Assassin's Creed Shadows Beginner Tips

Naoe's journey through the lands of a Japan at war is perilous, with enemies and dangers around every corner. No one seems to be safe with the shadow of Lord Oda Nobunaga looming over the entire country.

READ: Assassin's Creed Shadows Optimized Settings

To help in your revenge against the people who murdered your father, we've compiled our best Assassin's Creed Shadows Beginner Tips.

This list will not feature any Yasuke specific tips, as you'll only unlock him quite a few hours into the game.

Do Not Sell Your Equipment

Every weapon, armor, and trinket you own should be saved, even if you don't use them anymore. If you own a forge, dismantle it as soon as you're sure you will not be using it at all.

If you don't have a forge yet, make it your number one priority to make one in your hideout, and keep the items you're not using in your stash. There's plenty of gold available in the game, and the materials you get from dismantling equipment will be much more valuable later on.

Priority Hideout Upgrades

With that topic in mind, you should plan your Hideout Upgrades carefully. These take time to farm up, mainly because the brunt of your resources come from Smuggled Resources, which only arrive at the end of a season.

We recommend building a Kakurega as soon as possible, unlocking a lot more fast travel options. Follow this up by building a Study and then the Forge. This will give you an extra Scout and equipment upgrades, respectively. From here we recommend maxing out the Stables, as they are the cheapest upgrade possible, and will give you more resources per smuggled "crate". From here on out, max out the Study for more Scouts, and upgrade the Forge once to unlock access to Engravings.

How To Recover Scouts

Scouts automatically become available again once there is a season change, and they will bring back all Smuggled materials you sent them to gather. But how can you get them back without waiting for a Season change?

There are two main ways. You can either pay a fee at your Kakurega to replenish them, or you can do so for free by helping random people throughout the world. When you see someone and danger and no quest icon pops up, you can help that person, and they'll reward you with World Rumors or Scout Intel. This Scout Intel is a replenishment of a single Scout, for free.

What To Use Scouts For

We highly recommend that you do not use your Scouts for finding out quest objectives, unless you are either stuck and have no idea where to go, or if the season is about to change and you don't have any targeted resources for them to Smuggle.

Quest Objectives usually give you enough information for you to search for it yourself, using the L2 to scan for the blue light, so if you are patient, you won't feel the need to use them for this end.

Furthermore, as we mentioned previously, Smuggling is by far the biggest source of Hideout Upgrade materials available in the game, and it requires Scouts to do. We recommend using all your Scouts to smuggle resources, ideally using all of them every season.

Clear Every Castle You Encounter

Castles are essentially huge bases with an Eagle Point at the center, hiding a chest in a big pagoda. But you can't just sneak into the pagoda and steal this chest, you need to kill the Samurai Daisho spread throughout the base to unlock it.

The number of Samurai will depend on the castle, and we've seen it scale from three to five. When you enter the area, a pop-up will let you know how many you need to kill. You can find them easily by using your L2 and searching for white dots.

Once you've dispatched of them all, the chest will be unlocked, frequently featuring Legendary rewards.

Best Legendary To Get Early

With the previous point in mind, the best legendary item you can get early is called Peasant Clothes, and it is a Legendary Light Armor. It is extremely powerful due to its Legendary Engraving, which is:

• Attacks have 3% chance to remove 1 Health Segments on hit.

This means that any attack you use can one-shot a character with one health segment. 3% doesn't sound like much, but Naoe attacks so fast that you will notice this proccing a lot.

To get this, simply clear the Osaka castle, and you'll find the armor in the big red chest inside the pagoda.

Parrying Is Extremely Powerful

Parrying can sound pretty tough to pull off in a lot of games, but in Assassin's Creed Shadows, the parry window is quite forgiving. It is much easier to correctly do than a perfect dodge, and will put your opponent into a vulnerable state.

Parrys can stop any attack that isn't red, including blue ones. Blue attacks will force you to parry the entire enemy combo to make them vulnerable, but it will also negate all damage.

Follow up a parry with a light posture attack (Hold R1/RB) and you'll do a weak point attack, dealing more damage and preventing your enemy from attacking.

Go All-In On Your Mastery Trees

Even if you don't have all trees unlocked, don't be afraid to fully commit into a weapon or the assassin tree. All points you use are refundable for free, no matter how many times you respec. If you only have a katana, all-in on the Katana tree.

Not only do you get more powerful abilities the higher up you go, you also will level up the passive bonus that every mastery tree contain. If you regret your decision, or found a toy that unlocks a new tree entirely, simply refund all your points and invest them all again.