A collection of Assassin’s Creed Shadows beginner tips to help you balance your progress. Learn the DOs and DONTs for the early game and discover how to improve your experience!
Assassin’s Creed Shadows has plenty of game systems and mechanics, interactions, secrets, and more things that make the experience immersive and fun.
There is a lot of information to process, and it can feel overwhelming. It’s easy to miss or forget something the game told you briefly in a tutorial. There are a few things the game never tells you.
This guide does NOT contain any story spoilers.
Settings to change
When you first start the game, you will see the “New Game Settings” screen. We have a detailed guide to all settings you should change and why, but will point the most important ones here quickly.
Canon Mode is a setting you choose when you start a new game and you cannot change it later. This eliminates all dialogues in every cutscene creating a fluent narrative experience, but also locks you off from a few interesting choices such as romances.
You can change at any point the Difficulty, Guided Exploration and Immersive Modes. Experiment to see which suits you best. Higher difficulty does not make the enemies feel like hitting a tank with a stick. It increases their skill and awareness. And, of course, their HP too. But not too dramatically.
The importance of Viewpoints
The map is massive and it takes a considerable amount of time to get from one region to another for the first time. It can be frustrating having to travel back and forth when you are in a bit of a hurry.
Make sure to unlock all Viewpoints as you come across them. It’s tedious, but worth it in the long run. We would even recommend going out of your way to unlock as many as possible, as early as possible.
Viewpoints also place markers for locations of interest, and you will want to visit most of them. A few are just named locations. Others give you lore updates. The best ones are the “red marker activities” (shrines, kuji-kiri, Kofun, hidden trails and more) that will grant you a Knowledge Point when you discover and complete them.
Get this powerful gear early on
The first truly open region you explore is Izumi Settsu. You can explore this region after completing the very linear tutorial levels.
For the first region, you will only be able to play as Naoe. Here are a few locations you should visit to get some nice upgrades for her:
- Explore the Old Kofun to obtain Amaterasu’s Blessing Legendary Trinket
- Complete the Path of Valor to get Tamakichi’s Hood.
After you complete the Path of Valor, you might want to get to some of the other Hidden Trails to earn the other half of this amazing dark assassin outfit for Naoe as soon as you can. Almost all of the Hidden Trails feature parkour only and only a single trail includes combat.
Yasuke vs Naoe
You will spend a few hours at the start of the game playing Naoe until you unlock Yasuke. After that point, you will be able to switch back and forth between them almost at any point and time.
There are a handful of quests and situations where you will be required to bring one or the other. The vast majority of the content is accessible to both.
You should not explore with Yasuke. He is heavy, big and strong, but also very slow and clumsy. The first time you do a leap of fate with him, I guarantee, you will fall of the chair from laughter.
Naoe is a lot more agile, and she moves more fluent and faster when climbing and doing parkour. Yasuke takes half an hour to pull himself to a rooftop. And there are locations he will literally be unable to go. Use Naoe to climb the Viewpoints and discover parts of the map and new markers.
When you want to solo raid a castle of a fort, this is Yasuke’s territory. He is very strong and can take a lot more beating than Naoe. He heals better, hits harder, screams louder.
Your Mastery and Knowledge Points are duplicated, so you are never going to miss out on progression with one character while playing with the other. When you switch, just remember to check your inventory for new gear and spend the newly acquired Mastery Points.
Keep a balance between main and side content
Assassin’s Creed has a ton of content and it can be overwhelming at first. Many players often struggle deciding what to do next when you are presented with a million markers, notifications and a full quest log (objectives board in this case). The best approach is to do an equal amount of main and side activities.
This way you won’t be too overleved or underleveled when heading to the next region. Do your story quest and some side activities that are in the same area. There are a lot of them, leaving a few of them behind for later is fine.
This strategy works really well with the change of seasons in Assassin’s Creed Shadows. This system opens up even more opportunities for you to diversify your gameplay and keep yourself entertained.
Use your allies and scouts
Scouts are incredibly valuable assets. Don’t hesitate to use them when looking for an important objective. Remember to use all scouts before the season changes, when this happens, they reset.
You can also refill a scout by paying 200 mon at a kakurega or your hideout by interacting with the cloth sacks.
Pet the animals
There are hundreds of animals wandering around. Petting them will let you adopt them and place them as decorations in your hideout. Be sure to pet the various breeds to complete your collection!
The Hideout is very important
You will be visiting the Hideout a lot as it is one of the key locations in the game for many reasons. This is your hub, your base of operations, your sanctuary.
Here you will collect resources delivered by your scouts, order the construction of new buildings and expand existing ones to unlock new features and upgrade opportunities.
Properly managing the Hideout will allow you to give priority to the things that matter to you the most. We highly recommend starting with the Stables, Study and Kakurega.
Having more scouts will allow you to be more efficient when you (solo) raid a castle or a fort. You can mark stockpiles with resources for your scouts to bring back home. This happens at season’s end.
It’s a horse, not a 4×4!
Horses make traveling faster and more comfortable. However, there are certain limits and not respecting them can make the whole process slower and frustrating.
Don’t try to use your mount to navigate complicated terrain or cross through rivers. You’ll likely get unmounted and will end up spending twice the time to reach your destination.
You can press a button to let your character auto-move. This is available while mounted as well. You can have your mount move in a slower or faster pace. If you are climbing up steep terrain, consider either slowing down, or even better – dismount and continue on foot.
If you have the Deluxe Edition, this amazing creature on the image above can be your mount. It’s important to note that the differences in mounts is purely cosmetic.
You will see several vendors offering horses and saddles, we advise you not to spend money on mounts too early. If you care about this aspect enough to spend resources, it’s perfectly fine.
Get a feel of the game’s vast world and explore it to see what other vendors have to offer. Early on Mon and resources are tight, so use them wisely.
Be careful when approaching an unknown location
Assassin’s Creed Shadows is full of powerful enemies on every step and behind every corner or door. Even the smallest room can have a deadly foe waiting inside.
Take all precautions when going into unknown territory, it might appear to slow down your process but by doing this you can prevent many unnecessary desynchronizations.
Maximize the usefulness of your gear
Gear comes with different stats and engravings, some are more useful in specific situations than others.
There are five tiers of rarity gear comes in and cannot be upgraded beyond their tier. Gear you find adjusts to your current level and can be upgraded to match levels you gain at the blacksmith.
You can modify your gear to your style. If you prefer to stay in the shadows, consider engravings that allow you to remove additional chunks of HP from targets on assassination. If you like open combat, tweak Yasuke (or Naoe, if you prefer her) to hit harder and benefit from his abilities and skills set.
Upgrade the Forge to be able to fully utilize the Engravings system. Place two engravings in each gear. Obtain Legendary Gear to unlock their unique Engravings.
Upgrade your gear
Do you have a set that you really like stat-wise but it’s getting outperformed by higher level gear? The Blacksmith can upgrade your gear, make sure to visit him once in a while. Also, I wouldn’t recommend upgrading anything but Legendary and Epic gear.
When you reach the higher levels, you will need to upgrade the Forge to allow your Blacksmith to upgrade your weapons to level 40 (Tier 2) and 60 (Tier 3) respectively.
You can also customize the appearance of your weapons by using the individual components of any weapon you have found thus far.
Don’t be afraid to loot Legendary Gear at low levels. Upgrading the items will cost an arm and a leg, but you can use Gold to upgrade an item to your current level. Gold is a rare currency. You can earn some from quests or by progressing through The Projects. Some obscure vendors also sell Gold pieces. Our guide on how to get gold in Assassin’s Creed Shadows will point you to every source, random or guaranteed.
Save the game
There are some instances where gameplay (not story) choices really matter, and they can alter your gameplay experience. It’s a good idea to have the ability to go back and change that choice if you’re not happy with it.
Obviously, there is no way for you to know when these will happen. My advice is to save once every thirty minutes and alternate between two or three save files.
The game only offers limited slots for saving. On Ubisoft Connect, where the entire VULKK team plays the game, you have 20 save slots. This is not a large number, but is certainly more than enough to allow you to comfortably spread your saves across different stages of your progression.
Small treasure chests hold random loot. If you are trying to collect the last piece of decoration for the Hideout, make a save at a chest and open-reload-open-reload as many times as you wish to see what loot you will get.
Gather knowledge points
Knowledge points are just as important as Mastery points, perhaps even more so. Gather lost pages from temples, explore kofuns, and do other activities to gain enough knowledge points. Mastery points won’t matter if you can’t spend them.
Knowledge Points allow you to progress through the Mastery levels for your characters. This happens at the same time for Naoe and Yasuke. You don’t need to do things twice to make progress on both.
After the 6th level of Mastery, you will unlock the Advanced Mastery tab where you can spend even more Knowledge Points on more passive boosts.
Our comprehensive guide to Mastery and Abilities will explain everything you need to know about this system and how to best utilize it to make sure Naoe and Yasuke stay at the peak of their powers, always!
Remove markers
Markers are very useful, but they can work against you if you’re not careful. With all the things to do, it’s easy to forget to remove the map markers. The Pathfinder can make you return to a previous location if you’re not careful with this as it tracks your most recent marker.
It’s called immersive for a reason
Immersive mode will have the characters speak in their languages, which are Japanese or Portuguese. Unless you are a fluent speaker, you really need to pay attention to the subtitles.
Turning away for five seconds can make you lose key information to understanding the story or making an important choice.
Don’t overestimate your power
It’s extremely satisfying to overpower multiple enemies with Yasuke or go on a massive killing spree with Naoe without being detected, but there are situations that can overwhelm both characters.
Even if you have the high ground, going against a huge number of enemies is likely to result in death (unless you play on lower difficulty, where you can faceroll things). There’s no shame in coming back later with better gear and a higher level.
Enemies you should not touch are marked with a skull icon above their heads. On any difficulty, they will usually one-shot you.
Those enemies are more than 3 levels higher than you and the game is soft capping your abilities. You will deal minimal to no damage to them, while one successful swing from them will result you a desynchronization for you.
You can defeat such opponents if it’s a 1v1, have the parry skills, and have a good chunk of patience. Just expect the fight to be lengthy and unforgiving.
Guardians will spawn when you put a region on Alert. They are among the most powerful enemies. You will recognize them by the red mask icon and the masks they actually wear on their faces.
Explore all angles before making a decision
There will be a few occasions where having all the intel will clarify if a choice is good or bad decision. You can decide what to do without hearing both sides of a story but you could lose on a good reward by doing so. Make sure to know as much as possible before making a life-or-death decision.
This is specifically true when it comes to a moral choice during a quest where you have to assassinate a target or group of people. We have in-depth walkthroughs to help explain each choice and what difference it makes if you decide to spear someone or assassinate them without researching anything more about them.
Take cool screenshots
Photo Mode is an incredibly fun tool that lets you take some amazing pictures without the UI showing up. This does not affect the gameplay experience but is a great way to capture your favorite moments.
Play with the game settings
With so many configurations of PC hardware, it’s impossible to say that one setting is the best. It all depends on your preferences and the power of your computer.
Try playing with RT on, cap the FPS, or lower the shadow quality. Don’t be afraid to change the settings of the game, you can always return them to the default setting if you’re not pleased with the result.
Never underestimate enemies
Every enemy is a threat. A lot of them might look weak compared to the powerful bosses, but if you’re not careful the risk of death is incredibly high.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a low-class samurai or a woman wielding two knives. One bad dodge or failed parry and you’re done.
Use the transmog feature
Love your outfit but hate the stats or vice-versa? The transmog feature lets you wear any set while still having the appearance of your favorite set of clothes. With so many amazing sets in Assassin’s Creed Shadows, you will never need to worry about not looking like a true assassin/samurai.
Personalize your hideout
The hideout begins as a useful but boring-looking place. There are hundreds of accessories that you can use to make it the ultimate lair for the League.
Probably not all players will bother with this part, but it’s nice to have such a calm and peaceful activity in the game to do between quests. If you love decorating digital houses (a typical perk in pretty much every live service or MMO game), you will likely love doing it here as well.
Work smarter not harder
Sometimes all you need to do is a very specific task, but it’s easy to make things harder for yourself. Let’s use the castles as an example. All you need to do to unlock the legendary treasure chest is to kill the Samurai Daisho.
Hunt them down and assassinate them quietly, there’s no need to take out every single enemy in the castle. I won’t deny that it’s fun and satisfying, but spending up to an hour in a single castle will slow your progress. Especially considering the number of all castles and forts available.
If that’s your approach, it’s completely fine but consider what is going to happen when the alarm is triggered and what dying in that spot means. You will load back outside of the guarded area.
We will be adding more tips in time, but this is enough for a start, we think. You can add yours in the comments and if they are valuable and we forgot to mention something really useful, we will be happy to add it.
Talk to random NPCs
Pay attention to NPCs that are not silent. If they talk to themselves or to you, or just cry or complain about something as you pass near them, stop and listen or talk to them.
Sometimes you have to save them from an angry boss or a cranky Samurai, sometimes they just need you to give them some advice. And in some cases, you just have to listen to two guys talking about something interesting.
All of these seemingly (but not really) random encounters will give you clues and locations of interesting things to check out. Sometimes it could be a Legendary gear piece, other times it could be a side quest or something else.
If you are kind and helpful to those NPCs, they will offer to reveal a clue about a location you should visit to find something useful there or ask them to act as a temporary scout for you, at least until the season changes.
Start the “Kill X Bandits” quests as soon as possible
In each one of the nine regions, there is one NPC that will give you the simplest of all tasks – kill an X number of a type of enemy that this region has an abundance of. It could be pirates, bandits or something else.
These quests are always split in tiers with each tier requiring a certain amount of specific NPC type killed. The rewards from these quests are not significant and you would never earn something invaluable like a Legendary gear piece, but you will be completing the requirements for these quests between other tasks, simply by play the game and doing other activities that interest you.
Don’t skip an NPC that wants to talk to you. They are usually found in populated areas, not in the wilds. Once you talk to them, they will appear in their region’s circle on your objectives board.
Honor Jizu statues and pray at shrines
As you travel, you will often encounter two little objects on the side of the road – a small shrine where you can pray or a Jizu statue you can honor.
Honoring the statues gives you a small amount of XP and progresses a side quest where you have to find all 69 of them. Praying at shrines gives you a buff. It’s random, but you can pray again to get a new one.
