Kenway’s Fleet is the passive-income engine in Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced. You capture ships during naval combat, dock them, and send them out on missions across the Caribbean while you keep exploring. Done right, it feeds you a steady stream of Reales and trade goods without any extra sailing on your part.
Quick answer: Complete the Sequence 4 mission “This Old Cove” to unlock the fleet, capture an enemy naval fort in a region to open its missions, then board enemy ships and pick “Send to Kenway’s Fleet” to build a roster. Run Trade and Piracy missions for money, and Patrol missions to lower a region’s risk so your ships survive.
How to unlock Kenway’s Fleet
The fleet becomes available once you finish “This Old Cove” during Sequence 4 of the main story. After that, you can reach the fleet planning table two ways. It sits inside your manor at Great Inagua, and it’s also below deck in the Captain’s Cabin on the Jackdaw, in the room just under the ship’s wheel.
Unlocking the feature isn’t enough on its own. Each region of the map is locked behind its naval fort. Until you storm and capture that fort, you can’t send ships on missions there. Clearing a fort opens the region’s fog and unlocks its available missions, so grabbing forts is the fastest way to expand where your fleet can operate.
How to capture and recruit ships
You build your roster during ordinary naval battles. The trick is to damage an enemy vessel without sinking it, then board it once its health is low.
Other boarding options exist, including Restore Health to repair the Jackdaw, Lower Wanted Level to shake off Hunter ships, and looting the captain’s lockbox for extra money when it appears. Only “Send to Kenway’s Fleet” grows your roster, so pick it whenever you’re building up.
Don’t grab every schooner you see. Slots are limited, and different missions demand different ship classes, so a varied stable of Schooners, Brigs, Frigates, and Man-o-Wars matters far more than raw numbers.
Mission types and which ships they need
Available missions show up as pieces on the fleet map inside captured regions. Each has a theme, a completion timer, a damage range, and a reward. Hover over a piece to see the required ship class and what it pays out before you commit. There are four core mission types, and each one calls for a specific ship.
| Mission | Ship needed | Reward |
|---|---|---|
| Trade | Schooner | Gold |
| Piracy | Brig | Gold and various resources |
| Scouting | Frigate | Refills warehouses |
| Patrol | Man-o-War | Lowers regional risk |
Some missions also require you to spend trade goods to begin, such as wine, sugar, or spices. That makes the fleet a give-and-take system. You earn resources by completing missions, but you spend some to start others. Trade and Piracy are where the real money and materials come from, while Scouting and Patrol keep the whole operation running.
Unlike the original game, there’s no separate turn-based battle minigame. You assign a ship, it leaves, and you get a pop-up when it returns so you can claim rewards from the table.
Managing risk level and ship damage
Every mission lists a damage range the assigned ship can suffer. Each ship has a set health pool, and if that health hits zero, the ship sinks and is lost. The safe rule is simple. Assign a ship whose health is higher than the mission’s maximum possible damage, so even a worst-case result can’t destroy it.
Region risk changes those numbers. Risk Level, shown by a skull meter in the bottom-right of the fleet map, rises the more piracy your fleet commits in an area. When a region’s risk is high, the total damage a ship can take can climb past 100 percent, which can push potential damage above a ship’s health and cause missions to fail.
To bring risk down, recruit a Man-o-War and send it out on Patrol missions in that region. Completing a patrol lowers the local Risk Level, reducing the damage your other ships take, which is what keeps longer and more profitable Trade and Piracy runs from failing.
Expanding fleet slots and buying berths
You start with only a handful of berths, so slots fill up fast after a few captures. You add more by upgrading your base of operations at Great Inagua. Each new berth has its own prerequisite tied to improving facilities and parts of your hideout.
Once a berth is unlocked, open the Fleet menu, select the new slot, and pay gold to purchase it. Each berth costs more than the last, so the price climbs as your roster grows.
Repair or salvage ships after each mission
Ships almost always come back with hull damage. In the Fleet screen you have two choices for each battered vessel. You can repair it, or you can salvage it for a small amount of resources.
To repair, select the damaged ship and hold A on Xbox or X on PlayStation. It costs a small amount of resources and finishes in a few seconds, after which the ship is ready to sail again. Reliable, valuable ships are worth repairing if the fleet is a priority for you.
For smaller, common ships, salvaging is often the better call. Replacements are usually cheaper and quicker to find on the open sea than the cost of repairs. If your fleet is full, salvaging also clears space. Two Brigs sitting idle, for example, is a fine reason to scrap one and make room for a Frigate or Man-o-War.
Best fleet setup for money and resources
Since Trade and Piracy pay the most, lean into Schooners and Brigs early to keep those missions running. As you progress, add a few Man-o-Wars so you can run Patrol missions and keep regional risk low enough for the longer, higher-paying jobs to succeed.
Keep upgrading the quality of your roster too. Swapping weaker ships for stronger captures raises your odds on tougher missions. And before you launch a new run, check the fleet and repair anything worth keeping so you go out at full strength. Note that ships take damage on missions, so a steady stockpile of Reales and resources for repairs is part of running the fleet well.
