Hello everyone!
Assassin's Creed Shadows releases on March 20th and we're excited to show you more of the game in these last few weeks before launch. In case you missed it, preorders are now available and include free access to the upcoming Claws of Awaji expansion , as well as other bonuses.
This week, we're going to show you more on how progression works in the game. We'll be joined by Julien, Associate Game Director on Shadows.
Let's dive into the details.
All footage is from a work-in-progress build. Please note that some of the videos in this article may be compressed, which could affect their quality. Make sure to watch in 4K for the best quality. HUD settings may vary depending on the capture to showcase examples of customizable options.
A NEW PROGRESSION LOOP
"Having two separate characters with unique archetypes in our feudal Japan world pushed us to rethink how we wanted to approach player progression," says Julien. "Our goal was to stay as close as possible to the philosophy of mastery and martial art."
This philosophy is reflected in the way learning new skills depends on gathering Mastery (points) and Knowledge (ranks).
MASTERY
In Shadows, Naoe and Yasuke have multiple Mastery trees to invest in - unique for each of them. These trees are tied to the unique weapons they both carry, as well as their specific archetypes: samurai for Yasuke, shinobi and assassin for Naoe.
Each weapon tree allows you to improve and expand your skills by learning new combos, increasing weapon efficacy, or unlocking deadly abilities. As for the archetype trees, Yasuke can invest in his samurai training to unlock new ways to be versatile in combat, such as switching weapons mid-combo. For Naoe, developing the shinobi or assassin trees unlocks new ways to evolve stealth and assassinate foes.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows – Progression: Passive Ability
"With the unique Mastery trees, we want to give players the freedom to dedicate themselves into a specific weapon, playstyle, or archetype, and ensure they can deepen their mastery of it," says Julien. "The points you invest in a Mastery tree also unlock additional bonuses for that weapon or archetype, further reinforcing your progress."
To earn Mastery points, you will need to level up your character through the normal course of play (completing quests, activities, etc.), but you can also earn them by defeating unique enemies in the world, like the Samurai Daisho (Deadly enemies only found in castles), or eliminating your targets. These foes will put your combat or stealth talents to the test.
Mastery points can also be reset at any time, if you wish to change your playstyle.
Naoe and Yasuke share their progression, meaning that your level, XP, Mastery Points, and Knowledge will be gained by both equally, to ensure neither character is left behind.
ABILITIES
Abilities are found in all Mastery trees. In combat, each weapon has two ability slots into which you can assign unlocked active abilities. When unlocked, a weapon ability can generally be upgraded multiple times, adding new gameplay twists and dealing greater damage to opponents.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows – Progression: Tanto Ability
In game, active abilities show up in the bottom right wheel.
The samurai and shinobi trees also offer unique abilities, and while you can only equip one of these at a time, it's available at any time no matter your equipped weapon.
When you look at a Mastery tree, you'll notice that some abilities and skills cannot be unlocked right away; you'll need to increase your Knowledge Rank to make them available.
Unlocking the most advanced abilities and skills may also require you to complete certain unique actions; to snag the last Assassination upgrade, for example, you must defeat a mysterious group of shinobi.
Let's take a further look at the concept of Knowledge Ranks.
KNOWLEDGE RANKS
In Shadows, Knowledge is an abstraction of your mind, aka your mental readiness. This means certain upgrades for your character will only be accessible once your character has reached specific Knowledge Ranks.
Knowledge can be acquired throughout your journey by completing different types of non-violent activities such as finding Lost Pages in temples, taking time to pray in Shrines, doing some Kuji-kiri Meditation for Naoe, or learning new Kata for Yasuke. It is a way for us to connect the development of our dual character's minds with their physical skills.
Even though some activities are character-specific, Knowledge gained from them is still shared between Naoe and Yasuke, so the more they grow as individuals, the more they both benefit.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows – Progression: Increase Knowledge
Be sure to increase your Knowledge so you can rank up and make new skills, abilities, and upgrades available to unlock in the Mastery trees.
Endgame tease
By the time you reach the 6th Rank of Knowledge, you will have all skills available to unlock in your Mastery trees, but your progression will not stop there. Naoe and Yasuke will then gain access to a brand-new Knowledge tree and continue progressing. This tree will offer numerous new passive skills, allowing you to maximize specific stats to fully embrace your ideal playstyle.
EQUIPMENT & STATS
Inventory
In addition to improving your Mastery and Knowledge, you will need to manage your equipment, making sure it matches your level so you can be as strong - if not stronger than your foes.
In your inventory, you can equip up to two different weapons at once (including ranged weapons for Yasuke), a headgear piece, an armor, and a trinket or amulet. All of them have a level, a quality rating, and stats that contribute to your total character stats.
You can also equip and customize your horse and its saddle, to complement the look of your armor, but these are purely cosmetic.
Enemy Resistance
The level of your equipment, as well as your skills and abilities, will influence how you stack up against your enemies in Shadows. An enemy's health is represented by a health bar divided into multiple segments; these segments directly impact how much damage you need to inflict to kill an enemy in combat, and they determine the outcome of your assassination attempts.
You'll start the adventure with a Hidden Blade that can remove two health segments, meaning that if an enemy has more health than that, they will survive your assassination attempt and turn to fight you. You can recognize these stronger enemies by using the Observe mechanic. Furthermore, when you target an enemy for assassination, the color of their health bar will change to reflect whether the attempt will be deadly or not - white will guarantee an assassination, yellow will only deal some damage and red will result in the assassination being denied.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows – Stealth Deep Dive: Denied Assassination
Note: you can trigger the "one-shot assassination" feature in the game options, which allows you to assassinate all enemies regardless of their health bar.
To ensure you can take down difficult targets with assassinations, you can improve your assassination damage in the Mastery Trees, equip gear and weapons that give additional bonuses, or engrave bonuses on gear items at the forge. Some of these bonuses are contextual and give you the advantage in specific scenarios, such as adding +1 damage segment to air assassinations, or +2 damage segment to assassination attempts at night.
Enemies that are 5+ level over you will be marked with a Skull icon, meaning that they are much stronger than you and probably too difficult to take on. You should always ensure your current level matches with the region you are in, as well as who you are facing.
Finding Gear & Weapons
In Shadows, we have a wide range of gorgeous gear sets - with their own visual variations, both for Naoe and Yasuke. Gear and weapons can be looted in chests or on defeated enemies. The loot itself is largely randomized in order to give players a sense of unique discovery along their journey.
However, we also have predetermined items placed throughout the world. These usually have a legendary quality and can be obtained from specific targets and in castle chests. You can locate these valuable opportunities on the Objective Board or the World Map, and they usually offer a great challenge in stealth or combat.
Gear Quality
We have five quality levels that influence how powerful a piece of equipment might be and how much it can impact your playstyle:
Common equipment is the lowest quality and has basic stats
Uncommon equipment has improved stats and a perk (more on perks below)
Rare equipment is stronger, and offers the possibility to engrave a second perk of your choice at the Forge in the Hideout
Epic equipment adds a chance to have one of the core stats boosted. (If you're lucky, an enemy can drop an Epic item that has stronger elements than a Legendary one.)
Legendary equipment has unique, handpicked stats, a gameplay-oriented perk, and an engraving slot
Assassin’s Creed Shadows – Progression: Gear Quality
As you play, it is highly recommended to keep upgrading your gear at the Forge, in the Hideout, to ensure your favorite equipment always matches your current level.
Following feedback we received after the preview event for Assassin's Creed Shadows, we have also recently added Yasuke and Naoe icons on the items looted in the world, so you have a better understanding of who this new item is meant for.
VISUAL CUSTOMIZATION (TRANSMOG) AND LOADOUTS
We know how style is as important as damage for players; if you like the stats of your equipment but are not interested in its look, you can apply the cosmetic look from other items you've found instead. This is known as transmog.
To unlock this feature, you simply need to build the Forge in the Hideout. After that, it can be done directly from the inventory menu - no need to use your in-game money.
"Overall, the Forge plays a key part in managing your inventory" says Julien "there you can upgrade or dismantle weapons & gear, but we will share more in an upcoming article on the Hideout."
We pushed transmog further for Shadows by adding weapon customization too. Not only can you switch the visual of one weapon to another, you can also mix and match the look of its different parts. The final result could be the blade of one weapon, with the guard of another, and the handle of your newly acquired one.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows – Progression: Weapon Customization
Once you've created a customized gear and weapon set that you want to save, head to the Gallery in your Hideout (once you've constructed it). You can not only display your gear there, but you also unlock loadouts to save your different equipment configurations.
Customizing your playstyle
Each equipment piece has stats that can affect key game mechanics, such as base weapon attacks, posture attacks, critical damage and many more. It will be up to you to find synergies between gear, weapons, and skills to embrace your favorite way to play.
For players who want to further dive into crafting their unique playstyle, here are additional features you might be interested in.
Perks
Perks are a great way to modify, enhance, or specialize a piece of equipment. In the game, there are hundreds of perks to find that can improve your stats. You'll acquire (or loot) new ones each time you kill a Target, but you can also purchase them at merchants, find some in chests, or obtain some by constructing your Forge at the Hideout.
Perks can also be unlocked after completing specific accomplishments in-game. For example, completing a specific number of Air Assassinations can unlock the perk to remove an additional Health segment while doing an Air Assassination. In short, perks are a great way to further specialize in your favorite playstyle while being rewarded for it.
Perks can be straightforward stat improvements, influence Afflictions, or feature different exotic conditions that inspire you to play differently. For example, a perk can boost your base damage the more you have adrenaline chunks filled, so it encourages you to play without Abilities in exchange for hitting enemies much harder.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows – Progression: Air Assassination
Legendary perks are the most unique ones. They change the way you play by affecting a game mechanic instead of simply boosting a stat, though they can only be found on Legendary gear.
The perks you collect can be put into use once you construct the Forge at the Hideout. Engraving complementary perks can create powerful synergies on a given piece of equipment, allowing you to personalize your gear and make it your own.
We have some examples for you of the unique playstyles you can create, simply by mixing the right gear, perks and skills.
EXOTIC COMBAT WITH NAOE
This mix of gear, weapons and perks allow Naoe to knock down enemies when sliding into them, deal more damage on ground attacks and vault over them when sprinting. This mix of moves gives room for a very offensive - and exotic playstyle, where you can engage/disengage enemies to surprise them.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows – Progression: Naoe Combat Build
STEALTH RANGE BUILD FOR YASUKE
We teased in our stealth article Yasuke's ability to strike from the shadows with his bow. In the following clip, you can see the use of the legendary Archer set that increases range damage, mixed with various perks that ensure even a Samurai Daisho can be killed right away with a headshot.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows – Progression: Yasuke Stealth Build
There are of course many ways you can specialize Naoe or Yasuke, whether you want to create a build specific to strike at night when in stealth or becoming deadly in combat when performing perfect parries with your katana.
Afflictions
Some weapons can also induce Afflictions; this added element replaces one of the weapon stat boosts. Afflictions require build-up time to take effect, the length of which can vary depending on your gear and perks, so they are more useful on enemies with larger pools of health. We have 4 types of afflictions:
BLEED
Bleed instantly deals massive additional damage once Affliction buildup is reached and then resets.
Poison
Poison becomes active for a set duration upon buildup, dealing light damage over time. Poison also interrupts enemies and causes them to vomit.
Daze
Enemies are dazed for a certain amount of time once the Affliction buildup is reached. While dazed, enemies will miss most of their attack attempts and won't be able to defend.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows – Progression: Daze Affliction
Knock Out
A KO'd enemy stays down on the ground for a certain amount of time. This Affliction is mostly induced by Abilities, or when an enemy is grabbed (instead of assassinated) and then KO'd by Naoe or Yasuke.
TRADING
Merchants
Trading will also be key in the game to push Naoe and Yasuke's talents further.
Throughout the Open World, you can find Merchants in cities, or Itinerant Merchants on the various roads of Japan. We have different types of Merchants that sell different things. Some are focused on selling gear, some on resources, and some on cosmetic elements. You can also sell them extra resources, unused gear, and valuables in exchange for Mons (the currency at that time).
Merchants also sell unique things that you cannot find anywhere else, so don't hesitate to stop by!
We hope you enjoyed this new look at Assassin's Creed Shadows! Tune in next time for a new detailed look at the Hideout.
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