Walkthrough

Mirage does not hand you your targets. Baghdad is divided between four Assassin bureaus, each bureau opens a set of cases, and each case is a pile of clues that eventually names a member of the Order of the Ancients and tells you where he sleeps. That is the whole campaign, and it is why the Investigation tab matters more than the quest log. This guide runs the board in the order it fills up.

Assassin's Creed Mirage Investigations and Their Targets

Alamut first, Baghdad second

A New Beginning is the chapter that makes Basim an assassin rather than a thief, and it is worth playing carefully rather than skipping through, because it is the only place the game formally teaches combat. Roshan runs you through target locking, light and heavy attacks, and the two colours that will decide every fight afterwards, and Rebekah hands over the Alamut Dagger and Sword and the throwing knives. It ends in a duel with your own teacher. Our A New Beginning walkthrough covers the leap of faith practice, finding Fuladh through an NPC the marker refuses to point at, and the night patrol with Nur that closes it.

The first real kill is Al Ghul, and it sets the template the game repeats: you are not meant to walk in the front door. Enkidu finds a narrow well by the north wall of the Caravanserai that puts you inside undetected, and from there you have a choice of two ways to bring the target out onto his balcony, either by freeing the enslaved workers with a pickpocketed deed or by fetching a merchant's crate so that he makes a scene at the gate. Either way it ends in an air assassination from the roof beams, and the kill unlocks Assassin's Focus.

The Abbasiyah cases: a fire and a missing man

The House of Wisdom carries two threads at once. One is Ahmad Ibn Musa, who has vanished; the other is the burned books and the murdered caretaker, which becomes the Book Burner. They share a location and an opening objective, which is why we cover the office investigation on its own page as well as inside the larger case.

The missing brother thread ends badly for a helpful assistant. Hamid Al Haleem offers to show you the way and walks you into a group of guards instead, and the map he draws afterwards leads to an excavation site southwest of Baghdad, where a chest holds a letter from Doctor Hassan. Following it to the Great Bimaristan means pickpocketing a key from the head nurse, eavesdropping on the doctors, and reaching a private laboratory through a window on the upper floor. Wait inside after the kill and Ahmad walks in himself.

The Book Burner runs on physical evidence instead: a scrap of a woman's gown in the dead caretaker's hand, a translator called Hunayn who is terrified of his employer, and a note about book deliveries to the Scholar's Estate. Zahra dies on her own rooftop, and the papers on her body name the next member of the Order. Both cases are on the Ahmad Ibn Musa page and the Follow the Fiery Trail page.

The Karkh cases: merchants, tea and taxes

Karkh is where the Order squeezes traders, and both of its cases start with somebody asking a favour. Kong wants a confiscated crate of tea leaves back and then his wares out of a warehouse, and the three letters you read while clearing that warehouse are the clues: a hunt for a Chinese hairpin, an order to hold every foreign shipment, and a scented letter that finally gives you the name Al-Kullulu.

Of Toil and Taxes begins with a perfume vendor tied up in the Bazaar and ends in a palace. The middle is the interesting part, an escort ride south of the city that gets ambushed between two cliffs, with a horse's head, a grieving owner, a useless bystander and a letter to sift through before the merchants trust you with the name Suhail. See the Harbormaster walkthrough and Of Toil and Taxes.

Sharqiyah: the Warlord and his two officers

This is the biggest case in the game, seven quests long, and it is structured as a pyramid. Spying on the Officer's Club names two men under the Warlord, Al A'eshma and Al-Rukh, and you can kill them in either order. Al A'eshma is the memorable one: his camp cannot be stormed, but a note on his own desk says to keep fire away from his prototype ship, so you burn the ship and he comes out to you. Al-Rukh dies in a tower at Qasr Salih. Then the garrison, which needs a hole in the north wall, a loyal steward, a warden's key and a lit beacon before you reach the trapdoor Wasif is standing under.

Because that case runs so long we cover it three times over at different depths: the Warlord investigation end to end, To Catch a Demon for the admiral, and Den of the Beast for the garrison itself.

Al-Bahamut, last of all

The final case will not appear until every contract from the Karkh, Abbasiyah and Sharqiyah bureaus is behind you, and then it turns the format inside out. Instead of clues pointing at one man, you get three names and have to investigate each: Arib the poet, whose letters went back to the Postal Bureau; Qabiha the concubine, whose office key belongs to a woman named Makira and costs you three errands to earn; and Muhammad the governor, who has to be followed by messenger to the Shurta. Only after all three does the leader of the Order have a face. The Al-Bahamut walkthrough takes all three suspects in turn.

Two things make every case above easier and neither is a quest. Learning to parry properly changes what a botched approach costs you, and knowing where the collectibles are keeps your skill points ahead of the difficulty. Those live in our mechanics guide and items guide, with the rest on the Assassin's Creed Mirage guide hub.