Shock and Awe - Rapid Domination of Arsuf

The military strategy of Shock and Awe is simple: Use displays of rapid, overwhelming dominance to demoralize your opponents, leaving them vulnerable. The same principle can be applied to AC battle tactics. Guards sometimes cower after witnessing a kill, and a cowering guard leaves his defenses down so that he can become the next victim. The death of the cowering guard then triggers other guards to start cowering, and so the cycle continues. To get the momentum of fear started, you typically need to rapidly kill a couple of guards. To perpetuate the fear, you need to rapidly kill those who cower.

One way to rapidly kill guards to start the shock-and-awe cycle is to use a pair-wise grab/throw/assassinate strategy. WITHOUT locking on, grab and throw guard A, and grab and throw guard B in the same general direction as guard A. Run over to kill guard A with your hidden blade, and quickly check to see if anyone has started to cower. If not, kill guard B. You should be able to kill two guards in rapid succession in this way. There is now a good chance that a surviving guard has started to cower. If not, just repeat pair-wise grab/throw/assassinate.

Since you are not locked onto anyone, you can sprint/run to a cowering guard to kill him with the hidden blade. When you kill a cowering guard, use a low profile kill so that you can adjust the camera angle to scan around for new cowering targets during the kill animation. Sprint/run to your new target and repeat.

Some of the cues for cowering appear briefly and may be subtle if you are not use to looking for them. Watch the video to practice looking for these cues, such as rubbing the shoulder or leg, ducking, lowering the sword, looking around, swinging the left arm out, etc. Cowering often starts with the kill animation (*before* your blade goes in), so you should start looking the instant you press the attack button.

When you kill someone laying on the ground or when you high profile kill a standing target, the camera angle will be fixed during the kill animation, so you often need to rely on more subtle cues to tell you who is cowering. Sometimes you can only see the dropping tip of the sword, or a shifting torso, or a wayward arm. Shadows can reveal the cowering of those out of direct view. And of course, you don't need to wait for cowering per se. You have an opportunity to kill whenever a guard taunts, yields, gives an order, etc. Listen for these opportunities as well.

Shock and awe won't always work well since it depends on who you are fighting and how many. Guards of higher rank (bigger helmets with more coverage) are less likely to cower (or unable to cower), which is why "only" half of the guards were eliminated this way in the final battle. Nonetheless, I suspect that the higher ranking guards become more easily grabbed and thrown as a result of shock and awe, which allows for a degree of fear propogation. I believe this is why the last several targets in the final battle were so easily thrown, despite their high rank.

I have trouble using shock and awe on extremely large groups (20+ guards). There are just too many guards, and I have trouble quickly finding the one who is cowering among the crowd. And even if I do find him, he may be at a distance, and it takes too long to reach him.

The video has a blitz on Robert de Sable at 6:25. Here are instructions for the PS3. I turn on the option to "Hold L1 (left trigger) to lock" under the game control options. My left thumb moves the left thumbstick while my left index finger presses D-pad up to change weapons. My right thumb presses attack. On the Xbox, I suspect that you can use your left index finger to move the left thumbstick, and use your thumb to switch weapons.

Kudos to stabguy, who was the first to realize that Robert could be defeated as the final battle starts.

If you like this video, please check out my other videos in this series.
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=1947FC13B3BC659C

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• assassins
• assassin's
• creed
• tips
• help
• battle
• fighting
• walkthrough
• arsuf
• robert
• de
• sable
• king
• richard
• finale
• blitz
• fastest
• fast
• fight

[jopasastropa]

What AC is that and on what console do u play it?

[ianxofour]

@jopasastropa this is the first assassins creed. i play on ps3, but the game is virtually identical in every way on xbox.

[blooqzue]

better way is to counterkill with the hidden blade... starts the cycle more quickly

[ianxofour]

@blooqzue yes, there are lots of different ways to get the cycle started, and a counter kill is certainly a fun way to do it. i think killing 2 ppl in quick succession is the most reliable.

[GW4GTA]

what memory block is this?

[ianxofour]

@GW4GTA mb6

[baronvg]

I'm in Shock and Awe from just watching the skill here. LOL

[BoundedCascade]

to be honest with you i really do not enjoy your style of fighting, its just not exciting to me. I mean it takes skill and all what u did, however I enjoy using the short blade and cut them up. Either that or using long sword to knock em off balance then change to the hidden blade and get them with it.

[Greyz174]

i feel like altair could take on every single man in the world now

[jacoblewis100]

what i do in a battle is when they say shen nebwida war biti spartin ill be like this is sparta 2 myself and ill be like no u so ill stab them like go fuck urself

[ianxofour]

look at the map. there are 2 ways to arsuf. take the other way. silly, isnt it?

[DCSHOES015]

how did you get to Arsuf? there is a wall of blue crap when i am travelling by horse which wont let me get to Arsuf., please help.