All weapons in Assassin’s Creed Shadows

There are eight weapons in Assassin’s Creed Shadows — not including the infamous hidden blade of the Assassins. Each weapon has its own style, and can only be used by one of the game’s two playable protagonists, Naoe or Yasuke.

In this Assassin’s Creed Shadows guide, we’ll go over the list of weapons available to Naoe and Yasuke, and provide some details on how you get new weapons, alongside information about how weapon afflictions work. Or if you’re looking for a curated selection, here’s our list of the best weapons in Assassin’s Creed Shadows.

Update (March 28): Added information about weapon afflictions.

How to get new weapons in Assassin’s Creed Shadows

Naoe starts with her straightforward katana weapon, and you’ll need to find her other weapon types as random loot drops from chests or as rewards for completing quests. The same goes for Yasuke — once you unlock him — as he only has his long katana when you first meet him.

If you want to quickly test out each character’s other weapons, head to a gear vendor in a major city. The one in Sakai, one of the game’s earliest port cities, can be found in the middle of town.

These vendors will sell common versions of every type of weapon in the game near or at your level cap. By spending a little cash, you can fully reveal both characters’ skill trees, so you can look through them and determine where you want to invest your mastery points in the future. (Weapon skill trees remain hidden until you acquire their first corresponding weapon.)

If you’re looking for higher tier weapons, you can get legendary versions of each type of melee weapon by taking on the game’s main story — i.e., killing the major targets in your Objectives menu. However, some of these targets are quite high level, so you might be better sticking with lower-rarity versions of each weapon until you level up.

All weapon afflictions in Assassin’s Creed Shadows

All weapons in the game, regardless of rarity, deal raw damage, meaning they simply remove health and armor when you successfully land a hit. However, some melee weapons — typically those with higher rarity levels — have afflictions associated with them, which deal additional types of damage, like poison, or have an effect associated with them, like daze.

There are three different affliction types that your weapons can roll with:

• Bleed builds up a meter as you deal damage to a target, which causes a burst of damage once the meter is full.
• Poison deals damage over time after you strike a target. Once an enemy has enough poison buildup in them, they’ll stop fighting and vomit.
• Daze builds up a meter as you deal damage to a target, which causes the target to become dazed once the meter is full. Enemies who are dazed won’t be able to block your attacks and will miss most strikes against you.

There are weapons in each category of melee weapon that have the chance to have an affliction perk. (While you can technically fire poison arrows as Yasuke, that’s a skill you’ll have to unlock with mastery points, and equip as special ammo — it’s not tied to any bows you’ll find.)

In Assassin’s Creed Shadows, whether or not a weapon has an affliction associated with it is determined by more than just its name. For example, the Bloody Katana of Service and the Silent Katana of Wounding are both katanas that inflict bleed.

The trick here is to ignore the name and instead focus on the stats. On weapons that cause an affliction on the target, you’ll see “[affliction type] buildup” as the fourth stat on the list. You can see this in action on the image above, where the legendary tanto Yukimitsu’s Revenge says “poison buildup” on its stat block, which is how you know it deals poison damage.

Naoe weapons list

Naoe can use three weapons in open combat, as she’s primarily built to attack from the shadows. What she lacks in weapon power, she makes up for with her tools, like the shuriken and kunai. 

Here are the weapons Naoe can use:

• Katana
• Kusarigama
• Tanto

We’ll break down how each weapon works below.

Katana

The katana is the most basic of Naoe’s weapons. And while she does typically hold it inverted — meaning the blade runs along her forearm rather than extending past her hand — it plays like a sword. You can parry enemies with proper timing, or slice them to ribbons by constantly pressing the attack button.

The katana’s skills position it as Naoe’s most defensive weapon, allowing you to capitalize on parries and dodges with powerful follow-up attacks.

Kusarigama

The kusarigama is essentially a small sickle attached to a long chain that has a big, metal ball attached to the other side. Your light attacks use the sickle as a close-quarters blade, which you can use to slice single enemies. Your heavy attack, however, sees you swing the ball and chain around your head, hitting multiple enemies at once.

The kusarigama’s skills allow you to better control the battlefield, with some allowing you to yank enemies into each other with the weapon’s chain.

Tanto

The tanto is essentially just a dagger or a half-length katana. However, the game treats it as two daggers, since Naoe also extends and fights with her Assassin’s hidden blade while the tanto is out. This makes for very quick combos with both light and heavy attacks, which include dodging around the sides of enemies to more easily get at their backs.

The tanto’s skills cement it as the true weapon of an Assassin, allowing you to both assassinate targets mid-combat and double assassinate unsuspecting enemies.

Yasuke weapons list

Yasuke can use five weapons when he gets into scraps. Since he lacks Naoe’s tools, he can replace one (or both) of his melee weapons with a ranged weapon like the bow or teppo, which use ammo that can be purchased from vendors or collected from enemy camps.

Here are the weapons Yasuke can use:

• Long katana
• Naginata
• Kanabo
• Teppo
• Bow

We’ll break down how each weapon works below.

Long katana

The long katana is a katana but long. That may sound sarcastic — and it is a little bit, if we’re being honest — but it’s also true. Yasuke is a big guy and he has a big katana to fit. He holds the katana upright — unlike Naoe — and uses it to duel enemies. The major difference from Naoe’s katana is that Yasuke’s is big enough for him to quickly cut through armor and skewer enemies so he can then lift them into the air.

The long katana’s skills help secure its spot as a dueling weapon, further incentivizing you to parry attacks.

Naginata

The naginata is a katana blade on a long stick. This thing is part bo staff (think Donatello from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) and part spear. It has wide, sweeping attacks that make it great for crowd control. The naginata also has very long reach, which allows you to attack from a safer distance than most other melee weapons, making a it a great tool for dealing with high level enemies.

The naginata skills help push it further into an area weapon, while also incentivizing you to position properly, giving you bonus damage when you hit enemies with its tip.

Kanabo

The kanabo is essentially just a big baseball bat. But instead of a smooth surface, it has little metal bumps implanted into the surface to help it deal additional damage. This weapon is very slow, but it bashes through enemy armor and staggers them very easily.

Kanabo skills help you break enemies even faster by allowing you to speed up sequential hits and blend light and heavy attacks together into devastating combos.

Teppo

The teppo is a musket-like rifle. It uses bullets (which are finite, but easily replaced in the world) to blast through enemy armor and make quick work of unarmored foes. It’s agonizingly slow to reload, however, making it great for single shots that lead into close-quarters combat.

The teppo’s skills help it become a more efficient sniper weapon, allowing it to deal bonus damage when you stand still for a short time and shred armor more efficiently.

Bow

The bow is a massive longbow that Yasuke can use to pick targets off from a distance without making much noise, making combat once discovered significantly easier. The quiver has a finite amount of arrows, but you can upgrade Yasuke’s ammo capacity to hold many arrows at once. Like bullets, you can find stations that replenish arrows around the world and in castles.

The bow’s skills help you fire off arrows more quickly and give you access to additional arrow types, like silent arrows that give Yasuke a powerful stealth option to open a fight.

For more Assassin’s Creed Shadows explainers, here’s how to get more knowledge points and mastery points, how to get more rations, how to get more scouts, and how to get all companions and romance options. Plus, see our all armor list.