How To Upgrade Your Weapon In Onimusha: Way Of The Sword

Published Sep 17, 2026, 1:12 PM EDT Alex is a gamer at heart. He started his journey on the Sega Genesis (Mega Drive) and has been playing games since. While he enjoys difficult games like Dark Souls, he also likes to cuddle up with a cozy game, too. Alex loves completing games 100 percent and getting all the achievements so it's only natural that he enjoys flex-... uhhh... SHARING that gaming knowledge with the world. Alex has a Master's degree in English but his love for games has made him into a writer he is today. He's written for websites like Destructoid, TheEscapist, ProGameGuides, and DotEsports before starting his career here at TheGamer. Onimusha: Way Of The Sword has a bunch of upgrade systems, but luckily most of them are easy to understand. Obviously, there are skills you can upgrade, both basic and special ones. While you can't change your weapons and armor, you can still upgrade them so they do or soak up more damage. Finally, you can also upgrade your Hozuki Pouch(es) and Charms. There's a lot to cover here, so bear with us. Below, we explain how each upgrade system works in Onimusha: Way Of The Sword - from swords, clothing, gauntlets to skills, charms, and Hozuki pouches! How To Upgrade Your Sword, Clothing, And Gauntlet You can upgrade your weapon, armor and gauntlet by visiting any of the Spirit Mirrors in the game, and using the appropriate upgrade items. Here's what you'll need for each type of equipment and where you can find them: Sword Sword How To Upgrade Whetstone Small chests around Eastern Kyoto and beyond. Iron Same as Whetstone but also as quest rewards. Tempered Iron Same as Iron but a bit rarer. Tamahagane Found in larger chests (those that stay marked on your map). Clothing Clothing How To Upgrade Hempen Cloth Chests around Eastern Kyoto and beyond. Cotton Cloth Same as Hempen Cloth but also as quest rewards. Leather Same as Cotton Cloth but a bit rarer. Fine Silk Cloth Found in large chests (those that stay marked on your map). Gauntlet Gauntlet How To Upgrade Malicite Get a bunch of these from closing Genma Rifts. Malicite Mass Same as Malicite but a bit rarer. Byakue's Talisman Get one or two for defeating a Byakue. Dohatsu-ten's Horn Get one or two for defeating a Dohatsun-ten. How To Upgrade Basic And Special Skills Basic Skills are for upgrading your sword attacks, defensive abilities, movement, as well as, the ability to equip more Charms. Special Skills upgrade your Oni abilities such as your Oni Awakening, your armaments, and things like Oni Vision for finding treasure. Just like with your Sword, Clothing, and Armament, you can upgrade your Skills at any Spirit Mirror in the game. To upgrade these, you need two things: Red Souls (lots of them) Power Stones (for Basic Skills) Oni Stones (for Special Skills) You probably know already that you get Red Souls by defeating enemies and gathering them with your gauntlet. Power Stones and Oni Stones are obtained from Rare chests you find in the wild and as quest rewards. How To Upgrade Charms In our opinion, upgrading charms is needlessly complicated. To upgrade them, you need Red Souls, just like with your skills, but you also need Favor. To get Favor, you find non-consumable food items around Eastern Kyoto, and sometimes you'll get them as gifts from the people you save. Things like Sake, Persimmon fruit, and other consumables (which you can't eat or drink). Once you have a bunch of these, you take them to Enma's Hall, which is right next to the Spirit Mirror near Takamura (where you progress the story). Interact with Enma's Hall, select the Charm you wish to upgrade, and you'll notice you already have Favor available. However, when you select the "Make Offering" option (which means to upgrade), you'll get hit with another screen. This other screen asks which of the offerings you'd like to use in powering your Charm (kind of like a gacha game, huh?). Honestly, just use the auto-select feature and be done with this extra layer. Unless you're trying to get all achiemvenets, you really don't need to upgrade all the Charms. How To Upgrade Hozuki Pouches Last but not least, we have the Hozuki Pouches. These are your healing bags and represent how many Hozuki (healing fruits) you can have at one point. Okuni (also located at Takamura's shirne) can upgrade these for you so you can hold more Hozuki. There are a total of 5 different Hozuki Pouches, and each requires different materials to upgrade. As for the upgrade materials, Hozuki Pouches use the same ones you'd use for your Clothing or Sword, but they also require their special Hozuki Materials. Fortunately, all of them will be marked on your map, so simply go and retrieve them. Quite honestly, we just stuck with the regular Hozuki pouch we got at the start of the game, upgraded it fully, and never looked back.