Fighting for the Cause is the 71st main quest in Assassin’s Creed Shadows. This walkthrough will guide you through all objectives of the Fighting for the Cause main mission.
- Region: Wakasa
- Questboard Category: Templar > Kimura Kei
- Quest Giver: Available automatically after completing the quest The Path He Walks
- Requirement: Available immediately after completing the quest The Path He Walks
- Recommended Level: 35
- Reward: 3300 EXP, 2 Mastery points
- Quest Description: Yasuke goes to Kii to find a Japanese sword master under the employ of Nuno Caro.
Talk to the ronin
To track Fighting for the Cause, navigate to the Objectives Board. Scroll to the Templar group and select the quest under Kimura Kei.
Takahara Village is near the bottom of the map in the Kii region. It resides in the middle of the Nakahechi Route sub-region.
If you haven’t done any exploration, the easiest way to find Takahara Village is to Start at Katsuragi and take the long trek south.
While in Koyasan, the town marked with a triangle on the map above, is where you need to go after you speak to the ronin. Make your life easier by activating either the viewpoint or the kakurega fast travel locations.
Find the Takahara Village inn. Go in and speak to the ronin. If you are not Yasuke, switch to him now.
The ronin presents a dialogue choice:
- [I make my own purpose.]
- [Life must go on.]
This choice doesn’t affect anything.
Find Kumabe Ujiie
Fast travel back to Koyasen. Then, head east out of town until you find a fork in the road. Take the left fork north to find the Okunoin Cemetary.
Look for a specific statue much further back in the cemetery.
After you interact with that statue, Kumabe Ujiie appears behind you.
You can forget about talking to him and just kill him instead, if you wish. Just know that you will have to deal with a lot of enemies after that. Otherwise, you can just run away to avoid the rest of the group. You get an item off his body, directing you to the Training Grounds (skip the next objective and go straight to the “Enter the Training Grounds” objective.
If you speak to him, you get a dialogue choice:
- [I seek guidance.]
- [That sounds too good to be true.]
This one doesn’t change anything. Then a second one comes up:
- [You’ve convinced me.]
- [That’s enough.]
If you choose “You’ve convinced me,” then Kumabe Ujiie leads you away.
If you choose “That’s enough,” then you fight everyone along with Kumabe Ujiie.
Follow Kumabe Ujiie
This objective comes after choosing “You’ve convinced me” in the previous dialogue choice.
You can auto-follow Kumabe Ujiie here. At different points down the path, Kumabe Ujiie stops and has another person accompany him. Your auto-follow deactivates at those points, so reactivate it each time he starts walking again.
He eventually stops the group and speaks. He then tells you to go to the Training Grounds.
Enter the Training Grounds
Mount up and head west from Koyasan and then south to find the Training Grounds.
Interact with the front door of the dilapidated structure to continue.
You get another chance to back away and prepare for what’s to come.
You must select “I’m ready to enter the training grounds” to progress the story.
WARNING: What comes next is the biggest fight in the game. Make sure you are sufficiently leveled. If you are so far below the level requirement that enemies have skull icons, you’re going to have a very bad time. In that case go do other side content first to level up. If you end up getting stuck in the combat section you can quit out of the quest in the pause menu, or load a previous save.
Assassinate Kimura Kei
Walk forward and join the group ahead of you.
Kimura Kei recognizes you and tells the entire group to attack you. Take them all out. There are big amounts of enemies here. It’s safest to take them out one group at a time, then the game makes an autosave after each group. Keep following the path on the right uphill, there’s a building with a locked door. Defeat the enemies or go near the door, and after a short while enemies come bursting through the door.
Then you can go inside, climb the ladder, climb out the window to the next section.
The next section has lots of bowmen and shooters so get ready to dodge whenever the red indicator shows on-screen. At the end of the path is a locked door, you have to defeat all enemies first before you can interact with it. There are explosive jars in different places around here. Feel free to get enemies grouped up around them and blow them up.
You can also stay in the building at the end where the locked door is to shrink the battlefield. That way, enemies can’t shoot at you anymore. This means you have to fight with the camera in a tight space, but it’s a tactic depending on your strengths.
After opening the door, continue up the path and go up the stairs. There, you encounter three elite enemies. Two use melee attacks and one uses a powerful handcannon.
The best strategy is to go around the rock to your right. For some reason, they’re not smart enough to actually flank you, even though they explicitly shout “Flank him” at some point. In doing this, you can take them on one at a time.
When you get past them, interact with the front door to the building.
Kimura Kei does something that no enemy has done up to this point: A combo of a heavy and then a light attack. Easiest strategy is to stay out of his attack zone, hold 
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to charge up a heavy attack, release when he walks towards you to land a single powerful hit, dodge back, repeat. It takes a while to whittle down his health but this tactic works safely against every boss – always one charged heavy attack, dodge back, repeat.
In the second phase, he chains heavy attacks.
You go outside in the third phase. Here, he uses a lot of heavy attacks but with different attack patterns.
It’s also helpful to adjust your Mastery and use two specific abilities:
- Impenetrable Defense (Samurai branch) – you deflect everything for 20 seconds, even heavy attacks. You still get staggered a bit, but you do not take damage. You end up generating enough adrenaline while using this ability to use it again when it gets off cooldown. Just stay away from him while Impenetrable Defense is on cooldown.
- Power Dash (Long Katana branch) – This does good damage to your target while also making the target vulnerable. This means you can get some much-needed free hits on him.
After he’s defeated the quest ends.
This finishes Fighting for the Cause in Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
For all other Quests refer to Assassin’s Creed Shadows Walkthrough.
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