Black Flag Resynced’s Final Major Update Adds New Game+

New Game+ and a Nightmare difficulty are the stars of Title Update 1.0.8 for Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced, which Ubisoft is calling the game’s final major content update. The update went live today at 7:00 AM Pacific (10:00 AM Eastern) on PlayStation 5, XBOX Series X|S, and PC, and Ubisoft says smaller quality of life updates will continue over the coming months. The remake launched on July 9 and sold over three million copies in its first week. In my review, I called it an extremely polished remake that rarely feels like a cynical nostalgia play, and after about 40 hours on a PlayStation 5 Pro, I said I could see myself sinking dozens more hours into the world.

The carry-over list for New Game+ covers nearly everything from a completed playthrough, including Edward’s tools, upgrades, unlocked weapons, and trinkets, all of the Jackdaw’s upgrades along with officer abilities and pets, money, materials, and trade goods, unlocked outfits, Hideout progression, perks, and the art collection, every Kenway fleet ship, codex items including treasure maps, and anything purchased from the store. There are a few exceptions, though, starting with officers, who won’t physically be on the ship and need to be recruited again, while quest-related items get removed and forts have to be retaken because the map’s fog resets.

Each New Game+ run makes the Caribbean more dangerous, with Elite Soldiers appearing more often and max rank ships patrolling the waters, and the difficulty keeps climbing through New Game+++++, which is five runs deep. Ubisoft has also added a currency called Escudos that’s exclusive to New Game+ playthroughs, earned by completing challenges and looting previously completed chests, or by exchanging Reales for Escudos at the General Store. Escudos buy new outfits and items exclusive to New Game+, and anything that previously cost Reales still does, at the same vendor for the same price.

Nightmare Mode goes in the opposite direction from what I described in my review, where stealth and combat were forgiving, with generous parry timing and separate difficulty sliders. On Nightmare, enemies deal 1.8 times the damage, the parry window shrinks, the white glint on enemy attacks is gone, ranged enemies shoot more often, and the one-shot kill safety is disabled, so a bullet or explosive can kill Edward outright even with a full health bar. Stealth gets stricter too, with detection time greatly reduced, investigation time extended, enemies able to hear Edward moving faster than a walk, and high spots only hiding him if he’s at least six meters above an enemy instead of four. All ship damage is increased on the naval side, which was the part of the game I found clunkiest in my review, and sharks, urchins, jellyfish, and harpooning wildlife all hit harder while the oxygen meter depletes faster.

Beyond the two headline features, Ubisoft has hidden six new community chests around the map, some with community-requested rewards, and it isn’t giving any hints this time. Takedown animations from the original game are back as well, covering hidden blade, unarmed, single sword, and gunblade takedowns, though I never played the original Black Flag, so I can’t speak to how faithful they are. New cosmetics ranging from outfits to pet skins and trinkets are collected by playing through New Game+. The bug fix list includes an issue that stopped players from launching the game in Offline Mode after losing server connection mid-session, more Rogue Waves during storms, Deluxe edition Blackbeard items now showing as owned in the Exchange, a freeze while playing tavern games, and a long list of quest fixes. The full patch notes put the download at 4.5GB on PlayStation 5, 15.5GB on XBOX Series X|S, 4.3GB on PC, and 2.1GB on Steam.