10 Tips for Playing Assassin's Creed Shadows

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Assassin's Creed Shadows is shaping up to be one of the most interesting and exciting installments this franchise has seen since Origins revitalized it in 2017. We previewed the game last year at Gamescom and finally went hands-on with it a couple of months ago. After numerous delays, I was happy to finally play the full build and can say it was definitely worth the wait.

I've spent over a dozen hours in Shadows at this point, across both the PC (via Nvidia's GeForce Now streaming platform) and on Xbox. Here are a handful of tips to help you get better prepared for entering feudal Japan.

Exploration is key

Shadows emphasizes exploration above anything else. One of the first choices you'll make when starting your game is whether you want the guide to signpost each object, holding your hand the entire way or if you want to engage in the game's more immersive directions. The game defaults to giving you only vague directions and hints about where your next quest objective is. This bolsters the game's emphasis on exploring the environment as you go. Finding new locations will grant you extra experience points and can often lead to additional side quests, random enemy encounters, hidden tombs and much more. You'll even find full cut scenes that flesh out character backstories, so explore as much as possible.

Use temples to stock up on knowledge points

One of the more useful extracurriculars is temples. Each of these will offer different bonuses, but knowledge points are some of the best rewards. For example, many temples will task you with finding three hidden scrolls somewhere on their grounds (or in trees/on rooftops). Knowledge points are accumulated in your mastery menu and unlock levels to progress through more of your characters' various skill trees (which you can then spend mastery points on to unlock new abilities).

Don't buy gear

Assassin's Creed games sometimes give the player a ton of different loot (Odyssey) and sometimes offer a more limited selection (Valhalla), but Shadows has returned to overloading you with new weapons and armor. Because of this, it's not worth buying new gear from any of the vendors. While you'll always see stats for sale, you will find new loot so quickly that those stats will quickly become obsolete. Unless you find something you really like the design of, just stick to finding new gear from chests and enemies.

Pathfinder might not show the shortest route

When a quest or location is tracked, you can hold Left on the D-pad to turn on pathfinder. This will bring up a white line in the game that will pulse and direct you to that waypoint. (Your horse won't auto-follow that path like it did back in Assassin's Creed Odyssey.)

While this guide is useful for directing you, the line will usually stick to roads and obvious pathways, meaning it isn't necessarily the shortest route as the crow flies. You may be able to find shortcuts and faster routes by going off path, directly toward the waypoint on your overhead compass. At the same time, not all geography can be easily passed, and going off route might lead you to a forest so dense your horse can't proceed or a cliff face too steep for you to climb. So if you're totally lost, pathfinder will be more helpful.

Pray and make offerings at shrines

There are tons of shrines located in the world, and they don't appear on the map or compass with any icon. You'll usually find them along roads as you're traveling from point to point. It's worth stopping to examine them, usually allowing you to quickly pray or make an offering (which doesn't actually take anything from you). Doing so will reward the player with a variety of small incentives such as experience points, timed boosts to stats such as armor piercing or topping up resources like adrenaline (which allows you to use combat abilities).

Pet the dogs (and cats)

Many stray dogs and cats are walking around the various towns and villages, and you can pet all of them. Early in Shadows, you unlock a base of operations for your team where you can customize the buildings and layout, giving your characters more benefits. Part of the aesthetic customization is any animal you've pet so far. See a dog that looks different than one you've interacted with before? It can be unlocked and placed in your base. One time, when I was petting a cat, my character said, "I'm bringing you home." Did I just steal someone's cat?

Swap characters when you get stuck

Even though you're introduced to both protagonists, Naoe and Yasuke, in the first hour of the game, you won't actually get to play much Yasuke for quite a while. In my time with the game, I didn't unlock Yasuke for good until after using Naoe for about 10 hours. When you unlock Yasuke, the introduction sequence is extremely cool, but be prepared to wait for a second character.

However, one great thing to know is that after fully unlocking Yasuke, you can swap between the two pretty seamlessly. Unlike Grand Theft Auto 5's multi-protagonist approach, where you would warp to each character wherever they were located as they went about their day, Naoe and Yasuke will spawn at the same location. Come across a tower that Yasuke can't climb? A quick swap means Naoe will be in the same spot and ready to scale it.

Scout contracts

One of the main mechanics in Shadows is using scouts to survey specific areas on the map, revealing points of interest and even quest objectives for you. You can also unlock bases in many of the game's towns, where you can replenish the number of scout uses. Another feature here is scout contracts, which are various missions that will auto-generate as you play. They aren't the most interesting in quest design, ranging from assassinating a specific target to destroying a heavily guarded object. However, they do give a lot of experience and resources (used to upgrade your base). While they aren't the best quests in the game, they're definitely worth doing if you're grinding XP.

Attack fortresses at night

If you prioritize a stealthy approach to the game, night is your best friend. Naoe does her best work in the dark, and you'll often be able to extinguish light sources to hide further. Many enemies will be asleep while on duty at night, making it even easier to sneak up on and take out. If you have a large, dangerous fortress ahead of you, wait to tackle it until after dark. Ahead of the release, Ubisoft asserted that weather effects like rain and snow could also aid your infiltration, but in practice, the benefits are minimal compared to the huge advantage of sneaking around at night.

Level up assassination skills first

Naoe is much stronger when she hasn't alerted the enemy. Taking out opponents from the shadows and assassinating without being detected is key to using her. This makes her Assassination skill tree very useful and where you should prioritize spending your skill points. Any skills that increase the amount of assassination damage will allow you to take out stronger opponents without having to fight. The double assassination skill is also extremely useful since enemies will often bunch together and you can eliminate them even more easily.

Assassin's Creed Shadows launches on Xbox, PS5, and PC on March 20.

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