Nothing feels better than increasing your health pool to survive hits with high damage numbers. While upgrading stats works differently than other soulslikes, you can still increase your maximum health in Rise of the Ronin.
Raising Your Max Health in Rise of the Ronin
Aside from finding gear that gives a relatively small percentage of a maximum health boost, there are three other (permanent) ways to increase your health in the game. However, one isn’t accessible until after you’ve finished the story.
Strength Tree Skill
There is a ‘Max. Health’ skill in the Strength Tree with three tiers that costs Strength Points. The first level is a 4.5% raise, but that definitely makes a difference in the early game.
Strength Points often seem the toughest to acquire, so it might be a bit until you can get the second two tiers.
Unarmed Weapon Proficiency
Every other level with the Unarmed weapon category (only using your fists) will get you a 0.2%, 0.3%, and then a 0.4% increase.
There are only 25 levels of proficiency, so these come rather quickly. Plus, with weapon proficiency, you’ll gain XP for the weapon type as long as it is equipped. This means you can use whatever weapon you want as your primary, keep your fists equipped without using them, and they will still level up.
Breakthrough Tree Skill
One of the rewards for beating Rise of the Ronin is that you get access to the Breakthrough skill tree. This lets you use skill points more directly on stats like health, defense, and attack. The skill related to health gives you 50 health per level for 15 levels, coming out to a total of 750 additional health.
Plus, the first few levels only cost a single skill point, and you probably have at least a few banked by that time to use.
Using all three methods to increase your maximum health in Rise of the Ronin should help you tackle Midnight mode. A blacksmith can also help you transfer health bonuses to new pieces of equipment.
