Sekiro – 10 SECRETS To Get You Playing Again

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is the most streamlined of FromSoftware’s Souls series – a game that’s more focused on hardcore parrying combat than exploration or discovering secrets. And yet, this is still a FromSoftware game, so it’s absolutely packed with weird secrets. There are tricks you can use to defeat giant enemies instantly, take control of minibosses or skip entire sections of the game. You can make the game easier or harder by finding hidden areas or discover the secrets of a very complicated true ending. There are lots of secret reasons you’ll want to revisit Sekiro – and we’re going to share ten of our favorites. These are the secrets you’ll want to check out on your new playthrough.

We’re starting our list with one of the most difficult bosses in the entire Souls-like canon. Near the end of the game, you’ll be able to battle a secret optional boss called the Demon of Hatred. This boss isn’t required, but nobody likes leaving a boss alive. Even if you can skip this creature, it sucks leaving unfinished business. If you don’t want to slowly grind away at the longest boss fight in Sekiro, there’s a trick you can use to end the battle early.

#10 Dropping The Demon of Hatred

One of the most difficult bosses in Sekiro, the Demon of Hatred is also one of the most memorable encounters in the game because it takes so, so long to kill. The Demon of Hatred is a rampaging fire demon that’s more monstrous than anything else we’ve encountered – and beating it requires a whole lot of patience. If you’ve defeated the Demon of Hatred once already and just want to kill this thing without all the effort, there’s a hilarious cheese method that makes one of the hardest bosses look silly.

All you have to do is trick the demon into tumbling off the arena and dying. You can do this by luring the Demon of Hatred toward the cliffs on the left side of the boss arena. Once he’s lured over, run to the standing tower and climb up to the castle walls. Standing on the castle wall beyond the cliff’s edge will lure the Demon closer – it’ll unleash attacks trying to hit you and eventually send itself flying. This trick is really tough to pull off, but watching one of the hardest bosses in any Souls games trip and fall is worth it.

There are more tricks you can use to beat the demon. With the Malcontent Finger Whistle upgrade, you can stun the boss up to three times. When stunned, you’ll be able to deal about 25% of its health bar with standard attacks. The Lotus Umbrella tool will block almost all of the Demon of Hatred’s attacks – the umbrella is a shield that negates all fire damage, so that makes sense. Fighting it the normal way is fun, but next time we replay Sekiro, we’re definitely tricking the demon into committing ritual seppuku.

#9 Skipping Fountainhead Palace

From one aggravating optional encounter to a totally mandatory one, the final dungeon of Sekiro is a brutal slog through mutated court lords, one killer bow sniper and a very hungry goldfish. The Fountainhead Palace is a challenging place that’s worth exploring once, but if you’re playing again, you can skip the entire thing. The final boss of the dungeon isn’t very difficult, so you don’t even need to prepare yourself by farming enemies – you might as well skip everything.

And you can skip the entire dungeon by following a simple route. Make this a lot easier by using Eel Liver and Rice before attempting the run. Eel Liver adds lightning damage negation to your Shinobi while Rice adds a health regen effect. Neither are really required, but you’ll be able to make more mistakes and take more damage without starting over if you consume these items first.

When you’re ready, stand on the right side of the starting valley. There’s a giant pool of water guarded by the goldfish while an archer with lightning-infused arrows snipes you. Use the debris as cover and swim forward, staying near the right-hand rocky ledges and diving underwater to hide in the ruined structures. Hiding inside will prevent the fish from grabbing you. Move fast and rush to each hiding spot. You’ll make it to the very end of the Fountainhead Palace and avoid so many of the frustrations in the castle ruins area.

#8 Puppeteering Any Mini-Boss

Here’s a fun one – you can turn any of the mid-bosses into any ally. The Puppeteer Ninjitsu ability isn’t just effective after sneaking up on enemies, you can also weaken mini-bosses and use the Vault Over skill to temporarily possess them. A puppeteered enemy or mid-boss will fight on your side, defeating every enemy in your path. And we never knew it worked on bosses with red health bars. It does make sense – there’s no reason it would work on certain enemies but not others. And some of the tough enemies can be controlled.

Early mid-bosses like the Ogre can be mind-controlled with the Puppeteer Ninjitsu when replaying on NG+. It works on almost all of the minibosses actually – except for the Headless, because they don’t have heads to mind control. This is a fun but mostly useless tactic because most minibosses are by themselves in the field. There aren’t enough enemies nearby to get any use out of an ally. Too bad, because puppeteering tough bosses is too fun.

You’ll unlock the Puppeteer Ninjitsu automatically as you progress – once you reach Senpou Temple, you’ll need to defeat the Folding Screen Monkeys boss. Defeat them and you’ll walk away with this ability. It’s required for solving certain optional puzzles. We’ll talk about those later.

#7 Increase Difficulty With The Demon Bell

Here’s an early secret that’s only fun if you’ve mastered the gameplay of Sekiro so thoroughly, you’re looking for a greater challenge. Early in the game, you can activate an additional “Hard Mode” by finding the secret path to the Demon Bell. Ringing the bell increases all enemy stats, making them hit harder, take less damage, have more HP, etc. You won’t level up faster but you will get more item drops more frequently. Still, this is a brutal challenge for an already brutally difficult game. Only the best shinobi apply.

To find the Demon Bell early, reach Ashina Outskirts and find the cave where the first Headless miniboss is located. Skip straight past the Headless and interact with a hidden wall – it leads to the Demon Bell area. You can fast-travel back to the bell using the Bell Temple Sculptor’s Idol. Unlike another ‘hard mode’, this one can be removed at any time. After ringing the bell, use the Bell Demon item in your inventory to remove the difficulty status effect. If you want it back, you can ring that bell again. I don’t know why you’d want to, but you can.

#6 Or Give Back Kuro’s Charm

Because one difficulty boost isn’t bad enough, there’s a second way to make Sekiro even harder. This one is only available after completing the game once, so you’ll need to reach New Game+ to try out a new extreme challenge. At the start of NG+, you’ll gain a special item called Kuro’s Charm. If you choose to give this item back, you’re basically writing your own death sentence. The charm protects you from an extreme difficulty spike, and relinquishing it makes you vulnerable to one big change.

If you give back Kuro’s Charm, all blocks will deal 30% chip damage – the only way to avoid taking damage is through perfect parry. You’ll need extreme precision to survive even against standard low-tier enemies. This changes your gameplay style completely. No more standard parries. Your timing has to be precise. At least you’ll earn additional Sen. You’ll earn about 20% more experience and Sen while playing through this difficulty mode.

Thankfully this isn’t permanent. If you’re feeling too much heat, talk to the Sculptor to regain Kuro’s Charm and prevent further hardship. New Game Plus is already so difficult, but if you’re looking for a real challenge, you can try giving up Kuro’s Charm. You can even stack the effects and ring the Demon Bell. Have fun dying a whole lot.

#5 Skipping Around With Secret Doors

Secret walls are so rare in Sekiro you might only find one in the entire game. There are actually five secret doors total – pressing into the walls causes the door to spin, revealing a secret room or path to a totally different area of the game. You can even find one linking back to the starting sanctuary of the game, the Dilapidated Temple. Progress to Ashina Castle, to the stairs right before the fight against Genichiro, and you’ll find a secret ninja door leading back to your hub. The other big portal is found in Ashina Outskirts. We talked about that one earlier. Near the Chained Ogre mid-boss, look for a warning sign leading to an optional cave. There’s a Nameless inside that you can avoid completely. Run past it and to the opposite wall. One of the five secret doors is here, and it leads straight to the Demon Bell.

The rest of the secret doors lead to hidden rooms with Prayer Beads. You can find one in the Hirata Estate, inside the large house before the Jirou boss. Press against the left wall of the hallway to find a secret room. Another is located in Ashina Castle above the upper sculptor’s idol. Press into the wall between the Samurai armor to find a secret. The last door is much later in the game in Mibu Village, under one of the houses. All of the secret doors are worth finding, and if you’re going to play the game again, you won’t want to miss any of them.

#4 How Dragonrot Really Works

Even if you’ve finished Sekiro you’ll still have questions about one of its scariest mechanics. Dragonrot is a deadly disease that spreads the more you die – and it isn’t clear how this major mechanic works. If you’ve played much of Sekiro, you’ll already know that Dragonrot isn’t nearly as bad as you might fear early on. But it will inevitably spread to NPCs, cutting off storylines if you die too many times. This sounds like a pretty awful punishment, but there’s nothing permanent about Dragonrot. There are ways to prevent it and ways to cure it.

First, if you haven’t progressed enough to meet a character, that character is not subject to Dragonrot. And you’ll know when a character is sick and no longer available for dialogue – if you die and receive an item in your inventory called a Rot Essence. You’ll only spread rot by dying and respawning at an idol. Reviving once does not affect Dragonrot or how fast it spreads. After inflicting your first bout of Dragonrot on an NPC – this will almost always happen after about ten deaths – will cause you to respawn at the Dilapidated Temple, where you’ll begin a quest to unlock a method to cure NPCs of Dragonrot. Using a single Dragon’s Blood Droplet item at any idol will cure ALL NPCs currently infected with Dragonrot. And there are plenty of these curatives. You can purchase them from different stores or earn them. There are about fifteen total, so there’s no reason to use them immediately to cure a single NPC.

Basically, if you want to progress storylines, continue into the story after you’ve overcome difficult bosses. Use the cure to fix any sick NPCs, then exhaust their dialogue before progressing to another difficult boss. The bosses are the main reason you’ll die often in Sekiro – but as long as you have some cures handy, you won’t get cut off from any content. The game isn’t nearly as cruel as it first looks.

#3 Getting Revenge On The Great Colored Carp

We’ve already talked about skipping all of the Fountainhead Palace, which is still a strong option if you’re replaying the game. Still, first time players will hate the Great Colored Carp monster that stalks the lake. This enormous creature can’t be defeated in combat – it’ll haunt you like a giant shark as you swim through the water, forcing you to hide in sunken rubble and wait patiently for your chance to escape. It’s one of the most evil sections of the game, and that makes revenge even sweeter.

You can get rid of the Great Colored Carp with the right poison. There are two weird NPCs called Pot Nobles located in two different locations. One is near the bridge of Hirata Estate while the other is on the Hidden Path of Fountainhead Palace. Both of these NPCs trade in Treasure Carp Scales. Trade enough and they’ll give you the Truly Precious Bait. Go to the Feeding Grounds in Fountainhead Palace and ring the bell – then feed the bait. The giant monster will be dead next time you see it. You’ll find the body in the Sunken Valley Passage, where you can gloat over your victory.

#2 Becoming Stronger With The Dancing Dragon Mask

There are multiple ways of making Sekiro harder and only one way to make the game easier. Very late in the game, you’ll be able to acquire the Dancing Dragon Mask – spend five skills points to increase attack power. This is the only way to make yourself stronger, and it takes a lot of steps to unlock. There are three fragments of the mask you’ll need to collect to unlock the ability to make your sword attacks stronger.

The first fragment is sold by a vendor NPC at the Abandoned Dungeon entrance from the Ashina Castle checkpoint. He sells the first mask fragment for 5,000 sen. The other two fragments are traded from the Pot Nobles – two strange NPCs in pots. Each of them will trade items in exchange for Treasure Carp Scales, and many more of these scales can be earned in the Fountainhead Palace. One of the pot nobles is found in Hirata Estate near the bridge, while the other is on the hidden path of Fountainhead Palace. Trading 7 and 12 Treasure Carp Scales gets you the other two fragments.

Just before this entry, we talked about poisoning the Great Colored Carp. Depending on which of the choices you make, one of the Pot Nobles may permanently die. That isn’t a problem, because the second Pot Noble will always inherit the dead one’s shop selection. Even if you poison the carp, you can still get the Dancing Dragon Mask.

#1 Getting More Endings

In a twist that we haven’t really seen in other Souls games, there are multiple endings in Sekiro that can lead to totally different final boss encounters. Usually Souls games will feature a true ending or some alternate ending, but rarely will you get branching conclusions that lead you on totally different paths. By following different endings in Sekiro, you’ll do more than just get new dialogue options from mysterious NPCs.

One ending takes you down a dark path, battling alternate forms of Emma and Ashina before conquering the province with your father. A different ending takes you far away from Ashina entirely, sending you back to Hirata Estate and battling an enhanced version of your father as the final boss. The True Ending is easily the most complicated, requiring you to follow totally cryptic steps to help the Divine Child and help the Divine Dragon return to its homeland. These are some of the most involved endings in any FromSoftware game – Elden Ring doesn’t have branching paths like this. If you really want to replay Sekiro, you’ll really want to follow the optional path and unlock one of the four alternate endings.

And that’s 10 secrets that make Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice a lot more interesting than it first appears. What might seem like the most straightforward and combat-focused Souls-like is still packed with the weird FromSoftware magic we expect.