10 Things to Do FIRST in Assassin's Creed Shadows
Kuji Kiri
Most of the open world events in “Shadows” give you Knowledge Points, and you need a certain number of Knowledge Points to unlock new tiers of abilities in the mastery menu. One of the earliest activities you’ll find that grants these points is Kuji Kiri, a Japanese tradition of making hand gestures to clear your mind. Only Naoe can do Kuji Kiri, and early in the game, each session of Kuji Kiri unlocks a flashback to her life in Iga. You can see all of these flashbacks in the first handful of Kuji Kiri activities, and they add more depth to Naoe’s life, training, and the shinobi culture she comes from.
Paint the Wildlife
While Naoe’s recovering from her early game injuries, she meets Sorin and Junjiro, who have been taking care of her. Junjiro is initially afraid of Naoe for reasons that will become clear later in the game – but which we won’t spoil here. However, Sorin teaches him to paint so that he can work through his emotions. He then passes this knowledge on to Naoe, encouraging her to paint a tanuki that lives in the temple. Throughout the game, Naoe can then find and paint more wildlife scenes, unlocking new decorations for the homestead. These also don’t show up on the map but appear organically as you explore Japan, and you have to be quiet as you approach so that you don’t scare the animals away.
Explore Kofuns
The last “AC” game developed by Ubisoft Quebec was “Odyssey”, and that was a game FULL of caves. You probably spent almost as much time spelunking as you did clearing out forts. “Shadows” has far fewer of these caves, now named kofuns and behaving more like the tombs in “Valhalla” and “Odyssey”. What we mean by this is that they’re small puzzle dungeons, with traversal puzzles to solve. Each one is designed for either Naoe or Yasuke, since Naoe is more agile, but Yasuke is the only one strong enough to pick up those explosive pots you’re probably sick of seeing if you played enough “Valhalla”. There aren’t too many of these, though, and they reward you with some VERY worthwhile loot. Just remember to light the candles as you go so that you don’t get lost.
Canon or Regular?
As well as choosing your difficulty, “Shadows” gives you another interesting choice right at the beginning: do you want to play the game in regular mode, or canon mode? Regular mode is the RPG-ified version of the game Ubisoft has been championing since “Odyssey” added those contentious dialogue options, while canon mode removes the dialogue options and lets the characters choose what to say themselves. This is a vital decision, though, because you can’t change it back later. Canon mode gives an overall more engaging story, but it also eliminates romance options. However, since a lot of people can take or leave Ubisoft’s bland romances anyway, you may not miss them.
Yokai
In Yamashiro, you can find this quest marker, simply named “The Yokai”. When you arrive you find a grumpy old man who’s sick of everybody in Japan coming to him with their yokai troubles, when he never finds a real yokai to deal with in each of his investigations. He gives you these rumours and then you, too, get to hunt the yokai throughout Japan. This isn’t a case of Ubisoft pulling out some mythical boss fights, though, but humorous or fascinating side quests about people pretending to be yokai. One of the earliest ones you can encounter, with most of them being in higher-level areas, involves men with melons on their heads fighting about which melon harvest will be the best.
Unlock Tools
Being far weaker in combat, Naoe has to make use of various tools to stay hidden. She has far more hiding spots available than any other assassin before her, able to go prone in grass of different lengths and crawl underneath buildings, not to mention using the shadows for cover, but she has a range of tools, too. However, you’ve got to unlock these tools in the mastery menu, and you should absolutely make it a priority. She has kunai to throw, but also smoke bombs, shinobi bells to distract enemies, and shurikens, all of which can be enhanced in the tool menu. Stealth encounters are far more dynamic with these extra gameplay options.
Customize Your Gear
Longtime players will be pleased to hear that the transmog system from “Odyssey” is back, and it’s here from the beginning. If you played “Odyssey” at launch, you’ll remember that transmog was only added to the game later after players asked for it. This is a godsend because “Odyssey’s” endless loot system is back, for better or worse, but if you find a weapon or armor piece you like the look of, you can simply customize it in the inventory menu and give it a new visual. As in “Odyssey” and “Valhalla”, you have to have already looted the item you want to make your gear look like, giving you another incentive to collect loot beyond the incremental stat buffs.
Build a Forge
The game asks you to do this very early on, but in case you’re not interested in the homesteading and want to delay, you should really listen to what it’s telling you to do and recruit the blacksmith to build the forge early. This is where you’ll upgrade your weapons – if you’re not happy to just wait for a better piece of loot to come along, as it inevitably will – and also add engravings to them, giving buffs and letting you inflict status ailments on enemies. There are many more ways to improve and customize your homestead, but you may not want to spend more time there than necessary since mandatory RTGI means the whole area is locked to 30 fps on consoles.
Get a Pet
If you pre-ordered the game, you’ll have gotten the “Thrown to the Dogs” quest, which lets you find a stray dog whose owner has recently died out in the world. It’s a short quest but once complete, it lets you adopt the dog and place him in your homestead. There are many more opportunities for pets, though! All you have to do is go up to animals and pet them, and you’ll unlock that breed as a pet to place around. Considering a lot of people loved the pets in “Valhalla” – like Nali, the cat who joins your longboat crew – this is a fun addition. There are more animals to find in “Shadows” than in any other “AC” game, and you’re free to simply enjoy nature rather than killing it all like in the Mythology Trilogy.
Unlock Yasuke
You play as him first in the prologue as a teaser for what’s to come, but you won’t be able to play as Yasuke again until he and Naoe meet during a pivotal encounter with Oda Nobunaga that we won’t spoil. From then on, Yasuke joins the newly renamed League of the Hidden Blade and you can switch to him whenever you like, either during fast travel or from the inventory screen. You then get Yasuke’s world activities, including a horse archery rail shooter minigame, to get even more precious knowledge points. He plays more like Eivor or Kassandra, as opposed to Naoe, who’s a more traditional Assassin who’s weaker in combat, like Basim in “Mirage” most recently. It’s a lot of fun swapping between them to approach missions in different ways. Let us know in the comments what you’ve been enjoying about “Assassin’s Creed Shadows” so far.
