It’s one of the first things you’ll notice when looking at your gear in Assassin’s Creed Shadows – they have various engravings! These can range from extra skills, more health, or even specific condition gains, such as increased damage if we equip a single weapon instead of two. It’s not immediately obvious where do you even get to customize this sort of bonuses, despite the game making it clear it’s possible. So let’s figure out how to engrave gear in Assassin’s Creed Shadows in this handy little guide!
Assassin’s Creed Shadows is 2025’s mainline installment to this massive open world franchise by French publisher Ubisoft. It’s the first to only be available on 9th generation consoles, once and for all leaving behind the shackles of 2013 hardware like the original Xbox One and PlayStation 4. This allowed the game to make quite the technical leap, with the density of the open world, the drawing distance, the amount of particles, the quality of the animations and more taking quite a huge leap from 2023’s Assassin’s Creed Mirage.
In a somewhat similar way to Valhalla and Odyssey, higher rarity gear all have extra perks and bonuses – in the case of Shadows, in the form of engravings. While the items you find may already have one engraving, you may switch that yourself, or add a second on certain unique weapons, armor, trinkets and so forth. Shortly after the end of Act 1, the player gets to build their customizeable Hideout. This is a much more elaborate version of the Settlement in Valhalla, with players being able to place, move, upgrade, customize entire buildings, trees, animals, decorations and more, on a pretty big grid-based structure.
Well, early in the hand-holding tutorial-esque first hours of the game, players will get to build a Forge. This is where the engraving will be done, but not just yet! Players will then have to select the Forge on the grid-based editor, and choose the upgrade option. Here, the player will see how there’s a level 2 and level 3 forge as well, which in turns unlocks engraving. So make sure you find enough materials to get this upgrade done as soon as possible, then push that Forge until level 2 at least – this will allow you to truly customize your gear. Further engravings can be found exploring the massive open world of the game, so keep your eyes open!
Hopefully that cleared up any potential confusion, as the game stops giving too many hints after the first couple hours, and some features can be a little confusing to find at times. Engraving your gear smartly is key to a quality build, which is crucial to have on higher difficulties – or, simply, when in combat with Naoe, who’s otherwise pretty low on health and general resistance. Let us know in the comments if you’ve found some particularly cool engravings in your trip to (virtual) Japan!
