Assassin recruit bug: 'Stuck at 90% completion' - Denying me 100% ACH! [SOLUTION FOUND!]

[Maycom]

EDIT: Found a solution, check my other comment. Leaving this thread for anyone who might need it in the future.

Hi, I need some help in AC3 regarding 100% sync. The completionist achievement in essence!

One of my assassin recruits: "Jacob Zenger" is bugging/glitching out in the sense that he is not recognized as a master assassin, meaning that his progress is at 90%; despite the fact that I have him at max lvl rank and I have completed everything else in the game - including any and all missions...

I have already tried solving my problem through various means in game and minute things such as verifying game files on steam etc. My best efforts to understand the problem through forums and threads have come short, and it seems other people have had the problem before.

I'm at 17060/17070 points in the DNA string, which equates to as close to 99% complete as is possible. So you can understand my frustation. To be exact it's the side mission: "Make Jacob Zenger an assassin" that isn't working, showing as 90% when it should register as 100%.

Does anyone else have this same issue? Do anyone know about this and/or have anyone found a way to fix this problem?

I do have a case open with Ubisoft, but it has been months with no news and in either case I want to expand my broadcast if help can possibly be obtained elsewhere ;)
Any help is most welcome at this point.

Thank you for your time!

[Maycom]

I finally got the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ achievement and let me tell you it took a lot of extra time, effort and frustation...

The achievement in focus being "Completionist": "Complete ALL progress tracker grid-entries."

First of all, I can now definetevely say that if you experience this bug which you can verify by checking your DNA string and seeing a recruit at 90%, while knowing that the recruit is maxed out with exp and rank in the "send assassins on missions window", then your save file is bugged out and there is nothing you can do which will fix it. Take it from me who as a perfectionist with a 166 hours in game; have tried absolutely everything, that you can't fix it. At this point I know everything about everything in this game, so on a side note you are welcome to add me or chat with me here or personally about any questions you might have.

I can't say exactly where the bug is in the game files or how integrated it is, but I can say that only the original developers of the game can fix it, which is not happening so forget about that.

So now that we have that established, you are left with only one choice. You have to play on a different save file... Yes this means either making a new save game (completely restarting) or using someone else's save file.



Swearing off that I would restart the game; I spent my blood and sweat trying to make another persons save game work on my account.

This if far more difficult that you might imagine. As it turns out, your save games in AC3 are connected your Uplay/Ubisoft account and personalized so that only you can use them. If you trying copying another person's save, it will show as damaged and unusable. The reason for this is because your personal info is encrypted within the save file and the game always checks for this before loading.

The way I got around this problem was to decrypt the save file and then to encrypt it with my own data. This originally was not working for one reason or another until I discovered that simply encrypting with my AC3 serial key did the trick. So I can't say if the Ubisoft account ID is also linked in the save file and whether or not it's important, but in either case simply encypting AC3 serial key seems to work.

All of this was done with a very simple small program called:

'AC3SaveGameTool' --- by Brucie

I don't know who Bruice is but a huge thank you, this would have been so much more excruciating without this handy little tool.

Here is a link which works as of May 22nd, 2018:
https://mega.nz/#!apxSUT4K!fQ3ZfQsoB6mYeVbwnXnKg2_A8Ft5nvQR4SrzKrUpwqU

Don't worry it's virus free if you are suspisious. You can always run it through your anti virus sandbox tool or something similar if you are worried, but the days of viruses in these kinds of places is over, that is at least my personal own observation...

The tool is very simple to understand and only has 2 options: decrypt and encrypt.
Here is how to use it:
Copy the application from your downloads folder (so that you have a spare, in case) into the folder where your AC3 save game files are located. The application does not interfere with the game when launched even when the game is running, so just leave it there while experimenting to find a useable save file.

Set Uplay in offline mode, to prevent the cloud from ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ up the save files. It's just an annoyance not a problem. Once you are completely done you can play in online mode as normal, just make sure to upload local files if asked and simply do something in game to force an upload of new data. REMEMBER TO MAKE A BACKUP OF NEW FILES IN CASE THEY GET OVERWRITTEN BY CLOUD DATA. Just to save time. And of course backup your old original save files before doing anything.

Start by decypting the save file you are trying to use, and you probably have to do it twice for it to work. It works when you see a series of 00 00 00 00...
Then encrypt and choose "enter activasion key" under Uplay. Then copy paste your AC3 serial key which you can find in account information in Uplay.
Now you are done, check and see if it works in game. You can do this easily be being in the main menu in game while changing files etc. The game isn't bothered by this and this is very handy as loading the game through those static 20 sec makes you want to kill yourself. Just be sure to go out of the load screen selector back to main menu everyime so that you can actually see the changes.

Here is a link to a youtube video going through everything:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Pq6EdB2MpM
The name of the video is: [ITA]Assassin's Creed 3 *SkidRow* Recupero Savegame corrotti-"Brucie Tool"
He doesn't speak english and a few things he does could be a little hard to follow, but just watch a few times and pay attention and it should be easy enough to understand. Also note that he uses a different encryption method which did not work for me. My method works and is much faster, but you can try all the different methods if it doesn't work for you for some reason.
The main reason I'm linking this video is to show you visually what i'm talking about...

Where is the save game files located you might ask?
I installed them at the default location without making any changes which I'm assuming most other people have also done, in which case they can be found here:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Ubisoft\Ubisoft Game Launcher\savegames
After entering the save game folder you will see a string on numbers and letters which is supposedly your accound ID or whatever, but this is not important. Enter it and then go into folder 54. Folder 54 is the number designated for Assassin's creed 3.

In terms of where you save files are located and the actual form of the save files, there can be altercations and different variations! The reason being that there are different versions of AC3... There are some who play a hacked version from Skidrow, I and most people play the steam version (you are likely to play same, reading this now), Uplay only version etc...
It doesn't matter too much because using the decryption tool you can make most saves work. By most I mean about 50%. There are a fair amount of save files for AC3 on PC available on the internet but many of them will not work now, because they are outdated and don't work anymore. Many of these are from 2012-13. Now bear in mind that some of these do work, some do not. Uplay and AC3 has been through many updates since so that's probably the reason.

I have save files which I can share if you contact me. I have both 100% and a 97% which you can use to get completionist with just a bit of work. Tested and working. Notice that loading a 100% save file will not get you the achievement even if you try engaging in acitivities in game to try and force the game to verify that you have met they criteria for the achievement. It will not work. You have to earn the last bit yourself in either case. The 97% save is a save which has all recruits at 100% and properly registered in DNA string so you guranteed have circumvened the bug. And on a note to this it seems the bug doesn't come from having completed the game (or getting too far in story) before getting all recruits to max level which I previously thought. Whatever is causing the bug is unknown.

I can also supply you with a link to the high completed game, and the highest one which I could find which also works is this one at 94%:

http://www.playground.ru/cheats/assassins_creed_3_sohranenie_projdeno_vsyo_sdelano_vsyo_najdeno_vsyo_94_sinhronizatsii_bez_chitov_theta-49951/

It's a russian site yes, the save in game is called 'VOLODYA' but it works perfectly and it is indeed the one I used myself to get to 100%. The one I have at 97% is this one slightly more progressed but in either case if you know the game you can use this save to somewhat quickly finish the rest instead of having to restart. This is the only way for a "solution" which lets you get the achievement. - Which other people can't even see. But whatever we are doing this on principle.

On that russian site you can simply translate to your own languge if you want to try and understand what is going on and in the category it's posted, there are lots of other saves, if you should want something else. I have tried most and some/half don't work. When you click download you have to wait 60 seconds but after that it's a smooth perfect download so don't think it's a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ site. [Specifically the 97% russian save comes in a 'Orbit-3' rar folder from which you enter folder 103 and you only need the 1.save, which is also the largest file. A good way to spot the save files generally. Everything else such as .metadata or .delete or .upload is not useless, you don't need it. Just copy 1.save.

The AC3TOOL has other encyption options which you can try playing with if my described method did not work. Something else might work for you, altough I should say that nothing else worked for me at least; and I have been very systematic in my approach to this.

And that is pretty much it. I know this is an insanely long post, but as I stated in the beginning I made this for those who might come across the same bug as I did, and I think everything here would be super useful for said person. Instead of you having to waste of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of time and anger trying to solve this yourself. I have tried being very precise and detail-full.
Not even gonna proof read and check grammar and spelling mistakes ;)
I think it's fine, the points come across!

Hope it works for you and good luck!