Assassin’s Creed Odyssey side quests

While exploring Ancient Greece in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, you’ll pretty much never run out of things to do. Between the main storyline, side quests, mercenaries, dismantling a cult, hunting wild animals, managing your gear, and looking for love, the days of a proto-Assassin are full.

But with all of those options comes a question: What should I spend my valuable time doing? The answer is mostly side quests, and this guide is here to help you understand various kinds of side quests available — including why you’d want to do them and what you get for completing them.

Side quests

Side quests are the most plentiful and obvious activities in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, but they still take a little work to understand. We’ll break them down in order by (our definition of their) complexity.

Ubisoft via Polygon

• Message board quests. The side quests you find on the message boards (actually the plinth of a statue) in some towns are bounties — it’s marked on your map with a black diamond icon with three horizontal lines inside (like a hamburger menu icon). You’ll see a list of murder-based tasks and, if you hover over each, you’ll see their rewards — usually drachmae, XP, and some resources. Notably, these contracts are a good way to earn orichalcum ore to use at Oikos’ shop for special gear. You’ll find him in Pilgrim’s Landing in Phokis.

Ubisoft via Polygon

• Timed Quests and Impact Quests. You’ll see these quests pop up on your map as you explore (usually in or around cities). They’re bite-sized quests marked with a black diamond icon with either an hourglass or a branching arrow inside. The complexity ranges from handing out some drachmae to killing a marauding bear to, unsurprisingly, murder. You’ll usually get some drachmae and resources for your trouble.

Ubisoft via Polygon

• Side Quests. Side quests show up on your map as black diamond icons with yellow borders and yellow exclamation points inside. Side quests are substantial time investments — usually involving multiple locations and sometimes even spawning multiple sub-side quests. Some even tie into (or at least support) the main storyline to some extent. They’re a lot bigger than any of the other side quests, but they come with much bigger rewards. Side quests are a great way to pick up some much better-than-average gear — usually something epic or legendary — that will last you through a few levels.