Red Souls Guide — Earning and Spending

Who this is for: players who feel permanently broke, anyone unsure whether to spend Red Souls on skills or materials, and readers coming from the soul-economy explanation on the best upgrades page.

What Red Souls Are

When you defeat a Genma, souls appear and drift away; you collect them with your Oni Gauntlet. The game separates them by color and job (IGN review, and the best-upgrades page):

• Yellow souls — heal you.
• Red souls — the currency for skill upgrades, and later for material trades.
• Blue souls — recharge your Oni Armaments (Oni Armament guide).

Absorb while moving — you do not need to stand still — and do not let enemies absorb souls first; denying Genma their own power-up is part of the loop.

What Red Souls Are Used For

• Skills: unlocking and powering up basic and special abilities (PowerPyx lists unlock costs from 3,500 to 8,500 Red Souls per skill tier; AppMedia lists similar figures in Japanese — treat guide numbers as close but verify in your own menu).
• Materials: after the Careful What You Wish For quest, Yorimasa's monument trades Red Souls for equipment and pouch upgrade materials and consumables (IGN wiki).
• That is the whole economy — no equipment purchases use Red Souls directly.

How to Get Red Souls

• Combat: every defeated enemy drops souls; red souls appear regularly from ordinary fights. IGN's early-game tips note that you will end up earning a ton across the campaign.
• Absorption upgrades: the skill line tied to soul absorption increases how much you gain (AppMedia recommends the absorb-while-attacking ability so enemies cannot steal souls first).
• Optional content: one-tree-shade fights, rifts and side quests all feed the same combat economy — they are not a separate currency.

Best Early-Game Method

1. Kill and absorb everything during missions — do not rush past fights while your skill tree is still empty.
2. Absorb while moving to keep momentum; watch that enemies do not vacuum souls first.
3. Spend on broad skills only (see which skills to unlock first); do not hoard, but do not spend on narrow nodes either.

Best Mid/Late-Game Method

• Once your priority skills are bought, surplus Red Souls should flow to Yorimasa's monument trades instead of sitting idle — materials are the real bottleneck by the late game.
• If a skill tier you want costs several thousand souls, clear a fresh side quest or rift rather than re-farming the same street; you earn while progressing.
• Break Issens and certain Oni Armaments produce extra souls of other colors — those feed healing and armament uptime, which indirectly lets you fight more and earn more red souls (armament economy).
• Unlock the soul-absorption upgrades early and pair the Soul Gathering charm (+5% Red Souls, from the Risky Trade encounter) whenever you farm side content (charm guide).

Buying Upgrade Materials

See the upgrade materials guide for the full trade list. Key rule: skills first, materials second — skill upgrades are permanent combat power, while material trades only accelerate gear you could farm anyway.

What to Spend Red Souls On First

1. Survival and consistency skills (the skill-tree priority list).
2. Core sword / deflection / Issen skills you actually use.
3. Only then: material trades for the gear lane you are actually upgrading.

Common Mistakes

• Zeroing out before a boss: keep a small buffer if a skill or upgrade you want is close — bosses are where you will feel a missing node.
• Confusing the soul colors: blue souls recharge armaments; spending discipline on red souls does not help if you also starve your blue-soul armament plan.
• Hoarding forever: unspent Red Souls past the mid-game are wasted opportunity; the monument trade exists precisely as a sink.
• Copying day-one farm claims: unverified per-minute numbers are usually measured on old builds or with end-game gear.

FAQ