Are you starting your journey through Feudal Japan in Assassin’s Creed Shadows? After many long years, Ubisoft’s titular open-world RPG, Assassin’s Creed, is going to Japan. Plus, instead of giving us one assassin to explore Feudal Japan, Assassin’s Creed Shadows features two playable protagonists.
There is the brutish Samurai, Yasuke, and the stealthy Shinobi, Naoe. Each has their own motivations and goals as you explore the vast lands to hunt down their enemies, hopefully restoring peace to the lands. Before you dive in, think about these five tips to make the most of your quest for revenge.
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Build out your Hideout Quickly
Early on, you’ll unlock the hideout. Think of this as your base of operations where you can craft gear, improve allies, and collect resources collected by scouts every season. It’s also a place where you can let your imagination shine by placing buildings, artwork, and pets wherever you want on the given plot of land. There are also major benefits to interacting with this feature. Adding and upgrading certain buildings can reshape how Yasuke and Naoe interact with the world.
For instance, the Kakurega room massively improves the function of Kakuregas, or purchasable safehouses in each city or town. Upgrading it to level 3 decreases the purchase cost of Kareguras by 20 percent and adds more to the map. Doing this early will save you lots of money in the long run. Upgrading the Stables reduces the cost of tagging stockpiles and increases the resource return by 20 percent. Improving the study adds more scouts and massively decreases the search zone for quests if they are sent to find objectives. Working on adding main and themed rooms will make your mid-to-late gameplay much more impactful and save time in the long run
Accept Every Side Quest
Now, this isn’t to say you should complete every side quest you run across. Assassin’s Creed Shadows has a lot of them. Just accept them. In about every region, there will be a side quest that boils down to “Kill X enemy commonly found in this area.” Completing these objectives give easy experience, a massive amount of resources for building out your hideout, and money. These are commonly found around or in the major towns of each region. If you pick these up as early as possible, you’ll also naturally complete the objectives by exploring and completing quests. So it only makes sense to grab them quickly to get an easy flow of valuable resources to supplement your normal play.
Don’t Use Gold Right Away
Completing side questlines will occasionally reward Gold. Gold is very different than any other resource used to upgrade your gear. Using one gold will upgrade your armor or weapon to its capped level (whatever level you are), without paying the money and resource fee. Please don’t use them right away. Save them for end-game or post-game. Especially when you reach level 40+ to upgrade legendary pieces of gear that you like to stay functional with better stats and keep their impactful bonuses.
Complete Activities and Forts when they appear
Leveling will only get you so far when it comes to getting stronger. The best way to quickly unlock strong abilities and upgrade them to be even better is by doing activities and Forts when you come across them. Activities like paying respects at shrines, completing Kuji-kiri meditations, or Horse Archery and Kata challenges awarded knowledge points. Knowledge points are vital to unlocking the mastery tree’s higher tiers for Naoe and Yasuke. Plus, they share knowledge points. Completing activities with one character will help both unlock the next tier of skills.
Then there are forts. Forts are castles or enemy strongholds where you must take out a certain number of Samurai Daisho and loot a locked chest to complete the objective. These reward a massive amount of skill points for completing, with each Samurai kill rewarding at least one skill point each and the overall objective rewarding additional skill points. Completion also comes with high-quality gear and engravings. Don’t worry about who you use to complete these objectives, either. Skill points are also awarded to both Yasuke and Naoe. They’re not earned individually. But this is the fastest way to get quick skill points early on to get better assassination damage and abilities.
Accept Contracts and Use Scouts for Resources
Completing contracts in Assassin’s Creed Shadows is another quick way to gain resources and make easy money. These are accessed in unlocked Kakurega throughout the world, giving you quick assignments in that region. The rewards can sometimes be enough resources to upgrade a room or a significant amount of money to unlock more Kakrurega or upgrade gear. In other words, complete contracts if you’re low on resources. Plus, it’s an easy way to accumulate XP and level up early on.
Another surefire way to get lots of resources for the hideout is to use scouts for stockpile collection. While they are useful for finding hard-to-find objectives, their primary value is collecting stockpiles from enemy bases. You’re limited to the number of scouts you can use each season and can only get scout charges back by spending money in your Kakuregas. So you have to be smart in how you use them. With the aforementioned stable upgrade, you’ll only need one scout to collect a stockpile instead of two, letting you collect more and more quickly. Then, once you spend all your scouts, change the seasons, and you’ll be set to buy the next upgrade.
However you begin your journey in Assassin’s Creed Shadows, think smart, and use your time wisely, and follow these tips. Numerous tools made available early on will help you immensely as long as you utilize those tools when you can.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows is available now on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and PC.
