Assassin's Creed has always flirted with the boundary between history, fantasy, and sci-fi. In Assassin's Creed Odyssey, the blurred lines between genres is most apparent in the Daughters of Artemis questline. In central Phokis, a priestess at the Temple of Artemis tells you about eight animals that wander the world even though they'd fit in better in the realm of myth and legend. Hunting down all eight and returning trophies to the priestess grants you a blessing from the goddess herself—and a lot of amazing legendary items.

Many of the animals are high-level, meaning you don't have a hope of beating them until many hours in to the game. Finding them is also an issue: All eight of these beasts are huge, dangerous monsters living at the far corners of the Greek world.

These fights can be relatively easy if you're prepared, though. For each one, we recommend using the abilities Second Wind, so you can heal; Venomous or Flaming Attacks, for extra damage and mitigation; and Overpower Attacks while using a sword or dagger. When fighting animals, Overpower Attacks doesn't initiate a combo but instead unleashes one insanely powerful attack that also heals you. It's extremely effective in all of these fights.

In a rough order from lowest level to highest level, here are all of Odyssey's fantastic beasts and how to kill them.

1. Kalydonian Boar, level 20 

Location: Northwest edge of Sacred Lands of Apollo, Northwest Phokis

The Kalydonian Boar is a really, really big pig. Before you can start the proper questline, Daphnae will require you to kill this one first. Unfortunately, he's a real pain in the ass even if you're a few levels above him. Luckily, he's also nearby—about 400 meters due west of the temple, at the top of a cliff.

Beating the Kalydonian Boar isn't easy—especially at such a low level when you have few abilities to use in combat. As soon as you approach its den, the boar will automatically spot you and begin charging, so make sure you're prepared ahead of the fight by equipping the right abilities. It's worthwhile to spend the drachmae respeccing your abilities to favor all-out combat, as there's no opportunity for stealth or ranged attacks during the fight.

To start, unlock Second Wind, which you'll need to heal yourself when you inevitably get gored on one of his tusks. I also highly recommend getting Venomous Attacks, which will weaken the boar's damage and armor while also applying some extra damage over time. Vanish can help you later in the fight if you start getting overwhelmed and need a few seconds to breathe. You can assign the rest of your ability points to your liking, depending on your level. If you're far enough along, Overpower Attacks with a sword or dagger will unleash its damage all at once instead of initiating a long combo sequence and it will heal you. It's a powerful ability that you should use in each of these fights.

The Kalydonian Boar favors strong, straight-line charges that you'll need to dodge. The best strategy here is to dodge often and avoid the front of the animal. If you can get behind it, you'll only have to worry about its 180 degree swipe attack that doesn't do any damage but will stagger you. Otherwise, stick to its sides and chip away at its health while avoiding its side-lunge attack.

When the Kalydonian Boar's health drops to three quarters, it'll run from you and keep its distance. At this point, a swarm of angry boars will take the field and you'll have to kill them all while keeping your distance from the Kalydonian Boar. This is where Vanish comes in handy, but you can also perfect dodges to slow time and create openings to take each mini-boar down one at a time. Using a bow can also be effective if you kite the monsters, get some distance, and unleash some quick headshots to thin the herd. Once the last one is dead, the Kalydonian Boar will return to the fight and the process will repeat. 

2. The Hind of Keryneia, level 25 

Location: Marsh just south of the center of Artemision Point, Northwest Euboea

Hope it's deer season in Greece, because the Hind of Keryneia is an enormous deer with golden hooves and a massive rack of gold antlers. Unlike the Kalydonian Boar, she doesn't get any help from her fellow deer—deer are famous pacifists, after all. Still, the Hind of Keryneia can be a tricky hunt. She's quick to charge, and she'll lower her head to swing her antlers at you in a pretty unpredictable way.

This fight is thankfully much easier and all you really need to do is stick to the hind's sides and hack away while dodging her attacks. From this angle, the worst she can do is stagger you with a blow that you can quickly roll out of. If you stand still and she gets close, she'll also slam her antlers down over you, pinning you to the ground underneath an angry, golden cage. If you dodge that attack, however, her antlers will get stuck in the marshy earth, giving you some precious moments to unleash hell.

Again, I recommend having Second Wind, Venomous Attacks or Flaming Attacks, and Overpower Attacks while using a sword or dagger to unleash a single, incredibly powerful strike. 

3. The Nemean Lion, level 25 

Location: Central Sinkholes of Herakles, South Argolis

Strutting around like a huge stone statue come to life, the Nemean Lion is a dead ringer for the carved lions guarding temples and palaces all across Greece. Unlike those statues, the Nemean Lion is hungry and he's coming for your face.

Before the fight begins, circle around the sinkholes until you're up on a ledge overlooking the arena where the Nemean Lion prowls. You'll notice several lionesses who you absolutely don't want to fight at the same time. Fortunately, with the right bow skills (namely Predator Shot) you can kill each one of them easily. Because you're high up on a ledge, they can't reach you and are easy prey.

Once you've killed the lionesses, jump into the pit to tackle the Nemean Lion. Unlike a lot of the animals on this list, you'll probably have some practice fighting lions. The Nemean Lion follows the same fighting pattern as ordinary wild lions you might anger in the wild—he just hits a lot harder. There's not much strategy here other than to stay on your toes and focus on dodging over doing damage.

4. The Kretan Bull, level 33 

Location: Western Fertile Battleground, South Messara

The legendary father of the minotaur, the Kretan Bull can be found in a lonely mountain-top clearing. You should be pretty used to dodging out of the way of charging animals by now, but with the Kretan Bull it's probably the most important to avoid those initial charges. Though he can do some damage throwing his horns around, his charge does the most damage. Also look out for him when he starts bucking and jumping around like a rodeo bull—there's no safe way to attack him while he's doing this, so just stand back and let it play out.

Unlike other animals in this guide, the Kretan Bull can deliver a deadly kick if you're directly behind him. The trick is to stick to his sides and jump in to attack in the precious second-long window after he charges.

5. The Lykaon Wolf, level 36 

Location: Northwest corner of Dioskouroi Peninsula, Southeast Lakonia

Ever since he was an extra in that flashback scene from 300, the Lykaon Wolf has had a big ego. To be fair, he probably deserves it—he's one of the toughest hunts on this list. In an abandoned farm near a cliff, the Lykaon Wolf leads a large wolfpack that you'll have to fight through to get to him. Even worse, if you give the Lykaon Wolf a chance to step back and breathe, he'll howl and summon even more friendly wolves to help him.

It's tempting to focus all of your energy on the Lykaon Wolf to take him out, but after a couple of minutes I found myself surrounded by more than two dozen wolves. Try to thin out the attacking wolves at least a little as he calls them. One effective way of doing this is by using a spear or staff because each has sweeping, area-of-effect attacks that'll hit any wolf that gets too close. Pair that with Venomous or Flaming Attacks and you should be able to trigger their respective debuff on the wolfpack pretty easily.

By this point, you should have Overpower Attacks, which is invaluable in this fight. With so many enemies coming for you, dodging and attacking them will rack up absurd amounts of adrenaline which will let you use this ability to thin the pack and top up your health at the same time. 

6. Kallisto the Bear, level 37 

Location: Southeast Golden Fields, Northeast Arkadia

Bears are scary, but this one actually isn't. Kallisto is all on her own, which means you just have to focus on bringing her down while avoiding her fatal attacks. But at this point, you should have some powerful weapons and armor and a good amount of ability points to keep you in the fight without much trouble.

Chances are you've fought a bear already, and Kallisto doesn't have any special tricks up her sleeve. Similar to the rest of these animals, stick to its sides and rear and unleash hell. Kallisto's attacks are slow and easy to dodge, so this fight should be an easy one.

7. The Erymanthian Boar, level 38 

Location: West Erymanthos Foothills, North Central Elis

What's with boars being so damn hard to kill in Odyssey? The Erymanthian Boar is one of the toughest fights in this questline due to his tendency to—I kid you not—fart toxic clouds of gas that will poison and quickly kill you.

You won't have to worry about any extra boars joining the battle, so the trick here is to avoid the Erymanthian Boar's attacks and try to stay on its rump to avoid its tusks. Eventually, though, the boar will do a kind of sideways charge and trip over itself, that's your cue to back up and move to a new part of the arena. Just as it hits the ground, it'll fart out a big cloud of toxic gas that'll linger in the area for up to a minute. Move the fight to another part of the arena and repeat this process until it's dead.

8. The Krokottas Hyena, level 39 

Location: South Central Skandeia Bay, South Kythera Island

Despite being the highest level beast on this list, the Krokottas Hyena is another pushover you should have no problem defeating when you're the appropriate level. The biggest thing to know is that this beast is incredible agile, so I highly recommend using a dagger or sword in this fight due to their faster attack combos.

Relying on the usual abilities (Second Wind, Venomous or Flaming Attacks, Overpower Attacks with a sword/dagger), you shouldn't have much of an issue. At a certain point, the Krokottas Hyena will begin leaping around the arena, and it covers such a large distance in each bound that it'll frequently disable the lock-on camera if you're using it. During these moments, you want to try and track the beast manually as best as you can, dodging each lunge as best you can. Really, there's not much more to it than that.

Assassin's Creed Odyssey asks you to collect a lot of stuff. Money, friends, and sailors are just the start of it: There's also wood, leather, iron, glass, and a few other essentials needed to upgrade your gear and your ship. Then there's Orichalcum, a special glowing ore that one, and only one, merchant accepts for payment. The good news is, this one merchant has a store full of seriously awesome stuff. His name is Oikos of the Olympians and he can be found near the docks of Pilgrim's Landing in Phokis (don't worry, the main quest takes you there pretty quickly).

Like Xur from Destiny 2, Oikos carries a rotating stock of rare and powerful armors and weapons that can be purchased using Orichalcum. He also has a loot box which contains a mystery item but also has a chance of netting you one of the premium cosmetic items from the in-game microtransaction store. Once you've finally beaten the entirety of the Odyssey campaign, finding Orichalcum and buying stuff from Oikos will be one of the few reasons to play each week.

How to earn Orichalcum 

Daily contracts (10 Orichalcum) and Weekly contracts (40 Orichalcum)

To start earning Orichalcum, head to any message board. There's one of these in every town at the base of a statue of Hermes (the messenger of the gods), and there's also a message board on the main mast of your ship. Orichalcum quests are set on timers, and two quests refresh daily and one more complicated quest pops up weekly. Looking through the list of lost goats and blood feuds against local bandits, find the quest marked by a swirly blue symbol.

The quest itself will be pretty normal and appear to be randomly generated just for these daily events. My quest, To Save a Mockingbird, was a call for help from a writer. Ugh, writers. Nothing but trouble. I found the writer on an isolated cliffside. She wrote a poem mocking a local man for having a small penis, and now he's coming with friends to kill her.

Here's where things get weird: Orichalcum quests appear to be more prone to bugs than other quests. Maybe it's because they're put together just for these events, or maybe I had a string of bad luck. But after I killed the angry dudes, the writer pegged me as hostile and started to run away. I ended up chasing her all over the island before I got close enough to trigger a totally normal conversation: "Ah, thanks for taking care of those men. Here's your pay. I certainly haven't been running away from you for several minutes."

Each daily quest completed earns you 10 Orichalcum, and a completed weekly quests earns you 40 Orichalcum.

Finding Orichalcum deposits while exploring

If you've completed all your contracts for the day, there are also hundreds of individual Orichalcum deposits out in the world. But good luck finding any. In around 45 hours of play, I've only come across three individual chunks of Orichalcum, and they were just sitting on random mountainsides like any other iron ore deposit, only glowing blue.

Fortunately, there's a simple way to highlight them all on the map. The in-game microtransaction store sells a map for just under $10 USD that'll mark every Orichalcum deposit on your map. Paying for that is for suckers, though, so instead take a look at this guide by Hold to Reset. They bought the map and took pictures of each zone so you can just reference that instead of coughing up your hard-earned cash. 

What to buy with Orichalcum 

There's exactly one man in all of Greece that accepts Orichalcum for payment: Oikos of the Olympians. Oikos has a small tent near the docks in Kirrha, a town in Pilgrim's Landing, the central region of Phokis. Phokis is the first nation on the first landmass you come to after leaving Kephallonia, so it's likely you've already been there. On your map, Oikos is marked by the same blue squiggle symbol you saw on the quest listing.

Oikos only has a couple of things to offer, but like the quests his stock changes weekly. Each week he'll offer three epic (purple) items and one legendary (orange) item. Picking out an individual item costs between 40 and 100 Orichalcum, with the legendary ones being the most expensive. A mystery loot box—sorry, I mean Olympian Gift—is cheaper at only 20 Orichalcum, but it's random whether you get something you want or not. The one thing that makes these lootboxes desirable is that there is also a small chance to earn one of the cosmetic items sold only in the microtransaction store. So if you don't want to cough up extra cash to ride Pegasus into battle (and who could blame you), this is the only way to get those cosmetics for free.

If you do decide to save your ore for another day, you can keep track of your total on the map screen, just to the right of your current gold amounts. Again, look for the blue squiggle—but this time, it's carved on the front of a glowing rock.

Take a stroll through any one of Assassin's Creed Odyssey's city streets and you'll be within a stone's throw of a penis. That's probably true for any city, sure, but Ubisoft's vivid recreation of ancient Greece doesn't censor the artistic expression of that era. Its cities and temples are adorned with studly marble statues of naked men letting their business hang out for all the world to see. Hell, even the backwater island of Kephalonnia sits in the shadow of one such godly weiner.

Though Odyssey often reuses these same statues across its various locales, I've toured from Macedonia to Pephka looking for every notable donger I can find for one sole purpose: rating them from best to worst.

Warning: In case it wasn't obvious, this article contains a lot of penises.

And if you want a closer look, click the icon in the top-right corner of each image.

 11.

Score: 10/100

I've seen a lot of penises in my lifetime, but this one is by far the worst. The artistry here is laughably bad: There's barely any definition, and this poor soul appears to be lacking gonads—a crucial component of any johnson. Considering this particular statue is found on every major temple in the Mediterranean, this crude, anatomically insufficient penis is a horrific disappointment that the entire Greek world should feel embarrassed about.

10.

Score: 15/100

It's fitting that this statue can be found right next to the previous one, because together they form the most disappointing pair of wangs in the Aegean Sea. This statue gets a few extra points, though, because the detail is slightly more pronounced. But why is it so pointy? You could cut yourself on that thing if you weren't careful. And again, I ask, where are the testicles? It's a shame too, because this guy's stance does a great job of drawing your eye to the prize, but anyone who gazes upon this willy is anything but a winner. 

9.

Score: 40/100

This warrior stands slightly above his nearby competition only because his package is anatomically correct. There's still a lot to be desired, though, and the lack of detail makes this dink look like Beaker's nose. Despite having a complete package, this dong is still fatally underwhelming—no wonder that other statue is trying to put him out of his misery. 

8.

Score: 42/100

While this competition is fundamentally about just the artistry in these statued ding-a-lings, this one gets some extra points for creativity. The fact that this guy has two snakes for legs but still possesses a human penis leaves me with a lot of questions, and I cannot help but think there must be some kind of statement to be made when considering the contrast between the two. Unfortunately, this statue still loses a lot of marks because the most impressive snake on your body should never be your legs. 

7.

Score: 48/100

Okay seriously, what the hell was up with Greek artists and their obsession with snake legs? Why are we idolizing these people that suffer from what is very obviously a horrific condition? Just so we're clear, I'm not giving bonus points because there is two of them, but even I have to admit there's a nice bit of detail here—particularly in the shape of the scrotum.

6.

Score: 64/100

This statue makes it clear that Poseidon was pretty insecure about his body. The enormity of his trident makes his other spear seem a little underwhelming, despite still being the size of a car. Still, who am I to judge? It's anatomically correct and even features a little pubic hair without making the whole thing look ghastly. But if you're working with this much material, is it too much to ask to spend a little extra time adding definition instead of just smashing phallic clumps of bronze together and calling it a day? 

5.

Score: 68/100

Fortunately, this other statue of Poseidon is much better. His scrotum is properly shaped and I also think the use of stone over bronze was a great choice since it really enhances the ruggedness of Poseidon's physique and his trident doesn't overshadow what matters here: The giant stone dong of a god.

4.

Score: 70/100

Finally! A respectable penis! This statue, found in the Sanctuary of Delphi, isn't extraordinary by any means but it wins points for detail, size, and for being anatomically correct. Here, we can see the artist actually attempted to carve out some pubic hair. I appreciate the extra effort, but the end result is something that resembles Medusa's hair. It's kind of off-putting to say the least. At the end of the day, though, the detail on the foreskin is undeniably impressive. 

This statue also gets bonus points because, nearby, I found a tranquil garden circumscribed by dozens of the same statue. It's the perfect place to enjoy some lovely conversation. 

3.

Score: 76/100

I respect the effort here. Technically this guy has everything you could want in a penis but the way it's arranged is dreadful. I'm torn, honestly, because in setting out on this adventure I wanted to showcase the most glorious penises (penii?) of the Greek world. This penis isn't glorious, but I can't help but feel like that was the artist's intent all along. Instead of standing triumphantly with his business hanging out for all the world to see, he's hunched over, almost concealing it from onlookers. It's subversive and controversial. I like it. I like it a lot. 

2.

Score: 88/100

By Zeus' beard, would you look at that thing? Size normally doesn't matter, but in this case this penis is so large it deserves extra points. What sets this dick apart from the others is its functionality—this is the only penis in the Mediterranean that I can hang off of. And, even better, you can find it within the first five minutes of starting the game. Even though the statue is crudely carved out of stone there's still an impressive level of detail. I mean, just look at how the foreskin is shaped. At the end of the day, this dong stands head and shoulders above the rest. It's enormous, well-made, and the fact that you can dangle from it like some kind of adults-only Cirque du Soleil performer makes it one of the most impressive pieces of junk in all the Greek world.

1.

Score: 95/100

I'm giving this penis our Editor's Choice Award and I think it's obvious why. Despite not being as large as other penises on this list, the artistry here is exquisite. For one, this is the only naked man-statue I found that was properly painted, which gives the whole thing a very lifelike appearance. I also respect that the artist even colored the pubic hair, even if the actual carving of it isn't the most detailed. Sometimes less is more. What really counts, however, is the immaculate shape of the testicles along with the subtle definition of the shaft. The best thing I can say about this is that, yup, that sure looks like a penis.