The Hidden Blade Assassin's Creed in Depth

Fkfkfkfkfkfkfkfkf NO!!!!! CRUD!

He's asking about AC1, Draco, not AC2. There were no brutes, agiles, or seekers in AC1. As far as I can tell, the only guard types there were in AC1 were (in order from weakest to strongest):

-Archers
-Regulars
-Captains (I think you refer to them as elites)
-Templars

I totally forgot about the archers.

I just checked it, they have 10 hp, just like the soldiers.

i recall that stabguy specifically investigated punch vs throw for interrogations. if i remember correctly, 1 throw = 2 punches, which appears inconsistent with your point assignments. maybe this information can help you refine your table.

Thank you. That's very interesting.

Stabguy was right, it is indeed 2 punches = 1 throw.

There are programs designed for finding and changing values in games. I've used one of those (Cheat Engine) to extract the actual hitpoint and damage values. There is nothing extraordinary about the system, it only seemed mysterious because they used big numbers.

Hitpoints:

Citizen: 25
Ordinary soldier and archer: 31
Commander (including Talal's guards and others): 45
Sergeant: 63
Templar: 80

Damage points:

punch: 5
strong punch: 10
Sword, short blade, grab and throw, counter grab: 10
Sword +1, short blade +1: 13
Sword strong attack: 14
Sword +2, Sword +1 strong attack: 16
Sword +2 strong attack: 31
Counter: 31
Half-done strong counter, when you can break your opponent's leg: 16

al-Assas, that's amazing. I never thought of using Cheat Engine or other value editors for figuring out this information. You know what they say, knowledge is power. So if Altair knows how much damage he does (lol), he'll know what attack to use in which situation.

I think this is one of those things that made Assassin's Creed so interesting, and just a tad bit more realistic.
You can't see enemies' health bars. So it doesn't break immersion that way. ACII and ACB changed this, by showing you Health Squares above enemies' heads.

It also provided a very "on-edge" feeling, where you're not sure when your enemy will die. So you just attack, guard, dodge and counter, hoping that THIS next hit will be the final one.

Great job on the find!

Thanks, I'm quite happy with it; it's been bugging me for some time now.

It's obviously too complicated for keeping track of the points during a usual fight without any previous planning, but those numbers make it possible to devise and memorize a couple of combinations at a time, and to be sure that they will work as expected.

Does this mean you can mess with the game by changing things in it? For example, giving a target 1 hp, or giving a regular soldier the max hp there is. I would like to see a video about that.

That's a really nice contribution, al-Assas. Thank you.

Do the Sword and Short Blade always do the same amount of damage (with +1 and/or strong attack)? I notice you didn't mention Short Blade +1 strong attack but a pattern seemed to be emerging. Also, is there any way to see the Hitpoints of the main targets and the damage caused by Throwing Knives? Ian once figured out how many punches it takes to defeat Al Mualim: 57. I guess that means Al Mualim starts with 281 to 285 Hitpoints.

There's no short blade strong attack.

I just checked Tamir, he has 45 points. I suppose the later targets have more points.

The throwing knives are instant kill, except that templars are immune to it. I suppose the main targets are immune to it too, although I haven't checked that yet.

I just started my most advanced save, which is the beginning of rank 9, Jerusalem, middle district. I wanted to play it quickly through and find out the HP-s of Maria, Robert and Al Muallim, but I gave up when I found myself fighting 10 commanders and 2 sergeants during a rooftop race mission. It's just messy. I'm not prepared yet. I usually just play the first three levels. I am saving the higher levels for later, especially the last ones, to be honest. So no al-Mualim HP for now. Would be nice if someone beat me to it, too bad noone cares about AC1 any more. Jerusalem middle district is especially worth savouring. It's amazing how tightly packed with archers, guard patrols, buildings and climbing features it is. Rushing through it would just feel blasphemous.

But what I did find out in the meantime is that Tamir's interrogation target has 30 hp, the Jerusalem middle district one has 50, and both yield when they have 5 points left. Which is quite relevant of course when your last attack is a throw. If you throw them when they have 15 points, they yield and the mission is completed, but if you throw them when they have 10 points, they die and you fail.

Huh. You learn something new every day.

So it's all or nothing: dead or unscathed. People sometimes ask me about Throwing Knives versus Templars or main targets. I usually say, "Throwing knives will just make them mad." but I don't know the real answer. Some have said that Throwing Knives will wear down a target but not finish them off. In the case of Al Mualim, Throwing Knives are a safe way to end his "vanishing act", so there may be some truth to that rumor.

Are you sure about that? I've never failed an Interrogation by accidentally beating the guy to death.

On second thought, that rooftop race was all I needed for the main assassination, so I went back and finished it.

I checked the interrogation thing, and no, I was wrong, you can bring its hp down to zero, and the mission completes normally.

During the funeral fight there was some friendly fire, and it seems that an arrow causes 30 points of damage, and the templars' attack causes 20 points, both the simple and the strong attacks. But that was just two occasions, so I might be wrong. Quite sure about the arrow though.

The templars in that fight, as well as the one in the hospital, in the pickpocket mission, all have 63 points, unlike the 80-point collectable templars.

Maria has 200 points, as well as Robert.

Robert in Arsuf has some 80-point templars you have to fight.

You can attack Malik in the final mission in Masyaf, he has 25 points, like a normal citizen. What a noob.

In the final fight, the revived main targets have 63 points, but can be killed with only one counter. The same is true for the ordinary guards in Masyaf in the beginning of the game, when you arrive from Solomon's Temple. But Abu'l Nuqoud and maybe one more are exceptions, they have 31 points.

The Al Muallim copies all have 65 points, including the yellow one.

And Al Muallim in the final fight has ... tadaa ... 280 hit points. (Maybe the very first time he falls off the column in Ian's video he doesn't get hit, I don't know.)

I checked the throwing knifes against him. They cause 20 points of damage.

Talal has 65 hit points, and throwing knives cause 20 points of damage, except when he has 20 or less hit points left, then it causes no damage.

Also, throwing knives never cause any damage on enemies lying on the ground, after a grab and throw.

I've done this. if i recall correctly, it takes 12 knives to wear down al mualim, then the next direct attack finishes him off.

That's pretty consistent with what al-Assas has posted since my comment: Al Mualim starts with 280 hit points. Each Throwing Knife causes 20 points of damage (unless he has 20 or fewer hit points remaining). So 13 Throwing Knives will get Al Mualim down to 20 for an easy kill on your next Counter or Strong Attack.

I wish we had an AC1 FAQ to put this in! It completely answers the question many folks have about Counter attacks merely knocking down Robert's Templars at Arsuf. Really good stuff, al-Assas.

Sorry to keep piling on but I still have a couple of questions:
Did you confirm that Throwing Knives cause no damage to the collectible 60 Templars?
Is it possible to Combo Kill a Commander (or higher) who is at full health?

I'm psyched to be able to stir up some interest in AC1, really.

And I'd like to encourage everyone to double-check and expand my results, it's really easy:

- Install Cheat Engine (I use 5.6.1)
Direct download page:
http://www.cheatengine.org/downloads.php

- Run AC and Cheat Engine

- Click the icon in the upper left corner ("select process to open") and select the AC process.

- Find yourself a guard to kill, but don't hurt it yet

- Type its HP in the "value" field (31 for tier 1 guard, 45 for tier 2, 63 for tier3, 80 for a collectible templar) Leave scan type at "exact value", and value type at "4 bytes". Then, press "first scan". Cheat Engine will find all the addresses of the given value.

- You can hurt your guard now. Say it's a second-tier guard (which i usually call a commander) with 45 hp. Throw him for 10 points, now it has to have 35 points. Change the value in the "value" field to 35, and click "next scan". The memory addresses will be filtered down to those that changed to 35 since the last scan. Repeat until there's only one item in the list. You can also wait some time in-game without hurting the guard, and repeat the scan with unchanged value, so that it throws away the values that changed.

- When you have your single value, double click it. It will create an address entry in the bottom part of the window. Right click it, and choose "find out what writes to this address".

- Hurt your soldier some more, and the mov instruction that changed it will come up in a new window. Select it, click "add to the codelist", and you can save your settings, and it will be loaded the next time you open your AC process in Cheat Engine.

- You can bring up the saved mov code after selecting the AC process by clicking "advanced options" at the bottom of the window. Right-click the entry in the code list, and choose "find out what addresses this code writes to". A new window will come up, which will display the HP of the guards as soon as you do damage.

All in all, it's just the most standard way of using cheat Engine, there's nothing unexpected or exceptional about it. It just works as it is supposed to.

(It is probably possible to find lines of code that write or read all the in-memory HP values before they change, but that would be a less than trivial task, for you cannot pinpoint a value before it changes. And also, that's not necessary for doing experiments.)

Now, to your questions:

Yes, I've checked it again, the collectible templars are always immune to throwing knives. Talal is not, and Al Muallim is not. I haven' checked any other main targets yet.

It's easy to combo-kill a commander with the sword +2, because of the high strong-attack damage. 31 + 16 = 47, so a single strong combo will kill it. (I like to call that move the longshot, heh.) It's also easy to kill it with a triple-combo with sword +2 (3 x 16 = 48), and of course, you can kill it with a quadro-combo with a +1 weapon, as expected. 13 x 4 = 52. I just checked it with a short blade +1, just to be sure.

As for the sergeant, it may be possible to kill it with a 4 x 16 = 64 quadro, with the sword +2, I couldn't successfully test it just yet, though. It counterded or counter-dodged me every time. The sergeant is like that. He likes to counter. I suppose it's just a question of luck, but maybe he'll always counter before you can finish the four-part combo.

Then lets make a combat guide for ac1! (It's not like the game is obsolete) Maybe al-Assass can even make a video showing the hitpoints of basic enemies and how many hits with each weapon would kill it. I'll help in any way I can.

I am working on a video. I don't know how exhaustive it will be yet. If I show all the different HPs, that will be mostly just a boring list of different types of enemies. I should probably just restrict it to the most common enemies, and demonstrate some stylish combinations.

Wow, I'm a mind reader! Yeah, just the most common enemies, and you can put annotations saying how many hits with each weapon will kill. That will shorten it a lot.

I'm not sure if we're talking about the same thing. You learn how to do combo kills in the training circle... the one where you attack again when you hear the swords clang. I don't know what it would mean to do a triple or quadro combo.

Several articles have proposed theories about the game mechanics of combos, including this one by Granjow and one here on THB by MacRoMackerel. Does your research back up either of these theories?

I guess the main question is whether combos are all about timing (i.e. you can combo kill a Templar at full strength if you time it right) or if it has more to do with the remaining hitpoints of the guard. The Xbox achievement Eagle's Dive is awarded for doing 50 combo kills. Many players find it easy to do combos in the training circle and frustratingly difficult everywhere else.

I don't know what "bonus" refers to in Granjow's comment. I don't really understand what he was talking about.

MacRoMackerel is basically right about combos.

The enemy's HP is reduced by flesh hits and by clink hits. Clink hits can be seperate or connected. They are connected when performed in combo-timing. If the last two hits are connecting clink-hits, the last one is transformed into the combo finishing animation.

What I call a quadro is just simply a four-part clink-string, or chip string, as MacRoMackarel calls it. Which appears as three connecting clink-hits, plus a finishing combo-animation.

They all cause the same amount of HP-reduction.

A vid is worth a thousand words, so I've uploaded an illustration of the four-hit combo to Youtube in three different formats already, but they are stuck in the "processing" phase for some reason.

If you pm me an e-mail address, I will send it to you. By the way, is there an upload feature on this site? I've been looking for it for inserting pictures in comments.

There it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFPYLJ9kZwE&hd=1

So basically a simple combo is a double hit. That's why it is worth 2 x 10 = 20 points. So You can kill an enemy with a simple combo if it has more than 10 points but not more than 20. Similarly, the above move is a quadruple hit, worth 40 points.

And while I'm at it, here's the "longshot" I was talking about:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwY7IVS8XMo&hd=1

I don't want to give away the whole show, but I want to show one more:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJGgPq38dNk&hd=1

All of the attacks are single, non-connecting attacks, right up to the last two, which are then connected together for a combo finish. The point is that a tier 3 guard will counter you down if you try to make a clink string. So I attack with single hits, trying to wait until he attacks and then cut him short. Then, at the end, he's lost too much HP to be able to counter the final simple combo.

And of course I don't have to count the points. I can just calculate in advance that a tier 3 guard will take 7 hits with the short blade, and then do the combo after the fifth hit.

Those videos are good illustrations of how to do combo kills. They were nearly impossible for me so I just did counter kills for ac1, and before that I just threw the enemies to the ground and assassinated.

Yea, prone assassination (the 7th way to wield the hidden blade) was my silver bullet too, when I first played AC.

His theory was that you could only do combos if you were in a certain state (which he called the bonus). He went on to describe how to get into this state and what could cause you to fall out of it. When making his video on combos he later realized that the bonus theory didn't stand up.

This makes perfect sense (although the videos were cool too!)

Sometimes instead of a clink-hit Altaïr's sword just slides off the guard's sword. I believe this causes no damage, because the guard has effectively blocked the attack. Is there anything you can do to ensure you get a clink-hit instead of a slide?

Users aren't able to upload pictures to our servers (except for the profile picture). This helps us to manage our disk space and cuts down on porn spam.

Upload them to a site like photobucket or imageshack and use the [img] tag to embed them in comments.

Yes, deflected attacks don't cause damage. One way I know to ensure a hit is to attack during an enemy's attack. That way he cannot counter either. Other than that, my feeling is that bad timing can be a cause of the slideoff, maybe distance. I'm not sure that a hit can be ensured other than by shortcutting the enemy's attack.

Here's the hitpoint video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cxemuUMkPQ

Great video. I actually really enjoyed watching it and the graphics look better than I remembered. I think I'll start playing AC1 again soon after this. The video gave me a great sense of nostalgia

Good to hear that, that's why I made it!

The original opening comment, 10/30/2010:

I loved the vid on this, you make AC1 combat actually look interesting which I've not relly seen before, so a large round of applause from me for this!

It's great to see a video of yours frontpaged. And good work on explaining hp and damage amounts.

Yea, thanks. I kind of expected it to be frontpaged, to be honest. I know that AC1 is sooo two years ago, but still. How would this not be revolutionary, right?

Very well researched You have made AC1 combat even more interesting