with the game’s difficulty, HUD visibility, and more, you can also try out the new visual/audio modes to see which one suits your style (or just go for the default, it’s up to you). For those playing on PS5 Pro, we strongly recommend using Ray Tracing Pro as it boosts the resolution, packs in ray tracing and runs at a pretty consistent 60FPS. It’s the whole package and it looks absolutely stunning on an OLED TV.

2. Don’t Rush The Main Story

Ghost of Yotei has a pretty straightforward revenge story with clearly marked yellow quest icons leading you to your main locations and objectives. However, each area in the game is jam-packed with intricacies, details, and content to tackle – most of which yield great rewards like charms for builds, new armours, shrines to accumulate skill points, hot springs to increase your max health, and helpful fast travel locations filled with vendors and NPCs selling new items. Simply take your time exploring all that the game has to offer.



3. Collect Bamboo and Flowers

While riding around the open world of Ezo, you’ll be able to gather bamboo and flowers. You can grab them as you pass them by on your horse too. These are perhaps two of the most vital resources you’ll need as you progress, because bamboo and flowers can be used to barter with vendors for new items, upgrade your weapons and unlock new dyes for your armour. It doesn’t take much to gather them as you’re riding around, so make sure you pick them up whenever you can.

4. Use Traveller’s Maps

As soon as you unlock the Shadow Inn, you’ll meet Isaburo the cartographer. He sells traveller’s maps that are inexpensive and point out various hidden locations on your map, mainly for shrines and other useful zones. It only costs 50 coins per map so make sure you always return to Isaburo after every quest to see if he has new maps to purchase. They will help a lot with exploration.

5. Earn Money Fast by Tackling Bounties

Most inns in Ghost of Yotei contain a bounty board, offering rewards for tackling bounties and killing various wanted criminals. The bounty board is available pretty early in the game, so if you find yourself a bit strapped for coins (that you’ll need to upgrade your weapons or buy new items), then taking on bounties is a fast way to earn coins. You can also begin earning a lot of coins once you unlock the gambling den and start dominating in Zeni Hajiki.



6. Standoffs

If you approach enemies or a fort, you’ll get an option to initiate combat with a standoff. At first, you’ll only be able to kill one enemy during these cinematic clashes, so we recommend putting a point into the skill tree that allows you to kill two enemies during standoffs – do this as soon as possible. Standoffs result in insta-kills for enemies, so you can easily thin enemy groups a bit before you take the rest of them on.

Ghost of Yotei is now available exclusively on PS5.