Use your favourite features in-game with our Desktop AppNaval combat is at the very heart of Black Flag: Resynced. The Jackdaw is your home, your weapon and your ticket to every bit of plunder worth having, and if you don't learn to handle her properly you'll be sleeping with the fishes before you've found your sea legs.
Here’s a guide on how to quickly become a master of the seas, and the vessel you’ll be using to conquer it.
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While it might seem like a hard thing to forget, your Jackdaw is extremely squishy when first starting out in Black Flag: Resynced. Wading into even a single enemy vessel can be enough to leave you limping away with barely a plank left, which is the last thing you want with loot on the line.
The moment you get the chance to visit the Harbourmaster, take the opportunity to build up your hull armor and cannonball damage. These two will make the most difference in your early fights. Make sure you also unlock your Mortar and Heavy Shots asap. The game doesn’t tell you to do so, but you’ll find them available straight away. Just remember - these use actual ammo. You need to purchase and replenish them from any Harbourmaster between fights.
Make great use of the Wine, Sugar, or any other plunder you find while out on the open seas. Sell it off for Reales, and put it to good use alongside other materials such as Wood and Metal for those necessary boosts to your home at sea.
At the heart of every battle, siege, and Pirate plundering session, is the brace mechanic. It’s the game’s way of ensuring that incoming damage is reduced, allowing you to have a chance at fighting back in the most dire of situations.
To Brace, simply hold the X/Square button on consoles, and Spacebar on PC as an attack is about to hit your ship. Doing so will massively reduce the punishment inflicted. If you’re worried about mis-timing this, keep an eye on enemy ships. You’ll often see the orange glow of their weapons before they fire, in addition to sound cues. This is the secret to knowing when to prepare for a barrage of cannonballs.
U-Turns in a massive pirate ship might sound like a clever joke by us, but it truly is one of the most important tactics of combat in Black Flag: Resynced. Due to the weapons on the Jackdaw being locked behind directional use (as we’ll go into details about a little later), it’s important to know how to set them up at a moment's notice.
For example, if you’re side by side with a rival ship but desperately need to land a crushing ram on them, what do you do? The answer is simple: Slam on your brakes by lifting the sails, and make a sharp pivot turn. Doing this at full speed is near impossible, but keeping sails up makes it extremely fast and easy.
Once you’re back to full speed, you can attack them with your originally desired weapon, feeling like a ninja as you bob and weave through the fight. It’s truly one of the most important tips for Naval Combat, but easily overlooked if you’re not expecting your boat to be as nimble as it is.
When first using your ship's weapons in combat, you may be slightly confused about how to actually operate them. The answer is that each side of your ship holds a unique type of weapon, so to make the most of your naval arsenal, you’ll want to constantly reposition to expose different sides of your vessel to access the relevant guns.
To begin with, you’ll have 4 weapons available to you.
As you progress in the game you’ll be able to upgrade your arsenal and gain access to even more powerful weaponry.
Against harder enemies, the easiest approach is to soften them up with mortar shots first and keep them at a distance. Make sure to brace and avoid getting rammed. Once you’ve softened them up, finish with a heavy shot or close-range cannons.
The Jackdaw however doesn’t only shoot projectiles. You can also use it to ram enemy ships with devastating effect. To get more accuracy, however, consider using your chain shot from the front of the ship to slow down enemy ships ahead of you. This will make catching up to them much quicker, allowing for piercing collisions.
If you find yourself on the receiving end of an attempted ramming, you’ll need a way to slow down your attacker. For this, turn behind you and drop your explosive barrel reserves. Ships hitting these barrels will take severe damage and be massively slowed. This isn’t used as much as the other weapons, but it’s important to remember its existence.
While using your main 4 weapons and their upgrades is a great way to immobilise enemy schooners in combat, there’s one last weapon that can’t be forgotten about. The swivel gun, while most typically used when boarding ships to weaken enemy morale faster, can also be used to aid you during your naval fights.
There are a couple of ways you can use it. The largest one is to blast away at enemy weak points with it. By just landing hits on enemy ships, you’ll open up weak points as visualised by the red animated cross icon. This is your time to strike while the hole is hot. Use your swivel gun by holding down the right bumper on the controller, or shift on pc. By just aiming at these weak points, you’ll blast them open, dealing a significant chunk of damage.
Not only that, if you see your enemy deploying explosive barrels to stop you in your tracks, you can also use the swivel gun to destroy them before they get the chance. It’s an excellent tool for keeping on top of enemies during combat, and one that some players often pass up using when they should.
This is a simple one to remember, mainly because it should go without saying. In the game, you will often come across fleets of ships, or higher level enemies. The game doesn’t hold your hand with these events. Just because they’re in the zone you’re currently completing missions in, doesn’t mean that it’s a good idea to fight them.
Always use your spyglass to scout enemy ships before engaging to make sure you’re not accidentally about to get blown to pieces. You should be doing this before every fight.
If you do insist on taking on the challenge then keep your distance to start and use your mortars. Higher level ships hit extremely hard. Worst case, if you need to run away, you can retreat quicker than most ships at full sail.
Hopefully with the tips provided above, you’ve secured the opportunity to board a rival ship and take some beautiful plunder home.
Prior to touching down on said ship, use the swivel cannons aboard your own vessel. These limited ammunition guns are great for causing extra damage to the enemy by blowing up crew members, and explosive barrels on the deck.
On larger ships, you can also deplete the morale of the crew even faster by taking the elevator to the top and cutting their flag.
Aside from that, boarding is pretty much a formality, having done the hard work to get to the boarding process in the first place.
And when you have blasted down a ship, successfully boarded it, and claimed victory, you’ll be given an option to decide the fate of the enemy ship. Usually, your choices range between hiring some of the crew aboard for your own ship or taking the opportunity to replenish the health of the Jackdaw.
If you don’t fancy a ship full of pirates hunting you down, you can reduce your wanted level instead. This is rarely the best approach; however, it’s mostly unnecessary, but it’s worth bearing in mind in cases where you truly feel you can’t take the heat.
On major ships with Captains, you may also get an option to secure the Captain’s lockbox. This is a great idea that will often net you tons of extra resources (which, let’s be real,r is probably what you’re there for)
