Assassin's Creed Origins guide: tips, hints and walkthroughs for your Egyptian adventures

Assassin's Creed Origins is a heck of a lot of fun, but it's also enormous. Let us help you help yourself.

Diving into Assassin's Creed Origins? We're putting together a stack of resources to help you make it through this enormous game lickety-split.

Here you'll find guides to some of the more complicated systems in Assassin's Creed Origins, which takes more of an RPG turn than ever. We're adding walkthroughs for the quests and puzzles that play out over several regions.

We've avoided spoilers whenever possible, but some pages necessarily include them. The act of exploration in Assassin's Creed Origins is one of its major draws, so maybe skip any flagged pages.

Do you have questions on the mysteries of Assassin's Creed Origins? Is there anything we haven't covered you want to know? Send your requests. We're here for you.

Assassin's Creed Origins resources

• Equipment: how to get and upgrade the best weapons and tools in Assassin's Creed Origins

  This page offers a full explanation of the loot system in Assassin's Creed Origins and explains how to upgrade your weapons and equipment, including where to find the most rare crafting materials. Essential.

• Find and solve all 25 papyrus puzzles in Assassin's Creed Origins to get the best loot

  Some of the papyrus puzzles are really straight forward. Others ... not so much. With this rundown, you'll be zipping back and forth across the map, filling your boots with rare and legendary gear, in no time.

• Best abilities in Assassin's Creed Origins - are you a Hunter, Seer or Warrior?

  Excuse me but the skill tree in Assassin's Creed Origins is heck daunting. We run down some of our favourite abilities to give you some idea of what to aim for the first time you arrive at it clutching your ability points and blinking in confusion.

• Find all 12 Stone Circles in Assassin's Creed Origins to finish Bayek's Promise

  Stargazing? It's easy and anyone can do it. Finding 12 stone circles in the deserts of a map absolutely overstocked with big dry sandy areas? Trickier, trickier. We point you in the right direction.

• All tomb locations in Assassin's Creed Origins so you can get your hands on loads of silica

  Hunting silica? Trying to finish a side quest we won't talk about for story reasons? Just wanna check out some of the coolest locations and content in Assassin's Creed Origins? Here's a handy list of where to find all the tombs. Enjoy raiding these uncharted areas, if your jonesing for a more exotic lifestyle than that of your home town in Indiana.

• What you need to know about the Great Sphinx in Assassin's Creed Origins

  Uhh, so ... obviously the Great Sphinx is in Assassin's Creed Origins. That's about all we feel confident we can say right here without the spoiler police coming down on us like a ton of polished and dressed stone intended for a tomb to stand for several millennia.

• Phylakes: take their heads for legendary weapons and Black Hood, Assassin's Creed Origins' coolest outfit

  The toughest enemies in Assassin's Creed Origins also drop the best loot - funny how that works, isn't it? The good news is we have everything you need to know to deal with the Phylakes when they start sounding their horns.

• Trials of the Gods: how to defeat Anubis in Assassin's Creed Origins

  Even tougher than Phylakes, the event-exclusive Egyptian god bosses in Assassin's Creed Origins will mess you up. Our Trials of the Gods: Anubis walkthrough has everything you need to know to beat the great jackal-headed softie.

• Trials of the Gods: how to defeat Sobek in Assassin's Creed Origins

  Actually a little bit easier than the first trials of the Gods event, the second deity battle in Assassin's Creed Origins is still a bit daunting. We'll talk you through taking down the mighty Sobek in no time.

• Find the Temple of a Million Years in the Assassins Creed Origins quest The New Kind in Town - walkthrough

  This quest dares to drop the map marker for one objective and boy howdy does that lead to some confusion. Read...? Read ... words? Follow cardinal directions?? Not in the year 2017. We have Siri and Googs and GPS now. Just tell me where it is.

Finally, below you'll find some general hints and tips for your first 20 or so hours with Assassin's Creed Origins.

1: Don’t bother to clear points of interest until you’ve finished all quests in a hub

Assassin’s Creed Origins has been really smartly constructed in that side quests take you through almost all the major points of interest around the hub or region you find them in.

For example, on your way from the starting village of Siwa to the city of Alexandria, you pass through an area of desert where a couple of those tantalising question marks may lure you from your path.

Ignore them and stick with the road until you reach the Temple of Sekhmet at Yuma just up the road, however, and you’ll find a stack of side quests that take you through the nearby bandit hideouts – and even lead you right to where you need to be to solve the local papyrus puzzle, which are Assassin’s Creed Origins’ treasure hunts.

By waiting to tackle these points of interest until you’re ready to get back on the road, you save yourself a stack of backtracking and repetition, and it’s very easy to mop up the few remaining bits and bobs, without ever feeling like you’re doing chores.

2: Senu is a huge help, so learn to use her properly

After you reunite with Senu, Bayek’s eagle, tapping up on the D-pad puts you into bird’s eye mode. From here you can fly around checking out the scenery, marking points of interest, and even fast travelling. It’s pretty cool.

Hold the left trigger, though, and you go into hover mode. This makes it way easier to scan the environment, and any baddies or notable objects like treasure, arbalests and alarm beacons you look over while hovering will be highlighted in Bayek’s view – even if they’re on the other side of walls or underground.

A direction indicator points you towards objects you may be interested in – white for general objects, gold for mission objectives. Move towards it and a shrinking circle appears; the smaller and more focused it gets, the closer you are to the hidden object. Use this to track down treasures.

Performing synchronisations increases Senu’s perception, by the way, which makes it way easier to scout baddies and locate objects. And you can also upgrade Senu through the abilities Skill Tree, for either Hunter, Seer or Warrior.

3: Dismantle your blue and purple weapons and shields

As discussed in our Assassin’s Creed Origins weapons, equipment and upgrade guide, you need a stack of crafting materials to upgrade all your stuff, and by far the easiest way to get them is to dismantle unwanted gear.

If you sell all your stuff, you’ll eventually come to a point where you want a better quiver or hidden blade and have to laboriously chase down guard convoys or fork out cash for crafting materials at frankly inflated prices. Avoid the whole situation in advance by building up a nice stock.

As long as you have one decent weapon to use at any given time, there’s no point hanging onto blue or purple stuff when new and better loot is always just around the corner. Just break it down and craft yourself a better hidden blade, already. It’s embarrassing that you can’t assassinate some grunt one level above you.

4: Do not underestimate animals

Crocodiles do not mess about. If you’re nice and safe on a rock they can’t climb by all means just headshot them; they stupidly stand there roaring at you until they’re nearly dead. But if they can reach you? Oh, wow: make sure you’re not out of your depth level-wise. They will f**k you up.

Lions also do not mess about. It’s not that one lion is such a big deal so much as that whenever you get one lion you almost always get about four more. If you don’t have a spear handy, you’re in trouble. See also: hyenas.

You know what else does not mess about? Hippopotamuses. Responsible for more tourist deaths each year than any other animal, according to our hazy memory for trivia from 1990’s cereal boxes, these cuddly looking beasts actually like nothing better than to smear you into jam. No thanks!! Go around.

5: Unlocked fast travel points are marked with a green dot

Most of the UI in Assassin’s Creed Origins is perfectly straight forward, but there’s an unfortunate overlap. After you discover a location, it appears as a dark icon on the map, but once you clear out the optional objectives there, it is greyed out.

Seems sensible, right? But for some reason, when the location in question is a synchronisation (fast travel) point, it is greyed out until you synchronise, instead of afterwards.

Happily, the green dot at the top of the icon indicates both a completed synchronisation and a general fast travel location like a city hub, so you can make sure you have actually visited all of the perches in a hub before you wander away and find you can’t fast travel back.

6: Fire is your friend, except when it’s not

You can do some really clever things with fire in Assassin’s Creed Origins. Grass, wood and many structures will burn, and small boats especially go up beautifully – not to mention you can set enemies on fire. You can also use fire to open wooden barricades and ceiling patches.

The easiest way to get a blaze going is to aim (but not draw) your bow and dip the arrow tip in a fire. Most camps, forts and towns have camp fires you can use, but you can also do this on the oil lamp on the mast of a boat, or pull out and then drop your torch and use that (for best results, drop it on a low ledge so it’s easier to get the arrow down to it.)

Be warned: you are also flammable, and fire eats through Bayek’s health really quickly. At higher levels with an upgraded breastplate you may survive if you mash the dodge key, but in general you’ll want to get into water, fast.

7: Don't spend drachmae on outfits and mounts

Every hub is home to a weaver and a stable, ready to sell you common and rare outfits and mounts. Oh boy!

The thing is, though: none of them do anything. The descriptions say stuff like "won't attract attention" and "runs like an arrow", but in effect, they're all exactly the same. Buying them is just a waste of your precious drachmae, which you should be hoarding for endgame. You get new mounts and outfits in sidequests, anyway.

Speaking of hoarding money: you don't really need to buy weapons, either. Save all your cash for upgrading legendary weapons and shields when they're under-levelled for your current task.

8: Your mount does not understand restricted zones
Assassin's Creed Origins has a great travel system where your mount can be set to run along the road automatically, and with a further button press, to navigate to your quest or custom marker.

As well as making it easier to fight while mounted, since you don't have to steer, it's fantastic for when you've gone out of your way needlessly (see tip #1 above, ahem) and have a long trip back, because you can admire the scenery at your leisure, and it's stunning.

Unfortunately, your mount is an animal with no respect for human laws, and will run right through forts and bandit camps. Check your map and don't tune out, lest you find yourself in more trouble than you anticipated.