Nioh 3 Blacksmith Guide: How to get the materials needed to upgrade your gear

While the Nioh series is more famous for its extensive loot drop system, it also features a Blacksmith who can both procure materials from the overwhelming supply and use them to enhance your favorite equipment gears. The same also applies to Nioh 3, where you can meet the Blacksmith in the Eternal Rift after you have defeated the first major stage boss in Jakotsu-baba.

However, Nioh 3's tutorial does not seem to explain the materials needed for the Blacksmith's features in much detail. As such, we have set up this guide to help you pinpoint the methods you will need to procure the materials.

Before we start with the main content, though, note that the Blacksmith menu also includes Forge Tools where you can craft consumable items by using specific materials dropped by yokai enemies. However, this is the only feature that is not closely related to any others in the menu. As such, this guide will mostly focus on the Blacksmith's gear upgrade features.

Disassemble

Even in the most basic Forge menu for crafting new equippable gear at your current level, you will notice that you need specific materials like Wood and Ingot to craft them. However, you won't be able to procure these by foraging or mining in the overworld like in other games.

These materials can instead be obtained by discarding any excess equipment via the Disassemble menu, and the material you get will depend on the type of item you are disassembling:

• Tamahagane: Swords, Dual Swords, Odachi, Ninja Swords, Dual Ninja Swords, Kusarigama
• Wood: Spears, Switchglaives, Tonfa, Splitstaves, Bows, Rifles
• Ingot: Axes, Hatchets, Hand Cannons, Ultra-Heavy Foot Guards (the latter applies to the foot guards from armor sets with the heaviest weights, such as Tatenashi, Warrior of the East, or Scion of Tamura)
• Leather Cord: Cestuses, Talons, Arm Guards
• Lacquer: Head Armor
• Leather Platelet: Light Torso Armor / Leg & Foot Guards (if the armor set barely has any visible armor plating, it'll usually fall under this)
• Iron Platelet: Heavy Torso Armor / Leg & Foot Guards (if the armor set does feature any notable armor plating, it'll usually fall under this)

In addition, some of the items that can be disassembled may have a rare moment where they can also net a bonus Material Essence. This will be essential when you check the Reforge menu later on.

Soul Match and Soul Extraction

Soul Match will have two options that let you raise an equipment gear's level or + value; the latter of which provides even further stat buffs. But before you can do any of them, take note that both processes require Soul Ores that are only obtainable via the Soul Extraction menu.

As of Nioh 3's launch, there are three kinds of Soul Ores that can be obtained based on the kinds of items you are extracting from:

• Yellow Soul Ore: All gears
• Azure Soul Ore: Gears with + values
• Viridian Soul Ore: Divine rarity gears

Note that while prior games would have cost inflation based on the gear's initial level, Nioh 3 instead scales the cost with the highest available level. We notice that the costs would rise exorbitantly as we get much nearer to the level cap, so we recommend stopping at around 5 levels under the cap.

Reforge

The Reforge menu is where you will be able to replace an existing gear skill with another one of your liking. However, there are a few limitations that come with this. Only a single skill from each category can be applied to a gear, and some skills also have a special mark that indicates the requirement of a rare Umbracite as an additional material. Since you can only replace existing skill instead of adding more, it is recommended to start working with a gear that already has a vast list of skills via a high rarity rating.

A reforge will also cost a Material Essence based on the skill category you have chosen, in addition to a number of basic disassembly materials. If you followed our earlier advice in disassembling unnecessary gears, you may find that you have already gathered enough essences to perform the reforge.

Remodel

The Remodel menu will offer different upgrades based on whether you're highlighting a weapon or armor. When you're going to remodel a weapon, it will let you re-assign core stats that serve as references to determine the weapon's stat, as each weapon has 3 referenced stats by default. It goes without saying that you will want to assign those to the top 3 stats you have invested in the most.

As for armor, it will offer several choices to modify the gear (or even revert it back to the standard setting). Each remodel option will have a different set of advantageous and disadvantageous increases from the defense stat and weight to the minimum stats required to activate the armor's skills.

But if you have invested a lot in the Stamina stat like I am, you might find Super Reinforce to be the best option in this list. It has the most notable defense stat increase but so is the weight rating, yet the latter will be rather negligible once you have considerably built up your weight tolerance limit.

Regardless of the type of equipment you are remodeling, take note that all of them will require the basic materials you get from disassembly.

Our recommendations for accessing the Blacksmith

As you defeat a lot of enemies in Nioh games (including Nioh 3), you will naturally gather new Equipment, Gold, and Amrita (the latter's unless you're dying too often that you end up wasting a grave). Out of the equippable gear types, only the Accessories are not treated at the Blacksmith, so you can sell excess Accessories for Gold or offer them for bonus Amrita.

For the weapons and armors, we recommend to Dismantle items of Unique rarity or lower, as there is also the rare moment of getting a Material Essence. But if any of them have a + value, it's instead better to send them to Soul Extraction—along with any future excess Divine rarity gear—for the exclusive Soul Ores.

If you are just starting out on Nioh 3 and have yet to reach the ending, we only recommend doing Forge and Remodel for the equippable gear if you ever get stuck with a specific boss (unless you actually have armors with highly advantageous synergies like Life Absorption). This is because the game is still gradually introducing more armor sets, and the post-game will also introduce an even better Divine rarity that will mostly render your pre-ending gear worthless.

Once you have a Divine equipment set and build of your liking, feel free to explore the Blacksmith's features like Soul Match and Reforge... unless you are also preparing for Nioh 3's future DLC expansions that might add an even higher Ethereal rarity based on the prior entries, but that will have another story of its own once the DLC packs are actually out.