Game Breaker / Assassin's Creed

Breaking the Assassin's Creed games is as easy as throwing a guard off a roof.

Assassin's Creed

• The counter-attack makes combat immensely easier. The problem is that, otherwise, the combat is horribly broken and random. What is worse: uncontrollable, luck-based combat or butchering every opponent without difficulty?
  • Guessing the correct timing to perform a counter is just as good as doing it, and that's if you're able to see every attack through to fit with your timing, which makes surviving the whole game with only the Hidden Blade possible if you have the ability to time every single counter correctly, not to forget that you can also use the Hidden Blade to do a high-profile assassination during a fight if an enemy is taunting you or is cowering in fear. Not even the game's Big Bad is spared (although he doesn't taunt or cower in fear like your enemies usually do)... let's just say Altaïr and his trademark Hidden Blade near the end of the game is pretty much a Game-Breaker himself.
    • It should also be mentioned that counters from the swords are not One-Hit Kill; counters from the hidden blade are. Even on the final boss.
    • It gets better. In the final fight (at least, before you have to fight Al Mualim), the easiest way to kill Robert is to just grab and throw him, switch to the Hidden Blade, then stab him while he's floundering on the ground.
  • And when you kill a couple of guards in quick succession with the hidden blade (grab them both and throw them to the same place), it's likely someone nearby will cower in horror, allowing you to kill them with it. This sets up a murderous domino effect where you can kill 10+ guards with no retaliation.

Assassin's Creed II

• The game has an economic system that's completely broken by the villa. Basically, you have a villa in the Italian countryside that people can visit and pay rent to stay, all of which returns a payroll every 20 minutes. You can increase the amount of money you make per payroll by renovating the villa, and fixing up shops can get you discounts when buying things from stores. When all is said and done and you have a fully-upgraded villa, you basically never have to worry about money ever again. It's balanced somewhat by your stake in the income having a cap with any extra money being lost, but the cap is generally large enough to not be much of a worry, and upgrades as you renovate.
• The pistol upgrade, which gives you a small wrist-mounted firearm, similar to the Hidden Blade. While this weapon takes a while to aim, it will One-Hit Kill any enemy in the game, including bosses. Many bosses past the point where you get this weapon are either extremely difficult to reach, surrounded by armored guards and other boss-level enemies, and/or extremely skilled in combat. The pistol takes all these factors completely out of the equation thanks to its extremely high range and perfect accuracy after 3 seconds.
• The Hidden Blade's biggest change in II was a little feature missing from the first game: the ability to block (okay, they also added a standard attack for it, but that was rather pointless unless you wanted to see some of the spectacularly gruesome combo kills). This may sound odd, but because you couldn't block with it in 1, you pretty much had to be perfect when timing your counters or lose a lot of health as the guards wailed on you while you were staggered. Before, if you weren't too good at the game, you had to stick with the sword to avoid the aforementioned risk; now, there really wasn't any excuse not to use the Blade. Sure, it does less damage than the primary weapons, but who needs a few more points of damage when you're one-shotting every enemy that attacks you?

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood

• The three main 'breakers' are executions/killstreaks, the Assassin recruits, and Arrow Storms — executions/killstreaks allowing the player to One-Hit Kill most mooks (and in some cases, even mini-bosses) while going on the offense, the Assassin recruits allowing Ezio to be credited for kills while completely avoiding detection (the recruits also potentially becoming one-man/woman-armies in their own right upon reaching the highest rank), and Arrow Storms one-shotting any enemy in Ezio's vicinity.
  • The player, with patience and a couple hours, can level several recruits up to max experience (and subsequently complete most of the recruit quests as a result), giving the player an unbeatable advantage very early on in the game.
• The Hidden Blade has a slightly wider window of opportunity than in the previous games, although that is probably a subtle nod to Ezio's experience, while the Hidden Pistol's much faster aiming time (making it an actually viable combat weapon) is a more overt example.
• The Crossbow, which is like the Hidden Pistol, except without the stealth-breaking loud noise or severely limited ammo. If you're moderately quick on the draw, you can kill any guard before they raise the alarm, even if you haven't even drawn the weapon when they initially spot you. This makes rooftop archers in particular completely cease to be a threat, since they tend to move on their own.
• The Poison Dart Launcher makes poison so much more useful. You can now poison enemies from afar, with almost no chance of enemies spotting Ezio, unlike the poison blade, where you had to get into melee range to use it. Furthermore, any hostiles around will be distracted as they watch the victim's throes, allowing you to slip by. Contrast with the Hidden Gun, which almost certainly will give Ezio away, and the crossbow, which is also likely to be detected. Also, it's always a One-Hit Kill, even on Brutes.
• The game's counter mechanic was greatly buffed from the previous games, reducing difficult fights to spamming the counter button, with no regard to timing. In addition, the game's "kick" option while fighting, which reduced even the toughest enemies to whimpering babies.

Assassin's Creed: Revelations

• While Brotherhood expanded II's economic redevelopment system to the entire city of Rome, it was given some reasonable limitations in the way of requiring you to seize control of an area from the Borgias by destroying designated towers before allowing you to renovate the buildings there. Certain towers were inaccessible until later parts of the game, preventing players from reaching 100% renovation too soon. However, the system was taken to absurd levels in Revelations with the city of Constantinople, which had basically the same setup as Rome and none of the limitations, since all of the Templar Dens are accessible almost right away. There was the minor addition of increasing notoriety every time you renovate a building, which is very easily sidestepped. It is possible to have the city almost entirely rebuilt as early as Sequence 3, making the economy an even bigger joke than it usually is in AC games. This also allows access to the vast majority of the city and side content very early on in the story, unlike previous installments that utilized gating.
• Piri Reis' store (and, subsequently, the in-game economy) could be exploited to great effect as soon as you meet him. He will sell bombs to Ezio at a 15% discount, but Ezio could sell these same bombs back to him at full price. With a few minutes of grinding, you could easily make enough money to never have to worry about running short for the rest of the game. Sadly, this got patched and he now buys ingredients for the same price as he sells them (and buying discounted ingredients elsewhere won't work, either).
  • But you can still exploit Piri. Enter his shop, use the nearby crafting station for some free bomb ingredients, then exit and re-enter for another batch. Keep this up until you can't hold any more, then sell them to him for a big chunk of money. And since time passes while you're doing this, you'll also get extra money from the bank and any assassin disciples returning from missions. And there's a convenient guild management table right over there...
• Ishak Pasha's armor set (think Iron Man with a hood) can be acquired as early as Sequence 5. Collecting 25 Animus data fragments will unlock the ability to purchase a map revealing every memoir page location (there are 10 of them) throughout the city, and after collecting them, a final tomb to complete. The armor is one of two unbreakable sets in the game (along with the Master Assassin Armor, which is usually acquired much, much later) and causes guards to freak out and run away when they see Ezio.
• Speaking of the Master Assassin Armor, this unbreakable set can also be acquired as early as Sequence 3, with time and patience. All you have to do is train seven Assassins to the Master Rank, which means not only liberating all the Dens, but taking on the Master Assassin missions they give. While the first half is unlocked upon taking a Den (and having a level 10 Assassin), you can also level up your Assassin to the max rank, and beat the second half of the mission, then repeat for each Den. Once all Master Assassin missions are complete, you are awarded the armor, and as a bonus, every single one of your Dens will now become impossible to attack (so no more Den Defense).

Assassin's Creed III

• Rope arrows are cheap, plentiful and can be exploited very quickly early on in the game. Not only can the player get easy silent kills on enemies with them, but they can be used to instantly trip any enemy (up to and including Elite Mooks) and can be used to hang soldiers from trees without breaking stealth. Tellingly, they only show up in the last couple chapters of Black Flag.
• You can buy the Duckfoot Pistol from the General Store, which is ostensibly a sawed-off shotgun with three barrels. Not only is it extremely deadly at short range (killing multiple enemies in a One-Hit Kill), but when mixed with the craftable multiple holsters, you can carry several at once and plow through enemy forces like they're tissue paper. It's incredibly easy to get through the final chase mission just by running full tilt and using them to clear out groups of enemies.
• In The Tyranny of King Washington, Wolf Cloak lets Connor turn invisible for a short stretch, at the cost that it drains his life and prevents him from sprinting or free-running. But his life regenerates quickly in cover, and he can pull off stealth assassinations while under cloak. Gets a little more balanced when guard dogs are introduced.

Assassin's Creed III: Liberation

• The choke hold usually knocks enemies out. When Aveline does it, however, they die (and rather quickly), so you can sneak around and choke every enemy in your way without many noticing you.

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag

• The Templar and Mayan armors. The former goes hand-in-hand with Disc-One Nuke, as it is available after doing some easy, if lengthy, mission lines unlocked in the first fourth of the game, and makes Edward a walking tank that takes an extreme amount of damage before dying. The latter makes Edward Immune to Bullets, albeit without the damage-reducing effects of the Templar Armor, and can let the player do whatever he needs without getting harassed by riflemen. Even the Guardians' blowguns are rendered useless.
• Berserk darts can make assassination targets a breeze. Why chase a target down when you can snipe them from the bushes and watch as their own guards cut them down in self defense?
• There's several tricks with regards to boarding gameplay that can make dealing with non-Legendary enemy ships^note Legendary ships cannot be boarded a lot easier than presumably intended:
  • Enemy ships will stop shooting once you grapple them — evidently none of their captains decide to sacrifice their disabled ally to ensure the sinking of the Jackdaw — and you'll 'leave' the naval combat phase, which effectively makes the Jackdaw^note though not Edward invincible for the duration of the boarding action.
  • You're almost never required to cross over to the enemy ship, even if you want to complete secondary objectives (e.g. destroy the enemy ship's powder reserves, kill enemy sharpshooters, kill the enemy captain^note which can be achieved by nailing him with a sleep dart from as far as one of the Jackdaw's masts, after which he can be one-shotted by anyone), with no special restrictions as to how to achieve these other than destroying an enemy ship's flag^note though, if you can get from one of the Jackdaw's masts onto a remaining mast on the enemy ship, you can avoid the deck altogether. In practice, if you've got enough ammo, you can almost always stay on the Jackdaw and plink away with Edward's personal ranged weapons... or if you've got a high enough crew, you could very well just let them handle the enemies instead.
  • Not only can swivel gun shots kill multiple enemies in one hit^note and upgrading them will increase their area of effect, but you're not required to use up all five swivel gun shots in one go, so if Edward took enough damage aboard the enemy ship to risk desync, you can have him flee back to the Jackdaw to regenerate health^note at the slow 'open conflict' rate while manning the gun. Moreover, if the enemy ship is sufficiently small and your shots sufficiently precise, you may carry out the boarding objectives entirely with swivel gun shots!
  • The post-boarding prompt for what to do with a captured prize will still appear — in particular, repairing the Jackdaw — even if a multi-ship combat is still ongoing. Combined with the Jackdaw's invincibility during boarding, a player can keep the Jackdaw afloat in a drawn-out battle for as long as they can make it to the next boarding, i.e. 'nibbling one's way up the food chain' against a high-level enemy ship by focusing on disabling, then boarding and capturing lower-level allies to recover health whenever needed.
  • Finally, you can avoid naval combat with non-Legendary ships in free-roam altogether if you're not already in naval combat... by releasing the Jackdaw's wheel, diving over the side, swimming to the target ship and wiping out its crew in personal combat single-handedly, then swimming back to the Jackdaw; your first cannonball impacts against the cleared ship will immediately disable it, and you'll even get a special slow-motion camera view of the shots, and upon the boarding prompt, you may even get the success lighting/crew animations/what-to-do-with-the-prize prompt with everyone still on the Jackdaw's decks, even if the disabled ship is a level 60 man o' war! If you end up having to complete an objective anyway, you'll be able to carry it out without having to kill any (more) crew.
    • Oh, and that part above, about this trick only working on non-Legendary ships? Not entirely true...^note The only real exception to this is the Dual Boss with his HMS Fearless and Royal Sovereign: you can pull it off with the first one, but the second will set itself on fire and try to charge you down after that, which makes boarding it difficult.
    • Depending on where Abstergo got that footage of Blackbeard in the bar, Edward might very well have canonically pulled that off.
• Downplayed in that you have to be able to defeat a Legendary ship, but in the ''HMS Fearless'' and ''Royal Sovereign'' boss fight, both ships drop one half of the normal reward, and if you loot one of them before going down to the other ship, you keep the drop, even if you leave the mission — 10000 reales! After about an hour or two of grinding, you'll never have to worry about running out of money for the rest of the game.

Assassin's Creed: Unity

• You can get through the whole game in Arno's original equipment if you purchase one particular skill as soon as you can. The skill in question? Disguise. Flick down on the D-Pad, and Arno will instantaneously transform into the nearest Mook or civilian, none of whom will question who he is.
  • This disguise will last until one of three things happen:
    • You get into Assassination range^note which has a slight delay, just long enough for you to actually assassinate someone;
    • You try to free-run^note slight delay on the Glamour Failure, but the running itself gets everyone's attention;
    • You run the timer out^note instantaneous switchback; you'd better hope you've got a hiding place handy.
  • Furthermore, smoke bombs let you slip into a curtain without hopping back out even if everyone is mobbing you at the time, at which point you can wait for the Disguise to recharge, trigger it, and then slip back out of the curtain (assuming you've got a disguise target in range).

Assassin's Creed: Syndicate

• Throwing Knives can help you clear enemy bases with ease. They're not only silent ranged weapons but they're easily replenishable simply by looting corpses and a knife to the head is always lethal. Evie in particular can be upgraded to carry more knives and do more damage with them.
• Much like Revelations, all of London can be liberated as soon as the player is allowed to move freely around the city. The different areas have different difficulty levels, so the player will have to level up quite a bit to conquer them all. If they do this, though, and then go after the main sequences, they will be pathetically easy.

Assassin's Creed: Origins

• While probably historically accurate to some extent, mounted combat is seriously overpowered. Hunting in particular is ridiculously easy while on horseback since Bayek is immune to being staggered (preventing the vicious Cycle of Hurting that often accompanies fights with hyenas for instance), can catch up with any fleeing prey, and deals one hell of a lot more damage. The high mobility also makes him predictably hard to hit and thus avoids most incoming attacks without the need for blocking or evading. He can even loot enemies' remains as well as containers and chests without having to dismount. Battling humans is slightly more dangerous because their charged attacks have a higher chance of knocking Bayek off his mount, but it's easy to get on again within a few seconds, and all the advantages mentioned above still apply regardless. If you don't feel like taking a hostile stronghold stealthily, just ride through the front gate and mow down everything inside. Even archers on parapets can usually be reached and hunted down this way. The only thing that doesn't work quite as well on horseback is the Overpower ability, but the adrenaline bar still fills up as usual, so you can just dismount, overpower whatever you want, then rinse and repeat.
• The composite bow with fast reload and regenerating health on each hit. This turns your bow into the equivalent of a machine gun, and replenishes your health very quickly. Where this bow really becomes a Game-Breaker is in the Challenges of the Gods, where you can pretty much circle strafe the god plucking away at his health without having to worry too much about what they throw at you, only breaking away to run for more ammo, which is strewn about the arena.
• Flaming weapons, particularly arrows on fire, against the Phylakes. No matter how strong, the fire will send them into a helpless flail, at which point you can circle around them and pluck away at them with more arrows.
• Ballistae, the ancient world's answer to the BFG. They are stationary weapons commonly found mounted in forts, firing enormous arrows which deal massive damage to (and cause comical amounts of blood to spurt from) whatever they hit. They also stagger the Phylakes to the extent that as soon as you manage to lure one within range, they're toast.

Assassin's Creed: Odyssey

• The Bighorn Bow is a rather unassuming and underwhelming bow in the Helix credits store, a rare with hunter damage and adrenaline on headshot kills and nothing else. It is also by far the most broken item in the entire game and a legitimate Game-Breaker in the truest sense. The reason for this is that the bow is in fact completely bugged and was never patched. When the bow is equipped it increases the warrior damage of your left hand weapon by 60%, which is higher than a rank 3 Battlecry of Ares which is 50% and is listed below under gamebreakers itself, and causes your bow damage calculation to instead use the number of your left hand warrior damage rather than hunter damage. The result is you can make builds amplifying warrior damage and ignore hunter damage entirely and still dish out insane ranged damage while also having a weapon that is constantly 60% more powerful than it should be, and thats before mentioning you can still be buffed with Battlecry of Ares increasing your damage by a further 50% or 100% with an engraving. No item can compete with Bighorn Bow for sheer power as well as considered almost required for Nightmare playthroughs. As a store item this would be Pay To Win, except it can be obtained even without paying any money as it costs 150 Helix credits and the game gives you 200 Helix credits early into the story as a mission reward and as a store item it is available from level 1 on every subsequent playthrough.
• The Hunter playstyle was by far the most effective since headshots used to always crit, and it's very easy to get headshots consistently thanks to the UI providing an indicator of extra damage and ease of stacking gear with large amounts of critical damage. A charged Devastating Shot in the head could one-shot Elites of the same level and two-shot everything else. And since the majority of enemies are melee-only, it was a very safe playstyle. Patch 1.12 nerfed this playstyle by removing the auto-crit property of headshots.
  • Going full Hunter is still the most ridiculously easy approach with the right character build. The Ghost Arrows of Artemis ability, combined with the "Gain 25% of an Adrenaline segment when using Hunter abilities" and the automatic adrenaline segment refill that comes with the Archery Mastery ability, lets you shoot your target for massive damage through any obstacle indefinitely. The target can't pinpoint your location due to how the ability works, so you're perfectly safe from harm. The Abstergo Elite Armor set takes it up to eleven with its 100% damage bonus for bows while you're hidden, which is easy to do almost everywhere. This way you can clear out fortresses and win any non-scripted fight without any enemy ever coming near you. It's probably not a coincidence that half the prerequisites for this strategy are only available through the store, though. It also takes a little while for the misthios' adrenaline to refill after every shot, so this is very much a Boring Yet Practical approach.
• The Rain of Destruction ability, once fully upgraded and combined with, say, explosive arrows, can one-shot basic mooks and grievously wound Elite Mooks, has next to no cooldown and only uses a single adrenaline segment that partially refills on its own if the shot hit something. Combine this with the passive upgrade that completely refills partially drained segments after a short time, and you can spam this ability ad nauseam. Made even better by the AI being unable to pinpoint your position because the arrows are hitting from above, not a specific direction, so they'll search aimlessly with little chance of finding you. The ability's only drawbacks are its rather short range and the inability to use it indoors or hit anything under cover, but neither of these poses much of a problem most of the time.
• None of the drawbacks of the Rain of Destruction arrows apply to Ghost Arrows, though. They can be shot through all terrain, they will hurt any overlapping targets at the same time, and the enemy will not know where to search. The shot is also quite powerful, and has a huge range. Add to this the adrenaline auto-refill and an endless supply of normal arrows, and this feature makes you unstoppable. Just find a good spot to hide and patiently pluck away at whatever you wish to kill.
• Hades' Bow is devastating when it comes to the above two skills because of its innate engraving to turn normal arrows into fire arrows and, because the arrows are originally normal, they keep the endless supply. The only way to get the bow is by defeating a mercenary with the title of the Ashen Wake. And speaking of Legendary Weapons, Arachne's Stingers and the Mallet of Everlasting Flame both come with engravings that automatically give poison and fire damage respectively. You just need to find and defeat the mercenaries with the titles of the Weaver and the Smoldering, respectively.
• Using the Second Wind ability can at times feel like a Cheese Strategy, especially during boss fights. It instantly restores a big chunk of HP (25, 35 or 50% depending on level) and has a relatively quick cooldown, essentially granting the Eagle Bearer a potent Healing Factor. This allows you to steadily whittle down a large group of enemies or a boss while constantly restoring your health, meaning you're only really in trouble if you're swarmed or encounter an enemy which hits hard and fast enough to overcome the healing.
• Besides the Ghost Arrows mentioned above, the other two perks at the end of the Warrior and Assassin perk trees are game-changers: a fully upgraded Battlecry of Ares boosts your damage by 50% and prevents you from dying for 20 seconds. Combined with the right overpower attack, you can one or two-shot pretty much everything in your path. Shadow of Nyx allows you to cross entire zones without being seen, slaughtering everything in your path; if combined with the legendary Pilgrim's Set, the misthios can use it with no duration limits, allowing them to use their increased freedom of movement to set up ambushes or assassinations and escaping after the deed is done.
• Recruiting Deimos as a lieutenant for the Adrestia turns boarding actions into a joke. They retain both their overpowered equipment and the devastating AoE attacks you had to endure when you fought them, and since ships don't offer a whole lot of room for evasion, one such blast is all it takes to wipe out pretty much every enemy aboard in an instant. The unique lieutenant bonuses they offer for naval battles are just icing on the cake.
  • Also, if you have Call to Arms fully upgraded and they're slotted to the first Lieutenant spot, they can be summoned at will in regular on-land battles too. Where most lieutenants (even the other Legendary level ones) can take out one, maybe two normal-level enemies, Deimos can take out several and also whittle down the health of others due to the large range of their attacks. Getting overwhelmed by a large group of enemies is hardly a problem when your formerly-evil-cultist sibling has already been through and softened them up for you.
• The Sparta Kick, in certain situations, given that a sufficiently long fall will One-Hit Kill almost anything, including bosses and mercenaries. If you're having problems with one, just run away, climb to a high ledge they can reach, shoot a few arrows at them and hide. They'll climb up to investigate the ledge, allowing you to sneak up and boot them over the edge to their death. Forts in particular also have lots of precarious ledges which their defenders will conveniently stand on the edges of — it's very satisfying to deal with Polemarchs by yeeting them off the walls to their doom.
• With the introduction of mastery levels, you can have some nice passive perks, including ones that would normally require wearing a full set of legendary armor. One perk is "chance to deal assassin damage on hit". Since assassin damage is several magnitudes higher than warrior damage, this essentially becomes a critical hit on steroids. Combine this with rapidly-hitting daggers for more chances to trigger, and you'll find a number of fights over much faster than expected. Patch 1.12 nerfed this by changing the perk to "chance to deal 25% assassin damage on hit".
• The "restore 10% health on block" weapon perk that came with the Legacy of the First Blade DLC's second episode is ridiculously powerful. Most enemies invariably attack with plenty of blockable attacks, so coming back from near-death becomes trivial even without the Second Wind heal ability. This perk alone makes the misthios next to unkillable, as long as you don't completely suck at blocking.
• Tamed Alpha Bears can turn the entire game into a spectator sport. Especially when combined with a weapon engraving that adds 100% extra health and 50% extra damage to tamed animals. Just bring your Alpha Bear into a heavily guarded enemy fortress and watch him tear through all the soldiers like a knife through butter. You don't really have to fear losing your bear due to its insanely large health pool. It can even solo against some of the Legendary animals from the Daughters of Artemis questline.
• The combo of Rush Assassination and Legacy of the First Blade's Death Veil, once you get high enough Assassin damage. Rush Assassination has the misthios throw the Spear of Leonidas at an enemy and then appear at the target for an assassination, effectively making it a teleport assassination. You can chain it across multiple enemies up to three times (four if you play Legacy of the First Blade), and they'll all count as assassination kills, even if a target you get has technically entered combat. This pairs extremely well with the aforementioned Death Veil, which makes assassinations disappear after the kill, meaning you don't have to clean up the bodies anymore. It all results in you warping from tower to tower and across courtyards one-shotting groups of enemies without concern.
• Provided you and the armor are at least level 91, the Greek Heroes set can get you near invincibility. Wear it, max out the ranged and melee resistance masteries, engrave the arms with your best melee resistance engraving and the head with ranged resistance. Congratulations, melee attacks now do absolutely nothing to you and arrows only tickle a little. Elemental damage is now the only thing that can noticeably hurt you, but putting some points into the "damage dealt restored as health" mastery can easily undo that. To take this further, get the Nemean Cestus blunt from the store for its "+30% damage while full health" engraving. Since you're taking almost no damage and easily healing what little you do take, you are literally an unstoppable god of death.
  • Even better, equip the Blade of Yumminess for its "+250% to all damage" perk, slap the "heal for 10% with every successful parry" perk on it and go to town. Sure, you can't use active abilities anymore, but you won't need to - just hack away at everything in range, and on the off chance that something does manage to tickle you, a single parry will heal you back to full. For additional lulz, engrave your secondary weapon with the "Melee damage applies to nearby enemies" perk to hit everything in a four-meter radius around you at once. Putting the Dekastes Armor's unique "Isu-enhanced" perk on your Armor of Invincibility makes it even more ridiculous because you get complete invulnerability, a massive damage boost, automatic healing and the ability to ignore pretty much any enemy defence for 15 seconds every two minutes. Playing this way is mind-numbingly boring, but even the most aggravating bosses will fall before you like wheat before the scythe regardless of difficulty.
• Once you get access to level 10 engravings, you can kit yourself out to crit 100% of the time while at full health, dealing more than 650% damage on each crit. Almost every enemy can be one-shot with a normal assassination or Predator shot, and when you do end up in melee combat, Hero Strike and Overpower will take out almost anyone in one hit as well. Second Wind makes it a lot easier to get back to full health, and even if you're not at 100%, you'll still have a 50% crit rate and more than 300% crit damage.
• In June 2019, they introduced user-created quests. Naturally, the first thing people did was make XP-farming quests that gave you gargantuan chunks of XP for little to no effort, enough for even level 99 players to get a skill point every two 'playthroughs'. The August 2019 patch fixed this by MASSIVELY nerfing the money and XP payouts of story creator quests.

Assassin's Creed: Valhalla

• Archery is ridiculously powerful in Valhalla. Almost any basic enemy can be killed with one shot to the head, Elite Mooks are severely weakened and usually stunlocked when you headshot them, and Eivor's quiver can be upgraded to hold enough arrows to wipe out entire forts full of soldiers. Arrows can also be retrieved from corpses, giving you practically unlimited ammo as long as you don't miss (and even if you do, they're plentiful in the world). Needless to say that bows are silent weapons, which allows you to clear enemy strongholds without anyone even noticing you're there, and from a safe distance, to boot. Sadly, unless you care not to use ranged combat much/at all, it makes the use of the Hidden Blade more or less obsolete for stealth combat.
  • Archery becomes even more broken with "Raven's Loot", a passive upgrade added in the March 2021 patch; once obtained, Synin loots whatever you killed with a bow. This means that as long as you don't spam arrows everywhere (she can't keep up if you do so), she'll bring you enemy loot, animal parts (including fish), and can even return your arrows.
• Melee combat becomes a breeze once the Raven-aligned ability Brush with Death is unlocked ^note slows time after executing a dodge just before an enemy attack hits. Don't like to dodge? The Bear-aligned ability Parry Damage ^note successful parries damage enemies is your counter of choice. Want to utilise enemy corpses? Explosive Corpse ^note booby traps enemy corpses with explosive powder is for you. Did we mention that all these abilities are passive?
  • Dual-wielding spears is another way to make melee trivial as the setup has both speed and reach. It can greatly help with the Zealots especially, allowing a player to kill one while at a much lower level than recommended.
  • The special sprint attack is also bad. With weapons, it does a lot of damage to enemies, frequently to the level of a one-hit-kill; without weapons, it still does a solid amount of damage and also throws them to the ground for a stomp attack.
• After you get Incendiary Powder Trap for your arrows, you can turn your arrows into what are essentially Zelda-esque bomb arrows for clearing out rubble instead of having to look around for oil jars.
• The Poison Powder Trap - while not able to destroy walls like its sibling - can take out weak outposts by itself and severely cripple stronger ones once combined with "Miasma", an upgrade that causes NPCs who died of poison to create a poisonous cloud on the body for a while. Just don't use it around civilians.
• With the Wrath of the Druids expansion, we now have to add the Mythical Spear Gae Bolg to this list. Obtained as a reward for eliminating all members of the Children of Danu and the hero Balor, Gae Bolg deals both Health and Stun Damage, with the real kicker being that it’ll strike opponents with a bolt of lightning after 3 consecutive hits!