The Hidden Blade Assassin's Creed in Depth

The Lunden story arc ends with a boss fight against The Compass. This is designed to be combat rather than an assassination. Since I already assassinated The Arrow and The Leech with explosions I decided to use fire on their boss as well.

You have three choices on how to approach The Compass. I choose to take the flank with Erke. He leads Eivor on a good route around the left of the forces. You can jump from log to log and stay dry but the archers will shoot at you about halfway there. I dive into the water and sneak up on the two archers nearest The Compass. After dispatching them I fire a crossbow at the target. It breaks down after the third shot and does a disappointing amount of damage.

Now I swim underwater far enough away that The Compass loses track of Eivor. When he's not looking I climb to a high point on a nearby boat. The Compass wanders between three sets of explosive barrels (one set is hidden behind a wall that collapses when shot with an arrow). Shoot whichever barrels are nearest to him and set The Compass on fire. A barrage of arrows both accelerates his demise and prevents him from throwing a counterattack at Eivor.

The escape demonstrates the dry route back to shore. Now that the archers have ceased fire there's no reason to swim.

You will find The Leech roaming the ground floor of the two story basilica in northeast Lunden. For a good stealth assassination enter through the open window on the second story and make your way over the study at the east end. Wait until The Leech arrives and hit her with an air assassination.

If at any time The Leech becomes spooked she will flee out the south door to the center of the courtyard. In doing so she passes a natural arrangement of four oil jars. With two more oil jars and a little imagination this becomes a perfect opportunity for a firecracker assassination.

The game mechanics make it difficult to move more than one oil jar a great distance. Whenever you place an oil jar and then move out of its sightline, that oil jar will disappear and respawn at its original location. Successfully moving two or more oil jars involves shuttling them 50 feet at a time and never around a blind corner. It usually isn't worth the effort.

PREPARATION

There are two preliminary steps not shown in the video. First, pre-assassinate all the guards in the courtyard being careful not to aggravate The Leech. Be particularly careful with the guard standing at the door of the basilica (the one through which The Leech flees). If she sees a dead body lying there it may spook her. So either whistle him away from the door or assassinate him while she's not looking and quickly move the body away.

Second, go find another oil jar and bring it to the courtyard. I grabbed the one right in the middle of the Temple of Mithras which is just south of the courtyard. The oil jar is on the ground below an archer on a high platform. You'll have to kill a guard or two in order to carry it out.

The Arrow is perhaps the easiest assassination target in the entire Assassin's Creed series. The Firing The Arrow memory begins with Eivor onstage and standing directly behind the target. All one needs to do is take three steps forward and stab him in the back. Furthermore, Eivor can do practically anything without raising suspicion among the target, the other archers gathered onstage, or onlookers. In other words, it's a perfect opportunity for a creative assassination!

I suggest climbing the large arch behind the stage. From the top you may air assassinate The Arrow. It's pretty cool but I wanted to try something other than an air assassination for a change.

HOT FOOT

There's a classic prank among baseball players called the hot foot which involves placing a flame near the victim's foot. We can do something like that in Valhalla. First we need to find one of those flaming oil jars. They aren't very common in Lunden and most are located in heavily guarded areas. The one I grab in the video has the virtues of being unguarded and easily accessible via a road running west from the stage. There may be closer oil jars - I don't know.

Carry the oil jar back to the stage and place it at The Arrow's feet. You can put it right in front of him. He won't care. Eivor is golden. I prefer to put it directly behind The Arrow so that the blast will blow him off the stage.

The Grantebridge story arc climaxes with an actual prime assassination target named Wigmund (no first name).
This guide will show a way to stealth assassinate him without help from Soma and her crew.

APPROACH

The memory An Island of Eels begins at a camp that looks like a clan standing ankle deep in a swamp. Soma tells Eivor, "At the first sign of trouble, my crew will jump in." but then Soma herself is the only one to join Eivor on the mission. Need help busting down a door? Soma will help! Her crew will just be hanging around in the swamp. (I've read that if you stealth assassinate Wigmund and then are detected by his guards, Eivor will blow her horn to summon the rest of the crew. This has never happened to me so I cannot confirm.)

Since Soma will be joining Eivor, I let her ride in the bitch seat of my horse. No sense making her walk all the way to the Ely Monastery. It's just a short ride to the southeast. Wigmund will be on the ground floor of the north tower. That's the tall, round tower which will be on your left as you approach the monastery.

It's fairly easy to infiltrate the Distrust Zone. As long as you don't ride your horse through the front gate you should be fine. I climb the wall to the left of the front gate and then move along that wall left toward the north tower. There's one guard that I assassinate just to clear an escape path for later.

Commentary Variant: https://youtu.be/6jbK8XQXYSo

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood
Side Memories | Assassinations
Full Synchronization, No Detection, No Commentary
Easy (Easiest?) Methods

0:00 Two's Company
2:29 Tactical Correction
3:28 ...And Three's A Crowd
4:41 Serf's Turf
5:55 The Three Amici
8:11 Red Letter Day
9:04 The Merchant of Rome
9:57 Bearers of Bad News
11:16 Cardinal Sin
12:39 Turning The Tables
14:50 Graduation
17:03 Brutes and Brutality

I love this game a whole lot and I felt like revisiting it while making a complete joke out of its Side Assassinations. In reality, the Full Syncs for these are super easy if you know how items work.

Brotherhood making Smoke Bombs throwable is what causes Full Sync No Detect to be possible on all of these. Without this mechanic, the player would have to choose between either Full Sync or No Detects in certain situations, it wouldn't be possible to clear both conditions at once in every mission. Throwable Smoke means the player can put a disable/stun on certain enemies but still kill them with a specific weapon (usually the Hidden Blade) and not be in breach of the Full Sync constraint. Very useful.

The Contract "Turning The Tables" has the Full Sync Constraint: "Kill 1 Brute, 1 Seeker, 1 Papal Guard with their own weapon." What it actually means though, is kill one of each with their own weapon type. This is what allows No Detects Full Sync here. The player can stun both, remove one, pick up the fallen's weapon, and use it on the one still coughing. Conditions ticked!

Normally the only way you are supposed to get civilians as ship lieutenants is when you complete a quest for an NPC and when you are done talking to him/her there is a chance you will get a dialogue option to ask said NPC to join your crew. The civilian may or may not accept your offer. But Ubisoft overlooked one thing: If you knock out characters from random quests you'll have the option to recruit the manual way (haven't tried this with story based characters). I've looked up "recruiting civilians" online and couldn't find any reference to this, so I'm assuming it isn't intentional.

So what is the purpose of recruiting civilians? Most of them have common perks, so it's just if you're tired of using the usual soldiers and mercenaries and rather would have unique looking allies.

In the first example I come across a civilian from whom I can start a quest. Both her and another civilian in the area are quest generated and are available for recruitment. Because I don't have the option to knockout, I just deplete nearly all their health and finish them off with a non lethal Sparta Kick (make sure they aren't taking poison/fire damage during this or they can still die).

Currently my only successful attempt at finding an exploit to kill an extremely high level enemy.

The video shows only the last part of the setup. This is a level forty five cultist found in a shipyard in northern Achaia. I had previously let him chase me to the docks. He'll stay put and won't return to his original location, even if you fast travel away, thanks to the game engine remembering where characters are.

In this particular dock there is a spot where you can make him get stuck (again the setup for this wasn't shown mostly due to the sheer amount of times dying). Lead the target to the tight spot on the edge of the dock. He normally won't go far enough to get stuck but can get tricked into by attacking you when you are close enough for a melee attack.

You'll need a boat for this as well. So you're thinking, why not simply knock him off the dock? Because you can't do that to skull level enemies, not even with abilities like Sparta kick. It seems you used to be able to do that based off an old video where someone knocks the same target off a roof, dealing massive amounts of damage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A08PPFYFrFU
But I've never been able to knock skull level enemies off of structures.

So now you take the boat and move it as close to the dock as you can, allowing the target to get on. I imagine very few docks have a spot where you can trap a character, so if you want to do this somewhere else you'll have to move the boat first, then try to get your target on. After that it's a simple matter of using a torch to sink the boat and whatever unfortunate NPC on is on there is a sitting duck. Normally characters will try to swim back on land, but in this case there wasn't a place for him to get back up.

Note: There is no guarantee the target will drown. First time I accomplished getting this cultist in the water I had to swing my weapon at him constantly for 15-20 minutes before all his health was whittled down.

One of the four Legendary ships in Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag is El Impoluto (which is Spanish for "The Big Polluter"). This is a video of straight up naval battle - no exploits. The main trick to getting it done in 4 minutes is to go on the offensive. I didn't brace often and nearly ended up getting sunk because of it. A few notes:

0:18 - Use mortars when at a great distance.

0:28 - I intentionally let El Impoluto ram the back part of the Jackdaw. This spins the Jackdaw around so we have a clear shot at the stern of El Impoluto as it leaves.

0:50 - Hold to fire Swivel Guns at weak points when prompted. I had the HUD turned off for this video and missed some other opportunities to do this.

1:25 - Pull right alongside the Legendary ship to use your Heavy Shot. This is like Broadside Cannons except you don't aim, just fire.

2:00 - If it gets on your 6 o'clock, deploy Fire Barrels. You can aim them a little to the left or right as necessary.

3:25 - After getting rammed one more time, I finished off El Impoluto with a 1-2-3 combo of Heavy Shot, Swivel Guns, and Broadside Cannons to the stern. That'll teach 'em to quit polluting the Caribbean.

When starting the first assassination mission, the game informs you there are ten entrances leading into Notre Dame, and a secret entrance. This video details that.

0:20 The most basic entry, the front door. Used a smoke bomb to avoid a direct confrontation with the guards.

1:38 The secret entrance (a definite must when Notre Dame gets rebuilt). An underground passage leads from the church to a well. Can only be used during this mission. I think these tunnels also play a part in a coop mission.

Up until this point I had practiced a little on roaming the inside of the building and showing entrances. Everything afterward is improvised. That's why I had trouble climbing directly to the second floor. Thought I could easily get up there from the pillars and had to edit out nearly a minute of embarrassing pointless climbing.

Assassin's Creed Odyssey
Nightmare Difficulty
Timed Epic Ship: The Black Wind (Event)
Targets: Alpha Light Trireme (Boss) with two other ships (Additionals).

I'm not much of a Naval guy, but I figure it's good to have at least a bit of high-level, maximum-difficulty Naval Gameplay on this website.

Naval in Odyssey handles and controls more smoothly than the previous games, feeling a lot more arcade-y and game-y, and even less simulated. You can move your ship around very comfortably, for the most part, and both attacking and defending are quick to access without much delay between actions. Boosting in order to temporarily move faster is easy to use, and so is turning, and ramming enemy ships.

At high difficulties, without having an upgraded ship, a player can be torn asunder very quickly, and even when maxed out, the biggest difference between this game and previous iterations of Naval is how Unbraced (Not Blocked) Damage is handled. It was possible not to Brace against damage in Black Flag, Rogue, Origins, and still live, but doing so in this game, even against normal enemy ships will savage your health-bar horribly. Blocking is even more important in this game, and so is picking the right moments to fire back.