Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ New Nightmare Difficulty is…

Ubisoft is still implementing a lot of changes to Assassin's Creed Shadows with community-led updates, with the post-launch plans for the title still being quite plentiful. Most of these updates have introduced a lot of needed changes to the game, with the recent 1.0.6 update being one of the most comprehensive and ambitious. Shadows' 1.0.6 update launched on June 25, with improvements coming alongside brand-new story content and major new mechanics.

One of the highlights of Assassin's Creed Shadows' 1.0.6 update is the introduction of the new Nightmare difficulty option. The way that difficulty has been implemented in Shadows has always been quite divisive, with a lot of pressure being placed on something like Nightmare mode to really up the ante of the title's challenging gameplay potential. While there is always room for improvement, AC Shadows' Nightmare mode really tries its best to create the most layered overall challenge that players can try their luck at.

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By Jervon Perkins

Assassin's Creed Shadows' Nightmare Difficulty Takes Things to the Next Level

Like many modern games, Assassin's Creed Shadows' difficulty options are quite detailed in terms of player choice. Instead of a blanket difficulty option, players can choose to fine-tune the difficulty of certain in-game aspects, such as combat, stealth, assassination damage, and parry windows. At the maximum end of the difficulty scale, AC Shadows' Expert mode has been criticized for its lack of real challenge to some players, with Nightmare mode aiming to offer the ultimate challenge instead.

As of 1.0.6, Shadows' independent stealth and combat modifiers can now be tuned to Nightmare, which does a lot more than simply beef up enemy health while making the player weaker. For example, across both Yasuke and Naoe, Nightmare difficulty requires completely perfect parries. While the pre-existing Expert difficulty tightened the window for successful parries, Nightmare now punishes even the slightest mistiming. Parrying is one of the most important elements of Shadows' combat, making Nightmare the ultimate test of a player's combat understanding.

While shields and health-regeneration are in fact weaker with Shadows' Nightmare difficulty, the real challenge comes from the more brutal and unforgiving enemy AI that the mode introduces. With Nightmare, players can expect all enemies to be much more aggressive in their attacks, while coordinating with each other to disorient the player and leave very little room for repositioning or counterattacks.

This increased enemy intelligence is also present in things like stealth detection, with players being spotted and searched for more easily through things like smarter patrol routes and a faster alerting system between guards.

Assassin's Creed Shadows' New Update Makes Resource Management a Nightmare

Away from combat and stealth, Assassin's Creed Shadows' Nightmare mode significantly hampers a player's available resources in a variety of ways. Vendor items will be more expensive, while players need to cough up more materials for things like crafting and weapon upgrades in AC Shadows. Nightmare doubles down on this by making loot chests offer fewer rewards, with things like healing rations and ammunition being an equally scarce resource in the unforgiving difficulty of Nightmare.

More challenging difficulty options have been a highly requested feature for Assassin's Creed Shadows for quite some time now, with Ubisoft choosing the timing of Nightmare's introduction quite smartly. A lot of attention will now shift over to the upcoming release of the game's first major story DLC, Claws of Awaji. Thanks to these consistent post-launch updates, Claws of Awaji will have the benefit of much more polished major mechanics than the base game, with the Nightmare difficulty option allowing dedicated players to tackle the expansion in the most immersive, challenging, and rewarding way.

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