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Should You Choose World Rumor Or Scout Intel In Random Encounters?

adminMarch 19, 2025

0 13 5 minutes read

Assassin’s Creed Shadows takes a surprising amount of inspiration from Red Dead Redemption, including in its random encounters. As you ride your horse from region to region, merrily on your way to other main campaign activities and major sidequests, you’ll occasionally be stopped on the side of the road by a stranger, or see a suspicious-looking encounter in the distance. If you stop and listen to the stranger, then fulfill their request – perhaps killing a robber, freeing a prisoner of war, or even just giving some genuine advice on cooking – they’ll offer you one of two rewards.

Your options here are “World Rumor” or “Scout Intel,” which don’t necessarily mean anything on the surface. By this point, you may already be familiar with Shadows‘ scout system, but what Scout Intel and World Rumor mean at this point can be a little unclear. In case you’re wondering how these rewards work, and which you should choose upon finding a random encounter, here’s a guide to how they work, and which is better for you in every situation.

What Happens If You Choose World Rumor?

Revealing More Of Shadows’ Map

If you choose World Rumor after completing a random encounter, the NPC will reveal a local landmark on your map. It may be the starting point for a sidequest, a parkour challenge, a shrine, or any number of other landmarks you might find around the world. While the game won’t tell you specifically what’s been revealed, you’ll get a notification that says you have new intel on your map, and you can check it at any time to get an update.

In AC Shadows, most of your map is obscured by fog of war until you actively explore it. That includes landmarks – you can’t even see icons on the map screen until you pass close enough to them, and even then, many of them simply appear as question marks until you investigate to discover what kind of landmarks they actually are. Unlike in earlier Assassin’s Creed games, where you could see most of the map icons from the very beginning, you really have to search for objectives in Shadows.

Yasuke and Naoe from Assassin's Creed Shadows standing back to back with lightning behind them.

One Game-Changing Mode May Have Saved Assassin’s Creed Shadows For Me

Assassin’s Creed Shadows features a game-changing mode that may have not only fixed its story issues but also changed my opinion of the game.

You can find new waypoints by simply walking around, but that’s time-consuming. It’s a lot more effective to learn of their existence from World Rumors. You can also discover new locations by unlocking new viewpoints. Most major cities and landmarks have them – marked by bird icons on the map, viewpoints are generally located in high places. By climbing up to them and “synchronizing,” you’ll reveal a new section of the map, along with all the waypoints within it. Unlocking a viewpoint also creates a new fast travel destination.

So, if you’re a completionist, or if you’re just new to the region, and you happen upon a random encounter, World Rumor is probably your best choice. However, there are certain situations in which Scout Intel is quite useful too, so it’s important to understand how both options work before you make your decision.

What Happens If You Choose Scout Intel?

Refreshing Your Scout Counter

Naoe leaning over in her hood, and Yasuke overlooking a large area on his horse in a collage of screenshots from Assassin's Creed Shadows. — Custom Image by Lee D’Amato

The other option available to you after completing a random encounter is Scout Intel. This temporarily turns the NPC you just helped into an additional scout, refreshing your scout counter by one. Plot-wise, they’re helping your existing scouts by sharing any pertinent information they may have about the region.

Some story quests in AC Shadows often won’t give you an exact location – they’ll give you clues, telling you that your target is “in western Sakai” or “north of Osaka Castle.” To find a more precise location, you’ll need to deploy scouts in their general area, and they’ll report back instantly with a more definite quest marker.

Even then, you’ll likely have to head to the region where the quest marker is located and search around a bit, using your Eagle Eye to find your specific target, and then making your way over to them through leagues of enemies. Still, learning how to scout is important to finding your quest targets, as without scouts, you’d be searching a much wider area.

Quest targets always appear as blue dots in your Eagle Eye. Treasure appears as yellow dots.

However, you only have a limited number of scouts, and they take quite a bit of time to refresh. You can recruit a few additional scouts over the course of the game, but you always have a maximum, and I often find that I didn’t have enough scouts to complete all my quests at my own pace. Of that strictly limited pool of scouts, you need to use one for almost every main and sidequest, and you may need to use multiple to haul away certain materials from enemy outposts.

Besides Scout Intel, there are only a couple of ways to refresh your available scouts: you can either wait for the seasons to change, or you can pay 200 mon per scout slot at your main hideout, or any of your smaller kakurega around the world. Season changes come about every two hours, which usually isn’t frequent enough to keep your scout slots stocked, and constant expenditures of 200 mon can add up quickly.

Yasuke and Naoe from Assassin's Creed Shadows in front of a Torii gate with flames below them.

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Therefore, Scout Intel from random encounters can come in handy when you really need it. Still, there’s a place for both random encounter reward options – you just need to choose the right one for your current situation.

You Should (Usually) Choose World Rumor

But Scout Intel Has Its Place, Too

On the whole, I’d say World Rumor is more useful than Scout Intel. It depends on how you’re playing, but I found that I was gathering enough treasure that the 200 mon per extra scout wasn’t too prohibitive a cost when I needed it, and my kakurega were spread effectively enough throughout the map that I was never far off from the opportunity to refresh my scout counters. World Rumor, on the other hand, revealed objectives I may have never discovered otherwise.

Still, I have to admit that Scout Intel has its uses. You may run out of scouts and money early in a season, and thus random encounters may become your only opportunity for refilling your scout counters. When that’s the case, you should choose Scout Intel without fear; you can always find a local viewpoint to learn more about each region of Assassin’s Creed Shadows.