Assassin’s Creed Shadows is the beginning of a new phase of progression in the series. Now that there is two unique characters that you can swap to at any time, the old progression of Assassin’s Creed no longer works. Ubisoft has revealed a dev diary on their blog that shows off everything to progression.
“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
The first thing they show off for Assassin’s Creed Shadows is the Mastery system. In this video specifically it shows off Naoe learning how to double assassinate. You can kill two enemies at once in stealth with this mastery tree progression system. Doing normal missions, and side quests as well as just playing through the game gives you mastery points to put into any of the trees you have unlocked. There are also unique enemies you can defeat to gain even more Mastery points.
You can unlock abilities in the Mastery trees. You equip this abilities to the radial wheel on the bottom right and can activate it by holding a trigger and pressing the face button that it corresponds to. Something that was practiced here on The Outerhaven when we got our hands on the game for a preview.
Some abilities in the game will be unable to be learned from the get go. You are supposed to increase something called Knowledge ranks in order to get access to those.
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.
Essentially the way you increase your knowledge rank is by gathering collectibles. In order to not get halted by your place in the game, you can also pray at shrines or start meditation. This will likely be easy to unlock due to the amount of collectibles you can find in the game. The blog talks about even though the knowledge rank caps out at 6, there is a completely different knowledge tree system once you are maxed out that can change how you play the game. This will be where you unlock end game builds.
Enemies
A big part of progression in any game is the enemies you are able to go toe to toe with and Assassin’s Creed Shadows isn’t any different. The level of your gear will directly affect your ability to fight enemies and seeing their level helps with preparing for them. Each enemy in the game has their health bar divided into segments. Going in for an assassination for enemies with lots of segments of health will only damage them. A successful assassination will deplete their health by two segments. Though if you want, you can just turn one-hit assassinations to kill any enemies instantly like in the old style of Assassin’s Creed games. When you target an enemy you can observe their health bar in different colors, white means it is safe to assassinate them, yellow means they are on alert and will prevent some damage, red means they are on high alert and will deny the attempt entirely.
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.
Gear
A big part of progression in any game is the gear you can equip to customize your character’s playstyle and stats. in Assassin’s Creed Shadows there are five quality levels of gear.
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Common equipment is the lowest quality and has basic stats
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Uncommon equipment has improved stats and a perk (more on perks below)
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Rare equipment is stronger, and offers the possibility to engrave a second perk of your choice at the Forge in the Hideout
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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.)
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Legendary equipment has unique, handpicked stats, a gameplay-oriented perk, and an engraving slot
Any gear you fall in love with you can continue to upgrade at the Forge. It is highly recommended to upgrade gear to keep your progression rising.
If you do fall in love with a way a gearset looks but realizes the gear you find has better stats, you are able to use Transmog in order to customize your fit the way you want in Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
Transmog
The way you unlock this feature in the game is to build a forge in your hideout. Then you will have access to upgrade and Transmog gear. You can also dismantle gear to get resources from gear you will no longer use or want. One thing that is unique to Assassin’s Creed Shadows is being able to Transmog parts of weapons rather than the whole weapon itself.
You can use the gallery menu to save Transmog configurations in the game as well as display it. The next part of the blog is all about the custom builds you can have with Naoe and Yasuke. In particular building Naoe as someone that uses Guerilla warfare in unique ways such as sliding into them and then running away to deal more offensive damage to them later. Yasuke has a stealth build but uses range to hide from enemies rather than sneaking up close behind prey like Naoe is able to do. Be on the lookout for the next blog post that the Assassin’s Creed Shadows team puts together outlining the hideout.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows will be released for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC on March 20th, 2025.
