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.
And it counts towards Blow The Man Down, Edward Catway, Hungover, Yo Ho…, Glutton for Nourishment, Smooth Operator, Business And Pleasure, required for the platinum.
The four hidden in plain sight
Four trophies with hard-trophy percentages and tutorial-level difficulty.
Friend To All — 9.1%. It asks you to interact with "all seven friendly animals", and here is the problem: the description undersells it, in practice there are eight. Most are in Kingston, around the market and the docks: cat, chicken, dog, cow and pig. The turtle is on Ábaco Island. The parrot, in Havana's market, inside a cage. The eighth is the monkey, and it is not roaming the map: you get it by completing a side quest south of Havana, and then pet it below deck on your ship. That is the reason for the 9.1%: people pet seven and write the trophy off as bugged.
Blow The Man Down — 6.9%. The least earned in the game after the platinum and Dilettante. It asks you to shoot down the hanging bodies at Long Bay, and there are 3: shoot each one's rope. What makes it rare is that Long Bay does not exist until the main mission The Observatory; before that the island is inaccessible.
Edward Catway — 8.3%. Break 50 potted plants. They sit on balconies, ledges and rooftops; Nassau has more than fifty in the centre alone and Havana is well stocked. The fast method is not stopping to break them one by one: parkour across the roofs and knock them over as you pass.
Hungover — 31.1%. Go to any tavern, walk up to the rum bottle on the bar and interact with it five times, at 25 reales a swig. The screen blurs, a cutscene starts and Edward wakes up in a haystack.
The ones that accumulate wrong if you don't know
Two trophies that do keep a count, but not of what you think.
Glutton for Nourishment — 58.4%. It asks you to consume 20 food items, and the nuance that leaves plenty of people finishing the game without it is that the potions in your inventory do not count. Only food you loot from the environment — bushes, camps, cities — and eat.
The practical rule is a single line: when you are hurt, heal by eating what you find, not with potions. Do that from the start and you reach 20 without thinking; skip it and you end the run on five.
Yo Ho… — 84.8%. You only need one shanty, and that very high percentage says almost nobody misses it. It is still worth knowing how they work, because they are odd collectibles: you see them floating around the cities and you chase them by parkour. As you get close, the sheet starts moving and pauses for a moment before vanishing: you grab it in that pause. You find the first in Havana already.
And two that come on their own
They are here to close the count, because they ask nothing of you:
Smooth Operator — 87.2%. Craft an item. It is part of the mandatory crafting tutorial, on the little island you stop at right after getting the Jackdaw. Impossible to miss.
Business And Pleasure — 62.0%. Spend 50,000 reales. If you are going for the platinum it pops without you noticing: between Jackdaw upgrades and restoring Great Inagua you go well past that figure.
The only part worth thinking about is the order of spending: put the money into Great Inagua first, not the ship. The more restored the village, the more money the manor's chest generates over time, and that money pays for the rest of the platinum.
The trophies involved
Each one links to its section inside the full Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced trophy guide.