Ubisoft has announced a release date for Claws of Awaji, its first Assassin’s Creed Shadows expansion. The major new add-on will arrive on September 16 as a paid DLC, or for free to those who pre-ordered the game.
Included within it is a new region — the island of Awaji — fresh gear, abilities, outfits, enemies, and 10 hours of new story content that picks up Shadows’ main plotline for those who’ve now seen the game’s main end credits roll.
What new revelations lie in wait for Naoe concerning her family? Will Yasuke get to take down some more Templars? There are now less than two months to go until we find out.
A fresh roadmap of other content coming to Assassin’s Creed Shadows includes a big progession update on July 29, featuring the addition of New Game Plus mode, a level cap increase from 60 to 80, further upgrades for all hideout buildings, and the ability to upgrade Knowledge ranks to 9 and 10.
It’s also with this update that the game’s third Animus ‘Project’ will arrive, offering further free rewards for undertaking weekly missions, including new modern day lore.
New Game Plus will unlock as soon as you hit the credits of the main game, and let you restart the game’s story again from either the very beginning or after Naoe inherits ownership of your hideout. Handy! Story, location and objective board progression will be reset, but you’ll keep your character level, gear, skill points, Knowledge rank and Hideout. Finally, completing the game again via New Game Plus will unlock unique rewards, so you can show off just how many hundreds of hours you have played.
Early in September, another free update will add several fan-requested quality-of-life improvements, including the ability to fast-forward the time of day, better unfog the world map when synchronising with viewpoints (finally!), and yet more improvements for your hideout. PC players will also be able to toggle an uncapped framerate in cutscenes.
There’s no further word on Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ likely arrival on Nintendo Switch 2 today, but if Ubisoft boss Yves Guillemot is to be believed, it doesn’t sound like it’ll be long.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
