Assassin’s Creed Pirates Walkthrough

Assassin’s Creed: Pirates is a ship-to-ship combat game created by Ubisoft Paris. Players man a series of ships in the open sea, fighting off the British navy, searching for treasure, and unraveling hidden secrets of the Assassin’s Creed universe. Gamezebo’s quick start strategy guide will provide you with detailed images, tips, information, and hints on how to play your best game.

Assassin's Creed Pirates

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Game Introduction – Assassin’s Creed: Pirates

Assassin’s Creed: Pirates is a ship-to-ship combat game created by Ubisoft Paris. Players man a series of ships in the open sea, fighting off the British navy, searching for treasure, and unraveling hidden secrets of the Assassin’s Creed universe. Gamezebo’s quick start strategy guide will provide you with detailed images, tips, information, and hints on how to play your best game.

Quick Start Guide

Getting Started

Assassin's Creed Pirates

  • Download Assassin’s Creed: Pirates by using the “Available On” link at the top of this page.
  • When you start up Pirates choose the “Play” option. This should drop you into a cutscene.
  • Tap to advance the dialogue in the cutscene, or tap the pair of triangles at the top-left of the screen to skip.
  • Once the cinematic ends, follow the in-game tutorial to enter the open-world portion of the game.

How to Play

Assassin's Creed Pirates

  • Navigating – The first thing any good captain learns is how to man their ship. In Pirates this is handled with three on-screen buttons. The two circles on the right-hand side of the screen control the three levels of speed: half-sail, full-sail, and travel speed. Steering is controlled by swiping on the wheel at the bottom-center of the screen. You can always tell if you’re in control by checking to see if the ship’s wheel is highlighted, even in travel mode. When steering, the wheel doesn’t function like an actual ship’s rudder. You actually have to swipe the wheel and hold it in the direction you want to turn, not just spin it.
  • Map Travel – The other method of travel is performed inside the regional map. To open it, tap the mini-map in the bottom-left corner of the screen. Once the map is open, you can navigate your ship by drawing a line between it and your desired route. This is much, much faster than standard sailing, and there are certain quests where you will absolutely need to use this function.
  • Starting Combat – Once you’re out and about it’s time to find some trouble. Enemy ships litter each area, and it won’t be long before they (or you) pick a fight. To initiate combat, get close enough to a ship (on either the overhead map or in sailing mode) for glowing, concentric circles to begin radiating from it. Tap this to start a fight. Some ships, specifically those appearing red on the map, won’t wait for you to take the first shot.

Assassin's Creed Pirates

  • Open Fire – Ship-to-ship combat makes up the majority of your time spent in Pirates. Combat is broken into two phases: offense and defense. During the offensive stage, you’ll see a set of weapon icons at the bottom of the screen. Tapping any of these allows you to use it against the enemy ship. During the defensive stage, the camera pulls back to an overhead view. Enemy firing lines will appear on screen and must be dodged by tapping one of the circular buttons on the left or right of the screen. Five consecutive dodges earns a “spider shot” icon at the bottom of the screen, which ends the defensive stage immediately when tapped.
  • Side Quests – The world of Assassin’s Creed: Pirates is littered with side activities. These are necessary not only for leveling up and earning resources, but to advance the game’s plot, as each new region is gated behind your character level. To activate a side quest, either sail up to its icon in the main game and enter its glowing activation ring, or navigate to it using map travel. Most quests have a set of secondary objectives such as completing it under a time limit that can be completed for greater rewards.
  • Advancing the Story – Advancing the main quest works just like activating side missions. Story encounters will appear as a gold and black exclamation mark on the map and mini-map. Each region has one story quest, and reaching a certain level is required to unlock each new one.

Tips and Tricks

Assassin's Creed Pirates

  • Play to your strengths. If you’ve equipped your ship with a perk that increases the damage of your next attack, save it for a mortar volley, not a standard swivel hit. If you’re kitted out with a speed boost, use it during a race mission, not on the open sea. Perk-specific abilities take a long time to recharge, and wasting them when they’re not really needed will have you kicking yourself when you do.
  • Lead your targets. While Pirates might draw some influence from Chair’s mobile cut-em-up, Infinity Blade this is not. The power of your shots is only as good as your aim, and any cannonballs the target dodges will reduce damage done. Smaller, faster ships like gunboats can be particularly tricky to hit with a full volley. Don’t fire where the enemy is; fire where they’re going to be.
  • Complete the secondary objectives. Unlocking new regions in the latter half of Pirates can take a long time. Completing the optional objectives in each side quest will unlock more resources, giving you more room to buy upgrades and earn experience faster. It also spices up the gameplay, which can otherwise get repetitive if you play too much in one sitting.

Assassin's Creed Pirates

  • Take your time. Dodging enemy fire in Pirates is not difficult, but that can lead to impatience and juking the wrong way at the wrong time. It won’t always get you killed, but most missions offer a bonus for not taking any damage. Failed secondary objectives means lost resources, so keep calm and dodge carefully.
  • Use the swivel gun. I know this seems obvious, but hear me out. The swivel gun, just like the broadside, operates on a timer. While the weapon is most useful hitting weak points, letting it sit fully charged doesn’t help. If you don’t think you’ll expose any powder kegs (such as against gunboats, which don’t seem to have them), you can use the swivel’s weaker standard hit to make up for whiffed broadside fire. Sometimes this is the difference between sinking a ship in time for a secondary objective and losing extra booty.
  • Hit your targets quickly. Using your weapons as quickly as possible means setting them up for reload as quickly as possible, giving you more of an opportunity to hit enemies again in a single turn. It also means interrupting enemy reload times, as most weapons will actually set a ship’s cooldown time back a few seconds. The end result is possibly taking down navy ships before they even get a chance to fire their next round. There’s not one moment in the entire game more exciting than swatting down an enemy gunboat in the later stages before they even get a chance to fire a second volley. Keep those fingers moving quickly!

 

Congratulations!

You have completed Gamezebo’s quick start guide for Assassin’s Creed: Pirates. Be sure to check back often for game updates, staff and user reviews, user tips, forums comments, and much more here at Gamezebo!

Steven "The Future of Games Journalism" Strom plays entirely too much Dota 2. He sometimes plays games when he's not too busy writing about them and their place in our culture, and thinks maybe they're not just a fad after all.