Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice Update 1.0.3 Adjusts Spirit Emblem Costs, Out Today

After selling two million units within the 10 days of launch, FromSoftware’s Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice will receive its next major update today. It makes some very interesting changes, including reducing the Spirit Emblem costs and adjusting the efficiency of certain Prosthetic Tools and Combat Arms. You can expect the update to go live at 6 PM PDT.

Certain Prosthetic Tools that are benefiting from lowered Spirit Emblem costs include the Lazulite Sacred Flame, Loaded Axe series of tools, and the Sparking Axe. Ashina Cross, Dragon Flash, Mortal Draw, and many other Combat Arts have also been adjusted. Other nice changes include the Posture and Vitality of the Blazing Bull being slightly reduced “to improve game pacing and balance time in combat.”

A bug where Gokan’s Sugar and Gokan’s Spiritfall weren’t properly reducing Posture damage for players while guarding or deflecting is also being fixed. If you faced an issue where your system crashing caused save data to be corrupted on PC, that should also be fixed. Check out the full notes below.

Improvements to Strategic Approaches

• Adjusted the efficiency and Spirit Emblem cost of the following to encourage usage and diversity of approach:
  – Prosthetic Tools: “Lazulite Sacred Flame,” “Loaded Axe” series, “Sparking Axe,” “Lazulite Axe”
  – Combat Arts: “Ashina Cross,” “Dragon Flash,” “One Mind,” “Floating Passage,” “Spiral Cloud Passage,” “Mortal Draw,” “Empowered Mortal Draw”
• Items: “Spiritfall” series
  – Reduced the Posture damage dealt by the first hit of the Combat Arts “Senpou Leaping Kicks” and “High Monk” as it was causing more damage than intended in certain cases. Posture damage dealt in the latter-half of the combo has been increased.
  – Increased the Poison build-up dealt by the Prosthetic Tool “Sabimaru” against enemies that were intended to be weak against it.
  Increased the drop rate of “Divine Confetti” for Fencers in Ashina Castle.
• Adjusted loading screen tips and tutorial text, as well as adding new text.

Other Fixes

• Slightly reduced Posture and Vitality of Blazing Bull in order to improve game pacing and balance time in combat.
• Lowered the price of information sold by Anayama the Peddler.
• The Chained Ogre inside Ashina Castle is now Red Eyed.
• Fixed a bug where “Gokan’s Sugar” and “Gokan’s Spiritfall” were not mitigating player Posture damage taken while guarding or deflecting enemy attacks.
• Fixed a bug where system crashes could cause save data to become corrupted on PC.
• Fixed a bug where certain enemies would sometimes stop attacking the player.
• Fixed a bug where certain actions could not be performed after reconfiguring the controls.
• Fixed certain bugs that were allowing the player to access unexpected areas, which could result in becoming unable to obtain items or make further progress.
• Fixed cases of certain text being displayed incorrectly.
• Improved stability.
• Improved performance.
• Other various bug fixes.