Officers, Templars and smugglers: the side content that unlocks trophies

Two of the five officers hand you abilities other trophies need, and without them the button does nothing. Plus the Templar hunts, the five smuggler dens, and the island where Owned takes ten minutes.

Completing them unlocksAll Hands On DeckBronze27.40%

And it counts towards Help A Brother Out, Among Thieves, Owned, required for the platinum.

The EveryTrophy team3 min readPublished on 31/08/2026Updated on 31/08/2026Covers 4 of the 50 trophies

The five officers, and the two to recruit early

All Hands On Deck asks you to recruit all five officers, and it sits at 27.4%. But its real value is not the trophy: it is that two of them unlock abilities other trophies need.

The five:

- Adéwalé and Anne Bonny arrive through the story. Nothing to do. - The Father and Lucy Baldwin become available from Sequence 4 and are recruited by following their missions, marked with a pirate-hat icon on the map. - Tobias Smith requires completing the first four missions of the In A World Without Gold line.

And here is the fact that saves frustration:

- The Father grants the ram, a prerequisite for Return The Favor. - Lucy grants the perfect brace, a prerequisite for Old Ironsides.

If you try either of those two trophies before recruiting them, you are not failing through poor execution: the ability does not exist yet. Recruit both as soon as they open, in Sequence 4.

Key

The Father and Lucy are not optional in practice: without them two naval trophies are literally impossible, because the abilities they ask for are not unlocked.

Templar hunts and smuggler dens

Help A Brother Out asks you to complete one Templar hunt sequence, and there are four. They unlock after Sequence 4 and appear marked on the map.

Each is a chain of missions that ends with assassinating a Templar and walking away with a Templar key, which opens a door in the Great Inagua manor. One is enough for the trophy, but the keys matter.

The one to start with is Nassau's, short and simple. Havana's is four missions alongside Rhona Dinsmore. It sits at 60.2%.

Among Thieves asks you to open a smuggler's chest. The dens appear on the map with a cave icon and there are five. The process is always the same: clear the den, steal the key from one of the guards — eagle vision with L2 finds it fast — and open the chest.

One is enough for the trophy, but it pays to do all five: they are where the 6 map fragments come from, which settle Zero Waste without relying on luck. It sits at 52.5%.

Owned: Ábaco Island and the animals people forget

Owned asks you to complete every activity in a single location. Each location has its own list and progress bar, so you can check as you go.

By far the most convenient is the game's first island, Ábaco Island. All you have to do is synchronise the viewpoint, open the chests, grab the treasure map and hunt the animals.

And here is the detail that leaves the bar at 90% with no explanation: the animals count as an activity, including the island's dominant animal where there is one. On Ábaco that means also hunting the iguana, on top of the ocelot the story already asks of you.

It is a ten-minute trophy if you do it on Ábaco as soon as you arrive, and a half-hour one if you attempt it on a large island. It sits at 67.4%.

The trophies involved

Each one links to its section inside the full Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced trophy guide.

All Hands On DeckBronze27.40%
Recruit all Officers
Original name: All Hands On Deck
Help A Brother OutBronze60.20%
Complete a Templar Hunt sequence
Original name: Help A Brother Out
Among ThievesBronze52.50%
Unlock a smuggler's chest
Original name: Among Thieves
OwnedBronze67.40%
Complete every activity in a single location
Original name: Owned

Other Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced guides

The Great Inagua manor: the 111 objects that decide the platinum
Dilettante is held by 3.9% and the platinum by 3.8%: whoever fills the manor, platinums. Here is the breakdown and the save trick that halves the time.
The 4 trophies that come down to luck in Black Flag Resynced
None is hard to execute and all four stall the same way, because they depend on the game spawning the event. One can be forced with a save; the other three cannot.
Maxing out the Jackdaw: the eleven forts and the legendary ships
Devil of the Caribbean sits at 8.4% and Ship This at 17.2%. They are the same problem: without a maxed ship there is no fight. The right order, where the money comes from, and why difficulty does not matter.
The Kenway Fleet: board instead of sinking
Every ship you sink is a ship that never joins your fleet. The four classes Collective Madness asks for, how to find a convoy, and why fleet slots depend on Great Inagua.
Underwater: the seven dives, the Black Trench and the 57 locations
The Sequence 6 diving bell opens four trophies at once, and one of them — Cartographer — stays locked forever if you never go down. How to do them in a single pass.
The eight trophies you only miss because you never knew they existed
Blow The Man Down sits at 6.9% and Edward Catway at 8.3%, and neither is hard. Eight trophies that are trivial to execute and whose only barrier is knowing: where they are and why people walk straight past.
The tavern games: the game's hardest trophy is not a fight
Grandmaster sits at 7.5%, below the legendary ships. Draughts, fanorona and nine men's morris against an AI that genuinely wins, and the two-machines-against-each-other method.
Boar, shark and ocelot: the three animal trophies and their coordinates
Double Tap sits at 13.2% and the game's best opportunity passes in the first few minutes, once. The three animal trophies, and the counter-intuitive advice they share: do not kill the second beast.
The seven combat feats: three need gear you have to buy first
Let Me Explain and Gun-kata are not failed through clumsiness: they are failed because the weapon you carry has a cap. The seven on-foot combat trophies, with each one's gear requirement.
The five story trophies: where they land and where people quit
From 95.3% to 27.2% across twelve sequences. None is missable, but one of the five opens Great Inagua and decides when the platinum really begins.