Nioh 2 Soul Cores provide you with a range of unique demon abilities and are attuned to your Guardian Spirits. This new feature in Nioh 2 is an addition to Yokai abilities which are linked with Soul Cores.
Soul Cores can be collected by slaying powerful Yokai, and attuning them to your Guardian Spirits. In this guide, we will explain the complete procedures of equipping Soul Cores and will demonstrate their uses along with Soul attunements and Soul Fusion.
Nioh 2 Soul Cores
To get ahold of Soul Cores, you need to defeat powerful Yokai. This also includes the boss Yokai.
Defeating specific Yokai bosses will let you collect their dropped Soul Cores. Also the powerful Yokai also often drop Soul Cores, but that thing cannot be said as true for every powerful Yokai you encounter.
So to equip a Soul Core, fight with these powerful Yokai and Yokai bosses, and once they drop the soul cores, interact with the dropped object to claim it as your own.
When you first collect the Soul Cores, they will be impure and you won’t be able to use them. In order to get them into working order, you will have to make them pure first.
You can purify a Soul Core by praying with it at the Shrine. Your impure Soul Cores are preserved with your Guardian Spirit if you fall in a battle, but you must retrieve them from your Guardian Spirits’ grave before dying once.
If you die while your Soul Core is with the Guardian Spirit, you lose the Soul Core totally.
After purifying your Soul Cores, head into the ‘Manage Soul Cores’ tab to begin equipping them. There you will see the list of Purified Items on the left side of the screen.
Hover over the list and you will be able to see the stats and Yokai abilities of them on the right side of the screen.
Press ‘X’ on any of the Soul Core to proceed to attunement. You will see the imbued Guardian Spirit at the top here and below it will be two empty slots to equip the Soul Cores.
There is an attunement limit bar below it which shows the allowed quantity of Soul Cores. This depends on the level of the Soul Core – lower the level, lesser will be the attunement limit.
How to Use Soul Cores in Battles and Soul Fusion
Once you have attuned the Soul Cores, take a look at your Anima bar which is showed just below your green stamina bar. You must have Anima bar filled to some extent in order to use the Soul Cores.
So if you have the Anima bar filled and Soul Cores attuned, just press the assigned keys which you assigned by attunement process and it will activate the demon abilities which are inherited with the Soul Core.
If you have more than one copy of a Soul Core, you can use the Fusion method to upgrade the Soul Core.
Simply open the Soul Fusion menu for it via ‘Manage Soul Cores’. There will be Base, Material and Finished Item option there.
Swap the products of the Base and Material to get a higher level Finished Item product. This whole process is what is known as Soul Fusion.
