Builds

Origins is the game where Assassin's Creed grew a skill tree, and it has three branches: Hunter for the bow, Warrior for the melee, and Seer for everything that is neither. Points come from main and side quests, and there are never as many as you want, so the real question is not which build is best but which branch deserves your next point. That answer changes depending on how far in you are.

Assassin's Creed Origins Builds at a Glance

Hunter: the bow does the work

The early Hunter picks are less about damage than about keeping a stealth run alive once it starts going right. Bow Fury gives you a three second slow motion window after a stealth kill with the bow, which is what turns one dead archer into three. Chain Assassination lets you kill and immediately throw the dead man's weapon at the next target. Elite Ranger drops you into slow motion for firing mid jump. Around those sit the XP nodes, Headshot XP, Assassination XP and Stealth Kill Streak, which quietly pay for the rest of the tree.

Senu belongs to this branch too, and Hunter's Instinct is the one people skip and then miss. It marks a target and shows you the route they are taking, which is the difference between waiting in the right bush and chasing a guard around a camp. Late game there is not much to build besides pouring points into Master Hunter and getting your hands on the right bows: Amenhotep's Bow for the highest stealth damage, Jebel Barkal for range, and Trophy Hunter from the elephants at Qetesh and Resheph. Full node list on the Hunter builds page.

Warrior: adrenaline is the whole build

Warrior looks like a damage tree and behaves like a resource tree. Overpower is the payoff, unleashing your weapon's special once the adrenaline bar is full, and almost everything worth buying either fills that bar faster or gets more out of it. Adrenaline 1 starts every encounter a quarter full and Adrenaline 2 doubles that gift. Overpower XP pays you for using it, Overpower Combo lets you chain light attacks off the back of it, Overpower Ultra makes it hit harder, and Overpower Chainthrow turns a kill into a thrown weapon at the next target.

Underneath that, the defensive picks are what keep you upright. Parry in shield mode is a separate purchase and worth making early, Regeneration heals you mid fight, and Weapon Bearer gives you a second melee slot so you are not stuck with one weapon class in a fight that wants another. Charge Heavy Attack breaks shields and knocks people down, which is the cleanest answer to the brutes the arena keeps sending. The whole list is on the Warrior builds page.

Spending points in the right order

Early on, buy breadth. A single Overpower or a single Bow Fury changes more fights than three stacks of a repeatable 1 percent node, and both Master nodes will still be there at level 40 to soak up spare points forever. Buy Parry and Weapon Bearer before you buy raw damage, because dying is what actually slows a run down.

Then remember where points come from. Main quests are the obvious source, but side quests carry them too, and the Hideaway quest in Siwa hands one over just for reading a tablet inside a tomb. Every Ancient Mechanism you activate pays another. That makes the collectible sweep in our locations guide a build decision as much as a completion one, and the quest bank in the walkthrough guide the fastest way to fill a branch. The gear those abilities point at is in the items guide, and our Assassin's Creed Origins guide gathers up the rest of Egypt.