Easy Tips To Ruin Your Ghost Of Yotei Playthrough

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Players jumping into open-world games can sometimes accidentally make things worse for themselves. Missing a crucial early quest can lock them out of content or create unnecessary challenges. Let’s take the popular new open-world game, Ghost of Yotei, as an example to illustrate how this can happen.

Here are some ways to make *Ghost of Yotei* less enjoyable, especially during your first time playing. While these ideas might appeal to some players looking for a challenge, they’re generally not recommended for a first playthrough. We’ll outline how to avoid these situations to ensure a smoother experience.

Playing On Lethal

Lethally Killing Your Buzz

Ghost of Yotei offers five difficulty settings: Casual, Easy, Medium, Hard, and Lethal. Players can also create a custom difficulty. The Lethal mode is especially challenging and is recommended for experienced players who enjoy tough games like Elden Ring. On Lethal, the player character, Atsu, will be defeated by a single hit, making it a very demanding way to begin the game.

Lethal difficulty does have some benefits, like making combat feel more realistic – a single strong hit can be fatal, just as it would for a samurai. It also encourages players to master the game’s counter system. However, this mode removes many of the strategic elements of *Ghost of Yotei*, such as using hot springs to recover health or equipping armor for special abilities, rendering them useless. Playing on Lethal can be very demanding and potentially lead to frustration, so starting on Medium offers a more balanced experience.

Playing With The Katana Only

There’s So Much More Out There

Even if a game doesn’t have a New Game+ feature, there are plenty of reasons to play it again. For example, in *Ghost of Yotei*, you might want to try a second playthrough using only your katana – that could be a fun challenge! It’s also a good time to test your skills on a higher difficulty like Lethal. However, starting a first playthrough with only the katana would be too difficult.

A major improvement in *Ghost of Yotei* compared to *Ghost of Tsushima* is the wider range of weapons available. As you progress through the story, you’ll unlock new options like a spear (Yari), the ability to dual-wield katanas, a larger katana called an Odachi, and a sickle and chain weapon known as a kusarigama. The game also features a variety of ranged weapons and tools, including bows, throwing knives (kunai), and bombs. While you *could* play the game relying solely on a katana, it would limit the fun and make combat much harder. It would also mean missing out on the stealth options available to the character Atsu.

Exploring For Altars Of Reflection Before Progressing The Story

Leveling Up Too Fast

Many players of *Ghost of Yotei* don’t realize the game features a variety of weapons, which can lead to two problems. They might miss out on trying new weapons by following the main story, and they could waste valuable skill points upgrading abilities they don’t actually need. Fortunately, players can find Altars of Reflection scattered throughout the game world. Each Altar gives them a skill point to spend on improving different skills.

Unlike some other games, you can’t save up skill points in Ghost of Yotei. If you rush to find Altars of Reflection, you might spend all your points before all the weapon skills become available. It’s best to explore for these hidden locations *after* you’ve unlocked all the melee weapons – that way, you’ll have more skills to choose from when you find them.

Riding Your Horse For Everything

Ignoring Fast Travel

To make the experience of *Ghost of Yotei* feel more realistic, players can choose to travel on horseback. You’ll get a horse during a side quest, and it will come whenever you call for it with a whistle. These horses are quick, and even faster when ridden through the fields of white flowers.

Ghost of Yotei is a stunning game on the PS5, and it’s easy to see why players want to take in all the scenery. While skipping fast travel can help you discover more of the open world – especially with the Golden Bird feature enabled – it also requires a lot of patience, as you’ll be traveling between locations repeatedly. This can be tiring if you do it constantly.

Not Camping

There Are Good Reasons For Down Time

Even on the hardest difficulty setting, Atsu won’t get hungry or tired, even if he doesn’t sleep. The game now features a “camping” system. Players can set up camp in most locations, triggering a short mini-game to build a fire. While the fire-building part can be skipped, camping offers several options: crafting ammunition, sleeping to recover, cooking fish, playing the shamisen, and even chatting with occasional visiting NPCs.

Okay, so you don’t *have* to fully commit to the camping stuff in Ghost of Yotei to enjoy the game, but honestly, you should definitely mess around with it! Making your own ammo is super simple and saves a ton of Mon – that’s the in-game currency. Plus, grilling food gives Atsu some really useful temporary boosts. I also learned that if you sleep until a certain time, exploring during the day is easier, and the moonlight actually helps you spot enemies moving around in camps. Seriously, skipping camping altogether would be a mistake, because it adds a lot to the experience!

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2025-10-08 22:05