Assassin’s Creed Shadows comes with a new approach to open-world exploration and quest tracking. From Objective Boards to scout deployment and resource smuggling, here is a quick breakdown of how it all works!
Objective Boards and Story Tracking
The Objective Board is your new quest hub, accessible from the pause menu. It shows everything from main quests and side objectives to local NPC requests and enemy targets. It updates automatically as you progress or meet new characters.
In the center, you will find Naoe and Yasuke’s personal questlines; including main story targets like the Shinbakufu. You gather clues by completing quests, helping citizens, or defeating enemies. Zoom in on a quest to see story details, rewards, and location hints. If you prefer a simpler experience, Guided Mode reveals exact locations without solving clues.
Scouts, Observation & Navigation
Once you track a quest, you can deploy scouts from your World Map to help locate it. The more scouts you dispatch, the wider the scan range. You start with one scout, but can expand to three and speed up their return at Kakurega safe houses. Upgrading your Hideout also increases your scout capacity.
Use the Observe mechanic (L2) to find exact objectives, mark enemies, highlight loot, and plan your approach. You can also activate the Pathfinder tool to create a visible route to your next target (this also works on the world map, not just out during gameplay). In any case, it is a very handy tool, no matter if you are on foot or horseback.
Smuggling, Seasons and Hideout Upgrades
Scouts are not just useful for finding objectives, they also help you gather resources through smuggling. You can mark guarded stockpiles, and your scouts will retrieve the materials by the end of the season, which you can then use to upgrade your Hideout. Just keep in mind: each smuggling operation uses up scout slots for the full season, so you will need to balance exploration and gathering carefully.
Seasons progress automatically as you play or when a loading sequence occurs. However, you can also manually trigger a season change from the world map after some time has passed! This is a helpful option when you want to collect smuggled resources sooner or refresh your scout deployments.
For more info, you can watch the full, official video here:
