Turn on auto-loot. Before you do anything else in Stellar Blade, go into the settings menu and enable the 'Auto-Loot Items' option. This single quality-of-life tweak transforms the entire game, letting you automatically pick up all resources, currency, and items from defeated enemies and containers just by walking near them. It saves you thousands of R2 button presses over the course of your journey and lets you focus on what matters: combat and exploration. It’s the single most important setting the game doesn't surface.
Once that's done, there are a host of other non-obvious systems, high-value loot types, and combat mechanics that are crucial for a smoother, more powerful playthrough. From identifying the specific chests that contain new outfits to knowing which skills can interrupt supposedly unblockable boss attacks, these are the essential tips Stellar Blade never tells you.
How to Find the Best Loot (and What to Look For)
Not all loot is created equal, and the most valuable items are often tucked away in specific containers or carried by unique enemies. Knowing what to look for will dramatically accelerate your progress and unlock Eve's best cosmetics.
Prioritize These Three Loot Sources
Your scanner will highlight many interactive objects, but your eyes should be trained to spot three things above all else:
- Small, Skittering Robots: You'll often find these little bots hiding in dark corners or just off the main path. They flee on sight, so be quick to destroy them. They are a primary source of crucial upgrade materials, including Tumblr Expansion Modules (which increase your rechargeable potion count) and Drone Modules.
- Tall, Rectangular Boxes: These are the big prize. While standard chests contain consumables and materials, these specific tall, squarish containers are where you'll find new outfits and accessories for Eve. If you care about cosmetics, hunting for these is a top priority.
- Briefcase-Style Boxes: These flatter, more metallic cases hold Exospine modules. Exospines are powerful gear pieces that grant significant passive bonuses, defining your build and enhancing Eve's combat capabilities. You want to collect every single one you find.
Stellar Blade™ in-game screenshot
Upgrade Your Drone's Hacking Tool
Early in your adventure, you'll encounter locked chests that require a hacking tool. This isn't an item you find, but a skill you must unlock for your drone. To avoid frustrating backtracking, invest in the drone's hacking skill tree as soon as you can. Many of the game's best resources are locked behind these electronic doors, and you'll be kicking yourself if you have to leave them behind.
Combat Secrets for an Early Advantage
Stellar Blade's combat is demanding, but a few key pieces of knowledge can give you a significant edge, especially in the early hours when your toolset is limited.
Your First Skill Points Have a Clear Destination
The parry and dodge timings can feel unforgiving at first. The single best thing you can do to make combat more manageable is to immediately invest your SP into the Focus Boost and Reflex Boost skills in the Survival tree. These skills explicitly increase the window for executing a Perfect Parry and a Perfect Dodge, respectively. They are a night-and-day upgrade that makes the defensive game feel more responsive and less punishing. Before you even think about flashy combos, unlock these.
Stellar Blade™ in-game screenshot
Use Beta Skills to Interrupt 'Unblockable' Attacks
When an enemy glows with a yellow circle, it's signaling an attack that can only be avoided with a Perfect Dodge. Or so the game implies. There's another way: hitting them with a Beta Skill. Activating a Beta Skill like Shield Breaker or Triplet as the enemy begins their unblockable attack will interrupt them completely, cancelling their animation and often leaving them open to a follow-up. Saving a bar of Beta energy for these critical moments is a powerful defensive tactic, especially if you're struggling with dodge timing.
Stop Spamming and Pace Your Combos
Button mashing is a death sentence. Many of Eve's combo finishers have significant recovery animations, or 'end lag', during which you are locked in place and cannot dodge or parry. A smart enemy will use this window to land a devastating hit. Get into the habit of pacing your attacks. Use shorter strings, watch the enemy for their tells, and be ready to cancel your offense into a defensive maneuver. Deliberate, controlled aggression is far more effective than relentless, mindless spamming.
Mastering Your Skill Trees and Abilities
How you spend your SP and build your energy meters is just as important as your execution in a fight. A focused build is always better than a scattered one.
Go Deep, Not Wide
When upgrading your skills, resist the temptation to spread your points thinly across multiple trees. It's far more effective to focus on fully upgrading a single skill you use often. Most skills gain a powerful second stage or follow-up attack as their final upgrade. A fully maxed-out Triplet, for example, is dramatically more useful than having the base-level version of four different skills. Pick your favorites and commit to them before branching out.
Understand Your Burst Skills
Later in the game, you'll unlock powerful Burst Skills. Two, in particular, have game-changing utility:
- Tempest: This area-of-effect attack has a secret property: you are completely invulnerable during the entire charge-up animation. You can use this to tank through a massive, otherwise unavoidable boss attack, take zero damage, and then punish them with the skill's high-damage blast. Think of it as an offensive panic button.
- Overdrive: This is a self-buff that massively increases your attack power and speed. Its casting animation is incredibly fast and will even interrupt nearby enemies. Activate it when a boss is staggered or downed to unleash a torrent of damage.
Stellar Blade™ in-game screenshot
Essential Gear You Might Have Missed
Some of the most powerful Exospines in the game are hidden away. Here are two you absolutely should not miss.
The Reflex Exospine
If you're still working on your defensive timing, this is the exospine for you. It further increases your parry and dodge windows, stacking with the Focus Boost and Reflex Boost skills. Once upgraded, it also speeds up your shield regeneration. You can find it in the subway area, on a mission to a location called the 'Closed-Off Platform'. Look for a train car you can enter; the briefcase containing this exospine is at the very end.
The Beta Trance Exospine
This is one of the most powerful offensive tools in the game. When maxed out, using a Beta Skill has a chance to put Eve into a 'Trance' state, granting you unlimited Beta energy for a short time. When this procs, you can spam your strongest skills back-to-back, stun-locking even the toughest bosses. To find it, explore the sewers during the main story until you find an abandoned hideout. Eve will comment on feeling warmth. Open the nearby gate, break through some wooden barricades at the end of the path, and defeat the enemies in the hidden room to claim this exospine from a box.
Unlocking Hidden Shops and Cosmetics
Not all of Xion's vendors are available from the start. You'll need to build relationships and complete specific side quests to unlock Eve's full customization potential.
Unlock the Hair Salon
You can change Eve's hairstyle and color, but you have to earn it. A few hours into your time in Xion, you'll be able to start a quest by visiting the closed shop with a large, glowing red sign: Gwen's Hair Salon. The owner will send you into the Wasteland to find her lost equipment—scissors, a blow dryer, and clippers. The items are clearly marked on your map. Once you collect them all, the game offers a convenient fast travel option directly back to the salon. Complete the quest to unlock a full suite of new hairstyles and color dyes.
Level Up Your Vendors
Affinity matters. The more you buy from vendors like the Information Broker (near the bulletin board) and Sisters' Junk, the more their inventory expands. The Information Broker, in particular, sells some of the game's best-looking outfits very early on, and it doesn't cost much to raise his affinity level. Check back with vendors frequently and spend your Vitcoins to unlock their best wares.