Wayward Desires is the second of four Rift quests you can find in Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced. EGO presents you with another alternative to both history and your future, but such alternatives come with a price.
What are Rift Quests?
These are special quests you unlock as you progress through the main story. All of them take place within the Animus Rift, where you meet EGO, an Abstergo AI that believes that to find happiness and peace, one must obey and fall in line to avoid making what it thinks are mistakes.
Rifts take the form of “What If” sequences in which you explore alternate outcomes for certain characters’ stories if they had made different decisions throughout their lives. In these sequences, you’ll have to engage in a variety of tasks, from platforming challenges and stealth sections to regular fights and boss fights.
How to Unlock and Start Wayward Desires Rift?
For the Wayward Desires Rift Quest, you’ll have to progress through the main story until the beginning of Sequence 8, right after mourning Black Beard’s passing, the game will tell you the Wayward Desires quest is available.
To start this quest, you want to fast travel to Nassau. This will put you on the Jackdaw right on the north side of the island. From here, it’s a matter of swimming to the small island right on top of you, to the coordinates (604,784). Here, you’ll find the portal to access the rift quest
How to Complete the Wayward Desires Rift
This quest revolves mainly around combat, with some small platforming sections connecting the action. You’ll have to advance forward while taking out enemies to reach the boss fight, Blackbeard himself.
To ensure you can traverse the quest safely, keep these suggestions in mind:
- There will be a lot of enemies armed with muskets throughout the quest that will start shooting at you from afar, even from distant ships. Stay vigilant to dodge their shots and use enemies as “Human Shields” whenever possible.
- You’ll find swivel guns and explosive barrels, you can use to take out these gunners from afar. Be cautious when using these, they are too slow and leave you open to their returning fire. It’s much faster and safer to rush them and take them out at melee range.
- Don’t be afraid of using your remedies to keep your health topped up. You’ll find bodies you can loot after each combat section to restore all your remedies.
First, you’ll want to approach the portal and interact with it to enter the Animus Rift. This particular version of the rift depicts a maelstrom filled with floating ships in various states of ruin, in which EGO explores what would’ve happened if Blackbeard had accepted the royal pardon.
The quest starts with a couple narrative sections. Follow EGO’s directions until they prompt you to take the English flag, do so and approach the front of the ship you’re standing on and take a leap of faith.
Navigating this rift can be a bit disorienting, with ships in all kinds of positions. Whenever you’re in doubt about where to go, look for enemies or sections with ships or ship parts “glitching”, you can interact with these to unlock new pathways.
After landing from the leap of faith, move forward until you meet EGO. This is where the combat sections start. You’ll see three ships filled with white enemies, you’ll have to take them out to keep advancing.
Once you reach the third ship and have taken out all the enemies, approach the front of the ship. Here you can use “re-synchronize” to make a ship explode. Jump on the debris to move forward until you reach a zipline that will take you down to the next combat section.
After following EGO a bit, you’ll find four ships. The first one is empty, but the other three are filled with enemies that will start shooting at you the moment you land on the first ship.
To clear the second ship you can either use a swivel gun aiming at explosive barrels or jump onto the ship and fight the enemies head on.
After clearing the second ship, you’ll find a cannon at the front that you can fire to quickly clear the third ship. Jump on the path made of floating cannonballs to keep advancing. Once you reach the third ship, you’ll have to stay alert and dodge incoming bullets. There is no way of reaching the fourth ship, so you’ll have to use a swivel gun to clear the three shooters.
After clearing all ships, you can advance through the front of the third ship. Here you’ll see an enemy you can assassinate from above. Be ready because once you do it, Blackbeard will appear from the flames, and the first fight with the boss of the quest will begin.
Boss Fight
- Blackbeard only has one move that can be parried. Once he goes for this, you’ll have to parry two consecutive attacks to get an opening to damage him. If you want to play it safe, use dodges.
- He has several unblockable attacks: he has a front kick with a big windup animation, which is a single strike, a sequence of sword slashes where he does 2-3 strikes, so be ready to dodge consecutive attacks, and on rare occasions, he will pull out his gun at point-blank range and try to shoot you once.
- Whenever you manage to take advantage of an opening, do a single combo, don’t over-commit because he can parry your attacks and punish you.
Once you damage him enough, he will pull back and start an animation where a green glowing circle appears around him. Back away from him to avoid damage, he will erupt in flames and disappear.
This was just the first fight. At the end of the level, you’ll fight him again, but for now, head to the side of the ship and keep advancing. Here, you’ll see a ship mast you can re-sync, but make sure to shoot the barrel at its base from afar before doing that to avoid taking damage.
After walking a bit, you’ll reach a ledge where you have to perform a leap of faith. This will put you in an on-rails sequence where you can move to the sides to try and avoid explosive barrels on your path.
You’ll land on a ship, and an animation will show where Blackbeard will start shooting at you with a mortar. Avoid the green circles that appear on the ground while trying to reach Blackbeard. Ahead there’s a ship with some enemies aboard. Get rid of them while avoiding the mortar fire.
When there are no enemies, use the lift on the mast. This will stop the fire from above because Blackbeard runs away and sends some enemies towards you. Fire the mortar once to get rid of most of them.
Keep going through the level and you’ll find a couple of platforms where you can assassinate enemies from above to go down. You’ll reach another leap of faith that will take you to the final fight with the boss.
Boss Fight Second Encounter
In this fight Blackbeard has a couple additions to his move set:
- He can now teleport away and call mortar shots to start raining down on you, you can perform perfect dodges on these shots.
- At any point he can teleport towards you and start his explosion animation. This makes a green circle appear around him. After a short while, he will burst into flames and damage any nearby objects.
- Once you damage him enough, he will teleport away and summon a group of pirates and some explosive barrels. He will summon a group of pirates twice. The first time will all be pirates that are melee fighters. For the second time, there will be two pirates with muskets. Eliminate all pirates before going back to attacking Blackbeard.
He still has all his moves from the previous fight so be patient, play around his new moves and look for opportunities to damage him.
Once the battle is over EGO will speak to you and ask you to climb the main mast of the ship and retrieve the flag. This will send you to the final dialogue sequence and back to Nassau to receive your rewards for finishing the second Rift Quest.
Quest Rewards
For finishing this quest, you’ll be rewarded with the “Queen Anne’s Revenge Wheel” appearance for your ship.
If you decide to complete all four Rift Quests, you’ll receive the legendary Dark Animus Corsair Pistol Sword. Keep in mind that to do the last Rift Quest, you’ll have to wait until after the epilogue of the game, when the last Rift unlocks.
