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).

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