Nioh 3 Secret Locations & Easter Eggs: Everything Hidden Across Four Eras

I have a habit in open-world games of walking toward anything that looks slightly out of place. In Nioh 3, that habit paid off in ways I didn't expect. Team Ninja hid an absurd amount of secret content across the four time periods. Some of it rewards you with unique gear. Some of it is pure fan service. A few things are so well hidden that the community didn't find them until weeks after launch.

Sengoku Era Secrets

Behind the waterfall in the first open region there's a cave entrance that isn't marked on the map. Walk through the waterfall and you'll find a small shrine room with a chest containing the "Rusty Katana." It does almost no damage. Don't sell it. If you bring it to the blacksmith after mission 8, when he unlocks the set bonus transfer system, the rusty katana transforms into a weapon called "Master's Blade" with the highest base damage in the game. It's a direct callback to a similar secret weapon from Nioh 2.

The burning village on the west side of the Sengoku map has three houses that can be entered. The smallest one, the shed behind the main building, has a floorboard that breaks when you walk over it. Drop through and you'll enter a underground room with a dead samurai clutching a scroll. The scroll unlocks a hidden mythic quest that doesn't appear on your map until you find this room. The quest rewards a Guardian Spirit fragment for a spirit you otherwise can't get until the Heian era.

On the cliff overlooking the eastern ocean, there's a lone pine tree with a sword embedded in it. Interact with the sword and you'll trigger a duel with a ghost of William, the protagonist from the first Nioh. He uses the same moveset. Beating him gives you his hat as a cosmetic and a trophy. It's pure fan service and I loved every second of it.

Heian Era Secrets

The imperial palace has a room behind a painting. I don't know how anyone found this without a guide. In the corridor leading to the Court Noble boss fight, there's a large painting on the wall that looks like every other painting. Walk into it and you clip through into a small room with a chest containing a Soul Core for a nine-tailed fox variant that's stronger than the normal version. This variant has a second charge level that fires homing fireballs.

The mountain temple in mission 7 has a platforming section off to the side of the main path. It's not marked. You have to jump across floating rocks over a bottomless pit. There's no reward for completing it other than a view of the entire Heian era map from above and a trophy called "Perspective." I fell six times getting there. Worth it for the screenshot alone.

In the garden area of the temple, there's a koi pond. Feed the koi ten times (you can buy fish food from the merchant in the hub, it costs almost nothing) and a giant koi Yokai emerges as a secret miniboss. It drops a unique water-element Soul Core with the highest Anima efficiency of any core in the game. Low damage, but you can cast it almost infinitely.

Bakumatsu Era Secrets

The Western fortress has a hidden armory behind a false wall in the basement. The wall has a seam that's only visible with your torch out (hold the torch button in dark areas, another mechanic the game never mentions). Inside the armory is a full set of Western-style armor that has firearm resistance as its set bonus. This is the only armor set in the game that specifically reduces bullet damage, and it makes the rifle sections of the Bakumatsu chapter much less annoying.

The abandoned train station (yes, there's a train station in the 1860s Japan fantasy game) has a locked ticket booth. The key drops from a random rifle soldier in the area. The drop rate is low, maybe 5%. I farmed the soldier camp near the station for about 40 minutes to get it. Inside the booth is a unique accessory that increases item drop rate, which then makes farming everything else faster. Get this early in the chapter if you can.

There's a hidden boss duel in the bamboo forest near the end of the Bakumatsu chapter. It's triggered by bowing at a specific grave marker (use the emote menu, select Bow, face the grave). The ghost of a Bakumatsu-era swordsman appears. He's harder than most story bosses and drops a katana with a unique skill called "Twilight Slash" that can't be obtained anywhere else.

Edo Era Secrets

Edo Castle has a room that only opens at night. The game has a day-night cycle in the open regions, but most players never notice because missions default to specific times. Wait until nightfall (or rest at a shrine to advance time) and a hidden door in the castle's east wing becomes accessible. Inside is a room full of developer tribute messages and a chest with a joke weapon: a wooden practice sword that does one damage but has the fastest attack speed in the game. There's an achievement for beating a boss with it.

In the final mission area, before the Kunimatsu boss door, there's a side path that leads to a cliff overlooking the ocean. At the edge of the cliff is a single glowing flower. Picking it gives you an item called "Remembrance" with no description and no apparent use. The community figured out weeks after launch that having this item in your inventory during the final boss fight adds a short extra cutscene after the credits. That's it. It's a purely narrative Easter egg and I respect the commitment to hiding it.

The Crucible Secret Floor

Between Crucible floors 30 and 31, if you've completed every mythic quest in the main game, a special floor appears that isn't numbered. It's a single room with an NPC who offers to sell you a Book of Reincarnation for one gold. One. This is a joke from the developers about how expensive respeccing is. Take the book. Go respec for free. The NPC disappears after one purchase, so use it wisely.

These secrets reward the players who poke at every wall and check every corner. Nioh 3 has more hidden content than both previous games combined, and the community is still finding things four months after launch. If you find something I didn't list here, the Nioh 3 Discord has a dedicated channel for discoveries. The game's still got secrets left to give.