Assassin’s Creed Origins Dec. Update: New Difficulty & Horde Quest

A new Ubisoft blog post teases new challenges coming to Assassin’s Creed Origins in December. The developer has detailed new difficulties, trials, a horde mode and much more.

First off, here’s what you’ll find in the game’s next big title update:

• Nightmare Mode: It’s the hardest difficulty, only meant for the game’s most skilled players. Enemies will take more damage and deal more damage to Bayek.
• Enemy Scaling: Lower-level enemies will now scale to match player level when enabled. If it's turned on, this should make the mid and late-game XP grind slightly less tedious.
• New Heka Chest Items: These include Nightmare and First Civ items. Players who like to take a chance on loot boxes with in-game currency will find more cool stuff.
• Horde Mode Quest: In the quest called “Here Comes A New Challenger,” skilled gladiators can test their might in the Cyrene arena against unlimited waves of foes. This sounds like a good way to level up for players that enjoy a good fight.
• A Surprise Quest: Your guess is as good as ours.
• Trials Of The Gods: The Sekhmet trial will debut and Anubis and Sobek will return. Try to take down all three gods.
• The Gladiator Items Pack: This will debut in the in-game store Dec 12. It features the Spaniard’s Armor, Hercules Gladius, Labrys, and Neptune’s Grasp.
• The Wacky Items Pack: Debuts Dec. 26 and features a mount and four weapons.

If we had to guess, it makes sense for most of these features to debut around Dec. 12. Version numbers will vary, but the PS4 title update will likely be 1.06. The previous update arrived in mid-November and introduced difficulty tweaks, a hair toggle and dozens of performance improvements.

This upcoming Assassin’s Creed Origins update strives to expand upon those shortcomings once more, but it does so with the added benefit of making XP yields potentially larger depending on player skill level. If enemy scaling and the horde quest are used properly, for example, there will be less of a need to waste time on side quests you may not want to complete. Considering the world of Assassin’s Creed Origins is one of the best the series has ever seen, it’s nice to see Ubisoft offer a little more freedom to take it in any way we choose.

Assassin’s Creed Origins is available now on Xbox One, PS4 and PC. The title update will likely arrive over the next handful of days.

Will these new challenges and bigger XP gains keep you playing Assassin’s Creed Origins for a longer period of time? What would you like to see from the game heading into 2018? Tell us in the comments section!