The 10 HARDEST Missions in Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag

The Forts

Most of the forts in Black Flag are optional, and theyre some of the hardest side objectives in the entire game. In this mission, all you have to do is set sail from Nassau and seize a Spanish fort because the governor of Cuba is keeping a large amount of gold in it, but it can be your unmaking. Its possible youll have reached sequence 5 with minimal Jackdaw upgrades, especially if youre trying to speed through, so taking down ANY fort isnt going to be easy. The game does advise you to upgrade the ship if it thinks you havent done enough side content, but you could still underestimate the difficulty.

Laying the First Brick

Heading out of the base game and into the Freedom Cry DLC, this is one of the earliest missions. It also doesnt NEED to be all that difficult, if you stick to the objectives and complete them as quickly as possible. But this mission has the joint purpose of tutorializing the plantation liberation mechanic, which means youre encouraged to free slaves and take out overseers. Depending on how patient you are, this is either very easy or very frustrating, since youll have to assassinate dozens of guards and, if you get seen, they start executing the slaves. After all that, you start the mission proper, and have to kill even more overseers in the rebel hideout.

The Fireship

Whats worse than a tailing mission? An escort mission, of course, and thats exactly what this one is. The Jackdaw is tasked with accompanying a fireship, the Royal Phoenix, as it gets into position to be used in battle. Because the fireships entire purpose is to be destroyed, its notably weak, making it very vulnerable to enemy attack. As well as this, Adewale will constantly warn you to keep an eye on it as if you werent doing that already. More frustrating, for 100% you need to sink three ships with the mortar. The enemy ships are all so fast that its easy for them do dodge the mortar strikes and fail the objective.

De Fayets Last Stand

More from Freedom Cry, Adewale eventually goes after Governor de Fayet, the Frenchman left in charge of Haiti. Unfortunately, this is one of the most tedious assassination missions in the franchise if you dont know exactly how to cheese it. If you approach stealthily and climb over the garden wall, de Fayet will run away extremely quickly. Instead, its easier to just approach from the front gates and alert him so that he runs towards you. Then, learn where hes going to end up and beat him there for a much easier fight. If you try to do this the stealthy way, its going to be a massive chore.

Black Barts Gambit

For a while, Bartholomew Roberts looks like hes going to be an ally to Edward only to betray him in his hunt for the Observatory. But Edward and Roberts are still working together when this mission appears, with Edward sent to steal vials of blood from the Portuguese. Its a long mission that first involves stealing a Portuguese flag so that you can get close, but whats really challenging is the 100% sync objective. You have to air assassinate the captain of the flagship from a rope swing, which is easier said than done. You also need to remain undetected for this long mission, and then full synchronization is yours.

Trust is Earned

The reason Edward is in Roberts good books at all is because he journeys to Africa to free him from the Templars once again. All the missions that take place in Principé are a little annoying, and this one is no exception. On the condition of going to the Observatory, Kenway promises to take out the two Templars occupying the island. Luckily, you dont have to stay undetected as a requirement, but it will make getting the double assassination a little easier when you can approach both targets from the shadows. Hindering this approach is the added requirement of freeing groups of pirates along the way.

Vainglorious Bastards

While in pursuit of Bartholomew Roberts, Charles Vane and Edward Kenway decide that the best way to locate his ship is to tail and board another ship belonging to the Royal African Company. The difficulty of the mission depends on how much of a completionist you are, and whether youve already taken out the Cabo de Cruz fort on the south coast of Cuba. If you HAVENT, the mission is made significantly harder. Not only do you have a fort shooting at you along with the enemy ships, but you have the optional objective to use the forts defenses to sink a ship. This involves leading the enemy ships around and hoping the fort will shoot them by mistake. Youre not really MEANT to take over the fort first, but its a way to 100% and speed up the mission.

El Impoluto

All the legendary ship battles were worthy of making this list, but undoubtedly, the trickiest is El Impoluto, an enormous Spanish ship found in the north-western corner of the map. Be careful you dont stray here early on because youll undoubtedly be destroyed by El Impolutos ram, which ideally requires you have the maximum armor available to stand a chance against it. Shes also very fast despite being huge, which, again, makes dodging that devastating ram difficult. Unlike other missions on this list, however, El Impoluto is an optional battle, so if you really dont want to deal with the boss fight, you can avoid it completely. Youll never have the satisfaction of winning if you do that, though.

Nothing Is True

Edward finally journeys to Tulum to learn about the Assassin Brotherhood from James Kidd AKA Mary Read. But when he arrives, he finds the beach full of Assassins. Considering he wants their help, he cant kill them, which means you have this mission where youre not allowed to be detected, nor are you allowed to kill anybody - though, you CAN knock them out. But the enemy placements and numerous areas you have to get through make this very tedious, since it goes on for far too long and is frustrating to fully synchronize. It also involves a lot of waiting around and learning patrol patterns, which just isnt fun.

The Siege of Charles-Towne

One of Black Flags few flaws is its love of tailing missions. Many of the tailing missions arent badly done, to be clear, theres just way too many of them. And when you start getting ship tailing missions, you know somethings gone wrong. Thats why this long mission lives in infamy, as Edward takes the Jackdaw through the swamps to stealthily follow a gunboat. You also have to periodically leave the ship and clear various watchtowers remembering to tranquilize and skin alligators along the way to get full sync. You then have to tail a rowboat by land, complete an eavesdrop, and THEN execute a chase sequence where one wrong move means you lose your target.

Let us know in the comments which optional objectives you think are the most unfair.