Beginner Tips For Rise Of The Ronin

Highlights

Choose the Beginner class in Rise of the Ronin to experiment and forge your own path.
Start on the Dawn difficulty and tweak settings to increase Ki levels and healing item effectiveness.
Embrace your inner ninja by using stealth tactics and learn the importance of sparing lives for HP.

Rise of the Ronin is a new action game by Team Ninja exclusively for the PS5. It has the DNA of other open-world games like Ghost of Tsushima and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. However, it has original ideas as well, with a few Soulslike elements thrown in for good measure.

Rise of the Ronin: How to Upgrade Weapons and Armor

Give yourself the edge in Rise of the Ronin by learning how to upgrade weapons and armor.

For example, Rise of the Ronin has a cool frame-by-frame option in their Photo Mode and an autopilot horse option. These are cool features, but there are more important things players should know before jumping into this latest samurai adventure.

1 Don’t Worry About Your Starting Class

Forge Your Own Destiny

Rise of the Ronin has six classes:

Killer
Breaker
Seducer
Sapper
Beginner
Unsharpened

Like in Dark Souls, the classes aren’t a locked-in concept that players can’t back out of. Instead, it’s like the game is auto-leveling starting builds for players. The best class to choose is just the Beginner as it will give players a good starting set of stats and allow them to experiment. Players should test out weapons as they go along to forge their own class.

2 Settings To Tweak

Go Beyond Difficulties

The difficulty menu in Rise of the Ronin

There are three difficulties in Rise of the Ronin: Dawn, Dusk, and Twilight. Things are set in stone in the tutorial, but after the world opens up, players can change the option they initially picked. To get through the tutorial quickly, it is recommended to try the easiest Dawn difficulty at first.

If players decide that’s the option they want to stick with, then there are two other settings in the menu they should look at. In the gameplay menu, players can increase Ki levels, which is the game’s stamina, and alter how much health is restored by healing items.

3 Death And Karma

Save Often

Players can save at any time in the game, which is nice for a Soulslike-inspired open-world adventure. Players won’t reload right where they left off as they will start at a nearby checkpoint, but all data will otherwise be saved. Saving manually is good to avoid losing Karma in Rise of the Ronin.

Rise of the Ronin: All Bond Levels & How to Improve Bonds With Allies

Reap the benefits of building strong bond levels with allies in Rise of the Ronin.

Karma will be gained through random tasks like killing, and it can be saved at Banner points. If players die, that killer will retain their Karma until they go back and defeat that enemy. If they die again, that Karma is lost forever.

4 Skill Points And You

What To Get First

Rise of the Ronin has four skill point trees based on Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Charisma. It’s always recommended to save skill points in RPGs like this until players get a feel for the gameplay. Who knows what the game will turn into?

That said, some good early skills to dig into are increasing HP and the effectiveness of healing items, along with how many of the latter players can carry. Another good set includes all the ones with the grappling hook, from being able to use it underwater to picking up the ability to stealth kill certain enemies.

5 Become A PaciFIST

Increase Your HP By Sparing Lives

There are a few ways to increase HP in the game. Players can go the traditional route by grinding for EXP in Rise of the Ronin to gain levels. There are the aforementioned skills tied to HP as well to give players an extra boost.

Players can also go unarmed, which they may not realize until a quest brings up the idea. Removing a weapon in the inventory menu will allow players to go bare-knuckle, a fighting style that will not kill enemies. Most ranks in the Unarmed category increase HP, so it may not be a bad idea to get used to fisticuffs, especially since there are special missions.

6 Shopping Around

Buying, Selling, And Dismantling

Players earn two kinds of money in Rise of the Ronin. The first is just regular currency, while the second type is Silver Coins. The latter are used to buy rarer items. The Black Market will have books that will grant skill points or maybe even Foreign Books which will be important later.

Rise of the Ronin: How To Respec

Rise of Ronin players can reset their Blade Sharpening Origin and reassign their skill points.

Those two types of books should be bought on the double, but items and gear should not be. This is a loot-heavy RPG, so there is no need to use the market areas except to either sell or dismantle weak gear.

7 Learn To Embrace Your Inner Ninja

Using Stealth To Your Advantage

Stealth killing an enemy in Rise of the Ronin

Rise of the Ronin is marketed as a samurai game, but becoming a ninja is just as important. Players can go whole hog on the stealth action, which is not a bad approach to take. Players can use Earthenware Balls to distract enemies to then execute them from the back.

Killing from roofs via the aforementioned grappling hook or by simply jumping down are good ways as well. This is a good stealth game if players know how to take advantage of the environment.

8 How Multiplayer Works

Unlock Missions, Unlock Co-Op

Unlike other open-world games like Elden Ring, players can only engage in multiplayer for certain missions in Rise of the Ronin. The first multiplayer mission is “Curtain Falls, Curtain Rises,” which unlocks after “The Bridge to Yokohama,” the quest that introduces Ryoma Sakamoto.

Once players meet him and follow up on a few more quests, they can unlock their Longhouse home base. From there, players can launch unlocked missions to go into instanced co-op scenarios, so if this is important, mainline as many story missions ASAP.