10 Top Tips For Assassin's Creed: Revelations

I”ve been playing a lot of Assassin”s Creed: Revelations over the past week. It”s easily the hardest game in the series with much tougher enemies and memories everywhere. Here are my top tips for story mode to make you an awesome assassin.

Note: There are some mild gameplay spoilers in these tips.

1. Steal from everyone, all the time – Right from the very start of the game pickpocket and steal everything. Don”t get rushed by the main plot. It can wait. Quickly rack up your cash by pickpocketing people during the walk and talk bits so you can buy some better armour as soon as possible. Go have a wander, explore the city and mug some people.
2. Renovate banks and book shops first – The quicker you start renovating the city, the more money you”ll earn. Renovate the book shops first and buy all the treasure maps you can afford. Many of the maps are really cheap so you”ll redeem your money just by finding a couple of treasure chests. Then renovate the banks so you can get your money out to spend on armour and weapons.



3. Aim for the nuts – As with Assassin”s Creed: Brotherhood, the kick is a ridiculously overpowered attack. There”s only one type of guard – who turns up a lot later in the game – that isn”t totally crippled by kicks to the groin. Especially when you”re outnumbered and cornered, start kicking. More armour = more kicking in the bollocks.
4. Reset your Templar Awareness (formerly known as notoriety) – Find a memory start to push the main plot on a bit. This has the effect of resetting your awareness to zero. So all you need to worry about is making it to the memory start without annoying the highly alert Templars casino online in the meantime. That means no killing, renovating property or recklessly running about the city. Added bonus, it means you”ll spend less time in the game”s tedious version of Tower Defence.
5. Forget about a lost den – If you lose a den back to the Templars, don”t worry about it. You”ll still retain the 2 assassin recruit spots you gained from reclaiming it the first time. Get on with training your team of assassins and making lots of cash.
6. Don”t rush to a contested den – When one of your dens gets attacked, don”t rush to win it back. You have loads of time. Go search for treasure chests, Animus data fragments or organise/training your assassins. Take your time.
7. You can bribe the same Herald twice – When you max out your Templar Awareness meter (i.e. top left logo on the HUD is completely red) all your dens are at risk of Templar attack and navigating the city is a real pain as everyone hates you. There are 2 ways to get your status back down to secret (white).
   • First way – Find a memory start (see tip 4).
   • Second way – Kill a Templar Official (eye shaped icon) and bribe two Heralds (person shaped icon). You can bribe the same Herald twice in quick succession by running away for about 15 seconds and then coming back. He will have mysteriously forgotten that you”d bribed him earlier and happily take another chunk off your awareness status.
8. More cities equals lots more income – In the Mediterranean defence game use the easy difficulty missions to start off your assassins training. Once they are above level 6 start sending them in groups on the reclaim the city missions. Once you”ve got control over other European cities the money starts rolling in.
9. Listen for the “twinkly” sound – As with all Assassin”s Creed games, the twinkly sound means that treasure or a collectable item is close by. In Revelations it”s either a treasure chest, a chest with bomb making ingredients or an Animus fragment. You can turn down the voice and music volumes (via Options>General) and leave SFX volume set on 10 to make this sound a lot easier to hear.
10. Go for the Templar den captain – Forget about everyone else. Just focus on killing the Templar den captain(s), even if they”re surrounded by a million guards. Once you”ve killed the head honcho they”ll all run off like frightened rabbits, leaving you to climb the tower and set off the flare. Job done.

Check out my 9 top tips for Assassin”s Creed: Brotherhood if you haven”t finished that game. IF you haven”t, you probably shouldn”t start playing Revelations unless you don”t mind major plot spoilers.

Assassin”s Creed: Revelations is out now for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.