Scouts are going to be a very important part of your progression in Assassin’s Creed Shadows. They are allies that you will be able to recruit as you make your way through the narrative, who will help you in collecting resources as well as finding your next objective or target.
The Scout system is a neat little mechanic, that you will want to make the most of in the action-adventure title. This is especially true if you are playing the game on a higher-difficulty setting as managing your Scouts properly will make progression significantly more manageable.
So if you are looking to make the most of your Scouts in Assassin’s Creed Shadows, then the guide below will help you out.
How to get Scouts in Assassin’s Creed Shadows
The initial Scouts that you obtain will be free and be a part of the narrative after you progress to a certain point in the Shadows story where you get your Hideout. Afterward, you will be able to recruit more scouts by upgrading the Study at your Hideout.
Every time you upgrade your study, an additional Scout will join the League allowing you to improve your overall count. When a new Scout is recruited, they will appear on the right side of the screen for some time and you will see a count increase of “Available Scout” on the left side of the screen.
How to replenish Scouts in Assassin’s Creed Shadows
Scouts go on a cooldown when used in Shadows, and you will need to replenish them to use them again. You can replenish a Scout by either waiting for the season to change or going to Kakurega in your Hideout and paying a small amount of money.
If you are picking the latter, then you will need to look for the cloth sacks hanging from the wall in the Kakurega. Now walk to them and it will show you the amount of money that you will need to spend to replenish your Scouts.
Additionally, if you upgrade the Kakurega you will be able to assign Scouts to complete Regional Alerts. Moreover, speaking to certain NPCs in the game will often reward you with “Scout Intel”. This mechanic will let you use a Scout an extra time, even if you have used them once in the season that you are in.
But do not that you will get an additional use of one Scout with “Scout Intel: and not increase your total Scout count.
How to use Scouts in Assassin’s Creed Shadows
Once you have started recruiting your Scouts, there are two major ways of using them in Assassin’s Creed Shadows:
1) Finding Objectives and your next Target
The most important function of your scouts is to find your next objective on the map. Unless you have the Guided Exploration setting turned on, you will need to use your Scouts to find your next target if the mission description that you are on is vague with very minor details on the region.
Scouts will help you find clues and solve them, eventually revealing the target that you will need to hunt down. To send out a Scout, you will need to head into the World Map, and there look for the assassin icon with dots next to it (you can find this in the bottom left corner of your screen). The dots notify the number of Scouts that you can still use in the season that you are in.
Now if you have a mission active that has given you very vague clues about a region, you can hover your cursor over the region and then pick this command prompt “Scout the Objective”. Once done, the Scout will then search the area and after some time find the objective for you.
The more Scouts that you use in a region the wider the search area will be. This will also make it significantly easier for you to have a 100% chance of finding the next target.
2) Smuggling important resources and items
You can also use Scouts to smuggle in key resources like Wood and Crops to your hideout. You can do this by making them search areas like Encampments and Castles which are wealthy areas of interest that can yield a lot of loot.
In order to send a Scout out to gather resources, you will need to explore one of the following structures:
- Castle
- Temple
- Encampment
These areas are usually classified as “Wealthy” and once there you will need to use your observation command to locate large resource stockpiles. Next, you will need to walk up to them and interact it them which will them, and you will be shown how many Scouts are needed to smuggle all the resources that it has back to your hideout.
Once you have assigned the required number of free Scouts, they will then be able to haul all of the loot in after the current season ends. Fortunately, you can keep a constant track of how much they have collected over time by checking the right side of your map right under the season icon.
Note: If you have upgraded your Stables to Level 2 in the Hideout, you will be able to tag certain resource Stockpiles for the Scouts to pick up. If you have upgraded the Stables to level 3, then the amount of resources that the Scouts will smuggle in will be increased by 20%.
