Castles are easily one of the best bits about Assassin’s Creed Shadows. Sleuthing through these enormous outposts to pick off enemies, shimmying through cracks in the walls to get the jump on small groups before firing a kunai at the alarm bell, cutting off their means of backup—It’s everything great about the series distilled into a single landmark, but fans have one major gripe with how they work.
In each castle, you have to take out a set number of Samurai Daisho before you can open the legendary chest, but first, you have to find them. This is the tricky part, as without the flying eagle from past RPG games, all you can do is wander around, aimlessly holding L2 and hoping to see a white dot. It’s frustrating, to say the least, especially when you’ve spent half an hour trying to suss out the last enemy.
“Loving Shadows but the Samurai Daisho sh*t annoys me to no end,” u/_J0hnny_Topside posted to over 1,000 upvotes. “It’s not the Samurai themselves, I actually like fighting them, it’s the part where you go around in circles for what feels like an eternity hoping to find them in these gigantic castles that is so frustrating. Like goddamn just tell me where they fu**ing are bro, I’ve been chasing dots around in Eagle Vision for 20 minutes”.
At first it’s okay but when it’s your 10th castle I’m sick of spending [ten minutes] to look for a effin Daisho — u/FreyAlster
“I like the old Assassin’s Creed formula and respect Ubisoft for getting rid of the bird,” u/Lost_Substance_3283 commented. “Unfortunately they didn’t fully commit as their level design is that of a new large open world RPG which was created with [the] concept of a bird scout in mind”.
“Samurai Fights? Awesome. Castle Chase? Pain”
Thankfully, players had plenty of advice to give those of us who are struggling to find the Daisho, from simply Googling their location (or you can check out our in-depth guides, like this one) to splitting each castle into quadrants, and combing through each section. That way, you avoid doubling back on yourself in a labyrinth of dot-hunting.
It’s actually better not to use Eagle Vision, due to its limited range.
u/IzzatQQDir also suggested grabbing a perk that lets you auto-tag enemies, which (as explained by u/JohnB456) is acquired “through the Anomaly Pass in the menu”. Failing all of that, several commenters, like u/dangnematoadss, advise that you “Climb up high and hold L2 while looking around”. Naoe seems to have an even bigger boost when at a viewpoint, and there’s typically a Daisho or two in the tower anyway, so heading there first is a pretty good strategy.
