Assassin's Creed Shadows finally takes the long-running stealth-action RPG series to feudal Japan, after over a decade of fans clamoring for it. Now that it's here, fans will find that Assassin's Creed Shadows is a , focusing more on assassinations and lessening the number of icons on your map. It also features two playable characters, with Naoe focused on stealth and Yasuke focused on head-on combat.

If this is your first foray into Assassin's Creed, or even if you haven't played since Assassin's Creed Valhalla in 2020, there are enough new changes and systems that it can be overwhelming. Luckily, we've put together a few tips for beginners that will help you get your shinobi adventure rolling.

1 Exploration is better as Naoe

Yasuke might be fun to play, but he isn't as nimble as Naoe.

While exploring the open-world, especially in the early sections of Assassin's Creed Shadows, you will want to spend most of your time as Naoe. While you don't unlock Yasuke until after the first batch of story missions, even after that point exploration is easier with Naoe. Why? Because Yasuke has limited capabilities when it comes to climbing and general parkour. This limits your ability to get places undetected, but it also makes it so you can't synchronize viewpoints--which serve as fast travel points--with Yasuke, because he can't climb up to them.

In the Assassin's Creed Shadows settings, you can turn on an option to ensure all assassinations are one-hit kills, if you perfer a more classic experience.

Being able to sneak around much easier as Naoe is great for exploring, as being able to unlock viewpoints will continuously open up the map and add more markers to the map. She can also sneak around undetected much easier, which is important since many of the viewpoints in Assassin's Creed Shadows are located in hostile castles.

2 Daily contracts award a ton of resources

These can be found in hideouts.

Inside Kakurega (hideouts), which are shown by a small hood badge and are typically found inside cities, you can pick up contracts. Contracts are generated quests that refresh every day--yes even Assassin's Creed has live-service elements--prompting you to find a small camp somewhere in the world and take out the enemies there. While all three reward building resources, which can be used to upgrade your hideout, one of them usually offers a couple hundred of each resource, which is far more than most single quests in the game offer.

Contract Types

• Eliminate Military
• Execute Target
• Steal Supplies
• Destroy Cargo
• Slay Gang Leader
• Elinimate Outlaws

The quests refill regularly, but they also don't expire once you accept them. It's important to note that in order to unlock Kakurega around the map, you will need to spend money from the map menu once you discover one's location. These also function as fast travel points and have supplies you can use to refill, making them helpful to have.

Contracts are usually updated and change with each new season, so the available contracts at any given time may change.

3 Upgrade your base ASAP

The stable in particular is worth prioritizing.

As mentioned in the previous section, you can upgrade your hideout once you are fully introduced to it, with different buildings providing different benefits. While all of the upgrades are beneficial, there are a few buildings worth prioritizing. The first is the Stable, with the first upgrade decreasing the number of scouts required to collect resources. Inside some restricted areas, you can find large caches of resources, which require you to tag them to be collected at the end of the season. To start, this requires two scouts (you start with three), but the first stable upgrade reduces this to one scout, effectively doubling how many you can tag.

Best Base Hideouts

• Forge: Essential facility for weapon and armor upgrades plus engravings. Prioritize reaching level three quickly to keep your preferred gear powerful as you progress.
• Study: Provides one additional scout per upgrade while enhancing their overall effectiveness. A crucial investment for expanding your intelligence network.
• Stable: Reduces smuggling stockpile costs significantly. Upgrade early to maximize resource efficiency during transport operations.
• Nando: Cuts scout refreshment costs at kakurega by 30%. Invaluable for maintaining a cost-effective surveillance network across territories.
• Zashiki or Tea Room: Boosts ration healing effectiveness by 20%. An early-game priority that dramatically improves your survival chances in combat.

The Blacksmith is a good early upgrade, so you can continuously upgrade your equipment, but the Study is the best second option, as it increases the overall number of scouts you have available each season. While you can pay to refill them--more on that later--having more scouts available means you can tag more resources in a single area, or more frequently use them to uncover parts of the map.

4 Scouts are worth paying to refill

No need to wait until the next season.

Those same Kakurega and your base also feature another important resource. That is the ability to pay gold to refill your scouts. Normally, you have to wait until the end of a season for your scouts to refill, limiting how often you can scout a section of the map or tag resources for collection. Not only can you pay to refill your scouts, it's also relatively inexpensive. The cost starts at 200 gold per refill, which is pretty inexpensive considering you find gold fairly often, and it isn't a resource you are starved for early on. You can also reduce the cost to 120 gold by building a Nando room at your base, making it even more inexpensive.

5 Swap characters depending on your next objective

Some situations require stealth, others just require a big stick.

While exploration is better with Naoe, that doesn't mean she's the best choice for every situation. Sometimes, a more straightforward approach makes sense, and since you can swap at any time, so long as you aren't in a restricted area, you may want to switch it up. For example, sometimes smaller assassination targets, like the Corrupt Daikan, are set up in smaller compounds with less enemies. This makes it a perfect choice for running with Yasuke and wrecking through them. But, doing this in a castle will result in Yasuke becoming wanted and guardians showing up to fight, making a more stealth-focused approach make more sense.

6 Keep your weapons and gear up to level

Early on leveling up happens frequently, quickly rendering your gear obsolete.

Enemies scale up with you in Assassin's Creed Shadows, meaning that enemies in regions below your level will be the same level as you, while enemies higher than you will stay higher than you. What that means in turns of gameplay is that it can be very easy to fall behind in terms of stats, which rely heavily on your gear. Using equipment even a couple levels below your enemies can result in a hefty loss in damage.

There are two ways to deal with this. First is to just constantly equip new equipment whenever you collect it, although this means using non-legendary gear pretty often. The other option is to return to your blacksmith at your hideout and level up your gear. This uses resources exclusive to equipment, but you will still have to be selective with which pieces of gear you upgrade, but keeping up is important.

Best Weapons

• Katana (Naoe)
• Long Katana (Yasuke)
• Kusarigama (Naoe)
• Bow (Yasuke)
• Teppo (Yasuke)

7 When in doubt, unlock a Viewpoint or assassinate a target

The checklist is never ending.

While Assassin's Creed Shadows is great at delivering you an endless parade of people to kill, sometimes you might find yourself unsure of what to do next. Maybe the main quest is too high level, or you just want to take a break from it. The best two places to look are Viewpoints and the objective board. Not only do Viewpoints unlock new fast travel points, which comes in handy, but it will mark nearby points of interest as question marks and will mark nearby Viewpoints.

The objective board becomes full very quickly, but you will likely have access to multiple side quest groups to assassinate. Most targets offer good rewards individually, but completing a full board almost always gives you a unique piece of gear, making them a great activity to take on.