Assassin’s Creed Odyssey really leans into the RPG progression system introduced in Origins. You’ll have to do far more than just the story missions to be powerful enough to take on increasingly challenging foes. Our leveling guide will help you rack up experience points as painlessly as possible.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey isn’t the first game in the series to have an RPG leveling system — Origins had a similar setup last year — but it’s incredibly important in Odyssey. How important? If you don’t actively seek out ways to earn experience points, you’ll fall way behind and have an extremely hard, if not impossible, time completing the story. So, in the spirit of helping you through the grind, we’ve put together a leveling guide that should hopefully eliminate some of your hard times in Ancient Greece.
If you open your map, you’ll notice that each land mass has a level recommendation. The lowest level areas, where you start, are under ten, while a few areas go up to the mid-40s and even 50. Keep in mind that although the loot is better in tougher areas, you’re unlikely to survive for very long if you go exploring while severely under-leveled. This includes sailing your ship near high-level areas, as enemy ships will mirror the level of enemies ashore.
In our Assassin’s Creed Odyssey review we emphasized that you won’t be able to sustain progression from just completing story missions, especially as you get deeper into the game. On multiple occasions, there are four-plus level jumps between story missions. This means that you won’t be able to breeze through Odyssey. We recommend keeping up with the required level of the missions if not one or two higher. Keep in mind that some mainline missions see an increase in level if you pass the original number. That’s OK, though, since this doesn’t affect future mission recommended levels.
If you’re looking for a way to level up while still experiencing some fairly interesting content, dedicated side quests are a good option. Side quests are marked on the map with exclamation points. All of them have a story element to them and some of them even lead to unlocking new mainline missions (weird, right?) or additional side quests. Many of these side quests unlock as you complete story missions in the same area. Most importantly, side quests dole out as much and sometimes more experience than story missions. Essentially, completing side quests is just as important as story quests during the grind.
Side quests are finite, though. There’s typically a handful of secondary quests for each level, but after a while, they won’t even be enough to keep you at a suitable level. That’s where all the in-between stuff comes in. All throughout Ancient Greece are enemy strongholds. Some of these are large Spartan, Athenian, or bandit bases, while others are single buildings or even environmental landmarks. You don’t have to walk far to find opportunities to earn chunks of experience points. Fortresses are marked on the map with a red symbol, while Leaders (powerful enemy houses) are marked with a blue symbol.
Often times you’ll stumble on enemy locations not previously marked on your map. You’ll know this when Alexios or Kassandra remarks that they should be quiet there. You can press L3 (down on the left thumbstick) to show location objectives. Sometimes objectives include killing an enemy captain and/or polemarch, along with looting treasure chests and/or picking up key items and burning war supplies. Other times it’s just looting chests. It depends on the location. Smaller locations with less or no enemies lead to fewer experience points, but they are still worth clearing out. It’s easy to snag 1,000 or more experience points for just a couple minutes work.
We mentioned this in our Assassin’s Creed Odyssey beginner’s guide but it’s also worth mentioning here: Don’t forget that if you’re having trouble finding new locations, switching to Ikaros (your eagle) is a good way to zero in on buildings, enemies, treasure, and other points of interest. Send Ikaros to the sky by pressing up on the d-pad. You’ll want to activate stationary mode with L2/LT. From there you can swivel the camera and Ikaros will catch anything of interest that you hover over.
One of the largest sources of experience points comes from conquest battles, the new full-scale battlefield fights that see you slashing through a large group of Athenian or Spartan soldiers alongside CPU allies. Each area has a conquest meter, shown on the map and bottom of the screen, that will decrease as you kill enemy Leaders, steal/burn enemy supplies, and kill enemy soldiers. A few mainline missions are conquest battles, but most of them are optional, triggered by your own attention to detail when clearing out enemy bases and completing side missions. This often leads to lowering an enemy’s grip on a region and once the meter moves down to vulnerable, two conquest battles will be available (they are marked on your map).
One of these icons represents your defense, while the other indicates your offense. While a bit harder, you should always choose to attack, as it nets you more experience points. In the early going, you can earn about twice the experience points you would for a normal mission. As you get later in the game, conquest battle rewards are massive, in the mid-30,000s. You should always be mindful of lowering the conquest meter. If it’s halfway depleted but your next story mission is in another area, it’s smart to stick around and chip away at the meter before moving on.
Your gear levels matter, too. If you’re level 25 but all of your gear is level 20, you aren’t going to be as prepared to take on level 25 enemies. Although your attack and health increase with each level advancement, it’s always best to keep your gear at or really close to your overall level. One surefire way to do this is to upgrade or purchase gear at the blacksmith (if you haven’t picked up any useful gear recently).
You can also prepare for the future at the blacksmith. Interestingly, the blacksmith often sells gear at one level higher than your current level. While you cannot equip gear that eclipses your current level, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t buy it.
