Black Flag Resynced: Fleet Planning System Lets Kenway’s Captured Ships Earn Loot
Ubisoft has confirmed that Kenway’s Fleet, the ship-management side activity from the original Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag, returns overhauled in Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced, now letting players send captured vessels on background missions for passive Reales, trade goods and rare rewards without needing a companion app.
The system, detailed in an official Ubisoft naval gameplay deep dive alongside independent breakdowns from Video Games Chronicle and Shacknews, ties fleet management directly to the campaign’s fort-capturing loop, rewarding players who clear out enemy strongholds with fresh mission routes across the Caribbean.
Fleet Planning Table Now Lives Inside the Game, Not an App
In the original 2013 release, managing Kenway’s Fleet required a separate companion app running alongside the console game. Ubisoft’s development team has scrapped that setup entirely for the remake. While in the original game, the Kenway’s Fleet was tied to a companion app, it is now fully integrated to Black Flag Resynced.
Players can now manage the fleet from two physical locations in-world. Players can manage Kenway’s Fleet either from the Captain’s Cabin on The Jackdaw or at the table in the Villa on the home base of Great Inagua. Access first opens after taking the story’s earliest fort. Fleet missions unlock after completing “This Old Cove” during sequence 4 of the main story, after which players can head into the room just below the main deck of the Jackdaw to access fleet missions directly via the planning table.
Four Ship Classes, Four Distinct Mission Types
Building a fleet starts at sea. There’s no point in managing ships if you can’t capture any — during a naval battle, damaging an enemy ship until it has low health allows players to sail alongside it and board it. Once boarded, captains choose what to do with the prize. After defeating an enemy vessel, players can choose to use it for repairs, lower their Wanted Level, or add it to an empty fleet slot, though sending an underpowered ship on the wrong mission may see it destroyed.
Four ship classes populate the roster, each suited to different work. Missions themselves span multiple categories. Instead of simply collecting Man-o-War battleships to rule the seas, players now have to collect specific ship types to send on unique missions, while also managing the risk of each section of sea. Trade and Piracy missions are the profitable ones, Scout missions restock warehouses, and Patrols lower the Risk level of the sea they take place in, reducing the damage ships take.
Berths Cap Out at Ten, With Risk Meters Guiding Every Dispatch
Fleet capacity is limited and must be earned. Sending ships to Kenway’s Fleet adds them to the collection, but players can only have three ships at first, with additional slots purchasable for 5,000 Reales each. Video Games Chronicle’s testing confirmed the cap tops out well beyond that starting number. Once docks and berths are expanded to hold ten ships, players should always keep a fleet of nine, leaving one space free in case a high-level ship is encountered.
Every mission carries a chance of losing the ship sent out, tracked through a dedicated regional gauge. Risk is displayed on the map in the bottom right corner by a meter with a skull icon that fills up the more acts of piracy the fleet partakes in, and in a region with a high Risk Level, the total damage ships can suffer will exceed 100%. Rarity also factors into survivability: ship types come with several rarity or ranking levels, and a one-star Brig has only a fraction of the health of a three-star Brig.
Damaged Ships Can Be Repaired or Salvaged for Parts
Ships that survive a mission frequently return battered. Captains then face a choice familiar to fleet-management veterans. Players have two choices for damaged vessels: salvage the ship for a small amount of resources, or repair it, with repairing costing resources from the player’s own supply but being worthwhile for reliable, valuable ships. Cheaper hulls are usually not worth the upkeep. It’s often best to salvage smaller, more common ships, since it’s usually faster and cheaper to find replacements at sea than to repair them.
Ubisoft’s naval gameplay showcase, fronted by lead naval designer Guilhem Marin, framed the fleet as one piece of a broader push to modernise Black Flag’s ship combat, alongside the returning Atmos weather system and rebuilt legendary ship encounters. Battles feature a distinct enemy vessel players must fight using tactics, skill, and planning, with defeating a Legendary Ship rewarding unique cosmetic skins for The Jackdaw’s figurehead, hull, wheel, and sails that are exclusive to each encounter.
Read also: Black Flag Resynced’s Harder Combat Echoes Assassin’s Creed Unity, Not the Original
Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced is available now on PlayStation Store, Xbox and PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store, putting the revamped Kenway’s Fleet within reach of Australian and New Zealand players picking up Edward Kenway’s story more than a decade after the original launch.
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