If you’re jumping into Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced and sailing around the Caribbean doing whatever feels fun, that’s totally valid. The game gives you a ton of freedom right out of the gate. But if you’re skipping the forts because the game hasn’t told you to go do them yet — you’re leaving a mountain of free upgrades on the table. Capturing forts is genuinely one of the best things you can do early in this game, and the sooner you get started, the smoother your entire playthrough becomes.
The Game Won’t Tell You to Do This Until Sequence 5 — Do It Anyway
Here’s the thing about the forts in AC Black Flag Resynced: Ubisoft doesn’t formally introduce you to them until the Sequence 5 mission literally called “The Forts.” That mission walks you through capturing a weakened version of one as a tutorial. But here’s what nobody tells you — you can start hitting the easy forts well before that, and you absolutely should.
The window most players miss is Sequence 4. Once you’re tasked with meeting Kidd in the mission “Nothing is True…”, the game opens up and lets you roam freely before heading to the meet-up point. That’s your green light. Instead of rushing to the marker, take a detour and start working on the three easy forts sitting in the upper portion of the map.
Need help getting around the map without wasting time? Check out our guide on how to fast travel in AC Black Flag Resynced to move between locations efficiently once you start capturing forts.
What You Actually Get from Capturing Forts
Forts aren’t just a fun naval fight — though they are absolutely that. They hand you a stack of practical rewards that directly impact how the rest of the game feels. Here’s what you’re looking at:
- Spanish Reales: Each fort capture drops a chunk of in-game currency. In the early game when you’re scraping together coin for Jackdaw upgrades, this money hits different.
- Crafting and upgrade materials: Wood, metal, cloth — the forts throw upgrade materials at you, which cuts down on the amount of time you need to spend boarding random ships just to grind resources.
- Fast travel points: Captured forts unlock as fast travel locations, which matters a lot when you’re trying to zip across the Caribbean instead of sailing for five minutes just to get somewhere.
- Kenway’s Fleet regions: Every fort you take opens up a new region for fleet deployment. Without forts, you literally can’t send ships out on missions in those zones.
The Three Easy Forts to Hit First
Not all forts are created equal. The ones sitting in the upper part of the map — specifically at Gibara, Eleuthera, and Dry Tortuga — are rated as easy difficulty and are the right targets to hit before your ship is fully upgraded. Their defenses are manageable, and the rewards are well worth the effort.
The approach is simple: attack from the sea, chip away at the towers and walls, and keep the pressure on. One important thing to remember — if you sail out of the fort’s radius, it starts repairing itself. So don’t break off the fight unless you’re boarding a nearby ship for emergency hull repairs, and even then, make sure you’re still within range.
Before you start rolling on forts, make sure your Jackdaw has Mortars unlocked. Getting Mortars should honestly be your first Jackdaw upgrade goal because they do serious work against fort defenses and make the whole fight way more manageable. The max health and healing items guide is also worth checking before you commit to these fights so you’re not caught short mid-battle.
Why Kenway’s Fleet Actually Matters Here
When most players hear “Kenway’s Fleet,” they think of it as optional background noise. It’s not. Forts are the direct key to unlocking fleet regions, and each region you unlock lets you send ships out on passive missions that earn you money and materials while you’re off doing literally anything else in the game.
The fleet system in Resynced has been reworked compared to the original — it’s more hands-off now, with no turn-based naval battles. You assign ships to missions, come back later, and collect your rewards. Different mission types need different ship classes, so boarding a variety of ships and sending them to your fleet matters. Brigs are especially useful since Piracy missions using Brigs are how you farm Art Pieces for the Great Inagua Manor if you’re pushing toward completion.
The critical point is this: without captured forts, fleet regions stay locked. You can have a full fleet of ships sitting at Great Inagua with nowhere to go. Every fort you take is directly expanding the passive income system running in the background of your whole playthrough.
Don’t Forget the Middle and Late-Game Forts
Once you’ve cleaned up the easy forts in the north, the work isn’t done. The middle and southern portions of the map have harder forts that require a more upgraded Jackdaw before you should realistically attempt them. For those, you’ll want your hull and main weapons at around tier four before engaging.
The other thing worth tracking down are the Ultimate Plans — elite upgrade blueprints scattered around the world. Finding these unlocks the highest-tier Jackdaw improvements, and once you’ve got those upgrades in place, the harder forts become a lot more approachable. Treating Ultimate Plans as a mid-game priority alongside the harder forts is the right call if you want the endgame to feel smooth rather than like a constant uphill battle.
One fort worth targeting sooner than most players expect is the one at Chinchorro — it only has four defenses and is actually doable before you’d think. Just scout the area first with your spyglass and make sure there are no Man-of-War ships patrolling nearby, because those will absolutely ruin your day if they show up mid-attack.
The Combat Itself Is Just Fun
Look, beyond the practical benefits — and there are a lot of them — capturing a fort is just a great time. You open up on the walls from the sea with cannons and mortars, you watch the defenses crumble, you dock your ship and storm the place on foot, and then you fight through a wave of soldiers before planting your flag. It scratches the exact pirate fantasy AC Black Flag has always been about.
It feels like a complete encounter in a way that boarding random ships doesn’t. There’s a buildup, a naval phase, and a land phase all rolled into one. It’s the kind of content that justified the original Black Flag’s legacy, and Resynced just makes it look and feel better than it ever did.
While you’re at it, keep your crew morale up and your crew’s shanties fresh — a happy crew sails harder. If you need help managing that side of things, our guide on how to get and change shanties in Black Flag Resynced has you covered.
Bottom Line: Don’t Wait for the Game to Tell You
AC Black Flag Resynced has a habit of unlocking things gradually through the story, but the forts are a case where doing them before the tutorial pays off in a big way. The three easy forts in the northern part of the map are sitting there from early in the game, loaded with rewards that make everything that comes after easier and more fun.
Hit them before Sequence 5. Get your Mortars first, keep your hull patched up, and don’t let the game hold your hand on this one. The benefits stack all the way through to the endgame, and the players who capture forts early consistently have a much better time than those who wait. That’s not an opinion — that’s just what the numbers and the experience tell you.
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