Nioh is a challenging and rewarding game that only gets better the more you play. The difference between driving your enemies before you and dying in a corner comes down to your gear - your weapons and armor.

For much of your first playthrough on the default difficulty (Way of the Samurai), you will likely find that the gear dropped by enemies is more than enough to keep the blood on your armor belonging to someone else.

As you progress through the difficulties, though, you'll start finding your patience waiting for that perfect helmet drop wearing thin, and you'll want to have a little more control over the quality of your equipment.

Enter smithing. Smithing becomes the single best method to control your gear loadout in the late game of Nioh. The option to visit the Blacksmith becomes available after the first Main Story missions (sorry, Derrick; all your contributions to heavy-load lifting don't get you a spot on the list), and you gradually unlock more options as you progress through the first two Regions of the game. By the time you're entering Chugoku, you should have everything you need to get started.

To unlock the ability to smith the best gear, you need Smithing Texts, which are scattered across nearly every mission, and can be gained in a number of ways. The purpose of this guide is to make it easy to find what you want, and where to get it.

Let's start with a breakdown of what you can smith, and where to find the texts that let you do so:

When a Smithing Text is dropped from a boss or enemy, it may appear anywhere that boss or enemy shows up (including the Abyss!). There are some encounters (see Kusanagi) where a boss will only drop the text on the specified mission. I will do my best to make this clear, but if anyone has deeper knowledge on the matter, let us all know! I'll update the list here.

Unless otherwise noted, all texts can be unlocked on the default Way of the Samurai difficulty.

The bread and butter of everyone at some point, the basic Katana is very versatile, and has several unlockable Smithing Texts to find.

In no particular order:

Quick hits and quicker evades; Dual Swords are how you prove that running away is only another way to victory.

My favorite, the Spear has range, it has decent power, and it has the best 1v1 skill set I've personally worked out.

Axes are the epitome of the thought "a good offence negates the need for defence."

The first of the "silly" weapons, the kusarigama nonetheless packs an absurd punch for its size.

For all that they look cool... I can't think of many better ways to say "I have a small wee-wee" than to pack one of these.

Perhaps better suited to the police than the battlefield, like all "cool" games, the Tonfa become just as sharp and deadly as folded steel. Not that getting smacked in the face with a length of wood isn't going to hurt, but decapitations is kinda where I draw the line :)

Quick and deadly, what bows miss out on in damage in higher difficulties they make up for in scoring that critical headshot.

They pack a punch, and they changed the face of war forever.

I take it back; Odachi got nothing on carrying around a flippin' cannon to advertise your inadequacies to the world. Hits hard, though.

Many bosses will drop smithing texts for both their Armor and their Weapons. These are separate texts, meaning you will need to repeat the fight until you have all the Smithing texts you want from them. Yes, this is a pain if you aren't using a Yasakani Magatama.

Armors are divided by Light, Medium, Heavy, and One-Piece (not the long-running anime, armors that have only one craftable piece, usually a helmet):

The draw of light armor is to make you fast enough to never get hit - which is a good thing, because with the paltry protection they offer, the first hit is probably the last one you'll take.

The lightness to easily reach Agility B combined with the protection to keep you from dying in two hits... truly, this is where compromise is proven to be useful.

"Walking Tank" would not be inaccurate to describe some of these sets; sadly, that includes the Stamina Requirements to use them effectively.

From the awesome to the bizarre, these are Smithing Texts for single pieces of armor:

Note that if an enemy drops the text, and if that enemy appears in other places, odds are great that their text will drop there too. For example, any Onryoki encounter in the game has a chance at dropping the Onryoki Kabuto text.

For all the miscellaneous usable items you can craft. Range from dead useful (Summoner's Candle) to dead weight (Sticky Pot)

There are exactly two Skills that are obtained via Text rather than from unlocking them in the Skills menu.

"...And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche

Obligatory quote out of the way, there are some texts that are unlocked in the Infinite Dungeon Crawler mode of Nioh, also known as The Abyss. There are better guides out there for the what the Abyss entails, so we'll just jump straight to what we're intrested in: the Smithing Texts:


There is also information out there that Hattori Hanzo, who appears as a respawning enemy on certain Abyss Stages set in the Iga Escape Mission Area, can drop an EXTREMELY wide variety of Smithing Texts that have no business being on his person. Guess being Ieyasu's spy doesn't pay well, to have such sticky fingers...

Other named NPC characters will also drop certain Smithing Texts in the Abyss, some of which might be obtainable in other ways as well:

This guide would have taken an unimaginably longer time without help from andrew.thiele, who pointed me to a Google Doc that seems to have first popped up on reddit under the name redchomp. Here is a link to the original thread:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nioh/comments/6nc4mi/a_google_doc_for_all_the_smithing_texts_up_to_dlc1/

And a link to the doc in question:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dCPVlyB7avz7yJPzST4_JBSsCTLPaZFm97QwDzTiiu8/mobilebasic#

If you are aware of a Text that is not listed above, and how to unlock it, let us know! I'll add it to the lists above and give you credit!

Thank you, and happy Yokai Hunting!