Nioh Blacksmith Guide to help you find and unlock Blacksmith and craft weapons/armor, upgrade, and reforge, in addition to changing your appearance.
While there is a decent amount of weapon and armor customization in Nioh, players need to unlock the Blacksmith first before they can use the feature and craft or modify their weapons.
To unlock Blacksmith, players must first complete Mission #2 Isle of Demons and then the option to use Blacksmith will appear on the Starting Point of their map.
For more help on Nioh, read out our Character Builds Guide, Best Stats Guide, and Amrita Farming Guide.
Nioh Blacksmith Guide
In our Nioh Blacksmith Guide, we’ve detailed everything you need to know about unlocking and using Nioh Blacksmith to craft and upgrade weapons and armor.
Crafting Weapons & Armor
The blacksmith feature allows players to craft new and improved weapons as well as armor for William to constantly keep on upgrading the character. To access crafting, players need to go to the Blacksmith and select the Forge option.
From there, they can choose between Armor, Weapons or Tools to craft and head to the relevant section. Once in the right section, players can highly Smithing Texts, which serve as recipes, to decide what they want to craft.
When an item from the recipe list is highlighted, the material requirement as well as the forging cost of the item appears. If players have the resources to craft it, they can simply go ahead and craft the armor or weapon from here.
If players are missing just a small amount of materials required to craft, they can use the Disassemble option available the Blacksmith to destroy useless weapons or armor and then keep the crafting materials.
Upgrade Weapons & Armor
Upgrading weapons or armor in Nioh is a bit complicated as players can’t just use crafting materials to give their equipment a boost. To upgrade something, they need another item which has better stats than the one they want to upgrade.
To begin upgrading, players need to select Soul Match from the Blacksmith menu. Once in the new section, they need to place the item they want to upgrade into the section marked Base while the item they will use to upgrade will be placed in the Material section.
The type of weapon or armor doesn’t matter as a hammer can be used to upgrade a katana and vice versa.
Once both the item they want to upgrade and the item which will be used to upgrade are in place, a new window will show players the stats of the upgraded weapon. If they are happy with the result, they can proceed with the upgrade by paying the Soul Match price.
Reforging
Similar to the enchant feature from Diablo 3 or any other similar gear based RPG, the reforge feature in Nioh allows players to re-roll the special effects of their items into something else. Players can simply choose the Reforge option from the Blacksmith menu and then select the item they want to reforge.
A list of possible effect changes will appear in exchange for an effect which is already active on the item so players can choose what they want to get rid off.
Reforging is based on RNG so players might need to reforge multiple times until they get the desired effect. There is also a cost of reforging and if players are fine with it, they can proceed to reforge the item.
Changing Appearance
Blacksmith menu also has another option called Refashion which allows William to change the looks of his armor while still maintaining the stats and special effects. Refashion is a purely cosmetic change and doesn’t sacrifice or boost anything.
Players need to simply the put the armor whose appearance they want to change into the upper slot while the armor whose appearance they want to copy goes into the lower slot. A preview of the end result item appears on the right and if players are happy, they can go through with the Refashion.
This is all we’ve on our Nioh Blacksmith Guide. If there is anything else you would like to add, let us know in the comments section below!
