Part 05: Removing Borgia Influence from Rome

Part 05: Removing Borgia Influence from Rome

Taking down the tower

Instead of searching for perch points head to the next memory location marked upon the map, where you meet up with Machiavelli, who it turns out is not the man who sent for you!   Talking with him triggers the start of the quest "New Man in Town" so go ahead and do that now.

Follow Machiavelli to the Blacksmith Shop, where he will give you some spending money, and ask that you provide him with any information you come upon in the city.  You are prompted to purchase a Stiletto and Roman Spaulders from the Blacksmith -- go ahead and do that now -- the Spaulders cost 900f but they add 1 Health and 4 Resistance to Damage, so it is a fair trade!

The Stiletto is classified as a Small Weapon, and has 1 Damage, 1 Speed, and 2 Deflect, which makes it useful for case-style fighting accompanied by a sword.  At the moment that is all that is available to be purchased, even though you have extra money.  Because you do not have any armor on at the moment, the piece you just purchased is automatically worn, so you do not have to go in to the menu and equip it.  You do need to use the wheel to arm the knife, but the system will prompt you to do so.

Now follow Machiavelli as he walks through the streets talking to you about the present situation and about your enemies.  When you arrive at your first destination you get a short CS, and then you get a Checkpoint Save.   Your current objective is to kill the Borgia Captain marked on the radar map - so go ahead and do that now.  You need to toss him into the scaffolding by the way :P

The first problem?  The Captain is inside the Borgia Tower, which is a forbidden area.  But as you just received a Checkpoint Save... Heh... You can try a number of approaches.  The straight-on go for him approach was how I chose to do it, walking boldly into the compound, climbing the tower, and using the perch to add the area to my map.  No one tried to stop me, so that part was easy.

After the Leap of Faith off of the tower you are looking right at the Captain, who is with his men in the alcove.  Now would be a great time to go over and have a nice chat with his men, wouldn't it?

-- Fighting the Captain --

During the fight the Captain will try to kill you -- do not kill him with your blade.  As hard as this sounds, ignore him and take out his men first.  Once they are dead, go out of combat mode (left trigger) then use B to grab him.  Once you have him, if you are near the scaffolding great, otherwise throw him in the direction of the scaffolding so that the next time you grab him you are close enough to throw him at the scaffolding, which then collapses on top of him, killing him, and fulfilling the requirement for this specialization kill!

Now return to Machiavelli as prompted.  You should have already used the perch in the tower to add the area to your map, so when you get the CS with Machiavelli you can just go ahead and set the tower on fire since you do not need it anymore to complete the perch scan!

Climb the tower and hit the button to set it on fire, at which point you get a CS for completing the mission and you are back with Machiavelli, who you now need to lead to the stable so he can purchase it.  When you step into the Stable area you will see the lit spot; move into that and hit the buttons as prompted to examine it.  Your objective is to renovate it, which you can do at no cost to you, and you have now completed the mission with full Sync!

The tower was a vital element in the mission and this stage of the game, and we will cover that in more detail in a moment, so be patient!

-- Easy Come, Easy Go --

You are prompted to start the next mission -- Easy Come, Easy Go -- so do that.  Now that you have a local stable you can press Y at any time to call a horse to you.  Your next objectives are to follow Machiavelli and to not lose ANY health.  Do that now by calling your horse and mounting, then following him.

Eventually you get a CS, and then part ways with Machiavelli, being given a new objective: follow the thief and recover the item.  Chase him down by holding RT to sprint, then hitting B when you are close so that you tackle him, thus recovering the stolen item.  You spare his life, allowing him to leave alive.

The Towers are the Source of Borgia Strength

-- Let's Go Tower Defense! --

If you examine your map you will see that there is a new symbol -- one for View Points -- most of which are associated with Borgia Towers though some are not.  These expand the map details -- as you know -- pushing back the fog of war.  This is the primary task that we are now facing -- clearing the Captains out, using the perch at each tower to add details to the map and push back the fog of war, and burning the tower to remove the Borgia influence for that area.  Just pick the nearest tower and start clearing them --  keep doing that until you are out of View Points that you can reach! 

At first we want to concentrate on View Points not attached to Borgia Towers, so we can get them done without having to fight and quickly, but that black line you see on the map is the white wall of death, and anything beyond it you cannot do until you complete more story missions, so do not worry about those towers for now.

The first non-combat perch is located at the Pantheon, in the Central District.  The second is at the Palazzo Senatorio to the south.  There is no guard or guard detachment here, so you do not have to worry about fighting - just head over to it, climb up the side, and use the Perch to add the details for this area to the map! 

-- The Borgia Towers --

Before you set out to begin liberation of the Borgia Towers, check your kit to see if you need to resupply anything -- if you do, go ahead and make the side-trips to complete that chore now.

While I am not going to detail each tower battle individually, since they are basically the same battle with only minor differences for each, I do want to cover one point.  In a nutshell as you approach a tower you will be shown the details on its Captain, including the difficulty number for him.  If the number is a 3, you can pretty much march nin and kill him, but if it is a 5, you need to be clever about that kill.

Level 5 Captains will run, and once they do your chances of catching them are slim to none.  That being the case, you need to position yourself to take them out with a ranged attack -- either the gun or the crossbow.  The problem with the gun is that sometimes it fails to one-hit-kill a Level 5 Captain, and once you shoot them and fail to kill them, they run.  The crossbow never fails to one-hit-kill them, but the problem with the crossbow is that you probably do not have it yet, as it costs 12,000f.

The easy solution to this is to avoid Level 5 towers for now, and concentrate on the ones you can do, while you build up money.  Do that by purchasing a treasure map from a Tailor Shop and using that to locate Treasure Boxes on your way to the other towers, and being sure to rob the solders you kill as you take each tower.  You will collect the 12,000f in no time if you do that.

Once you have slain the Captain, climb up to the top of the tower and use the Perch to add the area to your map, and then burn the tower!  After you escape the burning tower, check your map and head to the nearest Doctor and/or Merchant and re-supply any kit you used up, then rinse and repeat. 

-- Upgrading Shops --

A word about the shops: in each of the regions there are different shops as well as special shops, like the Banks, that you can upgrade.  You can only upgrade the ones in regions you have liberated from teh Borgias, first, and as you upgrade them they begin to pay you a share of their profits!  Every 20 minutes of game time you receive a share of the profits from every shop you have upgraded, which is deposited into your Bank Account.  The Bank Account can hold a maximum of 5,000f at any one time, so keep an eye on its balance and, when it is close to 5,000f go to the nearest Bank and withdraw the money.

If you have not upgraded a Bank yet in an area you control, make that a priority right now and do so!

Upgrading the shops accomplishes two additional important things - it earns you a discount on items or repairs purchased there, and it expands the type and level of the items you CAN purchase there!  As you can see that is of critical importance to our progress.

Once you upgrade the shop check its inventory and you will see the big change.  The first Blacksmith that I upgraded added new weapons to his inventory!  When you check this, you will see that the weapons you already own are marked as such, and you cannot buy those.  You will also see weapons you cannot buy because they require you to complete a quest for the shop, or they require some other prerequisite -- for example the Bearded Axe requires that you already have the Heavy Sheath from a Tailor Shop. 

Some weapons will be available but you may not have the money to buy them -- in which case you know what you need to do, right?  Go out and get the money!   The Blacksmith also sells the ammo you need for replacement -- Bullets and Throwing Knives at the moment -- so keep up with those as well.

SHOP QUESTS

Another interesting point - you know all of those odd items you are finding in addition to money in the Treasure Chests from the map?  Those are shop quest items -- so do NOT sell them!  Hold on to them because eventually the shops will start to offer you quests, which largely consist of something like this: "Bring me X number of the following Trade Goods!"

By the time that happens you will already have a nice inventory so I shouldn't be surprised if you can complete a lot of these quests right away!

-- The Rinse and Repeat Cycle --

Right, so I have now covered everything that you need to know for this stage of the game.  Now all that you need to do is take this information and use it!

Keep doing the towers until you have added as much detail to the map as you can for this stage -- having cleared all of the towers inside the black line on the map.  That is actually a limited proposition, since a large area of the city is still not accessible to you, due to the white wall of death that blocks it off.  Those areas will eventually be accessible once you complete more of the story missions though.  Once you have finished liberating the towers and all of the areas are white on the map inside the black line AND you have upgraded all of the shops in the white areas, go to the next section, where we resume the story missions!