Assassin’s Creed Mirage beginner’s guide

Whether you’re a beginner to the Assassin’s Creed series or have just forgotten how the older games used to play, Mirage is a great entry point. The stripped-back approach means there aren’t as many complicated systems to learn as in Valhalla, but some tips and tricks will help you out.

If you find yourself struggling through Mirage, we’ve got you covered below.

Pickpocket everyone

Pickpocketing is tricky, but it gets easier with practice, and the rewards are well worth the effort. The people of Baghdad just leave their valuables dangling from their hips, ripe for the taking. As well as money and trinkets you can sell, you’ll also find tokens you can use to hire mercenaries and musicians and bribe merchants or beggars who may have useful information for you. The only other way to get these is through the contracts, so if you want to use them a lot, keep picking those pockets. You can also turn on 100 percent successful pickpockets in the settings if you want.

Unlock the smoke bombs ASAP

There are lots of tools in Mirage, but none is as useful as the trusty smoke bomb. Just like in every Assassin’s Creed game, these are ridiculously overpowered, so unlock smoke bombs immediately. You’ll be able to very early on as a story mission reward, so you don’t even need to spend skill points on them. You can use them to evade enemies or stun them so you can assassinate them. Win-win.

Reduce notoriety quickly

If you fail a pickpocket or get spotted killing someone, your notoriety will increase. This is a mechanic pulled straight from Assassin’s Creed 2, and it’s important you deal with it straight away. At first, guards will just get suspicious of you, but the higher your notoriety gets, the harder it is to just explore the gorgeous city of Baghdad. Eventually, deadly duelists with two swords will start hunting you, so tear posters down and bribe the street preachers quickly. You can also just turn it off in the settings menu.

Experiment with skills

Fortunately, there aren’t too many skills in Assassin’s Creed Mirage. Still, it can be tricky picking which skills to unlock. Luckily, you can reset all but the tool expansion skills, so feel free to experiment and try out different builds to figure out what’s most fun for you.

Be patient in combat

Basim doesn’t have much health, and even on normal difficulty, enemies hit hard, so be patient when in open combat. Ideally, you want to avoid it at all costs and be as stealthy as possible, but no plan survives first contact. Like the original games, you’ve got to wait for an opportunity to parry and counter-kill your foes in Mirage. Just be patient. Or throw a smoke bomb down and stab everyone in the ensuing chaos.

Spend your money

There’s only one mission where you need any money, and even then you don’t need it. It just helps you skip a little stealing section. Spend all the money you make on things that are actually useful. Mainly this will be components, iron ingots, and leather, the items you need to upgrade weapons and armor. You can also buy outfits and refill your consumables like throwing knives, smoke bombs, and elixir, so buy buy buy!