Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag Resynced has received several major facelifts that make it worth playing for both new players and fans of the original, but one gameplay aspect that has remained relatively the same from the original is the Harpooning gameplay. Despite the system being brought back over a decade later, the Harpoon system in Black Flag Resynced is still a bit tricky to get used to, let alone to master.
Especially if you choose to play Black Flag Resynced on higher difficulty levels, you’ll need to make full use of the following mechanics and upgrade your rowboat to be able to have success with greater difficulty catches later on in the game.
How Harpooning Works In Black Flag Resynced
Hunting sea life in Black Flag Resynced can be divided into three distinct stages: tethering and attacking your prey, waiting for it to reappear after disappearing under the water, and counterstriking when the creatures rise again, which varies between each animal as bites from Sharks, charges from Killer Whales, or tail slaps from larger Whales.
When it comes to actually catching aquatic animals in Black Flag Resynced, you’ll only have to worry about two main controls after you’ve located your prey, those being aiming down and throwing harpoons. While you can throw them without much buildup, holding down the attack button will charge up your reticle to deal more damage, which is more efficient than just attacking as fast as possible.
On greater difficulties, you will often run out of harpoons before the hunt is over unless you’re both charging and not missing any shots.
While charging up your attacks, your harpoon will glow for a brief second when the reticle enters the diamond-shaped aim symbol in the center of your screen, which will unleash a ‘Perfect Strike’ when released in this brief window. Aside from dealing additional damage, Perfect Strikes will also cancel the attacks of your prey when they try to strike back at you and your rowboat, which can put an end to your hunt early if left unchecked.
How To Upgrade Your Harpoon Abilities In Black Flag Resynced
If you’re struggling to succeed at harpooning animals or want to go after higher-rarity prey but find your equipment lacking, you’ll need to head over to your hideout in Great Inagua and construct the Harbourmaster to level up your rowboat and harpoon attacks. After initially unlocking them, consecutive harbormaster upgrades will allow you to craft even more upgrades for your Harpoon hunting up to 3 each for harpoon ammo, harpoon damage, and rowbot durability.
Even if you’ve upgraded your Harbormaster to the third and final level, however, you’ll notice that there is one final enhancement that requires you to find the Elite Harpoon Plan, which needs a bit of extra legwork before you can master Edward’s hunting capabilities through the following steps, which are also outlined in the images above:
- Find the Treasure Map on Mariguana Island (849, 515)
- Go to Andreas Island (543, 699)
- Dig up the Buried Treasure on the southern part of the island (544, 693)
- Return to the Harbormaster and purchase your final upgrade (Level 3 Harbormaster required)
Once you’ve completed these steps, you’ll be able to go out harpooning like a pro, although greater difficulty creatures can still pose a significant challenge if you’re not taking full advantage of the Perfect Shot mechanic.
Where To Find All Aquatic Animals In Black Flag Resynced
Unlike traditional land animals that have set spawn locations in Black Flag Resynced, aquatic animals will instead spawn randomly throughout the ocean, with the only way to tell what animal is at each location on the map being to hover over it yourself.
While this randomness can make farming for a specific animal more than a little annoying at times, given Black Flag‘s massive map, I’ve found the following areas to be the most common ones to find each of the varying levels of sea creatures in Black Flag Resynced:
|
Animal |
Common Locations |
Frequent Section |
|---|---|---|
|
Bull Shark |
Eleuthera, Dry Tortuga, Gibara |
Upper (easy) |
|
Hammerhead Shark |
Eleuthera, Dry Tortuga, Gibara |
Upper (easy) |
|
Great White Shark |
Punta Guarico, Cruz, Castillo de Jagua |
Middle (medium) |
|
Killer Whale |
Punta Guarico, Cruz, Castillo de Jagua, Contoyor |
Middle (medium) |
|
Humpback Whale |
Navassa, Charlotte, Serranilla, Chincorro |
Lower (hard) |
|
White Whale |
TBA |
TBA |
While you’ll start finding higher rarity sealife like Humpback Whales higher up on the map as you progress through the story of Black Flag Resynced‘s world and explore more of its world, the sealife still tends to spawn most frequently within the three major quadrants of the game world.
While the White Whale previously spawned randomly as part of the Online Events in the original Black Flag, given that several of the biggest changes in Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced come from the fact that the Animus system and its online capabilities have been massively overhauled, we’re still waiting to see if the spawn mechanics will change after the full release.
- Released
-
July 9, 2026
- ESRB
-
Mature 17+ / Blood, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, Use of Alcohol, Violence / In-Game Purchases, Users Interact
- Franchise
-
Assassin’s Creed
- Number of Players
-
Single-player
- Steam Deck Compatibility
-
Unknown