The best Sekiro mods can speed or slow time, change Sekiro's outfit, and even change the combat to feel more like Bloodborne. Sekiro runs well on PC in our experience, but there's always room for improvement, and you'll find utilities below that can help Sekiro run better with your PC setup. And then there's the fun stuff, like turning your samurai into a dead-eyed Woody from Toy Story.

Word of warning. As always, mods that change game files can put your savegames etc at risk. Be sure to back up your save before messing around with anything. You can find the save files at C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Sekiro. Also make sure you switch the game off via the menu screen (don't recklessly Alt-F4), as this can cause save file corruption.

Here's our roundup of the best Sekiro mods.

Install Sekiro mod engine

Link: Nexus Mods

Many mods rely on the Sekiro mod engine to work. It's a file editor that lets mods mess with the game's guts. It also skips the logos at the start of the game so you can get stabbing faster. Convenient!

Unlock framerate, change FOV, add custom resolutions, change game speed

Link: Nexus mods

This single utility lets you adjust Sekiro to match your PC setup. If your PC is powerful enough you can unlock the framerate for better performance, or set a custom resolution to make use of an ultrawide monitor.

You can also make some significant optional changes to the game. You can choose to stop dragonrot from accumulating when you die, or remove sen and XP loss on death. You can even set the game speed to run faster or slower, which can be a great way to learn parrying, or help you out against a particularly tough boss.

When you install the mod, note the extensive instructions on graphics card settings and more in the mod's description page. The utility patches the game as it's running, which can be fiddly, but it's worth it to make these useful changes. If you can get it working this is one of the best Sekiro mods in our round up.

Fight any boss, in any order, at any time

Link: Nexus Mods

For the more hardcore Sekiro veterans, this Boss Rush mod is an incredible way to hone your skills replay boss fights with no fluff in-between. Once installed, you can instantly teleport to any boss fight from the Dilapidated Temple. Each boss grants 1,000 sen for upgrades and XP for upgrades.

The mod also streamlines other mechanics to make the Boss Rush more convenient:

• Skip the Ashina Reservoir tutorial segment
• Item pickups and drops do not pause the game
• No in-game tutorial popups
• No cutscene on first death
• No slow-walk areas
• Exchange multiple gourd seeds and multiple prayer necklaces at once
• Sold out items are removed from the shop

Learn the basics with Sekiro 'easy mode'

Link: Nexus Mods

If you wish Sekiro had an easier mode so you can just enjoy its technical combat and beautiful worlds, modder ttwin531 has you covered. The mod increases your attack power, defense, and stamina. It also grants unlimited spirit emblems, which can be a big help in boss fights where certain shinobi tools work especially well.

Turn Sekiro's combat into Bloodborne

Link: Nexus Mods

This mod completely reconfigures Sekiro's combat to resemble From's PS4 exclusive Bloodborne. Blocking no longer deflects attacks and combat is now focused on dodging. Vanilla Sekiro downplays dodging by having only six invincibility frames, but this mod bumps it to 16 by default. It also adds Bloodborne's rally system, which lets players quickly gain back health they've recently lost by landing hits on enemies.

Play as Emma, Genichiro, a big frog, and much more

Link: Nexus Mods

This entry in our best Sekiro mods list replaces the Sekiro player character model with a range of characters including Emma, a monkey, an Ashina samurai, Genichiro, Isshin, and loads more.

Enable PS4 controller prompts

Link: Nexus Mods

The PC version of Sekiro has a hard time recognising Playstation 4 controllers. This is odd, because modders have found native PS4 buttons in the game's files, they just aren't activated. Fix that with the Native PS4 Buttons mod.

Change Sekiro's outfit

Link: Nexus Mods

Bored of the One-armed Wolf's brown and orange gear? Blend into the shadows with this simple but effective colour swap.

Link: Nexus mods

Get two gorgeous, detailed outfits in this mod, Oni of the Forest and Oni of the Shadows. They look great with the katana appearance mod below.

Give Sekiro a beard

Link: Nexus mods

The mod darkens the wolf's hair too. It really suits him.

Add swords of moonlight

Link: Nexus mods

Moonlight swords appear in Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne, but it's not normally the sort of weapon a shinobi favours. This mod replaces Sekiro's sword with either the DS3 or Bloodborne moonlight sword. All of Sekiro's animations are designed for a smaller sword, but it's a fun novelty nod to From Software's history.

Change your katana's appearance

Link: Nexus mods

The Holy Moonlight Kusabimaru is a gorgeous, tasteful take on the famous moonlight blades of the Soulsborne games.

Add elemental damage cosmetic effects to your katana

Link: Nexus mods

The Elemental Weapon Buffs mod lets you swig gourds to supercharge your katana. The mod includes  eight purely cosmetic effects including fire, lightning, blood, and the awesome flaming purple divine confetti effect.

Add reshades

Reshades change the saturation and colour balance of the image the game outputs, and sometimes add anti-aliasing and depth-of-field effects. Some reshades can be quite intense and over the top, but if you like more pronounced shadows and dark colours then the simple 'Sekiro HDR Preset' might do the trick. The Simple Realistic Reshade also gives the game's colours a big pop.

For more on Sekiro, check out our Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice review.

Add Thomas the Tank Engine

Link: Nexus mods

Replace the great serpent with a monstrous Thomas the Tank Engine. This mod continues the grand modding tradition of adding Thomas the Tank Engine to games where he has no business being. Here he is in Monster Hunter: World.

Play as Krillin, the strongest man on Earth

Link: Nexus Mods

This simple Krillin reskin finally gives the guy a chance to kick butt without freaking out every two seconds. His head is appropriately oversized and his gi is wonderfully bright against the muted tones of Sekiro.

While you're at it, be Woody

Link: Nexus Mods

Or don't, that would be fine too. Actually yea, definitely don't play as Woody in Sekiro. It's a cursed thought and a cursed image. Woody's eyes feel no pain and no regret as he mercilessly drives his blade into flesh. He's the bad guy.

Play in first-person

Link: Nexus Mods

If you're a glutton for punishment, why not play Sekiro in first-person and die a lot more often? This mod changes the perspective and turns Wolf into a pair of floating arms. You'll need to install Cheat Engine to get this running. 

In Sekiro you play a shinobi on a quest for vengeance. An army of enemy soldiers and monsters stand in the way, but they can’t fight you if they can’t see you. You can battle everyone face to face if you want to, but why risk your life when you can stealthily avoid enemies, or kill them instantly from the shadows?

The dark fantasy world of Sekiro has many places to hide. Crouching in the long grass makes you practically invisible. You can use this position of safety to observe enemies in an area and look for routes past them. If you catch an enemy in the long grass you can kill them instantly with a Deathblow finisher from stealth.

Your shinobi can also grapple up to high ground. In forested areas high branches offer stealthy pathways that can help you to evade enemies. Alternatively you can position yourself directly above an enemy to open up an insta-kill drop attack. In tiered temple areas you can use your grapple to approach rooftops from unexpected angles and attack enemies in the back for an instant kill.

Whenever an opponent’s back is exposed you have a chance to take them out. A gas explosion in the middle of combat can hide your position and let you get some sneaky stealth kills, even in the middle of a group. Even if you prefer to fight every enemy, stealth is a powerful tool. You can often take out the first member of a group instantly from stealth, improving your odds against the rest of your enemies. A combination of stealth and outright brawling may be the smartest way to play.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice has only been out a matter of days, but modders are already playing with its innards. One of them has found a way to unlock the framerate, letting you run it at more than 60 fps—provided you have a powerful enough rig.

The mod, posted on the Widescreen Gaming Forum by user jackfuste, is still being tested and might cause bugs, but it's letting some players run the game at more than 100 fps. 

To get it to work, you'll need to download the mod from the link above, unpack Sekiro using Steamless, run the patcher and apply the patch to Sekiro.exe. I'd only recommend it you've tried this sort of thing before, but if you're confident then it could give you a big performance boost.

If you're having trouble getting it working, make sure you click through the rest of the forum thread, which contains plenty of troubleshooting ideas. It seems to be working better in windowed mode than in fullscreen.

Tom's review in progress of Sekiro is here, and keep your eyes peeled for the full review next week.

Thanks, Dark Side of Gaming.