Assassin’s Creed Shadows Best Start Guide

There are a lot of features and mechanics to learn and discover in Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which is the latest entry in the long running series. Set in feudal Japan, the game takes heavy inspiration from games like Ghost of Tsushima in terms of its combat. In this guide, we will be going over a few tips that will hopefully help you get started and find some of the good gear and abilities early.

Best Start Guide

Before we get started, it is important to note that these are just recommendations and not necessarily a strict set of guidelines to follow. You are always free to do things at your own pace and explore the game as originally intended by the developers.

With that said, if you want to get some really powerful boosts in the form of items or even abilities early in the game, this guide is for you. Without further ado, let us go through a few tips to keep in mind once you gain the freedom to explore the game’s world.

Tip #1 – Get Knowledge Rank Up ASAP

In order to get your knowledge rank up, you are going to need to gather knowledge points. One way to do this is by looking for temples in the map. There, you can climb up and around the structures to look for glowing objects on the ground, which will form a full note once all pages have been collected.

Upon finding all of the pages in a temple, you will gain a knowledge point. It is one of the easiest ways to get them, though there is a limited number of these scattered around the map.

Another way to gain these is through Kuji-kiri, which is a sort of meditation thing that Naoe can do at certain parts of the map. These will let you play a fairly simple mini game, followed by a brief flashback mission that you have to finish.

Once you have completed the mini game and flashback section, you will gain a knowledge point. Just look for the red icons on the map to find either of these, of which there are plenty early on.

These knowledge ranks are used to unlock new passive abilities, which will make it easier for you to pull off assassinations against tougher enemies or groups of hostile individuals. This is why it is important to get these as early as you can.

Tip #2 – Find and Loot Legendary Gear From Chests

Early in the game, you will obviously not have the best items on hand, so you are going to have to start looking for upgrades to really get the ball rolling. One way to do this is by searching for legendary gear, which you can start doing as early as the map starts to open up.

One way to do this in the early game phases is by clearing castles and camps. Some of these will have requirements before you can loot the legendary chest, such as having to defeat a certain number of Samurai Daishos that are roaming around the area.

Just check the castles and camps in your map. If they have a legendary item under the rewards panel, as indicated by their gold / yellow border, then it is a place worth looting as soon as possible. Head over there and start clearing them to claim your spoils!

The first tip will help with this as well, since having more passive abilities can help you clear these areas much faster with less risk. Consider grabbing knowledge points along the way while you head to one of these legendary item spots.

Tip #3 – Unlock Kakuregas and Upgrade Your Hideout

All throughout the map, you will be able to unlock Kakuregas. These are basically safehouses that you can use as fast travel points or as a way to restock on supplies whenever you are in need of more. Not only will this save you a lot of time in the long run, but they are just incredibly useful overall.

On that note, make sure to upgrade your hideout whenever you can. The rooms you can add and upgrade provide a wide range of benefits at the cost of various resources that you can gather out in the world.

One of these is a hub that lets you manage all of your other Kakuregas. These also give you contracts that give you simple tasks, which all reward you with a decent number of resources that are going to be especially useful early in the game.

The Forge is another noteworthy addition to the hideout as it will let you upgrade your gear. This goes hand in hand with the second tip, as you will be granted the ability to scale your legendary items up to whatever your current level is at any point in time.

In fact, the Forge is actually one of the most important hideout upgrades you can have. Get this sorted as soon as possible so that you can take on tougher enemies with ease and get more resources for later upgrades.

And those are all of the tips that we have for you at the moment, as the game has just released and we are still in the learning process as well. These bits of advice should be able to get you up to a decent starting situation in which you can progress much more smoothly.

As far as specific legendary gear suggestions go, we can’t really help you too much in that regard as it is better if you just explore your other abilities and figure out what combinations and unique builds resonate with you the most.

If you are just starting out, which you should be if you are reading this, then get as much legendary gear as you can by clearing and looting areas with legendary chests. You can always shift things around and figure out what build to go for later on.