Tips for newbies

[William Shakesman]

Just some collected tips for first timers.

Start on Easy. WotS4 is a game about stats, and the stat grind curve is far, far steeper than Akiba's Trip. In fact, if you don't really care about the sword crafting, there's nothing stopping you from enjoying the game on easy. You miss out on some unlocks but you can do the whole story on easy.

It's much cooler to kick sliding doors, especially with a jump kick.

Runs are cheap. You can save all your progress and start again whenever you like by hopping back on the boat you came in on in the docks.

Previous WotS games allowed you to eat a bunch of consumable items for instant health. Apparently Acquire did not like that aspect, and as a result we have an incredibly clunky stamina system between you and your health. Your health will regenerate after a while so long as you have stamina. The same applies for boss characters. You don't need stamina for anything else, but it will almost always be lower than you need it to be. There is not much point in raising it by eating except before you enter a fight. If you craft a Life&Death sword, you can regenerate stamina.

Several variables carry over from game to game: Whether Sensei and Dojima are employed at their respective locations, whether the hospital, language school, and casino are open or closed. There may be a situation where you do an entire run just to get change one of these and then restart. NB: The language school is required if you want to speak with non-essential British characters. So it is generally good to get that open and keep it open.

The average run will go through three days of story events before deciding if you are on a faction path or a neutral path. You can take a story event with any faction. They will comment if you fought against them before but generally you can ping pong between factions picking their best events. Time will not pass unless you do a faction event or sleep. There is an event map/schedule that will get filled out the more of the game you explore.

You need a good sword more than you need air to breathe. Start getting the blacksmith to upgrade your sword early or kill a boss character (Not easy) to get a slightly better unique sword (Stats randomized based on your difficulty). One of the long term grind goals is to collect at least one copy of every sword in the game.

Visit the dojo in Town for a place to store your excess items and gear. You can only carry 10 swords and it is not worth selling them. Break them down and keep the parts if all else fails. Having lots of sword parts is not a bad thing.

Find a good martial arts book and learn some skills out of it. You will appreciate having a decent hand to hand moveset in what is probably the worst gameplay segment in the whole WotS series second to the pixel hunt panty finding side quests in WotS3.

[Kain]

Thanks! I only started playing today and i'm a little lost.
PS - what to do with fish that you catch? Eat, cook (how?), sell? Or rubber boots?
PPS - or just wander around and do sidequests to level up sword? Events will progress time? Can i do several events in one column in event table or just only one?

[Kain]

And last one - should i fight with random people and how it will be punished?

[Kain]

And another one - should i sell unneeded weapons or dissasemle them? Or give them to smithy for iron?

[William Shakesman]

it's been a while and I don't remember doing much of anything with the fish, sorry. Rubber boots are certainly junk.

Swords level from use to get new skills, but upgrades come from the smithy.

You can usually only visit one event per time column. Time advances immediately after an event.

I like disassembling unneeded weapons. You can hold more parts than weapons and it does not cost much to put a weapon together from parts, which you can then melt as needed. I think iron is only used in blacksmith weapon upgrades.

[Kain]

Thanks!
Somebody tell me - should i bother with Dojo? Challengers just keep coming and coming every minute (and some of them very strong!)

[William Shakesman]

Dojo challengers are a good way to get some rare stuff I think. Complete Sensei's quest to get her in the dojo and she will auto-kill challengers you let time out.