Wayward Minds is the third Rift Quest you can find in Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced. EGO, exasperated with your stubbornness, forces you to abandon your Creed.
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 Minds Rift?
For the Wayward Minds Rift Quest, you’ll have to progress through the main story until sequence 11, after completing the main story quest Delirium, in which Edward hallucinates in a drunken stupor after the passing of Mary Read.
To start this quest, you want to fast travel to the Ruins in Sacrifice Island. This will put you on the Jackdaw right on the south side of the island. From here, it’s a matter of sailing your ship around the island to the coordinates (14,559). Here, you’ll find the portal to access the Rift Quest.
How to Complete the Wayward Minds Rift
This quest is a combination of combat and stealth with very short narrative segments connecting everything. As you advance through the quest, EGO will take your weapons forcing you to avoid combat.
Everything starts very abruptly compared to the previous two Rift Quests. Frustrated, EGO will summon enemies you have to shoot through a gate to “vent your anger”. Make sure to aim your gun instead of using the quick shot.
The gates will open letting you move forward as you go groups of enemies will be summoned to fight you. Most notably there will always be marksmen on high ground shooting at you.
All these combat segments have large and small explosive barrels. A well-placed shot from your pistol on these barrels will help clear out the enemies quickly.
Once you’ve reached a room full of crosses sticking out from the ground, EGO will open a gate that’ll take you to the next section. Here you’ll be standing in front of a grave where you’re forced to put down your pistols, therefore they won’t be available for the rest of the quest.
Here’s where we start to see the “theme” for this rift. It revolves around the idea of choosing life over violence, exemplified by the idea of Mary Read choosing to leave the Assassins to be with her newborn daughter.
Jump down using the ziplines, this will take you to the next segment of the quest. From here on out, the Dark Animus takes the form of Mesoamerican ruins where you’ll have to eliminate groups of enemies. You’ll have to do this while being shot at by a lone marksman who disappears and reappears further ahead when you approach him.
Throughout these combat section whenever you kill an enemy, EGO will show you WARNING messages such as “This ‘target’ was press-ganged into being here” or “this ‘target’ fed the town’s stray dogs every evening” which is very manipulative on their part.
But because combat is so fun and you’re given no other choice, take these enemies out until you reach a section with three ropes as your only way forward. Here you’ll have to run up these ropes while being shot at by the annoying disappearing marksman. Jump from one rope to another to avoid the enemy shots.
Right after the three ropes section you’ll have to do it again, but there are now only two ropes so you’ll have to be more careful with your dodges. Once you reach the top you’ll finally be able to eliminate this pesky marksman.
After trying to advance for a little bit, EGO will teleport you back to where you took down the marksman. Up ahead you’ll see an enemy standing bellow a red light, don’t take him down because if you do EGO will keep teleporting you back.
Ignore the enemy and move forward, you’ll reach another narrative section where you’re standing in front of a grave. Here you’ll be forced to put down your swords, meaning there’ll be no more combat for the rest of the quest.
A couple of times during the quest, the Eagle will appear and urge you not to listen to their mother, referring to EGO which is an interesting narrative reveal. But this quest doesn’t give you an alternative, if you try to disobey, you simply can’t progress the quest.
After putting down your swords you can move ahead. You’ll reach a zipline that’ll take you to the final segment of the quest, which revolves entirely around stealth. There’ll be a light shining from above that moves around, if you’re spotted by the light or by an enemy you’ll get an instant game over.
You’ll land inside a hay cart. To start this segment try to perform an assassination. EGO will stop you and show you what happens if the light spots you.
You’ll be moving between tall grass patches. Only a few enemies move around, so be patient and wait for them to turn their backs on you, only then move ahead avoiding the light.
Once you’re able to move, jump out of the cart and head right into the tall grass, wait for the light to move away, and jump over the fence into the well.
Wait for the roaming guard to move towards the stairs to jump out of the well and into the next patch of tall grass. Once he moves back to the side of the barn, move forward to climb the wall an enter the grass in front of you.
Here the light will be moving in a triangular pattern. To safely move forward, follow it’s trajectory right after it passes above you, so go up and then to the right. You’ll see another wall you can climb but wait to move right after the light passes you, just to be safe.
This next section seems larger and has more moving guards, but you can get through it very safely. First go left and wait for the guard to move away to cross the main path to the white flowers and into the grass.
You’ll go left again, wait for the guard to turn away, and cross the dirt path. The next segment has 2 moving guards and the moving light so take your time. The first guard moves left to right so you really only have to worry about avoiding the light.
Next you’ll see a small patch of flowers ahead. Here you’ll have to wait for the guard to move away and for an opening where the light is moving away from you. When this happens, go into the small patch of flowers and wait. You can’t reach the next patch of grass. Wait for the light to pass you and then move forward.
You’re basically done, wait for the guard to move back and an opening where the light moves away and advance to the last patch of flowers. The iron gate will open and you can go through to the final section of the quest.
This final section is a chase sequence. You’ll find yourself in a long corridor where soon after you enter, the light from above will appear right behind you. and start moving forward.
Make sure you’re pressing your left stick to sprint if you’re playing on a controller or holding Shift if you’re using a Keyboard. There are some obstacles in the way but as long as you’re sprinting your character will parkour over them automatically.
Once you reach the end of the corridor, you’ll slide down a slope and reach safety. Here you just have to go through the white light to enter the last narrative cutscene where EGO asks you to abandon your Creed which you must do to finish the quest.
Quest Rewards
For finishing this quest you’ll be rewarded with… a sea shanty. The sea shanty is called “Don’t Forget Your Old Shipmate”, which is a bit catchy but still feels underwhelming.
The important thing is this puts you one step closer to the final Rift Quest, where you get to face EGO in combat to unlock the legendary Dark Animus Corsair Pistol Sword.
