Your character’s gear is an essential part of your progression in Assassin’s Creed Shadows. This guide explains what types of gear you can get, how to improve your equipment, and how to change its appearance.
Table of contents
Character Gear Slots
The two protagonists in the game, Naoe and Yasuke, have separate inventory when it comes to armor and weapons. Every piece of gear is unique to the character it is designed for.
You can equip up to two weapons per character. You can also opt to leave a gear slot empty. In fact, there are some engravings that boost your stats and performance if you have only one weapon equipped.
What gear can Yasuke use
Yasuke has two slots for weapons – a primary and a secondary, a Helmet slot, an Armor slot, and the final slot is for an accessory – Amulet. The weapon types he can wield are Long Katana, Kanabo, Naginata, Bow and Teppo.
You cannot equip a Teppo and a Bow at the same time. Only one ranged weapon type is allowed at a time. There is no restriction in which weapon slot you want to place the Teppo or Bow, though.
Yasuke is both a tank and a brute force. He can take a lot more beating than Naoe and his skillset revolves around smashing and destroying things – both stationary and moving objects.
What gear can Naoe use
Naoe has a primary and secondary weapon slots, a Headgear slot, an Armor slot, and one slot for a Trinket. Her weapons are less diverse. She can only wield three types – Katana, Kusarigama and Tanto.
Naoe has access to unique throwing items, which are replenished from various locations in the game:
- Kunai – sharp knives that can be deadly if aimed at the target’s head. You can also retrieve them after you throw them.
- Shuriken – Mostly useful to distract enemies by breaking things from the environment or exploding barrels. They deal far less damage than kunai.
- Smoke Bombs – a helpful tool for giving yourself a breathing moment while suffocating and blinding the opponents.
- Shinobi Bells – Throw them to attract attention of nearby soldiers and other unfriendly NPCs.
The gameplay with Naoe is the more typical one for the Assassin’s Creed series – assassinate your targets one by one without revealing yourself. She is squishier in open combat. Her best friends are the shadows and the element of surprise.
How to tell who the gear pieces are for
When you loot a new weapon, armor or anything else you can equip, it will have a small white icon in the top right corner, showing you which character this piece is for. Sometimes you will play with Naoe and earn a weapon for Yasuke, or vice versa.
You do not need to transfer gear between your character. When you loot it, it will appear in the inventory of the character that can use it. I advise you to build a habit of checking your inventory when you switch characters.
You can unlock safe houses in many of the cities and towns you visit (Kakurega). There, you will find a storage chest you can use to dump unwanted items. However, there is rarely if ever a need for you to do that.
Gear Tiers and Levels
Every piece of gear you obtain, is defined by its rarity and level. Usually, the game is going to always match the level of the items you loot to the current level of your character at the time you obtain the new piece. You can upgrade levels but cannot change rarity of an individual piece of gear.
Gear Tiers explained
There are five tiers of gear in the game, based on rarity level. As you progress and level up, you will be finding higher tier gear. The tiers are as follows:
- Common (grey)
- Uncommon (green)
- Rare (blue)
- Epic (purple)
- Legendary (gold)
How to Upgrade Your Gear
You can upgrade your gear’s level up to your current level. However, you cannot change the rarity of a gear piece. Higher tiers of gear have more and better stat perks.
Upgrading the level of a gear piece, increases its stats. Upgrading costs resources. To upgrade your gear, you need to build the Forge in your Hideout. To build and use the Forge, you have to recruit the Blacksmith.
You recruit Heiji, the Blacksmith, very early in the game. The quest is called “Way of the Blacksmith”, and it is part of The League storyline, which is a core part of the game, and you cannot miss it.
Right after you start the Hideout during the main quest “From Spark to Flame”, Tomiko will tell you to find Heiji. This starts his recruitment quest.
After you build the Forge, the Forge building can be upgraded twice. Here is what you can do at each tier:
| Tiers | Perks |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | Weapons and armor can be upgraded to level 20 and dismantled | 40 | 30 | 10 |
 | Weapons and armor can be upgraded to level 40 and non-Legendary engravings can be applied to them. | 350 | 260 | 90 |
 | Weapons and armor can be upgraded to level 60 and Legendary engravings can be applied to them. | 700 | 520 | 170 |
Using Gold to upgrade gear
Upgrading Legendary gear requires a lot of Hideout Resources for each level. It’s considerably more expensive than upgrading a non-legendary item.
Gold chunks are a very rare and valuable Crafting material. You can use 1 Gold to upgrade an item to your current level without using other crafting materials.
We have a guide listing the various methods of how to get gold in Assassin’s Creed Shadows. Some of them are based on random drops, others are guaranteed drop or reward.
You can purchase gold from a select number of merchants around the world. You can also earn it from some quests. And you can get some through the Projects side activity, which has you deal with things like anomalies and collecting Fragments (familiar types of activities from the previous Assassin’s Creed titles.
Should you Dismantle Gear?
Dismantling gear will give you back some crafting materials. Each type of gear gives you back a different type of material when you are dismantling. Higher tiers of gear yield more resources when dismantled.
You do not have to dismantle your gear, but there is no harm in doing so. It is a bit slow as you have to click and hold the button for a couple of seconds and then wait for an animation to finish. And this is repeated for every single item you want to dismantle.
There is no weight limit and if you play the game the way it is intended – farming castles, exploring the wilds and looting things left and right, you will be overflowing with resources and not feel the need to dismantle. This is entirely up to you.
Engravings
Engravings provide an additional perk that will compliment, or in some cases, completely alter your build and approach to combat. You can have up to two engravings per equipped gear piece.
Types of Engravings
There are two types of engravings: Normal and Legendary. The Legendary ones have a gold-colored icon and aura. In the Engravings tab at the Forge, they are displayed on a gold background to make them more distinct.
How to engrave your gear
Every piece of gear you loot, above Common, will come with one Engraving. Rare and higher tiers can have two engravings. You can apply a second engraving by visiting the Forge in the Hideout. And you need the Forge to be at least tier 2.
You can explore the full catalog of engravings in the game by visiting the Blacksmith at the Forge in the Hideout.
The engravings you have already unlocked, will be at the top. The ones you have not yet unlocked, will provide a clue where to find and how to get them when you hover over them.
How to get Gear
In Assassin’s Creed Shadows, you obtain gear by looting treasure chests or as rewards from quests. Special (named, usually quest-related) enemies will also sometimes drop their weapons after you defeat them. Normal enemies will only drop basic loot.
As you level up and get more experience with the world of Assassin’s Creed Shadows, you will learn what to expect form a treasure chest when you see it, or even while opening it (the wheel progress bar is slow for chests with high quality items inside).
The larger the chest, the more valuable the item inside will be. The biggest chests, located usually on a high story inside the main structures in castles and forts, will yield a Legendary gear piece.
Most of the time, the game matches the level of the gear you obtain with your current level. There are a few unique items that you get as rewards from quests that have a predetermined level.
For example: if you are level 37 and defeat a level 40 special enemy, they may drop their weapon as a reward, and it will be level 40.
How to use Transmog
You can use a certain gear piece for its perks and boost that matches your build, and change its appearance to look like any other piece of gear you have already found or earned. This is commonly known as Transmogrification or Transmog.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows offers customization options for multiple parts of your weapons. You can also transmog your armor and head gear pieces or opt to hide them.
To modify the appearance of an a gear item, mark it in the inventory and click on “Customize” in the bottom right corner of the screen.
Here, you have the freedom to change the appearance of various parts of the weapon. You can use anything that you have previously found. Even if you dismantle or sell a piece of gear, your character will still be able to use its appearance in the Transmog menu.
You can change the appearance of everything, even the Trinkets and Amulets. They are tiny, but if you care about every detail, the game allows you to design your favorite outfit the way you want, while still getting all of the benefits of the most awesome gear collection you have looted.
When an item has its appearance modified, a small white star will appear in the bottom right corner of its icon.
The relationship between Gear and Mastery
Both Naoe and Yasuke can specialize with the usage of each weapon they are proficient with and unlock new passive and active abilities. This is done via the Mastery system.
Each of the two characters has six Mastery trees, which they can develop as you progress through the game. These Masteries are unique to them.
When you level up, you earn Mastery points, which you can spend on Passive boosts and Active Abilities in each Mastery tree. You earn Mastery Points by leveling and completing quests and objectives.
To unlock the higher tiers of the Mastery paths, you need Knowledge Points, which you earn by exploring the world and completing the “red markers” on the map.
We have a full guide to how Mastery works in Assassin’s Creed Shadows where all of this is explained in great detail. Check it out.
