Should I Disassemble or Sell Gear in Nioh? A Looting Guide for Min-Maxers

As a long-time fan who has sunk over 500 hours into Nioh across multiple playthroughs, I‘ve learned to both love and fear its incredibly complex loot system. With dozens of obtuse stats across 5 tiers of rarity, evaluating what gear to dismantle, sell, or equip can be a nightmare even for veterans. But mastering your loot filtering skills is essential for building the ultimate min-maxed samurai slayer.

In this extensive guide, I‘ll share everything I‘ve learned about wringing every last drop of value from the mountains of tantalizing treasure Nioh throws your way. You‘ll learn how to balance dismantling for crafting with selling for gold, optimize your farming strategies, and evaluate gear like a true min-maxing pro. Let‘s dive in fellow loot fiends!

Deciphering the Labyrinth of Loot Attributes

Before we tackle the big dismantle vs sell question, you need to understand Nioh‘s dizzying array of equipment traits. Here‘s a quick overview:

Rarity – Ranging from common white to exotic orange, rarity denotes overall power level. Higher tier gear gets bonuses with bigger impacts.

Level – The main indicator of offensive and defensive capability. Gear levels range from 1 to 200+ in the end game.

Familiarity – This rises as you use a weapon or armor piece, unlocking bonus perks when hitting milestones.

Set Bonuses – Wearing multiple pieces from a matched set confers special effects.

Stats – Each piece of gear gives boosts to core stats like Strength, Stamina, Courage, etc.

Special Effects – These roll randomly giving boosts to skills, status effects, etc. The real loot jackpot!

Soulmatching/Tempering – Upgrade system for increasing gear levels and rerolling bonuses by sacrificing other equipment.

That covers the key technical basics. Now let‘s move onto unpacking optimal strategies for handling all the sweet, sweet loot.

Dismantling Gear for Crafting Materials and Gold

Whenever you find gear you don‘t plan on using yourself, disassembling it at the blacksmith breaks it down into crafting components. Here are the major benefits of dismantling instead of selling:

• Rare crafting materials – Required for soul matching, tempering, and forging. Dismantle high rarity gear for the best materials.

• Upgrade own gear – These materials are necessary to improve equipment level and attributes.

• Refashion appearance – Reshape gear look while retaining desired stats and bonuses.

• Forge new equipment – Craft new weapons, armor, accessories, and soul cores.

• Transform soul cores – Specific cores need to be dissolved to unlock new forms.

• Flexibility – Gold comes and goes, but you‘ll always need crafting materials as new gear is introduced.

Based on my own tracking, here are sample material costs for key crafting actions:

Crafting Action	Sample Material Cost
Soul Match +1 Level	~50,000 gold, 1-2 exotic materials
Soul Match +10 Levels	~500,000 gold, 10+ exotic materials
Temper Stat Reroll	5000-50,000 gold, 5+ divine fragments
Forge Divine Weapon	100,000+ gold, 10+ divine fragments

As you can see, costs quickly skyrocket. You‘ll need a steady supply of dissolved gear to keep up with the demand.

Knowing When to Cash Out and Sell

However, selling drops outright also has advantages you shouldn‘t ignore:

• Gold for purchases – Buying ammo, elixirs, gear gifts for NPCs, etc requires income. Dismantling generates none.

• Weapons for spirits – You can only apply gear as soul cores by selling items of that type to the shrine.

• Excess materials – If you already have 500 Giant Toad Oil, selling extra instead of disassembling can give you some gold.

• Low level gear – Weak or non-special effect gear often sells for more than its dismantled value.

Here are the average gold values for each rarity level of equipment:

Gear Rarity	Average Gold Value
White	200-800
Yellow	1000-5000
Blue	6000-20000
Purple	30000-100000
Orange	50000-500000

Use these valuation ranges as a baseline when judging whether to sell or dismantle marginal gear.

Find the Right Loot Filtering Balance

Rather than stick to just dismantling or selling, maintain flexibility based on your current needs:

• Early game – Dismantle all but the worst drops and build up rare crafting materials. Gold comes easier than exotics.

• Mid game – Balance dismantling and selling to keep gold stocked for ammo and elixirs while accumulating materials.

• End game – Once you have amazing divine gear, switch to selling the majority of drops for gold to soul match, temper, and forge.

My personal approach is:

1. Check for valuables stats worth keeping for own use or soul matching fodder.

2. Dismantle all exotics and divines with useful effects.

3. Sell bulk unwanted blues and purples for gold.

4. Sell most divine gear past the first few kept for upgrading.

This nets me a steady income while building up the rare crafting materials needed to push my gear to the limits.

Advanced Tactics for Loot Farming

To accelerate your gear gain, use these proven farming tactics:

• Revenant trading – Defeat revenants to loot their equipped gear. One of the most efficient ways to obtain high end gear sets and divine items.

• Twilight missions – Replay these challenging missions to earn mountains of glory and massively boosted divine equipment drops from bosses and chests.

• Coop play – Tackling levels in online co-op significantly increases enemy item drop rates, granting more chances at rare loot.

• Luck stacking – Maximize Luck stat on gear and use blessing talismans to hit the item drop rate cap of 80%+. More loot means more dismantling and selling!

• Specialized builds – Equipment drop rate boosting sets like Imakomei and Hunter‘s Blessing paired with high Luck enable insane farming sessions.

Gear Analysis Tips from a Min-Maxing Expert

Evaluating gear stats comes down to knowing what to look for. Here are the attributes and ability combos to prioritize:

Weapons

• Change to Attack scaling for your primary stat
• Familiarity Damage Bonus
• Close Combat Damage
• Active Skill Damage
• Damage vs [Status] Affected Enemy
• Break

Armor

• Life Bonus
• [Status] Resistance
• Damage Taken Reduction
• Elemental Damage Reduction
• Equipment Weight Reduction
• Unlimited Onmyo/Ninjitsu

Accessories

• Yokai Ability Damage
• Elemental Damage Reduction
• Increase Max Elixir/Ammo
• Shorten Jutsu Cooldown Time
• Yokai Ability Hit & Ki Damage

Seeking out this "god roll" combination of effects on divine rarity gear and dismantling duplicates allows you to stack the most potent bonuses on a perfectly min-maxed build.

Nioh‘s In-Game Economy and Evolution

The value of gear you extract shifts dynamically based on your currency needs:

Stage	Gear Value	Strategy
Early	Materials more valuable	Dismantle all but worst
Mid	Balanced need	Mix dismantling & selling
Late	Drown in divines	Sell most, dismantle best

Once you begin finding divine equipment in large quantities, available crafting materials typically outpace the amount needed. With an ample supply banked, selling extra divine gear becomes the smarter move to generate gold for soul matching, tempering, or buying elixirs, bombs, etc.

However, even with mountains of divine fragments, you‘ll find certain rare crafting materials can still run scarce. Prioritize dismantling any gear that provides these precious reagents like Quality Umbracite, Divine Fragments, and Rare Perk Umbracite. Check the Nioh 2 disassembly guide to target the most valuable dismantling targets.

Working with the Blacksmith to Upgrade Gear

All those materials you stockpile by dismantling gear can be spent on powerful crafting options:

Soul Matching

• Increases gear + levels by sacrificing items up to 100 levels higher.

• Match within same rarity for best results.

• Resets familiarity requiring releveling unlocked perks.

• Costs scale exponentially – each +1 match gets massively more expensive.

Tempering

• Reroll a gear stat/bonus with Umbracite materials from dismantling.

• Useful for getting perfect bonuses on divine gear.

• Can inherit gear effect onto another item via tempering.

Transference

• Destroy one item to transfer a trait over to a different piece.

• Allows stacking best abilities from various sources onto one optimized item.

Restoration

• Repair max durability using excess materials instead of gold repairs.

• Much more cost efficient for pricier divine gear.

Forging

• Create new equipment by spending gold and materials like Whetstones, Leather, Wood etc.

• Limited availability. Unlocks more recipes by completing missions and challenges.

Mastering these crafting systems allows dominating the brutal combat with a perfectly constructed build.

Offering Gear for Amrita and Kodama Blessings

Be sure to also utilize the offering system at shrines which lets you consume gear for:

• Amrita – Sacrifice equipment in exchange for XP used to level stats and unlock samurai skills. A quick way to power level.

• Kodama Blessings – Gain permanent boosts for sacrificing gear to Kodamas including elixir blessing, better consumable drops, more gold from enemies etc.

Since offered gear is destroyed, balance this with dismantling and selling to avoid wasting potential gains. I typically only offer gear well below my current level when power farming Amrita. For Kodama blessings, I‘ll offer mid-tier gear with no outstanding traits to dismantle.

Closing Thoughts

And there you have it, my deep dive guide on optimizing your loot filtering strategy in Nioh! Determining what to dismantle versus sell requires considerable game knowledge and gear analysis expertise. But you‘ll master it in time fellow loot hoarder. Let me know if this guide helped you understand Nioh‘s labyrinthine loot systems better or if you have any other useful tips to share! I‘m always seeking more information and insight into build crafting. Now get out there, slay those demons, and don‘t leave any shiny piece of gear behind!