All Difficulty Settings in Assassin’s Creed Shadows Explained

This guide will explain all the difficulty settings in Assassin’s Creed Shadows and give recommendations on which difficulty to choose.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows offers varying difficulty settings that you can choose from. The game lets you carve your path through feudal Japan. However, the hardships and challenges you need to overcome can be tweaked to your liking. The difficulty can go from a cinematic journey to a brutal test of skill where enemies are unforgiving. Needless to say, there is a difficulty setting for whatever experience you want. 

 In this guide, we’ll explain all the different difficulty settings in Assassin’s Creed Shadows. 

Also Read: 7 Mistakes You Should Avoid While Playing Assassin’s Creed Shadows

List of All Difficulty Settings in Assassin’s Creed Shadows

Here is a complete list of all the difficulty settings in Assassin’s Creed Shadows and the changes they make to the gameplay experience:

Difficulty Setting	Changes
Story	More narrative-focused. Enemies are weaker. More forgiving combat. Naoe is harder to detect during stealth. Playable characters have high damage resistance. Playable characters deal more damage.
Forgiving	Naoe is harder to detect during stealth. Playable characters are slightly stronger. Less forgiving combat.
Normal	Most balanced gameplay mechanics. The intended difficulty of playing the game.
Expert	Enemies have wider field of view making stealth hard. Unforgiving difficulty. Requires more focus on character progressions and gear upgrades.

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What Is the Best Difficulty Settings

Generally, we recommend Normal Mode as the difficulty setting to go. This setting offers a good balance of challenging gameplay without ruining the story pacing of the game. As long as you get the hang of the gameplay mechanics, you won’t be dying a lot and restarting to a checkpoint. 

However, if you care less about the gameplay and just want to breeze through the narrative, go for Story Mode. You will be completely unstoppable, making enemy encounters fairly easy. You won’t even need to upgrade your gears. This difficulty setting ensures you can pay attention to the story without having to worry about anything else.

Also Read: How To Upgrade Your Hideout in Assassin’s Creed Shadows

What is Difficulty Tuning in Assassin’s Creed Shadows

Unlike the standard difficulty presets, Assassin’s Creed Shadows offers Difficulty Tuning. This allows deeper customization of how tough or forgiving specific gameplay elements are.

Combat is divided into Story, Forgiving, Normal, and Expert difficult levels. Meanwhile, Stealth has four options: Forgiving, Normal, and Expert. Another feature included is the Guaranteed Assassination toggle. For those who love the classic Assassin’s Creed one-hit-kill mechanic, this setting is crucial.

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We provide the latest news and create guides for Assassin’s Creed Shadows. Meanwhile, you can check out the following AC Shadows articles or catch us playing games on Twitch and YouTube:

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