As someone who grew up during thegolden era of the Assassin’s Creed series, I still remember rather fondly playing as Ezio Auditore and slowly but surely restoring Monteriggioni to its former glory.
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It was nice to have a place to call home after a day of spilling blood across Italy. Venice is nice, and Tuscany is beautiful, but there was something about your little hideout that had a certain charm to it.
That’s something that Assassin’s Creed Shadows tries to replicate by offering players a hideout that they can effectively build from scratch. With unique buildings, scouts, decorative items, and even pets to occupy the space, you can really make the place your own.
But the question remains: which of these buildings is best? Well, we intend to rank them, allowing you to prioritize the most useful structures first.
Pray For Perks
Praying grants a boon for 15 minutes, and effects are given a 20% buff
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The Jinja is, at least in my humble opinion, the weakest of all the buildings on offer, not only down to the fact that the effect isn’t all that helpful to players, but also, that it’s very rare that you get a chance in the game to make use of this feature at all.
Players will, on occasion, come across shrines where they can pray, and in turn, the player will gain a buff that allows for faster adrenaline gain, which is useful for those who rely on weapon-specific abilities.
However, the issue here is twofold. First, the abilities, while useful, aren’t a necessity for players, and adrenaline fills up quickly anyway if you’re good at combat. Plus, it’s very rare that you even come across a shrine to pray at anyway, meaning you’ll rarely get any benefit from this building.
I would save your materials and swerve this one unless you want to complete the set.
Free, But Far From Exciting
Stockpiles can be tagged and provide resources by the end of the season.
This is a building that players get as standard when they unlock the Hideout in AC Shadows, and even though it’s a free building, the fact that you don’t need to invest any materials doesn’t make this one rank high on this list.
The only function this building has is to offer a means of transporting materials when you find hefty caches of them across the map.
In theory, this can be quite helpful and keep you stocked on materials, but due to the high cost of Scouts, it’s often more trouble than it’s worth. Plus, you may’t often manually change the seasons, so you never really know when you’ll reap these rewards.
It’s a building you’ll get anyway, and it’s nice to have. But it’s one that we wouldn’t particularly miss if it was gone.
Stick That Up Your Dojo
Unlocks Allies and gives you the ability to upgrade Allies to higher ranks.
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If you’re someone who gets akick out of a fun JRPG summon system, AC Shadows employs something relatively similar through the medium of Allies.
When you build a Dojo, you can house allies you acquire by completing quests andactivities in the open world.Then, when in battle or sneaking around, you can call upon their services as needed and make the most of their unique abilities.
This is a fun inclusion, and these summons have situational uses. However, there is rarely a time when you can’t get by just as competently without them. So, investing in upgrades for your Allies isn’t the best use of your time.
It’s definitely a building worth having for those situational moments, but it’s a luxury more than anything.
A Walk-in Wardrobe
Allows you to create preset loadouts and switch gear on the fly
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If you’ve ever dreamed of having a walk-in wardrobe, then AC Shadows has a Hideout building that could be right up your street.
The Gallery is basically a wardrobe where you may create custom loadouts, and once you do this, you can return anytime and switch from your current loadout to a preset you made on the fly.
This is a building that you won’t have much use for in the early game, but as you unlock more weapon and armor types with unique perks that blend with one another, this can be a handy thing to have, as it negates the need to menu incessantly as you chop and change your gear.
But it is another building that feels like more of a luxury than a game-changer, hence why we can’t bump it any further up the ranks.
Less Chicken, More Scouts
Reduces Scout Refill costs by 30%
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Not to be mistaken for the popular chicken establishment, a Nando in AC Shadows is essentially a block of cozy apartments for your scouts to live in, and if you build these, the scouts will reward you in turn.
This will reduce the cost of refreshing your Scouts, which can get pricey at 200 Mon a pop. The cost drops to 140 Mon, which means that you can refresh them without needing to worry quite as much about your bottom line.
Seeing as the game puts so much emphasis on the Scout network feature, this is a good option to unlock early, and that is why we rank this one relatively high.
5Tea Room/Zashiki
Patch Yourself Up Better
Increases Ration efficiency by 20%
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Depending on what difficulty setting you are playing on, these buildings will vary in terms of their usefulness, but if we meet in the middle and assume you are playing on normal difficulty, these buildings can be quite handy to have.
We have grouped these buildings together as they both have the same effect, offering a 20% buff to the effectiveness of your rations. However, you can only build one of each, so building both is advised.
These are great passive effects that ensure that every time you need to heal in AC Shadows, you get the most out of each Ration, as you never know when your next opportunity to refill at a Ration Box or with a Trader will be.
Obviously, the best remedy to all this is to simply be amazing at combat and never take damage, but seeing as that is pretty unrealistic, these buildings are great options to spend your materials on.
Upgrade Your Blade
Allows players to upgrade and dismantle weapons and armor
The Forge is a building that players will likely build early in their AC Shadows playthrough, as it is tied to a major early quest line.
But even though you’ll effectively be strong-armed into building one, it’s a feature that you won’t regret building, as the forge allows you to manage your gear more effectively.
With a blacksmith on-site, players can upgrade any weapon that they find and bring it up to a standard befitting of your level, not to mention dismantle the weapons you don’t need to facilitate that.
I will concede that you don’t necessarily need to engage with this feature all that much, as the drops you find in the open world will constantly scale with the player. But, if you find something that you really like, this is a means of making it your go-to gear for the entire adventure.
A Base Of Operations
A safehouse to manage contracts, supplies, and Scouts
While it may be a building that you more or less get for free, making it a mandatory and unavoidable purchase, the Kakurega still deserves praise for offering a lot of value to the player.
This is a building where you will be able to pick up contracts to acquire more building materials, you’ll be able to store your gear, and you’ll also be able to refill your Scouts here, which is a necessity because the game demands you to use scouts to locate just about every damn quest marker.
It’s essentially a little base of operations, and you’re able to even unlock Kakuregas across the map to act as little homes away from home. It’s a versatile building and one we rank highly.
Cut Down on Grinding
Grants players a passive 10% buff to all XP gain
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You’ll come to find out as you play AC Shadows that the game has a bit of an issue with level-gating content, as you will get to a point in the game where you’ll simply be too under-leveled, and you’ll need to grind your way to better base stats.
This can be a slog, as you’ll need to do busy work within the open world or complete quests in the areas that don’t require high levels. However, you can avoid having to do this quite as much if you build yourself a Tera.
This is a building that, when constructed, gives the player a passive 10% buff to all XP gain, meaning no matter what you’re doing in-game, you’ll be getting more experience from each activity.
It’s one of the few buildings that is optional but feels damn-near essential. So, if you don’t want to spend forever grinding, a Tera is the answer to all your woes.
Extra Scouts Are A Godsend
Adds another Scout and reduces the quest marker search zone by 25%
By far, the best building to build early in your hideout is the Study, as the game demands that players use Scouts to reveal just about everything in this game, and this building eases that burden ever so slightly.
Not only does this building add an additional scout slot, allowing to call upon four of them before you need to refill early on, but it also reduces the search zone for quests when you finally do pinpoint the area on the map, meaning you won’t need to aimlessly run around for quite as long.
It’s a shame you can’t build more of these buildings, as they would have trivialized the rather burdensome scouting mechanic and made progression a little smoother for those willing to grind for materials.
But even still, one is better than none, and you may upgrade the existing one, so more Scouts are always an option.
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