Dexerto / UbisoftAssassin’s Creed Shadows is by no means an easy adventure. With so much to explore, so many quests to go on and so many challenges to face, you’ll want to fully understand the different difficulties in order to thrive in feudal Japan.
Whether you’re looking to keep your game stealthy with Naoe or barge into the world’s biggest strongholds as Yasuke, finding that perfect balance between too easy and too hard is vital. After all, if a game’s too simple, it’ll become boring, and if it’s too tough, it’ll be far too frustrating.
So, to ensure you get the best experience in Assassin’s Creed Shadows, you’ll need to understand all the available difficulty settings, as well as the best settings you have to choose, and all you need to know about Difficulty Tuning.
All Assassin’s Creed Shadows difficulty settings
Each Assassin’s Creed Shadows difficulty setting offers a different gameplay experience, with the likes of combat, stealth, and enemy power being the primary factors that differ. We’ve listed all the difficulty features below:
| Difficulty | Features |
|---|---|
| Story | – Focuses on narrative over combat – Enemies are weaker – Naoe is harder to detect – Naoe is more resistant to damage – Naoe deals more damage – Yasuke is more resistant to damage – Yasuke deals more damage in combat – No need to optimize gear |
| Forgiving | – Naoe can easily infiltrate areas – Naoe is slightly stronger – Yasuke is slightly stronger – Optimizing gear and skills is recommended |
| Normal | – The intended experience – Naoe will need to use skills to take down enemies – Yasuke can face combat at his current level – Must invest in gear and other progression elements |
| Expert | – Enemies have a wide field of view – Enemies are stronger against Yasuke – Must maximize power through gear, weapons, and skills |
The best difficulty setting
The best difficulty setting to choose in Assassin’s Creed Shadows is undeniably Normal mode.
This will ensure you get the intended experience out of the game’s combat and stealth. To complement this, we suggest using the following settings to enhance your experience:
- Guided Exploration: Off
- Canon Mode: Off
- Immersive Mode: On
Then, under Gameplay, when you select Difficulty Tuning, we suggest the following:
Dexerto / Ubisoft- Combat Difficulty: Normal
- Stealth Difficulty: Normal
- Guaranteed Assassination: Off
Difficulty tuning explained
Difficulty Tuning is similar to the game’s standard difficulties, except it allows you to finely tune what kind of features you want to be harder or easier. So, if you prefer to use stealth and don’t like the melee, you’ll need to adjust the combat difficulty, and vice versa if you prefer up-close battles.
Combat Difficulty is formed of the same four difficulty classes, Story, Forgiving, Normal, and Expert. Naturally, Story will make the protagonists stronger and more resilient, and reaction times will be much slower. The harder the difficulty, the faster their reactions, the wider their perception, and the weaker Naoe and Yasuke are, though you can use gear to balance this out.
Stealth Difficulty is much the same but is split into Forgiving, Normal, and Expert. Forgiving allows infiltration to be easier with enemies not having much perception and lacking coordination during a search. Their responses are also made slower. Then, the harder the difficulty the more they’ll spot, the more cautious they’ll be, and they’ll detect you faster, even on roofs.
Lastly, Guaranteed Assassination removes the feature that stops powerful enemies from being instantly killed through an assassination. Tougher enemies will lose a chunk of their health (or reject it altogether) if you have this toggled off.
So, that’s all you need to know about the difficulty settings in Assassin’s Creed Shadows. While preparing to dive into the game as Naoe and Yasuke, be sure to check out all the game’s weapons, where and when it’s set, or what’s coming in the DLC and expansion.
