Assassin's Creed Shadows Best Early Game Builds
Naoe is the swift killer in Assassin’s Creed Shadows, the character that follows the title’s traditions. She is small and nimble, which makes her a perfect silent assassin, but a less than ideal choice for “fair” combat. For that, you would opt for Yasuke.
READ: Assassin's Creed Shadows Beginner Tips
With that in mind, we’ve come up with a few builds to help you make the most of Naoe’s kit, and to turn you into an assassin feared by all of Lord Nobunaga’s goons. Here are our best early game Naoe builds.
Assassin Tree
Whatever build you choose, your Assassin Tree should always be the number one priority. Not only is Naoe much better at assassinating than actually fighting her enemies, she gets more XP out that way.
Killing a “normal” enemy in combat awards you with 5XP, while taking him down stealthily gives you 10XP, for example. You should be assassinating as many people as possible, and only reverting to full combat when you have no other options.
The Assassin Tree mastery build we’re showing here requires 17 mastery points and Knowledge Rank 2, but you can get the more important parts with only 11 points.
Assassin TreeYour highest priority choices here should be Shoji Door Assassination followed by Double Assassinate. It is important to note that you need to have found a Tanto to be able to use this skill, but you can get them pretty early into the game.
With these two skills unlocked, you now need to invest into Assassination Damage 1 and Improve Ground Assassinate. Having these two passives will allow you to remove three health segments when assassinating targets on the ground, and it will let you kill two targets at once, as long as you have a Tanto equipped.
If you have the spare points, invest them into the two left-most passives, Executioner and Nightcrawler. These will boost your Vulnerable damage and your damage during the night, respectively.
Shinobi Tree
We only recommend two mandatory Shinobi skills, as they complete the Assassin tree perfectly. Those are:
- Ascension Boost - Much faster Grappling Hook climbing.
- Grab Assassinate - Allows you to assassinate an enemy after grabbing them.
Shinobi TreeThese two are crucial if you’re going for a stealthy playstyle for two reasons. The default Grappling Hook climbing speed is quite slow, which will lead to you being caught by enemies much more often. Ascension boost will fix that, for the most part.
Grab Assassinate allows you to kill targets that might be in direct line of sight of other enemies, as long as you’re fast enough at pulling them behind cover. You could just knock them out, but that takes a long time, and enemies can sometimes break free. Assassination is much faster and less risky.
Tools Tree
Tools TreeThe only Tool we consider mandatory is the Smoke Bomb. Despite alerting enemies, these are your only source of cover that you can deploy when in need. These can block out line of sight in corridors, or allow you to deploy emergency cover if you are about to be seen.
The Smoke Bomb skill only requires a single Mastery Point, so it is a very worthy investment early on.
Weapon Trees
Your weapon choice will mostly come down to personal preference. All three weapon choices for Naoe in Assassin’s Creed Shadows serve a different purpose, and will work for different people.
We’ll go over how each weapon works and we’ll recommend mastery builds for each of them.
Katana
Katana TreeThe first weapon you get access to is the Katana, and it is a viable choice for your whole playthrough. This is the most versatile option available, as it works well in most situations. It is slower than the Tanto, but still quite fast to use.
It excels in duels, and has a tougher time in fights against groups. The attack animations are longer than the Tanto’s, and it has very few options at hitting multiple people at once, so being surrounded or attacked from two different directions will often prove difficult to deal with.
If you’re following our guide so far, though, and investing heavily into the Assassin Tree, that won’t be that big of a problem. You’ll want to thin down the enemy numbers as much as you can, and leave only the targets that you cannot outright assassinate.
Kabukimono's GreedFor the Katana Mastery Tree we’re using a build that requires a minimum of 5 Mastery points, but ideally 11. Start with getting Tidal Wave, your first Katana Ability. This is a lightning fast strike that staggers enemies, dealing damage and making them Vulnerable.
Follow this up by unlocking Dodge attack and its two upgrades. This gives Naoe a chance to counter-attack following a dodge, a perfect choice for punishing red attacks. The upgrades will give you Adrenaline back on hit, and boost the attack’s damage. These investments will cost you the aforementioned 5 points.
If you have the 6 extra mastery points on hand, max out the Melee Expert skill, as that will be a straight 9% damage boost with Melee Weapons.
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When it comes to choosing your weapon, we don’t have a specific recommendation, but we highly advise you to opt for Affliction-based Katanas. These can be Bleed, Poison, or Daze.
All of these Afflictions will lightly-CC enemies, outright stagger them or make them unable to defend. The Katana is fast enough to build these quickly, and they can even be boosted by investing into the Affliction Effectiveness skill, which will boost your damage against Afflicted enemies.
Tanto
Tanto TreeThe second weapon we unlocked was the Tanto, the japanese dagger. While wielding a Tanto, Naoe will also use her Hidden Blade as an auxiliary weapon, allowing her to strike with both at once.
This is the fastest weapon in the game, but also the one with the lowest damage numbers. While using the Tanto, you will be hyper-mobile, able to quickly move from one enemy to another, and attack multiple times at once.
The Tanto excels at out-maneuvering enemies, and building Afflictions quicker than any other option. Its lower damage makes it weaker than the Katana in outright duels, especially against armored opponents, but the speed of its attacks makes the Tanto excellent at dealing with unarmored enemies, even in groups.
You’ll attack so fast and so swiftly that your unarmored enemies will rarely have a chance to strike back.
Shinobi's FuryInvesting into the Tanto Mastery Tree will be a bit more costly than the Katana. You’ll need a minimum of 9 Mastery Points, but ideally 12. You’ll start by unlocking Shadow Piercer, a powerful ability that will deal 40% ability damage, stagger the enemy and leave them Vulnerable.
Leap Strike is a must, too, and will help you deal with groups of enemies much better, allowing you to jump between them quickly. If you have the 12 points we recommended, follow up with a fully upgraded Escape Strike, which will give you an extra mobility tool and boost the damage of these two strikes.
If you only have 9 points, skip Escape Strike entirely, and invest only into Backstab, which will allow you to trigger Weak Points when attacking an enemy’s back with a Light Posture attack (holding R1/RB), even when they’re not vulnerable.
Unlike with the Katana, we do recommend a specific weapon for your build, Shinobi’s Fury, a legendary Tanto. On top of boosting your damage against Vulnerable enemies, this weapon comes with a legendary engraving that makes your Weakpoint attacks turn enemies Vulnerable again. This synergizes perfectly with Backstab, allowing you to constantly make your enemies Vulnerable, and easily compensating for the weapon’s lower damage numbers.
Kusarigama
Kusarigama TreeThis weapon is the last one we unlocked, and the most unique available in Assassin’s Creed Shadows. It is essentially a scythe chained to a flail, which makes it the highest ranged melee weapon in the game.
The wide ranged attacks that Naoe can do with the Kusarigama make it, by far, the best option for dealing with groups of enemies, allowing you to hit multiple enemies at once.
While having better range and AOE damage than the two other choices, the Kusarigama loses when it comes to raw DPS and speed. It is the slowest weapon in the game, which means that despite hitting hard, it doesn’t hit often enough to match the DPS of the Katana and Tanto.
It makes up for this with the aforementioned AOE potential, and a form of CC specific to the Kusarigama, which you’ll be able to use with our recommended Mastery Build.
Death WhispererUnlike the Tanto, investing into the Kusarigama tree is actually quite cheap. With a minimum of 4 points you can have a decent build, but we recommend 13 for a truly powerful option. The priority here is unlocking Entanglement and Big Catch. This allows you to entangle enemies (including large ones), and throw them in any direction you choose, following a Posture attack.
Quick Strike is the last mandatory option, which will considerably boost your DPS, as soon as you get used to the rhythm. Simply delay your strikes, and Naoe will hit the enemy twice per button press, perfect for building Afflictions.
If you have the ideal 13 Mastery points we recommended earlier, you should unlock Feral Outburst and the full Exposed Wound upgrades. Doing so will give you your first Kusarigama ability, which unleashes a flurry of 4 strikes on an enemy. With the Exposed Wound upgrades, Feral Outburst will deal more damage and make your enemy Vulnerable.
Much like with the Tanto, we recommend a specific weapon for this build, the Death Whisperer. This legendary Kusarigama deals a boat-load of damage and comes with an excellent legendary engraving, which will boost the damage on enemy collisions by 200%. This means that any collision an enemy makes, be it against other enemies or walls, will deal 3x the damage. Paired this with the fully upgraded Entanglement allows you to maximize your damage and crowd-control simultaneously, turning the Kusarigama into a truly fearsome weapon, even in duels.
