How to start New Game+ in Assassin’s Creed Shadows: Everything you need to know

Master Assassin’s Creed Shadows New Game+ with carry-over strategies, enhanced difficulty, and completionist tips

What Carries Over to New Game+

This guide covers everything to start the New Game+ in Assassin
This guide covers everything needed to start the New Game+ in Assassin’s Creed Shadows (Image via Ubisoft)

This guide covers everything to start the New Game+ in Assassin
This guide covers everything needed to start the New Game+ in Assassin’s Creed Shadows (Image via Ubisoft)

The New Game+ in Assassin’s Creed Shadows provides a comprehensive continuation system that lets you revisit Feudal Japan while preserving your entire progression framework. Rather than resetting your accomplishments, this feature transforms your second journey into an empowered experience where you maintain all hard-earned assets while confronting amplified challenges.

Accessing this enhanced mode requires no special conditions beyond completing the main narrative once. The implementation creates a fluid transition between playthroughs, eliminating repetitive grinding while introducing fresh strategic dimensions to familiar content.

Also read: Assassin’s Creed Shadows title update 1.0.7 patch notes explored

The retention system in New Game+ encompasses your entire gameplay ecosystem. Here’s the complete breakdown of preserved elements:

  • Skills and gear: Every ability unlocked and equipment collected remains accessible, including end-game weaponry and advanced combat techniques that immediately reshape your tactical options.
  • Allies: All recruited characters maintain their affiliation, ensuring your support network remains intact throughout subsequent playthroughs.
  • Hideout progression: Structural enhancements and functional upgrades to your operational base persist, providing immediate access to previously unlocked facilities and services.
  • Pro Tip: Before initiating New Game+, ensure you’ve completed all weapon mastery challenges and collected rare crafting materials, as these will significantly accelerate your early-game dominance in the enhanced difficulty setting.

    Enhanced Challenges and Rewards

    Despite your accumulated power, New Game+ in Assassin’s Creed Shadows substantially elevates the combat experience through intelligent enemy scaling. Adversaries not only possess increased health and damage output but demonstrate improved tactical awareness and coordination, demanding refined approaches to familiar encounters.

    The reward structure introduces exclusive equipment unavailable in standard playthroughs, creating compelling incentives for engaging with the heightened difficulty:

  • Whisper of Gold (Katana)
  • Dragon’s Gold (Katana)
  • The replayability extends significantly through the allowance of eight consecutive New Game+ cycles. Each iteration introduces progressive difficulty enhancements, making this system ideal for perfectionists pursuing complete mastery or players testing their combat proficiency against increasingly demanding scenarios.

    Common Mistake: Many players underestimate the AI behavioral changes in New Game+. Enemies will flank more aggressively and exploit environmental advantages, requiring adjusted stealth and combat strategies beyond simple stat improvements.

    Completionist Milestones and Progression

    For achievement-focused players, New Game+ introduces specialized milestones that leverage the expanded progression systems:

  • Enjoy the Ride: Attain Level 80 character status.
  • Stars Unseen: Achieve Knowledge Rank 10 mastery.
  • Worth its Wait: Acquire both Gold Katana and Gold Long Katana through New Game+ completion.
  • Concurrent with the New Game+ launch, the game’s progression framework received substantial expansion through recent updates:

  • The maximum character level increased from 60 to 80, introducing more powerful adversaries with sophisticated combat patterns.
  • Knowledge Rank progression now extends through ranks 9 and 10, unlocking advanced passive abilities and specialized mastery skills.
  • The Forge upgrade capability reaches Level 4, enabling comprehensive weapon and gear enhancement to match the elevated level ceiling.
  • Optimization Tip: Focus on Knowledge Rank advancement before pursuing level cap increases, as the passive abilities provide compounding benefits that accelerate subsequent character development.

    Advanced NG+ Strategies

    New Game+ arrives integrated with Title Update 1.0.7, which incorporates various performance optimizations and general fixes. The update size varies by platform:

  • Xbox Series X|S: 19 GB
  • Check out: Assassin’s Creed Shadows Claws of Awaji DLC finally gets a release date

    Advanced Strategy: For maximum efficiency, prioritize main story progression during your initial New Game+ cycle while utilizing carried-over gear, then focus on side content in subsequent cycles when enemy difficulty plateaus. This approach minimizes redundant effort while maximizing reward acquisition.

    Avoid This Pitfall: Don’t neglect your hideout upgrades in New Game+. The enhanced crafting and resource generation become increasingly valuable with each cycle, and delaying these improvements creates unnecessary resource bottlenecks later.

    Weapon Specialization: With eight potential playthroughs, consider specializing in different weapon types each cycle to complete associated mastery challenges while keeping gameplay fresh and strategically diverse.

    No reproduction without permission:SeeYouSoon Game Club » How to start New Game+ in Assassin’s Creed Shadows: Everything you need to know Master Assassin's Creed Shadows New Game+ with carry-over strategies, enhanced difficulty, and completionist tips