Onimusha: Way of the Sword Spirit Mirrors Guide — Save Points, Fast Travel & Upgrades

• Spirit Mirrors are the game’s save points, fast travel hubs, and upgrade stations — all in one.
• Fast travel is not available from the start. It unlocks after sufficient story progression into the game.
• Spirit Mirrors are spread across seven main areas — East Kyoto has the most, Mount Oe has nine across four levels.
• Interacting with a Spirit Mirror fully heals Musashi and respawns standard enemies in the surrounding area.
• The Change Difficulty Level option lives here — not in the settings menu. This surprises many players.
• Spirit Mirror progress does not carry over to New Game+. You re-unlock each mirror on your Carnage run.
• Always activate every Spirit Mirror you pass. Missing one can mean a very long walk back in complex areas like Mount Oe.

Onimusha Way of the Sword Spirit Mirrors are the backbone of how you move, save, and grow in this game. They work like a bonfire in Dark Souls — but with more options packed into a single menu. Every time you pass one, you should stop and activate it. Missing a Spirit Mirror in a dense area like Mount Oe means retracing long stretches on foot when you die or need to backtrack for collectibles. This guide covers every function the Spirit Mirror menu offers, where mirrors are located across each area, how fast travel works, and how to use them efficiently for upgrades and soul spending.

If you are early in the game and want to understand how the Spirit Mirror connects to the broader upgrade loop, our combat and controls guide gives the full picture of how skills, souls, and equipment interact. For farming the Red Souls and Favor you spend at Spirit Mirrors, our dedicated soul farming guide covers every method in detail.

What Is a Spirit Mirror in Onimusha: Way of the Sword?

A Spirit Mirror is a glowing, ornate mirror embedded in shrines and checkpoints across Kyoto and the surrounding areas. Spirit Mirrors act as checkpoints — interact with them to save your game, heal, access the Storehouse, or change the difficulty level. They are also the only place in the game where you can fast travel, spend Red Souls on skill upgrades, enhance equipment, change your appearance, and access additional content like pre-order bonuses.

Think of them as the game’s central hub for everything outside of active combat. Any time you need to do anything that is not fighting — saving, upgrading, travelling, changing loadout — you come to a Spirit Mirror.

Onimusha Way of the Sword Spirit Mirrors

Every Function in the Spirit Mirror Menu

The Spirit Mirror menu has multiple options, and not all of them unlock at the same time. Some open as you progress through the story. Here is every function and what it does:

Save

Interacting with a Spirit Mirror creates an autosave. The game also gives you up to 20 manual save slots, accessible from the save option. Manually saving before a tough boss, before the point of no return at the final mission, and before spending large amounts of Red Souls on upgrades is strongly recommended. The autosave is reliable for general progress, but manual saves protect you from spending mistakes and one-way narrative decisions.

Travel (Fast Travel)

Spirit Mirrors are where you fast travel in Onimusha: Way of the Sword, and where you can also upgrade your gear and change your outfit. Fast travel is free — it costs no Red Souls, items, or any other resource. You can warp to any previously activated Spirit Mirror in any area of the game from any other Spirit Mirror.

One important rule: you cannot use a Spirit Mirror while enemies are actively targeting you. You must clear the immediate area or break line of sight first. Once the area is clear, interact with the mirror and select Travel to open the world map and choose your destination.

Fast travel also resets all standard enemies in the game world. Every non-boss Genma respawns when you warp. This makes fast travel the premier tool for farming loops — travel to a Spirit Mirror near a good enemy group, clear them, collect souls, fast travel back to the same mirror, and repeat.

Enhance Equipment / Abilities (Spirit Mirror Upgrades)

This is the main upgrade screen. Once available, you will find the option inside the Spirit Mirror menu, used for resting, saving, fast travel, changing your appearance, and enhancing gear. Your clothing, sword, and gauntlet each level up independently using their own dedicated materials, so there is no need to weigh one upgrade against another.

The upgrade menu has two sub-sections:

• Enhance Equipment — upgrades your clothing, sword, and gauntlet using crafting materials. Each piece levels up independently. Clothing requires Fine Silk Cloth, swords require Tamahagane, and gauntlet upgrades require boss-dropped materials like Malicite, Byakue’s Talisman, and Dohatsu-ten’s Horn. Chests holding these materials are one-time pickups, while loose materials scattered around the world tend to respawn.
• Enhance Abilities (Skills) — spends Red Souls and Power Stones or Oni Stones to unlock and upgrade basic and special skills. This is where you buy movement skills, combat technique upgrades, the Soul Absorption improvements, Oni Vision abilities, and everything else in the skill tree. Skills unlock progressively as you pass through Oni Portals in the story.

A key tip: hold off on spending Oni Stones until you can unlock Oni Vision: Treasures, Oni Vision: Treasures 2, and Oni Vision: Search Range. These three skills reveal collectibles through walls and are the highest-value early purchases in the entire upgrade menu. Buying them first pays off across the whole playthrough.

Change Difficulty Level

This option is hidden inside the Spirit Mirror menu rather than the main settings screen — which confuses a lot of players. The game tells you the difficulty can be changed anytime, then hides the option from the settings menu entirely. This is the only in-game menu that actually lets you change difficulty freely, tucked in among Travel, Save, and the rest of the Spirit Mirror’s options.

You can switch between Story and Action at any Spirit Mirror at any point during your first playthrough with no penalty. Carnage is the exception — once selected for a New Game+ run, it locks in and cannot be changed back. For a full breakdown of what each difficulty changes, see our Story mode vs. Action mode difficulty guide.

Change Appearance

This option lets you change Musashi’s sword appearance, outfit (haori coat), and gauntlet cosmetics. Sword appearances, haori coats, outfits, and gauntlets are cosmetic items that change the appearance of Miyamoto Musashi — they do not alter his performance in battle. Pre-order and Early Adopter bonus cosmetics are accessed here after claiming them from Additional Content.

Storehouse

The Storehouse is your overflow inventory. When your active item pouch fills up, any new items you pick up go automatically to the Storehouse rather than being dropped or lost. Access it at any Spirit Mirror to retrieve stored items and move them into your active inventory. This system means there is no reason to leave items on the ground — pick up everything you find and sort through it at the next mirror.

Additional Content

Interact with a Spirit Mirror and open the menu, then select Additional Content to access bonus content. From here, available bonus items can be selected and claimed. Pre-order bonuses, Early Adopter bonuses, and any DLC content are claimed through this option. Items like the Lion Dog charm, White Monkey charm, Sealed Curse sword appearance, and White Lion sword appearance are found here if your edition includes them.

Note: if items have been claimed but cannot yet be equipped, continue progressing through the story. The Equipment screen and Spirit Mirrors unlock separately, so some bonus features are intentionally unavailable during the opening portion of the game.

When Does Fast Travel Unlock?

Fast travel is not available from the first Spirit Mirror you encounter. It unlocks through story progression. At the start of the game, you will be able to choose between Story or Action difficulty. If you are playing on Action and keep dying to the same boss or encounter, the game eventually offers you a way out.

The fast travel system — the Travel option in the Spirit Mirror menu — opens up once you have progressed far enough into the main story. The exact trigger is tied to a specific story milestone rather than a purchase or unlock requirement. Until that point, you travel entirely on foot between areas. This is intentional: the early game wants you to learn the Kyoto map layout before giving you instant teleportation across it.

Once fast travel unlocks, it is immediately available at every Spirit Mirror you have already activated, and at every new one you activate from that point on. There is no additional cost or action required to use it.

Spirit Mirror Locations — All Areas

Spirit Mirrors are found across seven main areas of the game. Activating every one you pass is the most important habit you can build — it takes seconds and the coverage it provides for fast travel and farming routes is significant.

East Kyoto

East Kyoto is the central location and the area in which you will spend most of your time, travelling between the other locations. Naturally, there are more fast travel points in East Kyoto than any other area. You do not necessarily need to activate all of them, but if you want to rescue Lion Dogs, gather collectibles, and complete Chance Encounters efficiently, having full coverage in East Kyoto saves significant travel time. This is the area where you will return most often throughout the game.

Kiyomizu-dera Temple

The walk to Kiyomizu-dera Temple is one of the longest in the game, and you will definitely want to unlock the Spirit Mirror once you reach the end. Alongside the fast travel points at the start and end of this long stretch, there is another once you reach the temple grounds. The winding alleyways between buildings in this area make the mid-area mirror particularly valuable for any return visits during collectible cleanup.

Oni Refuge

Once you discover how to get into the Oni Refuge, you will find two Spirit Mirrors: one at the very north, and one at the very south. This pairing makes it easy to cut out long stretches of walking if you return to the area for any reason later in the game.

Nijo-jo Castle

Nijo-jo Castle has multiple Spirit Mirrors covering its layout. Nijo-jo Castle is home to some side quests — namely the Lion Dogs you will need to find and rescue. Both Nijo-jo Castle Spirit Mirrors are useful to have unlocked to save time when returning for collectibles.

Underground Laboratory

There are multiple floors in the Underground Lab, each with fast travel locations marked. Once you have completed the main quest that takes place here, the main one you might want to use again is Grand Theatre, but since there are no side quests here, you will only need to return if you have missed the powerful Oni Armament that can be found in the lab. Activate all mirrors here during your first visit so the option is available without replaying areas on foot.

Kyoto Imperial Palace

While there are only two Spirit Mirrors in the Kyoto Imperial Palace, you might want to travel back for side quests later on, so it is worth unlocking them both while you are here. These also serve as useful rest points for healing and upgrading before the area’s harder encounters.

Mount Oe

Mount Oe is where Spirit Mirror coverage becomes most critical. Mount Oe is a complex area across four levels, with nine Spirit Mirrors in total. It is important that you unlock each fast travel point when you have the chance. The vertical layout of Mount Oe makes navigating between floors genuinely disorienting. Missing mirrors here means long backtrack runs through difficult enemy territory after deaths. Treat every mirror in this area as mandatory.

Spirit Mirrors and the Healing Mechanic

Every time you interact with a Spirit Mirror, Musashi is fully healed. This is not a consume-once mechanic — you can rest at a Spirit Mirror as many times as you want between encounters, and each interaction restores full health.

The trade-off is that resting at a Spirit Mirror respawns all standard enemies in the surrounding area. Genma that you cleared before reaching the mirror come back. This is by design — it keeps the world feeling active and it makes rest a considered choice rather than a free button. In practice, most players rest freely and simply clear the respawned enemies again, especially when farming souls. The enemy respawn on rest is also what makes Spirit Mirror fast travel so useful for farming loops.

Note that resting does not reset boss fights. If you have defeated a boss, it stays dead. Only standard Genma respawn.

Yorimasa’s Monument — The Spirit Mirror Shop

Connected to the Spirit Mirror network is Yorimasa’s Monument — a shop run by the Oni spirit Yorimasa at Yasui Konpiragu shrine. A few hours into the game, you will complete a quest to purify Yasui Konpiragu shrine, saving its guardian Oni spirit from an evil Genma infestation. Once done, Yorimasa will begin selling you items for Red Souls.

This shop is easy to overlook after the initial visit, but it is one of the most useful resources in the game. Check back in after you complete every major story mission, because Yorimasa’s Monument expands its shop inventory several times throughout the game. Eventually it stocks key crafting materials including upgrade materials for clothing, swords, and the gauntlet — items that otherwise require finding specific drops or chests across the world.

You can also purchase offering items from Yorimasa’s Monument to trade for Favor at Emma’s Hall. This makes it a dual-purpose shop for both equipment upgrade materials and Favor farming. Do not ignore it after the initial unlock — revisit it regularly.

The Storehouse — Never Lose an Item

The Storehouse attached to every Spirit Mirror is a quality-of-life system that removes inventory pressure entirely. Anything you collect along the way carries over regardless of the difficulty setting. Extra pickups are sent to the Storehouse automatically, and you retrieve them later rather than dropping them in the field. That makes it safe to grab every item you pass.

This means there is genuinely no reason to pass up an item because you are “full.” Pick up everything. Your Storehouse accumulates it all safely. Then the next time you visit a Spirit Mirror, pull out what you need into your active inventory. This system is especially useful for healing items and upgrade materials during long exploration runs between mirrors.

Spirit Mirror Progress and New Game+

One thing many players miss: Spirit Mirror unlock progress does not carry over into New Game+. When you start a Carnage run, the fast travel network is entirely blank. You re-discover and re-activate every mirror as you progress through the story again.

This has a practical implication for Carnage difficulty. Early in the run, before you have re-unlocked many mirrors, you will need to travel on foot between areas more often than you did in your first playthrough. It also means the farming loop reset mechanic works the same way — activate a nearby mirror, clear enemies, fast travel back to reset, repeat — but only once you have that mirror active.

What does carry over to New Game+ is everything else: your skills, charm upgrades, Hozuki Pouches, items, and Oni Abilities. So while the map resets, your character is significantly stronger than at the start of the first run. For a full breakdown of what transfers and what resets, see our trophy and achievements platinum roadmap which includes the complete carry-over list.

Tips for Using Spirit Mirrors Efficiently

• Activate every mirror you pass — no exceptions. It costs nothing and takes three seconds. Skipping one in a complex area like Mount Oe will cost you much more time later.
• Use manual saves before big spending sessions. If you are about to spend a large chunk of Red Souls on skills or charm upgrades, save manually first. If you buy the wrong thing or want to redistribute, you can reload without losing your currency. The save scumming method — saving with 135,000 Red Souls and 150,000 Favor, spending, then reloading to recover currency — only works if you have a manual save set up at that point.
• Buy Oni Vision skills first. Three special skills change how the collectible hunt plays out: Oni Vision: Treasures, Oni Vision: Treasures 2, and Oni Vision: Search Range. Buy all three at the Spirit Mirror before exploring seriously. Hold the button, and every nearby collectible lights up through walls. Without them, most of the 36 Lion Dogs, 8 Mysteries of Kyoto, and 15 Charms are invisible as you pass them.
• Check Yorimasa’s Monument after every major story mission. The shop inventory expands with story progress. Checking regularly means you catch new crafting materials as soon as they are available rather than discovering them late.
• Use fast travel to reset farming loops. Fast travel respawns all standard enemies. The most efficient Red Soul farming method is built entirely around this: warp to a mirror near a good enemy group, clear them using Issen counters and the Flashing Void Armament, absorb all souls, then warp back to the same mirror to reset the encounter. For the full method, see our soul farming guide.
• Rest before a boss fight, not after a death. If you know a boss arena is ahead, use the nearest Spirit Mirror to fully heal before entering. After you die in a boss room, you respawn at the last Spirit Mirror — so knowing which mirror you rest at determines how long the walk back is. The nearest mirror to a boss is usually just outside the door.
• Spend all Red Souls before the final mission. Red Souls do not carry over to New Game+. When you reach the point of no return before “The Clash At Rendaino,” make a manual save, visit every Spirit Mirror upgrade option, and spend everything. Skills carry over; currency does not.

Spirit Mirrors and Boss Encounters

Spirit Mirrors near boss arenas serve as respawn points when you die. This matters more than it might seem. The distance between the mirror and the boss door affects how much walking you do on each retry. In some areas — particularly Mount Oe — the mirror placement is close enough that retries feel smooth. In a few spots the nearest active mirror is a corridor or two away, making it worth knowing which mirror to rest at before attempting a fight.

For specific boss encounters, our individual boss guides cover preparation and loadout advice from the nearest Spirit Mirror. The Shuten Doji boss guide covers the Mount Oe fight in full, including the charm and upgrade setup you want in place before entering. The Sasaki Ganryu guide covers the game’s first major test and how to use your pre-fight Spirit Mirror time well.

Full Spirit Mirror Menu Reference

Menu Option	What It Does	When It Unlocks
Save	Creates autosave; access manual save slots (up to 20)	First Spirit Mirror
Travel (Fast Travel)	Warp to any activated Spirit Mirror — free, respawns enemies	After story progression milestone
Enhance Equipment / Abilities	Spend materials on clothing, sword, gauntlet; spend Red Souls and stones on skills	Unlocks during story progression
Change Difficulty Level	Switch between Story and Action freely; Carnage locks once selected	First Spirit Mirror
Change Appearance	Change sword skin, outfit (haori), and gauntlet cosmetics	Unlocks during story progression
Storehouse	Retrieve overflow items sent here when inventory is full	First Spirit Mirror
Additional Content	Claim pre-order bonuses, Early Adopter items, and DLC content	After story progression milestone

Related Guides

• Tips and Tricks for Beginners
• Oni Armaments and Oni Power Abilities
• Mastering Issen, Parry and Deflect
• Flow State Trophy Guide
• Onimusha: Way of the Sword Review

Onimusha: Way of the Sword is available on Steam (PC), PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. For news and edition details, visit the official Capcom Onimusha page. If you are playing on PC, our PC requirements guide covers all system specs.

Frequently Asked Questions