Among all the enemies to assassinate and castles to pillage, Assassin’s Creed Shadows also has base building element in it too. This hideout functions as a place for all your allies to gather so you can chat with them, a place for you to upgrade your equipment, and a place to build structures that provide various bonuses. Most of this is optional, but you will need to engage with them at least a little bit to ensure your equipment is up to date.
Whilst you’re there though, you may as well get yourself a few bonuses as well – you’ve been carrying hundreds of construction materials around all this time, after all. There are quite a few options open to you within Assassin’s Creed Shadows hideouts, so we’ve had a look to see which options are most useful and should be prioritised, since you can’t just build it all at once.
In this guide
- How to build Hideout rooms in Assassin’s Creed Shadows
- Best Hideout upgrades in Assassin’s Creed Shadows
- Themed Hideout rooms in Assassin’s Creed Shadows
- How to unlock Pets in Assassin’s Creed Shadows
- What else can you do at the Hideout?
How to build rooms in Assassin’s Creed Shadows Hideouts
When you’re at your hideout, there are two ways to transition to the building menu, either by interacting with the table in the main building or by venturing into the build area and holding triangle. Either of these will open the build menu, allowing you to select the room, path, decoration, or pet you want, then you’ll be able to place it from a top down view. If you misplace something you can select it and choose to move it or press Triangle / Y on your gamepad to erase things from the top down view.
Best Hideout upgrades in Assassin’s Creed Shadows
The basics of the hideout are the main rooms. The first room, the Hiroma, is built during the mission that introduces you to the hideout system. From there, you’ll be given some hideout related missions, the most important of which is to go and find a blacksmith. Once you’ve completed that mission you’ll be able to build a forge, which allows you to upgrade equipment.
Not all of this is introduced through missions, so there are a few other main rooms to consider:
- The kakurega manages the kakuregas (safehouses) that you can find whilst exploring Japan. Building and upgrading it makes it more efficient and can unlock things like additional kakuregas to use out in the world and reduce their costs.
- The dojo allows you to upgrade allies that you can summon during combat, making them tougher and even allowing you to call on two at once.
- The study is all about scouts, who are an invaluable tool. Scouts collect large resource piles that you find and mark whilst exploring, and the study allows you to increase the number you can have available, reduce the cost of replenishing them, and can also reduce the search area for quest markers.
- The stables are already built, but they should be upgraded as soon as possible. Those aforementioned large resource piles that scouts gather cost two scouts to collect, but the first upgrade to your stables halves this cost to one scout. This doubles your capacity for liberating the resources and hopefully cuts down a bit on having to skip them because you have run out of scouts, which is frustrating.
Themed Hideout rooms in Assassin’s Creed Shadows
Most themed rooms provide a bonus once they’ve been built, such as the Tera, which passively increases experience you gain by 10%, or the Nando, that will reduce costs of replenishing scouts in kakuregas. The gallery allows you to create and switch between weapon loadouts for both characters, whilst the remaining two rooms are customisable to be decorated however you like.
I focused on the Tera so that I could level up a little quicker, and on the Nando so it’s a little cheaper to replenish your scouts without waiting for a season to pass. The more scouts you have the more resources you can gather for building, after all.
How to unlock Pets in Assassin’s Creed Shadows
Pets can be unlocked very simply by finding animals and interacting with them in the world, after which they’ll be available to place in your hideout exactly like a building or other scenery.
It is a little strange that Naoe and Yasuke just wander around Feudal Japan cloning people’s pets, but that’s fine as long as we can have a small zoo of them to fuss over. If you’re desperate for a pet, one will be marked on the map near the hideout’s location once the open world opens up. Simply head over, pet it, and you’ll get yourself a dog!
What else can you do at the Hideout?
The other items for the Hideout are all cosmetic, allowing you to customise the look of your hideout until your heart’s content. There are a lot of items to be found all over Japan, whether it’s in chests, from enemies, or from merchants, and all of them can be placed from the build menu by cycling through the tabs.
Everything from trees, foliage, and rocks to lighting, there’s even some engawas to connect your buildings together so your allies don’t have to step out into the rain if they don’t want to. This is optional of course, but if you’re building a bunch of buildings they may as well look nice, right?
And that’s everything you need to know about the hideout. It isn’t an especially deep system, but there’s some useful bonuses to be found if you spend a little time building and upgrading things. If you’re so inclined, you could make a very pretty garden as well, which might be a nice way to pass time after diving onto fifteen guards wristblade first.
