Earning money is one of the most important things you’ll need to do in Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced. This guide will show you the best ways to acquire money and provide tips on what to spend it on to earn even more money!
Upgrade your Ship and Gear
In order to make money, you’ll need to spend money. First and foremost, focus on upgrading your ship with essential upgrades when you’re starting out. Your ship is by far your most valuable asset for generating wealth.
As you board ships, taking out an enemy crew as quickly as possible increases both your efficiency and survivability. You’ll need to craft upgrades for Edward’s personal gear such as his Pistol Holsters, Pistol Ammo Pouch, and Health Upgrades.
Early Game Strategy for Earning Money
In the early game, you’ll primarily be fighting Schooners and the occasional Brig. This will be in the Dry Tortuga, Eleuthera, and Gibara regions on the map. Unless you let your Wanted Level get too high, then you’ll only encounter 1 or 2 star level enemies in these areas.
Farm Schooners
Farming Schooners is an important first step as they provide ship upgrade materials and drop trade goods such as Rum and Sugar. Use Mortars to take them down in one shot to increase your efficiency.
Resource Gathering Naval Contracts
Naval Missions in the early game are fairly simple as all you have to do is gather ship components such as wood or cloth. Since you’re farming schooners anyway, it’s just extra money for you!
Raid Warehouses
You’ll find Warehouses in Plantations or Cities. These areas are heavily guarded and the warehouses are locked. You’ll need to get the key off one of the guards before you can open it. If successful, you’ll get a good chunk of Trade Goods!
Sell Trade Goods
In the early game, the only thing Trade Goods are useful for is selling. Later in the game you can sell them with Fleet Planning missions or acquire Map Restoration services with the Treasure Dealer. Until you’ve reached that point, just sell your Trade Goods as you’ll need all the money you can get for ship upgrades.
Accept Assassin Contracts
You’ll unlock Assassin Contracts at the end of the early game when you finish the quest “Overrun and Outnumbered“. You’ll be just starting the mid game but a new opportunity for money opens up.
Assassin Contracts are fairly simple. If you find a pigeon coop, you can interact with it to pick up an Assassin Contract. All this involves is killing a target and you’ll get bonus money if you do it a certain way such as killing them from a hiding spot.
Mid Game Strategy for Earning Money
Once you’ve upgraded your ship components to those that require a Harbourmaster II, you should be equipped enough to take on mid-game zones. This includes Conttoyor, Castilla de Jagua, Cruz, Punta Guarico, and Navassa.
Farm Brigs and Frigates
When your ship is better equipped, you can stop farming Schooners and instead steer your attention towards Brigs and Frigates. They’ll yield more loot overall, especially if the Frigate is a Convoy.
Build the Tavern in Great Inagua as an NPC there will give you Convoy Tips for 100 reales. This will spawn a Convoy in the easier areas of the map, allowing you to get higher yields of loot if you have the skill.
Dig up Treasure Chests
Since your ship is better equipped at this stage, you can more comfortably explore. Many islands and cities will have a Treasure Map that you can find. On these maps, you’ll find an image of where you’ll find some buried treasure with their coordinates.
Digging these up is a good way to get money as many buried chests will give 3,000 reales and they often give Ship Plans. These plans can be Ship Vanity items or even top tier ship upgrade plans you can use for the late game.
Storm Forts
Taking over Forts can offer between 3,000 to 8,000 reales depending on the difficulty of the fort. While you can only take over these once each, it’s still a solid way to get a good amount of money in the mid game.
Be sure to invest in good Mortar and Mortar ammo upgrades to take out a Fort’s defenses from a distance. A longer distance means you have more reaction time to brace and thus survive to raid the Fort on foot.
Start using the Fleet Planning
As you take control of forts, you’ll be able to have access to more missions with Fleet Planning. You can access Fleet Planning in the Jackdaw’s cabin or at the Manor’s office.
You can send ships in your fleet to go on passive missions such as selling your Trade Goods, looting Trade Goods, or inspecting Warehouses to resupply them in 15 minutes.
Accept Harder Naval Contracts
Now that you have a better equipped ships, you can start taking on Naval Contracts that have a three star difficulty rating. These will be more aggressive than gathering resources as you’ll need to do things like sink specific ships.
Late Game Strategy for Earning Money
For late game content, you’ll want all ship components upgraded to at least one tier below maximum. If you take the time to find all of the ship upgrade plans, then it’s even better to have max tier components! Late game zones include Chinchorro, Serranilla, and Charlotte.
Take on Man O’ Wars
Boarding Man O’ Wars in the late game is one of the easiest ways to make money assuming your ship is ready for it. On average, a single Man O’ War will have a minimum of 2,000 reales as a reward. Choosing to loot the Captain’s lockbox will bring the total up to 5,500 reales per Man O’ War
Farm Convoys
Unlock the Tavern in Corozal to get Convoy Tips in the late game area. You can spawn Convoys that hold 10,000 reales and another 2,800 if you loot their lockbox. Exchanging 100 reales for 12,800 is a steal both figuratively and eventually literally!
It won’t always be 10,000 reale frigates all the time, you’ll also get frigates that give 5,000 reales (or 7,800 for looting their lockbox). 7,800 – 12,800 reales looted per Convoy Frigate is a good deal, and this doesn’t include the money dropped by their escorts.
Scuttle Ships
When you have better equipment for Edward such as your pistols, pistol ammo, and health, you can more easily scuttle ships. To scuttle a ship, all you have to do is disembark from the Jackdaw in the ocean and swim to a non-hostile enemy ship.
You’re going to need to get the Jackdaw ahead of them on their path. This gives you time to release the wheel and swim to them. From there you can single-handedly take out the crew aboard.
Boarding ships this way will not give you the option to loot a lockbox, send it to your fleet, repair your ship, or lower your wanted status. Instead all you can do is scuttle the ship (sabotage it to sink). You’ll get all the base rewards once you jump off and as the ship blows up behind you.
While inefficient compared to using your ship’s weapons, you could destroy a convoy’s escort without aggroing them this way. Scuttling is better saved if you want to steal trade goods from a ship without putting in too much effort. Don’t swim too far out from the Jackdaw as you’ll have to swim all the way back.
Found Coin Trinket
You can earn the Found Coin Trinket by completing the side quest “Art Lover“. You’ll unlock this at the Manor once you’ve acquired 15 pieces of art.
This is easy to do as model ships collected from defeated enemy ships count as art. Be sure to get both British and Spanish versions of the ships!
Talk to Bernard in the garden for this quest and you’ll get the Found Coin Trinket. This trinket is most likely bugged as it states it increases the amount of reales gained, but fails to actually boost reales from boarding ships, looting boxes, selling Trade Goods, or money collected from the Protection Money Box.
Protection Money Box
In your Hideout’s Manor, you can unlock a Protection Money Box by restoring the Manor. You can increase the collection rate by building the Treasure Dealer and Fisherman’s Wharf.
While this is technically a way to get money passively, it’s very slow and at best serves as emergency funds if you spend all of your money on ship upgrades. Assuming it’s fully upgraded, you’ll only get 5,000 reales every 2 hours and 46 minutes.
Your Treasure Hoard
If you go to your Manor’s basement, you’ll find your treasure hoard! This hoard increases and decreases depending on your current amount of reales. This doesn’t do anything for you outside of looking nice, it’s just a fun touch.
