Assassin’s Creed Shadows – 5 Things To Do First

Assassin's Creed Shadows is out on March 20 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, MacOS, and PC via Steam, the Ubisoft Store, and Epic Games Store. It's also available as part of a Ubisoft+ Premium Subscription. To help you start your adventure in feudal Japan on the right foot, we assembled five things you should do as soon as you can in Assassin's Creed Shadows.

Increase Your Knowledge To Unlock More Abilities

Leveling up in Assassin's Creed Shadows works a bit differently than recent games. There are multiple ways to upgrade Naoe and Yasuke now and they're not all tied to character level. Progression is now split between character level and Knowledge rank.

• Character level increases with experience points that you'll get from doing just about anything in Assassin's Creed Shadows. When it increases, Naoe and Yasuke's base stats increase and they're able to equip more powerful gear. You'll also earn a Mastery point when you level up which can be spent to acquire a new active or passive ability in the Mastery menu.

• Mastery Points can be earned from a variety of sources, including leveling up, killing Samurai Daisho, taking on any number of different open world challenges, and completing side quests.

• Knowledge rank affects which abilities Naoe and Yasuke have access to in their Mastery menu. Naoe and Yasuke have six levels of Knowledge they can gain, each opening up a new tier of passive and activated abilities that you can unlock with Mastery points. You can gain Knowledge by completing activities on your map marked with an orange hexagon. These range from collecting lost scrolls and praying at shrines to meditating on formative parts of Naoe's life and competing in horse archery as Yasuke.

If you feel like enemies are doing too much damage, or you're not dishing out enough, odds are you need to increase your character level. If you feel like you're not able to do enough cool Samurai or Shinobi stuff, it's probably because your Knowledge rank isn't high enough!

Pet Everything

What's better than petting an Akita dog? Petting an Akita puppy. Nearly every animal in Assassin's Creed Shadows has an adult and baby version, and the domesticated animals you come across are all pettable. Not only that but petting them unlocks them for placement in your Hideout, meaning the only thing keeping you from having 10 kittens running around is finding one in the open world to give some scritches to.

Eventually, you'll also come across wildlife in the open world and if you can sneak up on them quietly enough, you can paint them and add them to your Hideout as well. Ever wanted to build a petting zoo in an Assassin's Creed game before? Well, now you can!

Invest In Your Hideout

Speaking of your Hideout, when you're not busy adding and petting animals, be sure to invest in constructing new buildings and leveling them up. For example, building and upgrading a Study will add additional scouts to your league. Scouts will help you find the precise location of objectives in Assassin's Creed Shadows but are also a huge help in gaining the very resources you need to further upgrade your Hideout. In the open world, Naoe and Yasuke will often come across large stockpiles of resources. Having a Study at your Hideout will get you more Scouts, but upgrading your Stables allows you to tag those stockpiles for your scouts to pick up at the end of each season. And if you ever run out of scouts, you can always wait until the next season for them to become available again or visit a Kakurega and replenish them for a small fee.

Kakurega act as local outposts for your league that let you replenish rations, tools, and scouts as well as manage contracts and allies. To access the network of Kakurega in the open world, you'll need to build one at your Hideout. Level up the Kakurega in your Hideout and your scouts will fill you in on rumors that can lead you to unique treasure and collectibles when you check your contracts board.

Other smaller Hideout buildings will provide useful passive bonuses, like the Tera which increases your experience gain by 10%, or the Zashiki which improves ration efficiency by 20%.  

Stick to the Main Path - for a bit

After a brief introductory section as Yasuke, you'll be put in Naoe's shoes for quite a while, and will even begin exploring the open world with her. You'll be free to wander where you like, take on side quests, and more, all without having access to Yasuke. This is intentional, and there's a very good narrative reason for this, but if you want to get to the point when both characters are playable and you can switch freely between the two, we recommend sticking to the main path in the early hours and prioritizing The Shinbakufu circle on your objective board.

Customize Your Settings

Assassin's Creed Shadows has a TON of customization settings that you can find in the "Options" menu on the pause screen that you can adjust to your heart's content, but there's a few we think are worth calling out.

• Gameplay > Difficulty Tuning > Guaranteed Assassination
  • Guaranteed Assassination is off by default, but if you just want your Hidden Blade to one-shot kill your targets regardless of your upgrades or their enemy level, toggle this on.
• Gameplay > Playstyle > Dialogue Icons
  • Conversations in Assassin's Creed Shadows can have massive ramifications. By default, dialogue icons are fully enabled; this places a specific symbol next to a dialogue choice that corresponds with the type of response it is (e.g. a heart for a flirtatious choice, balancing scales for a lie, crossed red swords for a fight, red skull for death). You have three options here: All, Crucial Only, and Off. "All" will ensure you always have guidance, but "Crucial Only" will turn off icons like scales (lying) or hearts (flirting) that won't make an immediate impact like swords or skulls
• Gameplay > Playstyle > Area Loot
  • Turning this on allows you to collect all nearby loot with a single button press instead of picking them all up manually.
• Audio > General > Immersive Mode
  • Immersive Mode locks the voiceover language to whichever language the character is actually speaking, mainly Japanese or Portuguese.

For the latest on all things Assassin's Creed, including the upcoming post-launch expansion, Claws of Awaji, visit assassinscreed.com.