How to Take Down FOUR Pirate Hunters in AC4 SINGLE-HANDED, with Just Sword & Pistol!!!
Many of you may have seen my recent post about how to take down TWO pirate hunters without using the Jackdaw, other than for transportation. Now, I've figured out a variation of this loophole in the AC4 game, which allows you to take down ALL FOUR of the pirate hunters SINGLE-HANDED. If you haven't read that post yet, go read it first, then come back. For those who HAVE read my first post, read on.
The trick here is to get all four pirate hunters chasing you, then lure them into the trap, so you can then board and slaughter them all, one ship at a time. First, you have to build and maintain a Four Red X (or red crossed cutlasses) Alert Status. This simply means being bad enough to out-fight them, and/or quick and clever enough to outrun and out-maneuver the pirate hunters. NEXT: With your Four RED X status, go into the game with the intent of pissing them off and staying out in front of them. This means taking down ships (but NOT pirate hunters!), firing at every ship in range but not staying to fight; we're really trying to piss the game off (meaning trigger alarms) to the point that ALL FOUR of the pirate hunters spawn in and start chasing you. Stay at least 400 yards out in front of them, allowing them to gather in a fairly tight group, while leading to a kill zone trap.
Using the loophole in the game described in my other post, this time, I used the same narrow channel at the lower left of the map, only this time, I used the southern inlet of the channel, which provides you with several high vantage points along the shore, to take screenshots of your 4 ship victory. Again, it's all about timing; they're chasing you, but you're far enough out in front that the attack alarm has not yet triggered, and we don't want that to happen EVER, in order to make this trap work.
The minute you get around the point, just out of sight, you drop sail, but NOT the wheel; turn around and wait until you see the masts of the first pirate hunter appear over the trees; now, drop the wheel quickly, before the ship comes fully into sight and "sees" you. This is the loophole we will exploit again; the pirate hunters MUST stop when you drop the wheel, unless the attack alarm has already sounded; if they keep coming and attacking, you've blown that chance, and have to get away and try again. Once you get your timing figured out, you can take them every time.
Once the PH ships have stopped, all you have to do is swim to them and (assuming your fighting skills and strategy is good) kill em all, one by one, swim to the next ship and repeat. Just like in the first post, after you've taken down all of the crews, you can then return to the Daw, ram each ship one by one, and plunder them. The game asks you to take the flag or blow up powder kegs, but if you killed all of the crew during your solo swimming attack, you won't have to fight again.
This is great fun to do; try it, and let me know how it worked for you!
I've got some great screenshots of my four captured pirate hunters; once I figure out how, I'll post some.
lol I did that sometimes.
Thing is, the combat was so easy, capturing a Hunter Man O' War wasn't even a challenge.
It was still fun though.
Now after having cleared the ship, having taken down the flag etc. I expected to be able to CAPTURE the Man O' War and be able to SAIL it from then on.
Sadly that was never possible.
It was all I wanted from beginning to end of the game. Sail on a Man O' War.
They sure crushed that dream of mine.
Oh btw because clearing those decks was not that hard, I most often chose to just fight against those 4 hunter ships ( Man O 'War, 2 frigattes etc. ) at the same time with the Jackdaw.
Was lots of fun!
Funny thing is how the Hunter Frigatte was capable of doing much more damage than the Man O 'War because it shoots several rounds in one go compared to the Man O' War.