This Assassin’s Creed Odyssey Tips Guide for Beginners focuses on helping new players get the most out of the game by taking advantage of all possible systems
Please note, this article does NOT contain any story spoilers from Assassin’s Creed Odyssey!
Ubisoft kept their promise to create a fully fleshed out RPG with Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. In this guide I will share a few tips and tricks that will help you get a nice head-start as a new player and allow you to enjoy the game to its maximum potential. I’ve split the tips in several categories – Tweaks to gain Better Performance, Best Starter Abilities and Ship Upgrades, Exploration and Gameplay Mission Types (how to read and use the map of Ancient Greece) and a few general misc tips at the end.
GRAPHICAL SETTINGS FOR BEST PERFORMANCE
This may be specifically aimed at PC players. The port is not exactly the most flawless one and the game is quite heavy for CPU power. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey doesn’t run well on Gen 1 processors and the developers only added AVX support with Update 1.0.3.
There are, however, a few settings that have significant impact on the performance of the game. Lowering some of them down, can yield great increase of FPS at minimal to no cost at all on visual fidelity:
VOLUMETRIC CLOUDS – be honest, how often do you stop to stare at the beautiful skies in any game. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey looks stunningly beautiful, but the sky sure is one of the things you can compromise with. It is also the thing that will have the biggest impact on the game’s performance. If you have been pumping it up to the maximum setting, try lowering it to High or even Medium and check the difference.
The clouds look only a tiny bit less impressive, but my personal test showed 5 to 10 FPS increase – less noticeable in crowded areas, where the frames drop for so many other reasons, more noticeable in the wilderness.
SHADOWS – Yeah, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey’s shadows, like pretty much every other game can look incredibly good at a very high cost or slightly more blurry, but with much less strain on your hardware.
In my personal tests I got on average 5 frames more from dropping the Shadows setting from max
TEXTURE DETAILS – the third place is taken by the setting for the quality of textures of items and characters around you. While this setting’s performance cost is quite high, I would strongly recommend you try to leave it to as high as possible. Part of this game’s charisma is the exploration and it’s a lot more entertaining to look around at the incredibly good-looking vistas and landscapes rather than something muddy and blurry.
ANTIALIASING and AMBIENT OCCLUSION – Lowering these will not produce any great visual quality decrease, especially if you play in a high enough resolution (for AA). The ambient occlusion is a setting that produces a more realistic lightning effects, but is in no way a game-breaking tweak or something you cannot live without.
BEST STARTER ABILITIES FOR GROUND COMBAT
My Abilities and Combat Guide will give you a much more in-depth information about how all mechanics work in the game. If you don’t have the time to check them out or think the following tips will be enough, then keep reading! :)
One of the best things about this game is that it allows you to reset your abilities and try a new build at any time (out of combat, of course). And this comes at a very low-cost too. Only a few hundred drachmae.
Some of the best abilities to pick early are:
- Sparta Kick – this is an amazing ability that can be used on all kinds of enemies to knock them off cliffs. Extremely useful against powerful mercenaries, for example.
- Second Wind – the ability to heal yourself is invaluable in any build. Even though it is on the second row in the Warrior tree, you will get great use of it as an Assassin or a Hunter as well. Invaluable against tough bosses and longer encounters.
- Sixth Sense – gives you that little extra time to react if an enemy surprises you. If you are a more experienced player, but prefer to play on Normal or Easy difficulty, you may skip that ability for the most part.
- Devastating Shot – great for dealing high amounts of damage and either one-shot an enemy soldier or enter the fight with a great advantage.
- Flaming Attacks – my personal favorite. Very fun and useful at low levels as well as later on. Great for a combo with Ring of Chaos.
- Critical Assassination – this passive allows you to one-shot even enemies one level higher than you with no problem.
- Revelation – it isn’t a combat ability, but is arguably one of the best early purchases you can make. Upgrading it later to level 2 and 3 increases its radios and allows you to find goodies easier. Just… don’t steal… much!
You can (and should!) use your torch as a weapon. It’s surprisingly strong in so many cases… until Ubisoft gets it nerfed, eventually.
Since I am a huge fan of the Warrior tree, I tend to run with upgraded Ring of Chaos and Flaming Attacks. These two abilities create a great combo for when you are surrounded by three or more enemies.
Activating the Flaming swords and then stunning the enemies around you, will cause them all to burn automatically. The Assassin Tree may be the most classical Assassin’s Creed type of tree, but the Warrior tree is more suitable for all kinds of purposes and is probably a better choice for a new player, who isn’t familiar with most of the game’s mechanics and cannot make the best out of the more advanced skills in the Assassin and Hunter trees that better suit more experience players.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey doesn’t restrict you from picking abilities from higher rows first if you have unlocked them, so you can have a very powerful build of only the active abilities that you do want and plan to use.
Don’t try to unlock all abilities. This is kind of impossible at the moment. There are 22 Stones all over Greece that will give you a free Ability Point for discovering them.
Adding this to the 49 Ability Points from leveling (current level cap is 50), you wont be able to max out of even purchase all abilities. This is intentional. Ubisoft wants you to focus on specific builds for your character.
Also, you have limited space to quick-slot these abilities so you wont be able to use them all at the same time anyway.
Get the most out of the game as early as possible by exploring the ancient tombs and ruins and earn over 20 FREE ABILITY POINTS by discovering the Ancient Stele locations.
BEST STARTER SHIP UPGRADES
My Ships and Crew Guide will give you a much more in-depth information about how all the mechanics work in the game. If you don’t have the time to check them out or think the following tips will be enough, then keep reading! :)
I would advise you to invest crafting materials and money into the Arrows and Fire upgrades first. The Arrows are a great long-range tool that, if aimed properly, does a significant amount of damage to the enemy ships. Being able to shoot arrows and/or javelins twice (or more) in a row gives you a decent advantage over pretty much any ship in the beginning of the game (and not only).
When you are surrounded by multiple ships, and especially on higher difficulties, it may become harder to see and predict where the attacks will come from (especially for beginner players). Upgrading your Crew Armor for the Brace perk is very useful in situations like these.
Upgrading the Hull is a given, of course. This is the perk that allows you to assign more Lieutenants, plus it also increases your ship’s armor and health, allowing you to last longer in combat.
Be careful when upgrading your ship. As I mentioned previously in this guide, the Naval gameplay is a lot more integrated into Assassin’s Creed Odyssey than it was in Origins, but it’s still more or less a side-activity for the most part. Always leave yourself enough crafting materials and money for the character upgrades, engravings and other things.
There are missions that demand of you to use your ship. Sooner or later you will run into a moment where upgrading your ship will be mandatory. Your options are to either invest into serious upgrades or lower the difficulty of the game for a specific encounter. Don’t worry too much, though. No main mission requires too much of you. Upgrading your ship more seriously is something you should only do if you enjoy the naval combat (it’s a significant step up from Origins’ mechanics, by the way) and/or you want to fight the Epic Ships for greater loot and challenge.
BEST EXPLORATION APPROACH AND MISSIONS TYPES
The map of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is enormous. I mean beyond gigantic. There are areas you will not get to explore fully, even if you want to. At some point I realized that I am well past level 10 and still not finished with Kephallonia.
My advice is for you to pace yourself. If you are so deeply involved and intrigued and desperately want to finish 100% of the missions, then do not skip anything. Some quests may (and will!) disappear or become inaccessible after certain events happen in the game – in most cases these are some small and meaningless side quests that become locked from completion after you pass a certain main story segment or chapter.
As for the types of quests, let’s take a closer look of the map of Ancient Greece. You will find that there are three general types of missions – main missions, side missions marked with a gold icon and side missions marked with a white icon. Then, there are also places of interest, notice boards, weekly events and… so much more. But, let’s focus on the first three:
- The main mission icons are mandatory, therefore you have to get through them if you want to see the fate of Kassandra and Alexios.
- The side missions with gold icons are optional, but often provide a great story, cinematic scenes and meaningful objectives. The rewards from these are also interesting.
- The side missions with grey icons are optional as well and are often the so-called “fetch quests”. They are usually quick and easy to complete – go there and kill someone or visit someone and help them with something kind of activities. They provide less interesting rewards and you can skip them freely.
As far as Exploration goes, I recommend you to pick the Exploration Mode vs the Guided Mode. My guide explains in details what these two modes are about and how different are they from each other, so I wont talk too much about them here. Just the basics:
- Pick Guided mode if you are short on time and don’t think you can afford to spend 50 or even 100 hours with Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.
- Pick Exploration Mode if you are so into the game that you don’t want to be hand-hold from objective to objective and have a ton of icons and arrows on your screen all the time.
If you play in Exploration Mode, use Ikaros often and a lot! Your trusty bird can help you spot places of interest, inspect enemy camps for hidden treasures and numbers’types of enemies inside and so much more. Ikaros’s perception gets better as you discover more Sync locations.
BEST WEAPON TYPES, CRAFTING AND UPGRADING
There is no one best type of weapon for all kinds of gameplay. My personal favorite is the heavy axe. Its long-ranged swings and massive damage per hit completely make up for its slower attack speed. Long after reaching level 50, I am still using this very same axe that you see in the image above. It’s a beast.
If you are a fan of silent assassin-style gameplay, obviously, a sword or daggers would be a much better fit for you.
Based on what build you go for, make sure that the weapons you use have perks boosting your build. If you go for the Warrior Build, having weapons and armor that boosts your Hunter damage would be next to pointless. Engravings that boost the damage performance of your character with the specific type of weapons that you prefer to use, is vital. For example, I like having “heavy weapons” boosts for my Warrior Alexios.
Crafting/Upgrading is quite expensive and not just in the beginning. Prices of upgrading your gear scale up with yours and their levels. Still, I would recommend you not to upgrade your items every two levels or so. Do it once every four levels or even five if you play on the Easy or Normal Difficulty. Same goes for Hard, unless you are about to face a boss. For boss battles on the higher difficulties you need all the boosts you can get to make the fights a little bit smoother and… faster.
If you ever find yourself short on crafting materials, running around the walls of Athens for weapon racks would be a good idea. I found this tip on Reddit, shared originally by u/Sean_Connor and it proved not just valid, but very useful and easy to do. To make sure you don’t get a high bounty on your head, assassinate the nearby guards.
MISC AND GENERAL TIPS
Outside the categories you have gone through, there are a ton of tips and suggestions I have for you. You will find them all below. Each paragraph is roughly dedicated to and describing a separate topic.
Take the time to discover as many Sync points as possible. When you are nearby one, don’t just pass by it. Take the extra minute or two and go to the top of that building or mountain. Having the freedom to teleport from one corner of the map to the other is a great time saver later on.
Don’t bother with gear upgrades too often. Unless you play on Hard or Nightmare, you should be fine with a gear upgrade every 4 levels or so. Always upgrade your weapon(s) first, they provide the biggest difference in terms of fight performance and duration.
Save often! Save on different slots. Take advantage of the multi-save slots.
If you are so short on time and want to experience primarily the main story of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, consider purchasing one of the items available in the Time Savers category of the In-Game store. The game is not grindy, but very time-consuming. The amount of content is incredible, but sooner or later you will start feeling bored. Don’t allow that to happen before you have finished the main story. It’s worth your time!
Don’t ever throw your favorite armor or weapons. You can upgrade them at a Blacksmith for a modest price of Drachmae (the money currency) and some crafting materials. Also don’t be a slave to the rarity of an item. If a Rare item has the better types of stats than a Legendary for your specific build and active skills, just take the Purple item and be happy.
The Mercenary System is your best friend when it comes to greater rewards for defeating tougher opponents. Killing mercenaries (regardless if they chase you or not) is very rewarding and fun. Climbing up the tiers of the Mercenary system provides additional perks and bonuses, such as cheaper prices at merchants and Blacksmiths and more.
Although you are a Spartan-born, do not take that as a rule for who you side with in the Conquests. I suggest you take the Invading army’s side more often as they provide more and better loot after the event is over. Try to stay neutral in general.
Change your weapons engravings as you see fit. You have to pay the crafting materials price only the first time. After that it’s just Drachmae and not a lot. As you unlock more engravings, you should swap the older and weaker ones for better quality and tier ones.
