Naval Action Part I

The first of the Naval Mission is The Chase, the description for which is “Investigate disturbances off the coast of Martha's Vineyard” – so assuming that you have fully upgraded the Aquila this is going to go a lot easier than it might otherwise... Hit the Harbormaster at the Homestead and select the Naval Mission The Chase, and prepare yourself for some awesome naval action.

What you are facing is a small civilian sloop that is under attack by a lot of other small sloops (gunboats) and the problem here is not defending it as you can do that, but defending it AND meeting the optional objective to limit its damage to 50% in total, which you will find takes a deft and early hand with the Swivel Guns.

The biggest impediment to your success is your limited visibility and the need to steer and fire – so you may need to run through this mission a few times to get it with the optional objective but it can be done!

As you start the first group on the right can easily be taken out with a broadside from your big guns to bear. If you fail the optional objective it is better to restart the memory completely than to try to restart from the last checkpoint because doing so can make you restart at a dead stop, making it almost certain you will fail to keep up with and protect the civilian sloop...

By sailing hard and shooting fast you will get through the first section – only to find that the second section has you facing mines! I recommend just shooting the mines on sight as well as the gunboats that appear just after – but to complete the optional objective “Use a mine to eliminate gunboats” you need to target and shoot the left hand then right hand strings while the gunboats are near them, but that is easy enough to manage.

The third section has you following the gunboats to an “abandoned fort” to the north – but then there is abandoned and “abandoned” and this one is not so much... The optional objective for this part is to limit the damage that the mortars form the fort do to the Aquila to 50% but with your upgraded hull that will be a snap!

Using the main guns you need to take out the three gun batteries on the fort, and once you do that you complete the mission, full synchronization, good an ya mates, well done!

Protecting a civilian sloop reveals a Templar Plot

With that finished you return to the Homestead Docks – if you are still working on the Assassin's Mini-Game, you should send out your Assassins for that, then talk to the Harbormaster for another mission!

Naval Mission: The Rescue

For this mission we need to rendezvous with Amanda near Nantucket to find out what she knows about Nicholas Biddle – and once you bring her aboard she tells you what she needs to and then points out that Biddle is nearby and attacking ships! Connor declares that he wants to see this for himself, and you need to run up to the top of the Main Mast. Do that and then you will find yourself looking at exactly what she described...

Here is the thing – this is not just about sea combat, this mission also has you needing to protect your ship from rogue waves, and sail it through a rocky area without killing yourself when you get rogue winds!

So to start out, get through the rocks ahead, and then when a rogue wave appears each time, turn into it and brace – when you reach the combat scene take out the smaller ships (Biddle runs) then when you have saved the merchant, you need to turn around and chase Biddle – at which point you encounter a pair of Frigates you have to sink by first exposing their weak spots.

To sink them AND comply with the optional objectives, you need to reveal their weak spots and then sink them – the best way that I have found to do that is to ram their bow to reveal the weak spot and then destroy them, but you have to be certain you do NOT ram them amid-ship as that will sink them without revealing the weak spot. Got that? Also you have to fire ON their weak spots... Which makes this one of the most difficult to complete with all of the optional objectives and one of the more frustrating missions...

If you really get mad at this, bear this in mind - if you ram them at half speed that will reveal the weak spot and then you can quickly target the weak spot with your SWIVEL GUNS not your big ones, and blow the frigate to smithereens! That way you get your kills, you comply with the optional objectives, AND you get the satisfaction of doing the dirty dogs in! I call that win-win!

If you have trouble, watch the embedded video below and it will show you exactly what to do.

The Rescue the right way with full synch in one go

That covers the pure Naval Missions we can do at the moment, so let us now turn to the Privateer Contracts, which are the missions on the route to Florida.

Privateer Contracts: Henderson in Distress

The basic assignment is to defend the Henderson against British privateers – and that really is all that this is about – you show up there is a battle underway and you need to kill the enemy before the Henderson takes more than 50% damage.

I should say this is the most fun I have had in the game bar none – but that is probably because I have always been a massive fan of Patrick O'Brian's Jack Aubrey books, and have been a life-long sail hobbyist... So yeah, that was fun.

Privateer Contracts: Paving the Way

In this mission we need to find out what is happening near the lighthouse, and as we sail into the search area we find a flotilla of small gunboats which we can easily destroy with our guns, but the optional objective for this mission requires us to destroy at least three (3) of them by ramming them... Hey, we can do that!

I could not do this without taking a little deck damage, but really it was acceptable deck damage, I am just saying :)

Privateer Contracts: Dread of Night

The next quick challenge has us chasing down the notorious privateer ship the Saint James, which includes the optional objective to take no more than 25% environment damage (that means do not run the bloody ship into the rocks, right?). Once you tail the target through the narrows you find that they have a fleet of gunboats waiting for you, and you just need to take her out along with her gunboats while not running aground or onto the rocks and shoals. Easy-peasy!

Finishing that one adds three more to the map!

Privateer Contracts: Troubled Waters

For this mission we need to drive British privateers away from the trace route, and we do that with the optional objective to limit damage to our ship to 50%. Hopefully you will take a lot less than that as you battle the trio of smaller ships and sink them. When you hit them with a broadside that can reveal their weak spot, which you can then shoot with the Swivel Guns to sink em!

Beating the timer to take out the Prospector Fleet

Privateer Contracts: Raiding the Prospector

On this mission we must ensure that the Prospector does not escape with its secrets and that means we need to sink the bugger! In the first part of the mission you take on a small group of raiders and, after you sink them all, you sail the ship through a narrow channel to the ambush spot and wait for the privateer fleet to approach, then you have a minute and a half to sink the entire fleet so do not miss, and do not delay!

This was a bit of a tough one because there are so many smaller vessels and what I ended up doing was ramming the target to sink it so I could concentrate fire on its consorts, and I accomplished this by heading to the left out of the ambush spot as much as I could so that I could position my ship to ram the main target while firing on its consorts. Watch the video and you will see what I mean...

Privateer Contracts: One of a Kind

On this mission we mean to secure the trade routes once and for all! Basically this ends up being a massive free-for-all at the start with loads of small gunboats, but do not allow them to distract you! Just keep sailing strait and you will encounter a pair of Frigates with a timer – you just need to quickly sink both before the timer runs out, which you will find easy enough by putting a broadside of regular shot into each to reveal their weak spot and then blowing that away! Easy-peasy!

Completing this sixth contract ends the ones we can do for now, so let us turn our attention to the Peg Leg Missions that we can manage just now!

Peg Leg Mission: The Ghost Ship

Far in the northern waters off the cost of Canada is a marker for this mission, during which we need to find the Octavius and recover Captain Kidd's Treasure Map! This is not so much a regular naval engagement as it is a mixed mission – and finds you making your way through the ice cap in search of the Octavius!

When you sight the ship you have two optional objectives – reach it before the timer runs out, and do not fall in the water!

The problem you will run in to here is that the auto-jump system will easily jump you into the water rather than where you meant to jump, so it may take a few tries to get this right... Once you make your way across the ice you will need to work your way around the large ice lump on the other side to make it to the rigging and onto the ship. In the Captain's Cabin you find the first of the four Map Fragments and the body of the Captain frozen solid!

Exploring the ghost ship and obtaining a map fragment

Here is the thing – they really pull out all of the weasel programmer stops here for this second part of the mission – they not only have the boat start sinking and coming apart at the seams when you try to leave, they hit you with a timer, AND they add water flooding in that if you even breath on it will blow the optional objective AND they use a bunch of oh-****-disaster mini-CS's just to crank up the tension. Was this grief code? Yes. Was it cheap? Oh yeah. Was it fun? Well... Yeah. So I guess we let this one slide.

When you finally make it out you end up in the water anyway since the ship sinks but that does not count against you for the optional objective, so that is OK...

Peg Leg Mission: Fort Wolcott

It is time to go for the second map fragment and our destination is a little closer to home – Fort Wolcott to be precise – our primary objective is to approach undetected, with the optional objectives to perform 3 Ledge Assassinations, limit your Health Loss to 33%, and achieve a minimum Kill Streak of 3 kills. Not too hard really, right?

Our first challenge is to climb the outside of the cliff and the fort to reach the top of the tower, where we do our first Ledge Assassination (actually this was the first one of these for me in the entire game, which is odd because in the previous games you did them a lot!).

Once we gain entrance to the fort we will be doing our very first rope slide (using our Tomahawk no less!) which has us bursting through a shuttered window but somehow not alerting the guard inside – that is OK though because we get to hear him whinge and then we get to kill him! We make our way all stealthy through the building, killing another guard, and then up and over to the other side to kill yet another guard, before climbing up and around to do our second Ledge Assassination.

Following the marker we do a little ceiling climbing using the hanging cage thingies to get across, and then some beam-walking and chandelier swinging to get through a large room, passing into the next area for our third Ledge Assassination, and then stealth-kill the patrolling pair of guards above before doing a Double-Air-Assassination on the blokes below to get all four of the kills we are required to get for this room. Now we make our way to the cell to recover the map fragment, but we are interrupted just after we do that by tow guards.

As we deal with them the ship starts to fire on the fort, which causes all hell to break loose! We make our way along the obvious escape route, but the shelling is actually causing our escape route to constantly change, and we end up in a room full of soldiers we must kill – it is REALLY important that you do a three-kill-chain here if you actually wanted to get all of the optional objectives done in a single run-thru, which after all you do want to do!

Getting full-synchronization on Fort Wolcott

As a personal note if you end up frustrated by getting the three-kill combo try to take a deep breath and relax, go do something else, then try again? The two things that are probably causing you the most trouble are the fact that when Connor enters that room he does it on top of some wreckage rather than on the floor, so you cannot easily get him into position with three of the regular soldiers (which you will have the most luck comboing) and the second impediment is that bloody kilt-and-axe Scotsman! I had to restart that section three times to get it, and I got lucky on the third try, I can easily imagine having to redo that dozens of times if I had not gotten lucky, so really, try not to let that get to you, right?

So chain three kills together by doing a Counter + Kll and then moving the Joystick in the direction of the next soldier and do a kill, then repeat that for the third kill, and voila! After that you just need to finish of the rest of them and then have you your escape before the timer runs out, which has you half-leaping half-falling into the ocean and unlocking the Achievement “Bring Down the House” (20G) Explore Fort Wolcott. Do I need to say nice job? Yes I do! Nice job! Well done mates! Huzzah!

Peg Leg Mission: Dead Chest's Treasure

We are of course going after the third piece of Kidd's map – bearing in mind that this is as far as we can go on this quest series since we have yet to visit New York City and obtain the rest of the Trinkets for Peg Leg to get the other clues/missions. Before we get to this though, you need to know something – part of the reason why we did all this naval stuff including the Peg Leg Missions now was so that when we did have the rest of the Trinkets and could continue the missions you would not have ended up doing naval mission after naval mission and gotten sick of them. The idea was to break them up.

Another thing you need to be aware of is that it is really very important that we complete this, then do Sequence 07 and gather the Trinkets, and then complete the Peg Leg series because there is a Piece of Eden in Kidd's Treasure that we absolutely need if we are going to complete specific parts of the rest of the game with full synchronization – so believe me when I say you will be glad that you did these this way :)

So we select the mission from the map (it is way down south) and as the description says, we brave the perilous cliffs in search of this third piece of the map that is the puzzle that will lead us to Captain Kidd's Treasure! In this case that means making your way through the dead ships and up the cliffs, and then exploring the ship graveyard, just in time to see some scavenger find the map fragment we came to get! Well, there is nothing for it, we have to chase him, but it will not just be a foot race through the wrecks, as there are other scavengers who will try to stop you or at least slow you down.

The optional objectives for this mission include performing 3 running assassinations, while all the while staying in range of the target (the scavenger with your map fragment) – but you also have to catch him and kill him BEFORE he makes it to the cave ahead. And that is the rub. BEFORE you start the climb stop and switch your weapons to Hidden Blade and Poison Darts – trust me it is the only way you are going to get through this with all of the optional objectives completed.

You get the starting CS and then you hop on the rocks on shore and make your way over a dead ships bow to the other side of the lagoon – there is a treasure Chest on the right you can get $3K from but I do not think it counts as one of the Treasure Chests from the collection so if you missed it that is probably not a big deal... Making your way up the cliffs you reach the other side of the area and jump on the stern of the wreck and you see the scavenger taking the map fragment that you came to get!

Running down the Scavenger and obtaining the third fragment

He runs – of course he does, they always do – and you chase after him, doing running-assassinations on each of the other scavengers that you encounter, and mostly using the beams and rigging and other objects to swing through the air with the greatest of ease as you chase him. When he reaches the point where he blocks the doorway he escapes through you go up and over and then stay up, keeping to the left so that you end up climbing the ship's mast there, which collapses, giving you access to the stern of another ship that you slide down as he runs below you. AS SOON AS YOUR FEET HIT THE GROUND throw a Poison Dart at him. If you fail to do that, he goes into the cave, you fail the optional objective to kill him before he reaches the cave, and you have to reload the last checkpoint... If you throw the Poison Dart as soon as your feet hit the ground he stumbles to a stop, now poisoned, and you can run up and kack him good and proper, getting your map fragment from him and getting full synchronization form this mission!

Considering how frustrating this was and how much grief-code was inserted into it, you really should consider the 100% Synchronization a bloody badge of honor here mates, as this mission is almost as bad as the next one – but we will burn that bridge when we get to it.

That completes this portion of the guide and the Naval Missions / Peg Leg Missions that we can do without completing the next Sequence run, so it is now time to go back on the Main Story path!