Frequently Asked Questions
Why are all my skills negative?
Three things can penalize your skills. The most common is using a ship that is too high for your navigation skill, and this tends to be the most common cause for this. You need to have a Navigation Skill, either yourself or provided by your Navigator, at specific milestones to use higher class ships, as follows: 25 Navigation for class 5, 45 for class 4, 65 for 3, 80 for 2, 95 for 1. The penalty gets worse the larger the difference between your Navigation and the required skill. The other two ways you can get penalties are from being over-encumbered or having low vitality. The former is an easy fix, while the latter will require rest or recreation to fix: Staying in taverns or visiting brothels should recover your vitality in most instances.
Why are my expenses so high?
This tends to be closely related to the previous question. If your ship is too big for your Navigation Skill and you’re receiving penalties to your skills, it will also drive up all of your expenses as well. The most immediate solution is to switch to a smaller ship. Other than that, in general bigger ships are more expensive now, if you want to sail a class 1 ship expect it to cost a few hundred grand a month. If you want to command a fleet of class 1 ships, don’t expect anything less than a million a month.
Why can’t I hire more officers?
Also related to the previous question. The number of officers you can hire is 2*Authority. Notably, this is the A in your PIRATES stats, not the Authority bar. The different archetypes have different Authority values, so some archetypes will be able to hire more officers than others. However, if you’re receiving penalties from manning a ship too big, your Authority will be reduced, which in turn reduces how many officers you can hire.
Why can’t I hire crew?
If you’ve just gotten off Martinique in the story, you’re not quite done with the tutorial yet. Unfortunately, the game still hasn’t fully opened up yet so you need to speak with Fadey on Guadeloupe and then return to Michel on Martinique before the game considers the tutorial over. Until that point, you are unable to do various things, including hiring more crew. If you tried to hire crew and the barkeep says you’re stingy, it means you have unpaid crew debts. Crew salaries can sometimes sneak up on you and they’re very easy to accidentally miss, make sure to check your crew debts on the fleet tab from time to time to make sure you haven’t missed any payments.
Why can’t my cannons hit anything?
Skill issue. Literally. At the start of the game, your accuracy and cannon skills are terrible. You need to find a cannoneer ASAP. As of recently, Folke Deluc starts with the Moonlighting skill, and has decent cannoneer skills, so you can assign him as both navigator and cannoneer until you get a better replacement. If you’re not at the start of the game and you just find yourself unable to hit anything in a fight, it could be that the defense of your target is too much greater than your accuracy, causing your shots to miss. Some people have also reported certain specific ships being bugged in this regard, causing shots to miss no matter what, though I’ve not been able to replicate this myself.
Why am I having a mutiny?
There are many factors that go into mutinies, but if you’re asking this question, it’s likely that you’ve already checked the usual stuff, like morale and debt. Officer Loyalty and Authority also play a significant part in mutinies. If an officer has low enough loyalty, they have a chance to incite a mutiny against you, if that officer is a companion on another ship in your fleet, they may just end up deserting your fleet and taking the ship and crew with. Authority, meanwhile, is the bar below your character picture on the inventory screen. If the bar is less than half full, your crew will start to grumble, and if it drops too low it will reach the point that no matter how happy they are or how loyal your officers are, they will simply mutiny in order to elect a captain they respect more. There are a few tricks to increasing Authority, the most important one tends to be regularly buying women for your crew at the brothel. Make a habit of stopping at brothels for this and you’ll quickly fill up your authority bar despite any other challenges.
Why is my Honor still dropping after Flying the Jolly Roger?
Once you become known as Charlie Prince, your Honor will drop at regular intervals. Until you repent your evil ways and return to Michel on St. Pierre, this will keep happening. For whatever reason, Michel is the only person you have to convince that you’re no longer evil.
I’m at the location a quest gave me, where is the ship I’m looking for?
A quest that tasks you with hunting a ship will either require you to find a ship on the Global Map, or engage a ship on the Local Map. There’s no clear wording on which one any given quest gives, but as a general rule: If a quest mentions that a ship will depart from a certain location, it will have specific-colored sails and travel on the Global Map, but if a quest only mentions where a ship will arrive at, you have to enter the Local Map of that region for the ship to spawn. If you get a notification in the top right that a vessel has been sighted on the horizon, you’ve come to the right place, however it may have spawned far away so you might not immediately spot it. If a ship is traveling from one location to another on the Global Map, the timeframe you’ve been given may not always be reliable, as it could travel faster or slower depending on the wind, or its path could be interrupted along the way. Sometimes it will even despawn before reaching its destination. Given all that, it’s generally best to attempt to intercept a ship by waiting for it to depart or finding it along the path, rather than waiting at its destination.
A job is telling me to go to a blank location, what do I do?
Unfortunately, there’s nothing you can do. You’ll see this come up for random jobs from time to time. Just reload and get a different job, this is a very old bug in the code that still has not been fixed.
Why am I being chased by pirate ships?
This question also has a few factors. Typically, pirate ships will regularly spawn to chase the player. You can fight them as normal or they can usually be easily avoided by just fleeing the battle, as they will despawn after you return to the Global Map. Also, if you pick up the perk “Scourge of the Sea” you will no longer be chased by random pirate ships. However, sometimes a special ship will spawn to chase you, the Gentlemen of Fortune. This ship will not despawn if you outrun it, and will require you to fight it. Your best bet if you’re simply outmatched is to lure it into a fort, as the fort will make quick work of it. If you have a bounty or are currently doing certain quest missions, you’ll often have interceptors chasing after you as well. The same applies to those however it may be a bit trickier as they will be of a certain nation, so you’ll need to make sure to lure them into a fort hostile to that nation or the fort won’t attack it.
Why is this ship I captured worth so little at the shipyard?
Most likely because you captured a ship that was generated by a quest. Essentially, any ship that spawns because of a quest or event is marked as such and sells for less. My guess is this was implemented to prevent players from spamming certain quests to generate a lot of big ships to capture and sell. There’s decent money to be made from prize ships, but there’s more money to be made elsewhere anyway.
I had a ship moored at a Harbor Master and now it’s gone, what happened?
Unfortunately, when a town is plundered by an enemy fleet, ships moored in the port are lost. This also applies to any money you have invested at the local Bank. The only thing safe from enemy attacks is cargo stored in warehouses.
How do I get rid of this bounty?
Abbot Benoit in the church of St. Pierre can fix your relations with Holland and Spain, while Fadey in his house in Basse-Terre can fix your relations with France and England. Each will require 600 doubloons, and after a few weeks your bounty will be reduced by 20,000.
I have the doubloons and resources, why can’t I upgrade my ship?
There is currently a mistranslation for the shipyards, and they state that you need to pay X doubloons. What you actually need to pay is X CHESTS of doubloons. You can sometimes find empty chests at the banker, use those to craft 150 doubloons and an empty chest into a doubloon chest. Otherwise, many quests and treasures will reward chests of doubloons, it’s often better to keep them in the chest until you need them.
Where is the Commandant?
There are actually two! It’s not usually made clear which one you’re supposed to talk to though. The first commandant is in the Prison and this tends to be the one you’re supposed to talk to for most quests. However, there is also a commandant in the armory room downstairs in the Fort, and sometimes you will actually need to speak to that one to progress some quests.
Tips for Ship Combat
Ship Combat can be tricky, especially early on. There’s a lot you can do to really maximize your effectiveness in battle, make sure you get the hang of It because there is a lot of Ship Combat in the game and it’s generally not nearly as cheesable as Land Combat.
Cannoneer: This can easily be the most critical aspect of improving your odds in ship combat, just get a better Cannoneer. Especially in the early game, a good Cannoneer should be one of the first things you look out for.
Manual Aim: If you find yourself in a situation where your shots just won’t connect, try aiming manually. Press Tab to switch to a first-person view and move around your ship with RMB. When you’re aiming, you’ll see a crosshair that will become highlighted when the fire arc can connect with a ship. Use this to make sure your Grapeshot is actually hitting the crew, or your Chainshot is actually hitting the sails.
Blind Spots: As you can tell from your own ship, your cannons can only fire a specific radius. If you can manage to outmaneuver your opponent, you stay within the corners of their ship and avoid their cannons altogether. At the very least, you can try to stay in front or behind the enemy, so they at least can’t hit you with broadsides.
Try Spinning: This is a good trick. When your reload speed is fast enough, you can often reload one side in the time it takes you to do a full rotation of your ship. Especially with smaller ships, a single broadside lacks the firepower to deal with enemy vessels, so just start spinning. This works even better if you have access to Quick Turnaround and Prepared Reloading.
Mines: Don’t underestimate mines! As long as you have enough gunpowder, and the maneuverability to bait a ship into them, mines can make quick work of any hostiles. This is easily the most reliable way to sink enemy ships when you otherwise lack the firepower.
Ramming Speed: This is pretty simple, big ships don’t care about smaller ships. Just plow right through them. Be very careful with this strategy though, as sinking ships are sometimes crazy enough to ignite their gunpowder stores to take you with them. Also, there’s an awkward bug where your ship can get caught in a shipwreck and immediately lose all its hull. Make sure you save before trying this.
Range: If you can outrange the enemy, they won’t be able to fire back. Couleuvrine-type cannons have much longer range than regular cannons, and if you manage to shred the enemy’s sails you can easily keep your distance and whittle them down. Cannonballs especially have the longest range of any ammo type, don’t underestimate the ability to sink a ship from relative safety.
Cover: This obviously won’t apply if you’re in the wide-open sea, but if you’re near land you can always just sail behind some rocks to block incoming volley. Just make sure you get back out when you fire back. You can also use other ships as cover, and friendly fire is a thing in Ship Combat, so you can even get enemy ships to hit each other! Just remember that the ship you’re hiding behind can still shoot you.
Ammo: If you’ve got the patience for it, you can wait for the enemy to deplete their ammo stores. Best if you have cover to hide behind, you can just let the enemy blow through all their bullets or gunpowder and close in once they do. A ship without gunpowder is a sitting duck.
Rocks: Those rocks aren’t just good cover! If you’ve got a small enough ship to slip through, you can run the enemy aground as they try to chase you. If the AI is stupid enough, they’ll sink themselves without you having to fire a single bullet.
Forts: If you can, try to either lure or push a ship you need to fight close to a fort hostile to it. Ship AI can be dumb sometimes so it won’t even try to flee the fort, and you can just sit back and watch a ship be blown to pieces by overwhelming firepower.
General Tips and Tricks
In this section I just wanted to go over any miscellaneous subjects, tips, tricks or any other details that I didn’t cover enough before. Some of these tricks are little… exploit-y, and some involve savescum, so it’s really up to you if you want to use some of the methods I’ll be going over here. A lot of these are more intended with Classic Mode in mind, being much less necessary in Exploration Mode due to the less strict requirements and removed timers. Expect this section to grow as I come up with more things worth mentioning.
The Art of Savescum:
Let’s kick things right off with savescum! A lot of encounters in this game have a random element to them, and can be somewhat exploited by saving and reloading to change an outcome or a reward. This sort of thing is never strictly required to progress, but can make your life easier if you have the patience to keep reloading until you get the result you want. Here’s a few things you can take advantage of with savescum:
Vendor Inventory: The items vendors have for sale is randomly pulled from a pool of potential items at the start of every day, and can be exploited in that regard. Simply save your game, advance 24 hours, and speak to the Vendor to check their inventory. If they don’t have the item you need, reload, and then repeat this process. If you are desperate for a particular item, like a piece of armor or a specific component, you can keep trying this until you get what you need.
Quest Givers: Similar to Vendors, the quests offered are also randomly pulled from a pool of potential quests every day. Furthermore, the specifics of the quest are random each time as well. If you’re looking for a specific quest, say a Destroy Smugglers quest from the Governor or a Stolen Ship quest from the Harbor Master, you can use the savescum process here. Save, advance 24 hours, and speak to the NPC. Simply reload and repeat if they don’t have the quest you’re looking for. Note that some NPCs have a cooldown period before offering jobs again, if they are telling you that no jobs are available you may need to wait multiple days to be offered a new quest.
Officers: The patrons at the Tavern are also randomly determined whenever you enter for the first time each day. If you are desperate for a particular kind of officer, savescum will work here too. Be sure to save outside of the Tavern, then advance 24 hours and enter. If the kind of officer you are looking for isn’t present, you know the drill, reload. This also works for other potential NPCs in the Tavern, like Merchants or Treasure Hunters.
Stealth: I’ll talk about stealth in more detail in a bit, but stealth checks will roll a different result every time they are attempted. If you desperately need to enter a port or slip past a guard, you can just keep reloading a save and attempting the check again until you get through.
Cargo: A ship’s cargo is randomly generated upon entering the Local Map. If you’re hunting traders looking for a specific good, like a Strategic Good for example, you can save on the Global Map and then engage the ship, and reload if it doesn’t have the cargo you want.
Fights: Is a fight just absolutely kicking your ass? Unless you’re on a ship, you can actually just pause the game and make a manual save, though sometimes you may only be able to do this with your weapon sheathed. Savescum your way through difficult fights this way.
There’s plenty of other minor things you can likely impact with savescum, but that’s really the gist of it. My advice? Don’t rely on savescum too much, it’s tedious and can drain a lot of fun from the game. If you keep failing at something, just move on. There’s not really anything you have to savescum to get through the game.
The Art of Saving Often:
Savescum aside, make sure to just save often regardless. A recent update has expanded the autosave feature so you’re much less vulnerable to losing progress on crashes now, but it’s important to not only rely on quicksaves and autosaves. There are many unfortunate quirks to this game where you can fail an important quest or some trigger can just break and you end up completely unable to progress. Make manual saves, name them, keep them. If you don’t like the clutter, go into your local files and just move the old saves to some backup folder so that you still have them in case you need them. It’s entirely possible to mess something up tremendously enough that you can lose the whole game, and if you don’t have a viable save file to go back to, you’d need to restart from the beginning. It’s happened to me, don’t let it happen to you. Also, don’t overwrite save files, I’m not sure if they’ve fixed the issues with this or not, but just don’t do it.
The Art of Stealth:
I’ve mentioned stealth in quite a few different sections of the guide but I wanted to just fully go over it here to just have everything in one place. While you’ll also use the Stealth skill for various random checks in dialogue, its main use comes from sneaking into Spanish ports. For the main way to do this, you’ll need the Spanish or Dutch Flag skill in order to disguise yourself and your ship. However, it is also possible to undertake some stealth operations without acquiring those perks, though they can be much trickier.
Spanish Disguise: This is your basic stealth method, put up a Spanish flag and start faking an accent. A lot of factors go into how successful you are at this. While at sea, you’ll need to deceive any nearby ship or fort, and failing against any present will reveal your French colors and turn them hostile. The size of your ship and the number of ships in your squadron will heavily affect your chances; it’s much easier to sneak in aboard a Lugger than with three Frigates. The Accountant also has an exclusive perk that significantly boosts the success chance of fooling forts and ships. Once on land, you’ll also need to fool any guards you come across. As with this method you’ll be landing at the port, there will always be two guards stationed at the dock during the day, and you must fool them in order to enter the town. This relies entirely on your stealth skill, which will likely be very bad at the start of the game. However, the Trustworthy perk will guarantee success against guards, though you won’t gain Stealth XP. This also only works early on, as once your Fame gets high enough the perk will no longer work for this.
Trade License: As an alternative to relying on Stealth, you can simply acquire a Dutch Trade License to get guaranteed access to any Spanish town, so long as you have the Spanish or Dutch Flag. This is always reliable, just make sure you don’t get your license revoked by attacking any trade ships.
If you’re seeking to do trade, shipyard work, or any kind of random quest in a Spanish town, primarily from Governors or Harbor Masters, you’ll need to do one of those two methods. Most NPCs in the important buildings won’t deal with you if your ship isn’t in port, and the Governor requires a Spanish or Dutch Flag to speak with at all.
Sneaking In: If you just have a single task you need to do in town and you haven’t been able to fool the fort, or perhaps don’t even have the required Flag perk at all, you can instead moor at a nearby beach and sneak into the town through the jungle. If you have the Trustworthy perk, you’ll be able to fool guards even without the Spanish Flag, but otherwise you’ll need to avoid them. Wait until midnight to enter the town, that way there won’t be any guards at the gate. You’ll still need to avoid the patrolling guards though, so hold shift to walk and just try to keep your distance while avoiding eye contact. Make your way to the nearest building and then wait until morning. Since you’ve gotten past the gate you don’t need to worry about the posted guards anymore, so you’ll just need to avoid the few guards that patrol during the day. Once you’re done, if you need to get out undetected for a mission, wait until night to get out quietly. Otherwise, just make a run for the gate.
Tricking Ships: If you have the right Flag perks, you can take advantage of your Stealth skill to set yourself up for a perfect attack on a ship. Simply fly a friendly Flag and as long as you pass the check, you can sail right up in front of the ship as it will likely have lowered both its sails and its guard. Switch back to a hostile flag and open fire with the element of surprise! You’ll get a nice sucker punch off and already be in a great position to control the flow of the battle.
The Art of Looting:
Yeah, that’s right, I’m talking about this here too. A.B.L. Always Be Looting! You’ll have a lot of dead bodies as you play, a lot of times they won’t have anything on them, but loot them all anyway. If you’ve looted everything off a body, select “No Search” to prevent the body from being looted again, allowing you to loot other bodies nearby. There are all sorts of valuable junk you’ll find from corpses, and big fights in particular will often have rare or even unique items as loot, so make sure you don’t miss anything.
There are also lots of containers you need to be searching. Chests and cabinets and the sort are obvious, but there are a lot of less intuitive things you can also search. During boardings, almost every door is a container, check around and you’ll find lots of extra stuff. In caves, there are obvious chests lying around but many caves also have hidden containers just in a small crevice or under a pile of rubble, be diligent and you’ll find lots of extra stuff.
Lastly, there’s also just free stuff lying around out in the open sometimes. Keep an eye out for anything that seems to stick out in the environment, this could be a small item on the floor, or a pouch or bottle sitting on a table, and also plants sticking out from their surroundings. All this stuff can be picked up by getting close and pressing Spacebar, so keep those eyes peeled! There’s a few very important items you can pick up this way during quest lines, though I’ll be sure to point them out when they come up.
The Art of Avoiding Fights:
There are a lot of fights in this game, but you can actually avoid a lot more of them than you may think. It’s rather simple to avoid them even, you just walk away. If you encounter a fight in the jungle, just put your weapon away and proceed to the next screen. If you encounter a fight at sea, just put enough distance on the enemy to exit back to the Global map. If you get caught sneaking into a town, just put your weapon away and make a bolt for the gate. It’s the sort of thing that seems obvious when it’s pointed out, but you might not even think you were allowed to. Note however that this only really works in freeplay, most fights in quests cannot be avoided.
An Extra Escape Trick at Sea: When a hostile ship starts approaching you on the Global Map, watch it closely and engage it at the farthest possible range. This will drop you into the Local Map already over 1000 distance away from your enemy, which will allow you to immediately return to the Global Map. Unless the ship pursuing you is special, it will despawn after and you can continue on your way. A great trick for traders that can’t defend themselves as effectively against pirates.
The Art of the Island Hop:
Has this ever happened to you? You need to deliver this letter to another island, but it’s over a week away and you only have three days left before time runs out! What if I told you… you could make it in a day? That’s right folks, introducing the latest innovation in teleportation technology: The Island Hop!
This is really a quite simple trick, made easier if you’re using the Global Map Boundaries mod. It relies on using Sail-To and Local Map sailing to quickly travel around the Caribbean and spending as little time on the Global Map as possible. You’ll need to get familiar with where the various ports and beaches of islands are geographically to get around, but you’ll get the hang of it over time. The bigger your ship is and the better your spyglass is, the farther distance you’ll be able to travel with Sail-To.
As an example, start by entering a region at the very Southern edge of the border, and sailing towards the region’s island. Hope for a favorable wind and accelerate time. Once you get close enough to the island, keep an eye on your Sail-To options, and as soon as you can, hop over to the nearest beach. From there, just hop around to the Northern side of the island, and continue sailing. Once you’ve put enough distance from the island, return to the Global Map and navigate across the border into the next region, and then repeat the process. Congratulations! In just a few hours you were able to travel a distance that could have taken you over a day on the Global Map! Taking advantage of the Island Hop can get you all over the Caribbean in days rather than weeks.
While it’s really the same thing, don’t forget about its variant: The Main Hop! It’s really easy to travel from the tip of the Yucatan to the edge of Brazil in a matter of hours since all the beaches along the Spanish Main are so conveniently located and the region borders are so tightly knit.
For Classic Mode the Island Hop is pretty necessary in many parts of the game due to strict timers, those playing Exploration mode shouldn’t really need to worry about this.
The Art of Money-Making:
You’ve got plenty of options when it comes to making money in this game, whether by plunder, trade, or questing, but there’s a few really important money-makers that can really turn you into a proper multi-millionaire.
Cooled Cargo: With a few rare exceptions, any cargo you’ve taken from another ship will be marked as stolen. Don’t just go selling that stuff right away, stick it in a warehouse and let it cool off first! It only takes a few weeks, just go about your business and when you come back you can sell for it typically twice as much as you could if you just sold it Hot. Don’t let your hard work go to waste, get the most out of your cargo!
Slave Trade: Yeah, this is pretty messed up, but it’s undeniable that slavery is obscenely profitable. Trade ships will often surrender without a single shot being fired, so while they may have some valuable cargo in the hold already, that crew of 200 or so is even more valuable if taken prisoner. Selling slaves in small batches is inefficient, you’ll want to make as big a sale as possible to avoid clashing with the authorities during smuggling operations too much. Even though slaves can’t be stored in a warehouse, you can actually just leave them in the hold of a moored ship, they won’t even need food while moored funnily enough. So, fill up a few spacious holds with slaves over time, and bring them to a smuggling deal all at once to make the most out of your time. Just remember that you can’t bring ships larger than Class 3 to smugglers, and it will need to be even smaller on the highest difficulties. Also remember that any time you’re carrying slaves, you’ll run the risk of a revolt at midnight, so either keep enough crew on board or simply save before midnight to savescum if a revolt happens.
Investments: Once you’ve got your first million, don’t just hand it over to bail your brother out of jail, make that money make money! Investing in bankers is a fantastic source of background income. The highest interest rate you can get on pesos is 6%, and will be deposited exactly a month after making the investment. Note that if you adjust the investment in any way, whether depositing more or withdrawing, it will reset that monthly timer. While each bank will have a different maximum investment you can make, interest has no limit, so fill up a bank and come back a few months later to pick up your free money. 17 million pesos at 6% a month will earn you just over a million per month! Just be careful, as you’ll lose any investments in a town that gets plundered by an enemy attack.
The Art of Freeplay:
There’s a lot you can do in this game even without the story. Combat, Trade, Side Quests, Treasure Hunting, the list goes on. If you’re playing Sandbox, this doesn’t really apply to you, freeplay to your heart’s content. For the rest of you on Story Mode though, you need to be careful about freeplaying too much. While CL no longer has Rank limits for certain questlines like TEHO did, you’ll still end up outpacing many quests if you take too long to do them. Challenges will be less challenging, rewards will be less rewarding, you’ll find much of the story disappointing if you approach it at too high a level, even if it does usually try to scale the difficulty to your Rank. Also, and this seems to even apply on Exploration Mode in some cases, there are a lot of timers between quests that can lock you out of further progression if missed. This comes up a lot in Flying the Jolly Roger, where you’ll finish one quest and be expected back in a few weeks. Many players view that as a soft timer, and spend the next month or so with freeplay or other quests, only to come back and learn they’ve failed the whole questline. Do what freeplay you can when you have downtime between quests and when it’s convenient, but I would strongly suggest avoiding freeplay and focusing on fully completing a quest line once you’ve started it. In my guide I’ll try to be as clear as possible when a quest line starts and ends.
The Art of Questing:
Beyond just random quests in freeplay, there are a lot of major side quests and even questlines in the game you’ll want to do. In CL, towns that have major quests available will now be marked with a yellow circle and exclamation point, making it much easier to tell where you can pick them up. Most of these quests will start by someone approaching you as soon as you enter port, so make sure you don’t dismiss them! If you simply don’t have the time to start a new quest, try to avoid marked ports until later, as you won’t be able to pick up a quest later if you decline it the first time. Other times, you’ll need to speak to a specific NPC in town to start one of these. It’s not obvious who you may need to speak to, but just keep looking around town and in buildings until you find someone with a marker over their head. Don’t neglect a quest once you’ve started it, they almost always have strict timers! I’ll be covering everything in my walkthrough, so stay tuned for that.
The Art of Paying Attention:
Please pay attention to what the game tells you. Given everything explained in this guide so far, there’s very little you should really even need a walkthrough for. I’m going to do it anyway, but I really cannot stress enough how beatable this game is if you just pay attention. If someone tells you to go to a certain location or speak with a certain person, you have no excuse for not knowing where to go. If someone tells you to return in two weeks, don’t be surprised when you fail the quest after returning a month later. Yes, there are a lot of really harsh moments in this game where you can fail an entire questline, but there are very few moments in the game where you will be expected to do anything unprompted. Pay attention to dialogue, pay attention to Charles when he shares his thoughts, pay attention to the quest log, pay attention to the world. You truly don’t need someone to hold your hand, all the information you need is out there.
Once I found the prisoner in his cell in Havana, he instructed me to speak with the government.
The government attacks me when I do. If I don’t speak Spanish, how in the world do I finish? I entered with a trade certificate.
Nevermind. He continues to attack me even though I cleared the Spain bounty by using the cheat to improve nation-state relations.
I’m attempting to finish this quest in which I kidnap Dorothy Loadman and demand a ransom. I’ve already battled for her and taken her, but now it says I have to take her to Willemstad to see a man by the name of Gabriel Lovett. When I ask the bartender about him when I arrive at the port and enter the tavern, he confirms that the man is there and that he usually walks the streets between 12:00 and 9:00 p.m. I have asked every man, woman, child, and even the guards around the town in order to write this, but I have not found anyone by that name. Even checked outside of those times and nothing was found. I am currently unable to finish the quest, and this worthless woman is trapped in my passenger hold. Regretfully, there is also no mention of a timer in this quest.
Has anyone else completed this quest or experienced a comparable event? I’m new to the game and I really like it, but even with walkthroughs, it can still be challenging at times to navigate and distinguish between what is a bug and what is just poorly explained.
In addition, I discovered a treasure map. However, as soon as I open it and equip it, the following text appears: “If the legend is true, the treasure is hidden in a cave to the north of the Aztec temple, a chest near the rope hanging from the ceiling on the mainland.” The map is still in excellent condition. but there’s no real map—is this typical? In any case, I discovered an Aztec temple close to Belize, and as of my most recent save, I’m at the temple but unable to locate the cave. The two caves that I did explore were empty; the one that did contain a treasure chest was probably not the correct one because it was not close enough to the temple, but strangely, I was unable to open it. It’s all kind of annoying at times, I guess. I want to love this as much as I loved playing Pirates of the Caribbean as a child. Any assistance is greatly valued.
You’re looking for a cave that’s a few screens away from that temple. Your map will be thrown away and a notification will appear in the corner once you’ve located the correct cave. I have no idea about the kidnapping; I never handle that kind of work.
I’m grateful. We’ll find a solution for at least one of the issues. I’m hoping that carrying her around won’t cause any more game glitches before I finish my save.
Even though that quest wasn’t in Willemstad, I completed it once without any issues. The fact that it was reworked and is now a large town may have contributed to the bug where the guy never appears. However, if it states until 9 p.m., attempt to wait until 8:30, when the majority of people usually head home, and search for anyone who sticks out. Sometimes, when I go around the town at night, I can find the people I’m looking for in terms of nobleman requests side-quests. They are very easy to find because they stand out against the guards. Check to see if that’s helpful. Alternatively, you could try searching for him in the church at 9, 10, 11, or 12 am, respectively, as the quest description might be completely inaccurate.
Have you been able to finish the quest? I have the same quest, but Clement Larivee is my man.
Regretfully, you have to talk to every single person you encounter on the street. Clement Larivee will be one of them.
You will be presented with quests in this game all the time that you are either not ready for yet or do not have time for because you are working on something else. If you do not complete these quests quickly, you will fail and lose forever. I understand that the original game has this terrible design, and it doesn’t seem like anything can be done about it. Recognized.
So let me ask you this: What happens if you decline a storyline quest offered by someone (like the Indian chief) when they approach you upon landing in a port? Is this questline permanently lost? Or does the quest eventually reappear? Presumably, it doesn’t. Why? due to the sadist nature of the ODs.
It feels like a minefield when you play this game. I’m scared to take any action for fear of ruining my playthrough. Every time I think I’m making progress, another piece of nonsense flies in like a monkey wrench.
Some, I believe, do. The Chief told me he would stay for a while when I first turned him down. I think it varies for certain story quests.
This is about my sixth try at a playthrough. There was potential for this game to be very special. However, it’s a huge mess. I’m scared of doing anything because I think it will ruin my game forever. Getting close to ******** the whole experience.
Why are people so keen to finish everything in a single playthrough? This game lets players create multiple playthroughs for a reason. You’ll end up in the same place as everyone else, so it’s okay if you skip some quests. After that, you can start over and try to finish the tasks you missed during your first playthrough.
Why not just finish your first playthrough and start a new one with different rules (such as selecting a different Dutch Gambit route or girl, etc.) instead of starting over five times? To save yourself more annoyance, you might as well just keep playing the game as you are.