Skip to main content

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

Level up in a hurry with our 'Assassin's Creed Origins' guide

In previous Assassin’s Creed games, skill and the right equipment was all you needed to take down nearly any enemy you encountered from the very beginning. Assassin’s Creed Origins changes things up with an RPG-style leveling system, and if you aren’t within a couple of levels of your opponents, you will find yourself dead on the floor in no time. But fear not! If you focus on the right activities, you can keep Bayek on pace to the proper level in very little time, and you will be ready to conquer all that Origins has to offer. Here are the things you need to know when leveling up.

Do side missions

If there is anything you should take away from this guide, it’s this: Do every side mission you can. As you explore Assassin’s Creed Origins massive Egyptian setting, you will come across many, many optional missions, which send Bayek out to help out townspeople, kill key enemies, or even hunt wild animals. Not all of the side activities available in a region will be suitable for your current level, but seek out every one with a suggested level within two of your own. As you do them, your level will go up, and some of the previously impossible side missions will be ready to complete. Make sure you return to previously explored locations after you have leveled up, as well, as many of them will have missions that were far too difficult for you the first time you reached the area.

Recommended Videos

In general, we recommend venturing to the area where your next main quest takes place and completing as many side missions as you can before actually taking on the next bit of story content. If you do this consistently, you will rarely find yourself unprepared for the level recommendation of an upcoming main mission. This is particularly important once you find yourself tasked with taking out the second batch of key characters (following the “Snake” mission) as a few of them will be five or 10 levels too high for Bayek.

Don’t waste your time killing enemies

Image used with permission by copyright holder

There are a lot of enemies roaming the roads and farms of Assassin’s Creed Origins. While it may be tempting to stop and assassinate as many as possible as you make your way to your next objective, this is generally a waste of time. The experience you earn for killing an enemy is minuscule, even after unlocking special perks to increase the rewards for specific types of kills. Plus, you can very rarely kill more than one enemy without alerting a whole mess of guards, and you wind up stuck for several minutes fighting a huge crowd or trying to escape.

Even the enemy camps you find — which contain officers who give additional experience — aren’t generally worth the time it takes to complete them. The reward for killing the officers and finding all the loot isn’t bad, but you earn more experience doing missions or exploring the open world.

Don’t forget the towers

As we mentioned in our beginner’s guide, just because you no longer need to climb towers in order to spot key areas and missions doesn’t mean they aren’t important. Towers will earn you about 200 experience points just for climbing them, and you often find them along the paths you were already taking.

In general, the towers are much shorter and less complex than those in other Assassin’s Creed games, so you maybe need a minute to reach the top. You don’t need to go out of your way in order to find a tower, but the little bonus bits of experience you get for synchronizing will add up, and can often get you to the next level without having to complete a full mission.

Complete papyrus puzzles

An easy, fun way to earn some extra experience points is to complete the papyrus puzzles you find scattered throughout towns and key structures. These are simple riddles lead Bayek from the point where he finds them to a relatively close location where he will find extra treasure — often a piece of powerful gear — as well as a nice chunk of change and experience points.

If you completed all the available side missions in an area and still feel like you could gain another level, make sure you haven’t skipped any of the puzzles. You can check on their completion status any time you’re in a town by pressing the left analog stick.

Invest in the right skills with each level

Image used with permission by copyright holder

In addition to making sure you’re always ready for your next mission, it’s important to make sure you’re steadily putting points into Bayek’s skill tree. With every level earned, you gain one ability point that you can spend on three different types of skills: Warrior, Hunter, and Seer. Each branch features a fairly natural progression, but it’s important to keep in mind the skills you’re picking up, as well as what skills you’re working toward: Depending on how you choose to play, not all skills are created equal, so make sure you’re expanding your skill set in a way that works for you. On that note, we have some recommendations based on the skills we found to be most important.

Warrior

The Warrior tree is, unsurprisingly, focused on direct melee combat. Of the three available trees, this should be your first priority, as it’s impossible to make it through the majority of the game without engaging with enemies directly.

You should invest your very first skill point in “regeneration,” which gives you the ability to regain health while you’re still in combat. In addition to being essential in combat, it is a prerequisite for many of the other skills in the Warrior tree. Next, choose “charge heavy attack,” which gives you an extra-powerful version of your heavy attack after holding down the R2 or RT button. Against enemies with full-size shields, this is the only way to stagger them from the front.

Hunter

None of the abilities in the Hunter tree are as crucial as those in the Warrior tree, but there are a few you should acquire fairly early on. “Assassination loot” will save you the trouble of having to manually pick up enemies’ loot after assassinating them from stealth. “Assassination XP” gives you an experience bonus for every target you assassinate without being detected. Both of these cost two skill points, so you will have to gain four levels in order to unlock them.

Seer

Like the Hunter tree, the Seer skills are not absolutely necessary from the very beginning, but there are a few that will make your life a whole lot easier as you raise your level. Get “dawn and dusk” as early as possible: The skill, which lets you manually change the time from day to night and vice-versa, comes in handy in several side missions early on. We also recommend the “salesman” skill, which gives you more money for selling items As you loot bodies and find item chests, you get plenty of trinkets to sell to local merchants. Maximizing what you get from shops for that swag will help you upgrade your gear, so your weapons are as prepared as you are.

Gabe Gurwin
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Gabe Gurwin has been playing games since 1997, beginning with the N64 and the Super Nintendo. He began his journalism career…
How to get Knowledge Points and what they do in Assassin’s Creed Shadows
One of the protagonists in Assassin's Creed Shadows.

By the time we get to Assassin's Creed Shadows, most of us will be familiar with how the games work. Since transitioning more towards RPGs than stealth games, the titles have not only gotten longer but also embraced skill trees. Naoe and Yasuke each have unique progression paths to work through, but right away you will notice that most of the best abilities are gated off. Like Scouts, Knowledge Points are a new feature that you will need to master if you want to be the best assassin possible. We'll share all our knowledge about Knowledge Points with you.
How Knowledge Points work and how to get them

Knowledge Points are a separate system to XP that allows both Naoe and Yasuke to unlock the better and more powerful skills in all their skill trees. Unlike XP, you can't earn them by performing normal tasks or taking out enemies. Instead, Knowledge Points are rewarded for doing specific non-violent activities in Assassin's Creed Shadows.

Read more
How long is Assassin’s Creed Shadows?
Yasuke in Assassin's Creed Shadows fighting an enemy. He's dressed in his samurai armor.

It's no secret that the Assassin's Creed games have gotten longer and longer over the years. This is typical for Ubisoft open-world titles, but many are hoping that Assassin's Creed Shadows has scaled back on the bloat a bit. There's always fast travel and finding the fastest ways to earn XP to cut down on the grind, but there's only so much time that can be saved. If you're worried that this game might be another 100-hour time investment to fully complete, let's use our Eagle Vision to scout out how long Assassin's Creed Shadows is before you start playing.
How long is Assassin's Creed Shadows?

As you would expect, the amount of time you could put into Assassin's Creed Shadows will vary wildly based on how you approach it. You can focus on just the story and nothing else, tackle a handful of side missions and activities, or attempt to complete anything and everything the game has to offer.

Read more
Assassin’s Creed Shadows preload guide: release date, file size, and more
A character sneaks around at night in Assassin's Creed Shadows.

Plenty of upcoming video games have been delayed, but few as much and as far as Assassin's Creed Shadows. Finally, the game is coming out one way or another very soon, giving us fans the ancient Japanese setting they've been asking for since the series began in 2007. Whether or not this will be one of the best Assassin's Creed games is yet to be determined, but we're not far from getting that answer. If you've been waiting for months to get your hands on this new open-world game, these are all the preload details you need to know to be ready to enter the world of assassins as soon as possible.
Assassin's Creed Shadows release date

There's no more room for delays, so Assassin's Creed Shadows will come out on March 20 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC no matter what.
Assassin's Creed Shadows file size

Read more