Assassin's Creed Odyssey RPG-all

One thing the Switch and PS4 have spoiled me on is sleep/resume for games. To start this up on PC I have to launch, let Uplay sync, click through 6 splash screens (or wait), then hit a button on the main menu, connect to servers and check DLC, etc, which takes at least 30 seconds, then finally click continue... And then wait maybe a full minute for the save to load and finally I can play.

So often I've taken to just pausing the game after a manual save, leaving it on that menu, when I think I might get to play again in a few hours. Sometimes the game sits there a long time though.

I'm not sure if my play time is accurate due to this, or if it pauses in that system menu. I know my Uplay reported play time is way off. Anyway, just musing about stats today.

Oh I did check that story % and it says 47.

beanman101283 wrote:

They patched it in later at some point, so it's possible it wasn't there depending on when you started the game.

Yeah, Odyssey has received a ton of quality of life improvements. I came back to it a month or two after launch and it was already a better a game. I think for Ubi games going forward I should probably just wait them out, not only for a sale, but for the improvements.

Stele wrote:

One thing the Switch and PS4 have spoiled me on is sleep/resume for games.

Yeah, the Switch and PS4 definitely made that a feature I love. It's one of the reasons I'm loving the Series X: the quick resume feature. So even if I leave to play something else, getting back into Odyssey is super quick.

pyxistyx wrote:

Fun fact: in case people don't realise, you can customise the appearance of whatever you have equipped so that it looks like your favourite armour design or weapon, no matter what it is. I only realised this late in the game and now I'm sporting my aesthetically pleasing Isu laser armour all the time.

IMAGE(https://smackfolio.files.wordpress.com/2020/12/20201202065832_1.jpg)

Also I'm attempting to clear every single major map icon, one island at a time. Because why not.

Oh gods, I was super happy I discovered that feature early on. Some of the armor designs are just atrocious. It's also fun when I get a crap piece of armor that has a new design and I can just nick that design and salvage the armor.

When I played Alexios I kept him in the "canonical" mercenary armor from the game cover.

Kassandra has a whole bunch of outfits for different purposes.

Unfortunately I can't find the AC Odyssey photomode web site any more, or I'd share them. It seems it was replaced by Valhalla.

trueheart78 wrote:
beanman101283 wrote:

They patched it in later at some point, so it's possible it wasn't there depending on when you started the game.

Yeah, Odyssey has received a ton of quality of life improvements. I came back to it a month or two after launch and it was already a better a game. I think for Ubi games going forward I should probably just wait them out, not only for a sale, but for the improvements.

That's why I'm glad to be playing this now and not missing Valhalla. Plus I'll need an AC break between the two. But sometime next fall or winter maybe, there will be a complete Valhalla on sale. Maybe I'll even get it on PS5.

Well, I find myself playing Odyssey again right now because I started but never finished the Atlantis DLC. And when Valhalla got to the first break to the modern day, I kind of felt left out. I looked up some YouTube videos, but as soon as I started watching, I realized that would just not be satisfying, and that I'd have to play it out myself.

It's worth it.

I kind of went back and forth when Valhalla came out. I bought it for Stadia, but the 30 FPS limit was driving me crazy, so I couldn't keep playing. Someone gave me a nice gift for Thanksgiving, so I subscribed to Ubisoft Plus, which let me play Valhalla on PC. But then I got to the first modern day bit... well, you know the rest.

Now I'm wandering around the Fields of Elysium with Kassandra.

Hell, maybe next week, I'll decide I have to play through the whole franchise from scratch.

i think you'd just have to go back as far as Origins to properly catch up with the current batch of modern day characters. Never played it myself (i should probably do that!) but i got enough of a gist of what was going on from Odyssey to make it work.

Reminder that you can break arrow and weapon stands to hurt the nation power. Forgot that was a thing until a quest last night mentioned it.

trueheart78 wrote:

Reminder that you can break arrow and weapon stands to hurt the nation power. Forgot that was a thing until a quest last night mentioned it.

I just saw a tip over the weekend to destroy them to keep enemies from arming themselves. I had definitely noticed enemies run to the rack and grab more weapons but never thought about the connection.

Last night right as I was about to go to bed, a new merc walked by. I always check them with eagle just to log them. Level 36... let me see... OMG dagger with all damage as poison!

I sat there for a minute watching, wondering if my level 32 Kassandra could kick him off a rooftop enough times to get that knife...

At least I can track it down now. Soon it will be mine!

Stele wrote:

Last night right as I was about to go to bed, a new merc walked by. I always check them with eagle just to log them. Level 36... let me see... OMG dagger with all damage as poison!

I sat there for a minute watching, wondering if my level 32 Kassandra could kick him off a rooftop enough times to get that knife...

At least I can track it down now. Soon it will be mine!

If near water you can also go out on a dock and kick into water. Most Mercs if a bit away from shore will drown. I spent an hour doing this out on one of the islands and was laughing as my bounty was way up there and all these mercs kept spawning then going into the drink. Loads of loot.

I did get those poison daggers shortly after my last post. One of the next times I had a bounty, that one came after me. Haha, thanks for the weapon. I was still 35 though, so I put the engraving on my current spear at the time and tried that. Then switched to the daggers when I leveled up. I'm enjoying daggers again, as I had been favoring spears since about level 20ish.

Anyway, got up to 39 over the weekend. I've also done at least half of the stele locations, for extra ability points. So I'm sitting on 3 points now with nothing really to put them in until I upgrade my spear. No room for extra abilities on the quick bar and no desire for more than I have from bow right now.

I had a crazy day, maybe Friday, where I ran around and hit several of the islands I hadn't been to before, and just grabbed eagle points. Got my bird to max level, and mostly just wanted the fast travel points if I need to go anywhere later. I didn't pick up many quests, just sailed around. I think I started it because I picked up a pirate bounty quest from the message board. So I hunted him down, and got some cool ship loot. Then I saw another gold or purple ship and thought yay more loot. When I took them down, it turned out to be one of the cultists! I think there's a couple more of them out there on ships that I need to search for too.

So after all that sidetracking fun, last night I finally got back on the main quest. Returned to Athens, for plague section of the story. And continued on to the next story bits on Naxos. Some good stuff in there, some sad, and some happy. I think I'm about 15 levels over where I should be for story missions right now so all the combat was easy. For instance, there were 2 guards after a cutscene in Athens, and it triggered sixth sense. So quickly I thought I was still in stealth, and I tried Rush Assassination, and killed them both. Fight over in one second, haha.

Maybe I should kick it up to hard, or just kick the leveling option to match me? It's kind of fun being a badass though. I did get my ship down to 30-40% health one time when I took on 4 ships at once by accident. But mostly I haven't been in danger of dying since I hit 30 and got my build figured out better.

Stele wrote:

Maybe I should kick it up to hard, or just kick the leveling option to match me? It's kind of fun being a badass though.

Hard is what I chose, and it's less "the game is harder" and more "you're gonna get desync'd more if you aren't on top of your abilities and inventory".

I guess I must have levelling match on? At 65 everything is at most a level or two below me, even when I go back to starting areas.

I believe by default it keeps enemies to within a level or two of you if you've exceeded the original level threshold of the zone.

Level-scaling is always active, so far as I can tell. You can control how far behind previous areas can get. The default is 2 levels, but you can make that more or less aggressive.

Edit: I'm too slow!

Yes default is 2. But I thought I read that it went to even level for hard or nightmare difficulty?

But that's why I was thinking one or the other. Either try hard if it's still -2 or try the even level setting staying on Normal.

I did manage to die once this afternoon but that's after I tried the Falx engraving they makes your health 25%. I was clearing out a really large camp and some bounty hunter interrupted and I got out of stealth and my elite wolf pet died. Basically everything went to hell and I should have cut and run.

The next time I popped out of zone and saved a couple times after clearing 1/3 of the camp successfully o6n stealth. And of course no problems, even when my wolf got a little wild and attacked some civilian.

Once you reach level 50, you unlock Mastery Levels, a feature on the Abilities screen that lets you allocate skill points directly to combat and defensive bonuses. Until then, I suggest making sure all your passive abilities are maxed out, for example, Sixth Sense in the Hunter tree (even if you're not an archer, you still benefit from the time slowdown when you are detected), Weapons and Gear mastery in the Warrior tree, and Shadow Assassin, Critical Assassination, and Death Veil in the Assassin tree. Death Veil isn't for everyone -- some people prefer the challenge of having to hide corpses.

If you use fire attacks at all (like fire arrows or a weapon that does fire damage instead of physical), it is worth investing in the Fire Mastery ability in the Warrior tree. You have to take a point in Flaming Attacks first, but you don't really need to use the flaming weapons ability to benefit from the Fire Mastery bonuses. Some players prefer not to be a magical flaming sword wielding demigod assassin.

If you haven't tried running with a pet, you may want to toss a couple points in Beast Master just to try it out.

And remember, you can respec any time you like, and it's pretty inexpensive to do so.

Yeah I've done most of that. I just still need 4 more cultists to get spear 5 so I can get several abilities to rank 3. So I was sitting on the points to do it all at once.

I mean I guess I could respec then. But I've got full poison, 2/3 on beast, most of the passives you mentioned.

I guess I could test warrior final ability. Maybe that's a good emergency button. But not sure I have room on the shortcuts

I'm nearly halfway through Elysium now, enjoying it. The gameplay is pretty much like the rest of the game but there are some nice features. And the drachmae and ability points flow like wine.

Warrior spec players will probably be very unhappy with it early on. The Isu have attacks that freeze and drain adrenaline and stun and do massive damage. After you pick up ability and weapon enhancements found in Elysium, things get a little easier, but it is much simpler to just go hunter or assassin. The teleporting laser beam spear wielding Kolossi are a real pain no matter your spec.

Did they ever fix the pet issue and fast travel? Or boat travel? I skipped it my 2nd time through as it was broken my first time though and I was always having to gather new pets as mine would go missing randomly.

Hobear wrote:

Did they ever fix the pet issue and fast travel? Or boat travel? I skipped it my 2nd time through as it was broken my first time though and I was always having to gather new pets as mine would go missing randomly.

Yeah except for when I warp to the arena to fight a merc, my pet seems to stay. Even when I reload an old save, which was apparently a bug after they fixed the fast travel one originally.

Had a fun little run on Kythera Island last night. Did the whole island, with Diona and a bunch of other side quests. That was a nice surprise, and pretty fun. I did confirm my choices for the final bit peeking ahead, but it was pretty easy to figure out due to certain key words.

I'm up to 46 now and tier 2 of mercs. I really need to get back to the story haha. 1 more cultist for spear 5 upgrade though.

I took a long break from the game but have been back the last few nights to dig into Phokis. I might chip away at this game one region at a time, because it's fun to sweep all those icons off the map (and brutally murder entire garrisons) but it gets repetitive if I try to do a whole bunch at once. Also, I finally cottoned on that the quests on the bulletin board are essentially endless filler and not actually all that interesting.

I've gone hard into assassin abilities and gear, and it compliments my playstyle very well. At least, until the game forces you into some kind of all-out brawl in which case I spend a lot of time running in circles waiting for my assassin attack to come off cooldown. The conquest battles and animal hunts have been challenging as a result. Should I have a second set of warrior gear to swap to when that happens, or are there abilities that make open conflict as an assassin easier to handle?

I played most of the game in assassin mode and just went with what gear i had, tbh. Though i was playing on easy...so...that probably helped. If you get the slow-mo dodge move down pat that makes toe to toe melee much easier.

when you get to level...60? i think? you unlock the ability to add points into various passive buffs that include stuff like, do a % of assassin damage in melee combat, etc.

It's taken me 22 hours to get to level 16. I cannot imagine the investment in time to get to 60!

I did end up dropping the level scaling to Light against the giant boar in Phokis. It still took multiple attempts, but that shaved a couple levels off; enough to give me an edge.

Nothing in video games has ever been as fun as Spartan kicking a boar or bear in the face.

That boar is definitely the hardest of all the hunts. I think it's about your level at the time and not really having a rounded build, much less rank 2 in some of your key skills.

There's a wolf around 40-something in that quest chain, and he also calls in adds of wolf packs of 4, just like the boar did. But by the time I was there, I had many more tools to deal with it. I had multi-shot hunter skill, and all arrows are poison arrows enhancement on one of my bows. So I would just pop off two shots, and all the wolves were dead or dying on the next poison tick. And back to the main wolf.

Also 7 action points by then instead of just 4.

Honestly that first hunt should have been in a zone at level 25-30 or so, just to give you time to do it properly. All the rest of the hunts that I did post level 30 were cake. Didn't even read any tips or anything, just went in blind and beat every one of them first try.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I've gone hard into assassin abilities and gear, and it compliments my playstyle very well. At least, until the game forces you into some kind of all-out brawl in which case I spend a lot of time running in circles waiting for my assassin attack to come off cooldown. The conquest battles and animal hunts have been challenging as a result. Should I have a second set of warrior gear to swap to when that happens, or are there abilities that make open conflict as an assassin easier to handle?

Something like this is what I ended up respeccing to around 25 and loved it. Build planner

IMAGE(https://i.ibb.co/72H7G1j/aco-asn-war-leveling.png)

Obviously Hero Strike is your best, but yeah long cooldown. Devastating Shot is great for backing up and taking an arrow headshot. Second Wind good for a heal. Shield Breaker becomes really useful as more enemies get shields. Level 2 gives a brief stun, where you can just unload with your weapon. Fury of the Bloodline (top left warrior) is a DLC skill. But it turns out to be awesome, if you have it. It does a 5-attack burst and builds 3 adrenaline for other powers. If you want to use Overpower (beside it), that costs 3 bars, so they complement each other well. Mostly those 3 warrior powers fill in the gaps for me while waiting for Hero strike to recharge, and do some decent damage.

Then a little later I added the top warrior thing, Battlecry of Ares. You can't die while using it, so you can just wail on enemies to build up some bars, so that you can use overpower or hero strike again. If you didn't have Fury... then I would definitely grab that at level 23.

There's a stele (+1 ability point) in Phokis where you are, and 2 in Megaris where you were. That's 3 extra points. And one more on an island by Megaris that you can sneak too pretty easily. A few extra points can help a lot for those forced melee times, or when assassinations go sideways.

I am an Olympic champion!

Man this game is bloated. 50 already and I've started trying to skip extra stuff and just focus on story. Would like to finish the game this year.

Save file already reports 70 hours. Whew.

Oh I did turn combat up. A couple days ago I got enough cultists to upgrade spear to 5. Then I also read that Hard keeps the enemies just 1 level below you, rather than 2. And there's no option for that in the separate setting for scaling. It's either 0, -2, or -4 there. So instead of normal-even I tried Hard.

So far it seems like a lot more enemies in forts. And there are some that I can't assassinate even with the charged crit version. And haha I died to sharks twice trying to grab some treasure. First time I didn't check, second time I killed one but it turned out there were 3. They bite for a lot on hard. Aside from that, so far so good. I think I have a conquest coming up on story quest, so we'll see how that goes on hard when I can't assassinate at all.

Stele wrote:

Man this game is bloated. 50 already and I've started trying to skip extra stuff and just focus on story. Would like to finish the game this year.

Save file already reports 70 hours. Whew.

I hit 83 hours for a full exploration of the map with very little of the main quest past Athens completed; I kinda love it, but I am clocking near 350 total hours across 3 play throughs on 2 systems. I mean, odyssey is right there in the name.