Combat

Odyssey offers three types of combat: Warrior, Hunter, and Assassin.

Warrior combat utilizes several types of melee weapons, such as swords, daggers, or heavy weapons.

Hunter combat consists entirely of bows and arrows. Using a bow allows you to attack from a safe distance, often eliminating enemies before they’re aware of your presence or can reach you in melee range. It also allows you to use different arrow types, like fire or poison.

Assassin combat plays a big role in Odyssey. Whenever possible, you should engage in combat from stealth.

Focus: Target Selection

You can select a certain target to focus on (when playing with a controller, click the right stick). You can cycle your focus to another target by shifting your view to that target. Focusing on a particular target ensures all of your attacks are performed in that direction. Enemies that come between you and your focus target will still be struck by your weapons, so positioning is also important.

Damage

How much damage you do depends on several factors, such as your Hunter, Warrior, and Assassin abilities, your armor selection, the rarity of the equipped weapons, the engravings they have, and the level. The damage you deal is also dependent upon the level of your target. When you’re fighting an enemy above your level, the damage you do significantly decreases.

Status Effects

During the course of your Odyssey you will face many enemies you use Poison and Fire. If you get hit by these attacks you begin to suffer damage over time and can even be weakened. All is not lost however. The best way to reduce the damage of these effects is to know how to counter them. If you are suffering from Burning you can perform dodge rolls to quickly put out the fire. Another method that works for both Fire and Poison is to quickly submerge yourself in any nearby source of water. However, this isn’t always a viable solution. The final option is to simply endure it and mitigate the amount of damage it causes by equipping Engravings that have Elemental Resistance. The level 3 Heal Ability also removes Status Effects.

Adrenaline Meter

Your adrenaline meter, found just below your health bar at the bottom of the HUD, starts with four segments. By performing successful attacks (or equipping Adrenaline on Hit engravings), you fill your adrenaline meter. You can also generate adrenaline by performing a perfect dodge, headshot, kill, or parry, or by causing Critical Damage. When at least one segment is full you can perform a special attack if you have purchased and assigned it on the ability tree. Each special attack consumes one segment of adrenaline (except for the later, more powerful abilities), draining the meter. Make sure to time these abilities to get the most use out of them, as adrenaline doesn’t recharge very quickly. Correct timing can also give you an edge in combat, as performing an ability interrupts the target’s attack, including attacks which are normally uninterruptible.

Tagging Enemies

Tagging enemies lets you keep track of your foes, even if they move behind cover. It also tells you their level and if they are regular or elite enemies. There are two main ways to tag enemies: with ranged weapons or with your eagle, Ikaros. To tag enemies with ranged weapons, simply aim the weapon at the enemy. The foe remains tagged until you defeat it or leave. Using Ikaros is the fastest, preferred method to tag enemies, but the eagle is not always available. See the Ikaros section in this chapter for more details. Tagging enemies with a ranged weapon is slow but is the only viable option when Ikaros is unavailable. A third option is to utilize the Ability, Revelation to tag enemies around you.

Assassin: Stealth

Stealth has always been a key (and fun!) component of Assassin’s Creed. Use stealth whenever possible to increase your chance of success in any encounter.

Certain areas provide great hiding spots: tall grass, shrubs, dark alcoves, and more. When you are taking cover in these spots, an eye with a slash through it appears in the middle of your health bar to let you know you’re successfully hidden, and your body is shrouded in a white halo. From stealth, you can perform assassinations or use a ranged weapon on unsuspecting foes, as well as hide from enemy pursuit (as long as they don’t see you enter your hiding spot, that is).

Another useful stealth tactic is hiding the corpses you create. Killing is an untidy business, and leaving the corpses of your enemies lying around for their comrades to find quickly raises suspicion. Once the suspicion level is high enough, foes will start actively searching for you, or even light a bonfire to call in reinforcements. To avoid this, pick up and carry the bodies to a hiding spot. You can also intentionally leave a body (or move one where it will be seen) if you want it to be noticed in order to force new patrol patterns. Employ this tactic to divide and conquer enemies when they are grouped together.

It is also extremely useful to single out an enemy. You can do this by whistling. This lets you divert the attention of a single enemy, often separating them from large groups. Once they are alone and in range, you can assassinate them without drawing the attention of the whole group.