How do AC Shadows scouts work? Japan is a big place, and for Naoe, the threats are many. If you want to succeed in achieving your vengeance-themed goals, you’ll need some help, and AC Shadows scouts are the perfect way to give you an advantage over those who would do you harm. Not only can they dampen the threat on your life, but they can increase your wealth and even scout out an area before you visit.
Eventually, you will have a lot of assets on your side in Assassin’s Creed Shadows. This includes a handful of powerful AC Shadows allies, and the best AC Shadows weapons – leading into the best AC Shadows builds, of course – but one of the first tools at your disposal is your array of scouts. Here’s how the AC Shadows scouts work, and how you can use them to get an advantage over the enemy.
What are AC Shadows scouts?
Scouts in Assassin’s Creed Shadows are a multi-use resource of people that can be deployed in a variety of ways. They can be used on the map to locate the position of an objective, they can steal resources from an enemy camp, and they can lower the threat level of a region if it gets too high.
Scouts have a limited number of uses during an AC Shadows season, and this depends on how many scouts you have in your employ. Assigning scouts to a task will reduce the available number you have on hand, with hauling resources from an enemy camp initially costing two scouts, for instance. You can increase the number of scouts you have by upgrading the Study in your Assassin’s Creed Shadows Hideout.
The three main functions of AC Shadows scouts are:
- Scouting
- Smuggling
- Cancel provincial alert
Scouting
When you’re tackling one of the AC Shadows quests, it’s often the case that you won’t get a specific map marker. Instead, you’ll get a general location, and you’re left to figure it out on your own. You can narrow the scope of your search with scouts, though, by pressing X (or Square) on the AC Shadows map.
You still have to direct the area of your search, so paying attention to the clues is important, but scouting ahead can save you a lot of time. You can increase the radius of the scouted area, but this will cost you more uses of your scouts.
Smuggling
When skulking around an enemy camp, you will occasionally come across large bundles of AC Shadows resources. These cannot be picked up by your character; instead, they can be tagged for transport, and your scouts will ferry them back to your hideout at the end of the current season.
Initially, each bundle of resources will cost two scouts to ferry, but as you upgrade your Study, this cost can be reduced to just one scout. Having a constant supply of smuggled resources coming into your hideout at the end of each season can help with consistent expansion.
Cancel provincial alert
If you create too much of a fuss for your enemy, you may find the entire province gets put on alert, making things very difficult for you. If a province is on alert, guards will be more aggressive to you on sight, and you’ll be hunted by deadly groups of enemies called The Guardians. Building and upgrading a Kakurega in your AC Shadows Hideout will allow you to counteract this threat.
Once you have a Kakurega, you can deploy scouts to cancel this provincial alert. This makes it easier to move around and saves you the need to look over your shoulder every five seconds, lest you find a sword buried in it. This action removes the AC Shadows wanted level and brings you back into anonymity.
Now that you know how AC Shadows scouts work, you can get the lay of the land before you take a single step into enemy territory. Instead, you can concentrate on gathering AC Shadows legendary gear, taking down the AC Shadows bosses, and potentially getting involved in an AC Shadows romance with one of your eligible partners.