When you first start out your journey for revenge in Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Naoe will find herself without any allies and unable to do much around the open world of Feudal Japan.
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This includes some key gameplay mechanics and features that can be unlocked by the player by taking part in side quests and recruiting allies. One of the earliest examples of this is weapon customisation, which needs to be unlocked by finding the blacksmith.
How To Find The Blacksmith
Finding Heiji In The Way Of The Blacksmith
After you complete the mission From Spark To Flame and unlock the Hideout in Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Tomiko will give you a few leads to chase up for new recruits. One of those leads is to find a blacksmith called Heiji in Sakai for the Way of the Blacksmith side quest. Head over to the location marked on the map above in Sakai to begin the sidequest.
You’re going to be returning to Sakai a lot at this point in the game, so it’s worth heading to the Synchronisation point on the boat to get a quick fast travel point.
When you arrive in the area, head up to the roof of a building and hold down LT on Xbox or L2 on PS5 to observe the area and find Heiji, who will be marked with a blue dot. Go over to him and defend him from the low-level bandits that will be trying to cause trouble for him. Talk to Heiji after defeating them and he’ll agree to join you at the Hideout.
How To Unlock And Upgrade The Forge
Before Heiji can help you out, though, you’re going to need to build a Forge for him. Head over to the Hideout and to a table in the main building with a model of the Hideout on it to enter build mode. Then, select the Forge and place it wherever you like in the Hideout. Building it is going to cost 40 Crops, 30 Wood, and 10 Minerals which should be fairly easy to do with a bit of exploration and looting in enemy hideouts.
Building the Forge unlocks weapon and armour customisation (which we’ll detail in a second), but that’s just the start of what you can do. Each structure can be upgraded, giving it more capabilities, meaning there are multiple levels to the Forge.
|
Forge Level |
Resource Cost |
Unlocked Abilities |
|---|---|---|
|
Level 1 |
40 Crops, 30 Wood, 10 Minerals |
Weapons and armour can be upgraded to level 20 and dismantled. |
|
Level 2 |
350 Crops, 260 Wood, 90 Minerals |
Weapons and armour can be upgraded to level 40 and non-Legendary engravings can be applied to them. |
|
Level 3 |
700 Crops, 520 Wood, 170 Minerals |
Weapons and armour can be upgraded to level 60 and Legendary engravings can be applied to them. |
Weapon And Armour Customisation And Upgrading
Making Your Gear Look However You Want It
The most important thing about the Forge is that it unlocks the ability to customise and upgrade your weapons and armour. To upgrade your toolkit, simply speak to Heiji in the Hideout and then select whatever item you want to be improved. This will cost Mon and Ironsand (or Hemp Cloth for armour), but if you’re particularly attached to a weapon, it might be worth doing.
You can also dismantle weapons and armour at the Forge to obtain Hemp Cloth and Ironsand that can be used to upgrade the pieces of gear you actually want to keep. You can also just sell them at shops if you want to get more Mon, but the option is there to basically recycle your equipment.
Weapons are very easy to come across in Shadows, so it might be better to save your Mon for something that’s more worthwhile later down the line.
Customising weapons and armour is much more simple, as you can do it from your inventory screen. When selecting a piece of clothing or a weapon, press Y on Xbox or Triangle on PS5 to open the customisation screen. This will let you apply the appearance of any of the weapons or clothing you’ve collected up to that point to whatever weapon you like.
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