9 Top Tips For Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood

For most off this week I’ve been playing the quite wonderful Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood game. Here are my 9 top tips to make the most of the single player game from the very beginning.

1. Keep everything you find – You need trade objects (e.g rabbit’s food, tomatoes) that you pick up during your travels (looting bodies and treasure chests) to complete the various shop quests to unlock weapons and maps. For instance, to unlock the Captain’s Sword you need: 3 Terracotta pots, 2 Totems and 2 Buddhist prayer beads. So don’t sell any of the items you find as they will be useful. Also there is no encumbrance penalty for carrying too many items. Ezio is superhuman in that respect!



2. Renovate the banks first – Just like in real life, things are lot easier with a functioning banking system. Not only will it generate you lots of income but the more banks you renovate the easier it is to withdraw your money (i.e. more branches are available). If you do this at the start of the game you can build up a tidy, regular income quite quickly.
3. Search everybody – If they are alive: pickpocket them (also see tip 9). If they are dead: loot them. You will find that if you loot the bodies of everyone you kill you will rarely have to visit the shops to resupply. This will save you a lot of time and money. Also the guards in heavy armour usually carry loads of ammunition and money. So look out for them. Finally, if you kill someone near a group of guards, just pick up their body and drop it somewhere quieter to loot. This way you won’t get noticed.
4. A kick in the nuts – 3 to 4 kicks in the groin will fell any guard to the floor, even the heavily armoured ones. It is an amazingly overpowered attack. You can even kill people using it! This is an especially useful technique on the guards with long spears who will otherwise block your hand-held weapon attacks.
5. Buy treasures maps – Buy the treasure maps to get rich a lot quicker. They make treasure hunting simple. However, some of the later treasure maps require you to complete a shop quest (see tip 1).
6. Pistols and crossbows – Your pistol kills anyone with one shot. This makes it the perfect weapon for assassinating the Borgia Captains. The downside is that it will attract attention. But, if you’ve killed your primary target (i.e. the Captain) that’s ok you can handle that. Whilst the crossbow will kill poorly armoured guards with one shot, it’s not as effective on Borgia Captains. It will simply alert them (and everyone else) to your presence and make the Borgia Captain flee.
7. Viewpoints and fire go hand in hand – When a viewpoint is at the top of a Borgia tower, kill the Borgia Captain and then climb the tower to burn it. When at the top simply synchronise the viewpoint and then burn the tower. This will save you climbing the tower twice.
8. Listen for the “twinkly” sound – It means there is a treasure, flag or feather near by. Turning down the voice and music volumes (via Options>General) and leaving SFX volume set on 10 makes this sound a lot easier to hear. If you don’t have a treasure map (see tip 5) then this is the easiest way to locate the hidden treasure chests.
9. Don’t rush through the main story – Until you complete the first thieves memory and renovate their guild building (i.e. when the memory start is located in the bottom left corner of the Rome map), you cannot become notorious whilst wandering around Rome. This makes it very easy to go on a pickpocketing frenzy. Also, it makes renovating the city a little bit easier as the guards don’t bother you.

The only other thing I would say is if you haven’t played Assassin’s Creed II, I would highly recommend it for a few reasons. Firstly, it is a brilliant game. Secondly, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood follows on straight on after the end of Assassin’s Creed II you will find it a lot easier to understand what’s going on. I’m not saying that a total Assassin’s Creed newbie can’t just pick up and play Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, they can. It’s just that they will miss some of the back story.

Update 20th Nov 2010: I’ve added a 9th tip – Don’t rush through the main story.

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood is out now on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.