Assassin's Creed Shadows: Shrine Altar Locations & Interactive Tracking Guide

Miss one and the shrine sits incomplete on your tracker with nothing to show for the visit. All 75 are included on Map Master's Assassin's Creed Shadows Japan map, with 11 more on Awaji Island.

What a Shrine Altar Is

Each Shrine site contains between two and five Shrine Altars — small stone or wooden structures scattered across the complex. Walk up to one, press Triangle or Y, and your character offers a prayer.

Nothing happens on an individual altar beyond the animation. There's no partial XP, no incremental reward. The site's 500 XP and 1 Knowledge Point fire only when the last altar in that complex is done.

A tooltip appears in the top right when you enter a shrine's grounds telling you how many altars you're looking for. Count them off as you go.

Use Focus Mode to Find Every Shrine Altar

Hold L2 or LT and altars resolve as white pulsing dots through walls, trees, and buildings.

The trick worth learning: get high first.

From a rooftop, a pagoda, or the Viewpoint beside the complex, Focus Mode reveals every altar on the grounds simultaneously. That converts a search into a route — you know before you dismount whether the last altar is behind the main hall or up a hillside path.

Where Shrine Altars Hide

The placements follow patterns once you've done a few.

• At the top of the main steps, directly in front of the primary building — almost every site has one here, and it's usually the first you'll find.

• Directly behind the first altar. A common trick is to place the second one immediately behind the first, reached by a short stone path. Turn 180° from altar one before wandering off.

• Across small bridges. Several sites put an altar on the far side of a garden bridge, visible from the first but requiring a short detour.

• Behind fences in the rear garden. Tokei Shrine in Kii hides its second altar past a wooden fence in the northern half of the garden — invisible from the entrance.

• Behind rows of small houses at the back of larger complexes, well away from the main path.

• Up a hill on the far side. Yura Minato Shrine on Awaji puts its second altar far back and up a slope. On the way up, look right into the woods for a treasure chest sitting on a cliff.

You Can Split Shrine Altars Across Visits

Worth knowing if you're passing through and short on time. Altars you've already prayed at stay registered — leave the site, fast travel elsewhere, and come back later for the rest. Progress doesn't reset.

Which means there's no penalty for grabbing two altars on your way past a shrine and returning for the third when you're next in the region.

Awaji Island's 11 Shrine Altars

The Claws of Awaji expansion adds five shrine sites and 11 altars, functioning identically to the base game's.

Yura Minato Shrine at the southwestern end of Yura City is the most convenient — the Yura Kakurega sits about 80 metres north, with one altar near the northern entrance and one up the hill behind it.

Another site is reached most easily from the south, following the steep mountain path up from Fukura Village.

Shrine Altars Are Not Praying Shrines

The animation is identical, which causes endless confusion. Shrine Altars sit inside marked shrine complexes and contribute toward a Knowledge Point.

Praying Shrines are the standalone roadside shrines with no site attached — they grant a temporary combat buff instead, and no Knowledge Point at all.

If you prayed and nothing counted toward a shrine, you found a Praying Shrine. Check the timer beneath your health bar.