Seq 10 "assassinate captain from rope swing" help

[Bhryaen]

I've tried this literally about 100 times, albeit failing 50 from blowing the "no combat" bonus. My main issue is that he doesn't assassinate and just sails on by the captain to land idiotically on deck in the middle of everything. I've got him where he swings close enough to get the "target available" sheen over the captain, but clicking the attack key doesn't do anything. He just stays on the rope until it deposits him where I have to restart again.

The main suggestion I've garnered from YT and online discussion panels regards the timing. But in YT vids the timing of the rope swing is different in every vid... and they ALL get it. So there's clearly a decent range in timing to work with. It's not like I'm just missing some high-precision-timed hit- a level of precision that AC4 doesn't have in any other part of the game anyway. The "target available" glow stays for 2 sec sometimes and still the attack key fails. That said I've nevertheless tried the swing over and over successively along the entire range- from when the captain is just getting past the stair railing to when he's past the rigging. Nothing has worked. Though the further toward the rigging seems to get the "target available" glow more consistently and longer... even if he still doesn't attack. I've concluded that it's not my timing. Mr. Assassin just doesn't want to let go and assassinate for some reason.

So I'm hoping someone knows the "trick" (since the biggest challenge of AC4 (and probably all AC games) is fighting the wonky game mechanics) to landing the kill blow. I'm sick of giving up at this point given how many bonuses I've skipped from being sick of the game mechanics. The game is now stuck forever at that part of Seq 10 until it friggin works. It's sucked the fun out of playing.

The only thing I've figured is that I'm not hitting the right keys. I use RUN+FWD+JUMP to get to the rope, but then just use the mouse to keep the captain in center screen and hit ATTACK- usually spamming it. I've tried hitting FWD+ATTCK, RUN+FWD+ATTACK, JUMP+ATTACK... Nothing has worked: he insists on staying on the rope until it tosses him off elsewhere. Either I'm still missing something or the PC port fails where the console succeeds (which wouldn't be the first time). Either is possible. It just doesn't seem like it should be this difficult.

EDIT: Forgot to mention. Also saw in many discussion threads that you're supposed to use the hidden blades, not swords. Makes no sense why, but whatever. I've been using hidden blades since. Still not working.

[Bhryaen]

Originally posted by SALATOR:

Hello Bhryaen

When you swing from the rope and get close enough to the Captain he will be outlined in white indicating he's targeted. Press the attack key to air assassinate.

If you still have trouble with this objective, I would be happy to live stream it for you.

Yes, this is exactly what I thought, exactly what I've been doing... and exactly what fails. If all I do is click ATTACK when the captain is highlighted as a target, he ignores it, sails on past, lands with a turd-eating grin. It makes perfect sense that it would be that reasonable a mechanic, that it would be simple and intuitive to master, but it's not working that way for me. I'm not exaggerating when I say I wasted 100 attempts on it. I've pretty much walked away from the game now.

Are you doing anything else? Like are you moving forward while on the rope? Or simultateously hitting the JUMP key? Or the RUN key? Does getting the targetting highlighting not suffice to offer assassination viability if you're not close enough? I'm starting to wonder if it's just that I reassigned the ATTACK key to "G". Maybe it only works if you leave it on whatever key is default.

As to livestreaming, thanks for the offer, but I'm not sure how it would help. It's something on my end, and I don't have livestreaming capability (or vid-making options) to show what I'm talking about: getting the viability highlighting on the captain, hitting ATTACK, nothing happening.

[drew.pilling]

Just as you described it is exactly what I'm experiencing now. I'm really thinking this is a PC glitched thing.

I made sure I had assassin's blades equipped instead of fists or swords. I've tried pressing E to release early, which just lands the assassin short. I've clicked the ever living mess out of the left mouse button to attack as I sailed right past his white highlighted/targeted figure. I've held the left mouse button down as soon as he was highlighted, only to sail right by. I've tried the F key and the space bar as well - Ubisoft's PC controls support is notoriously antagonistic.
...

Finally just now got it using the technique where I tranq dart him right between the stair rails and the shroud ropes. The difference this time was that I waited for one of his companions to walk over to wake him and pulled it off doing a double assassinate on the two of them.

To recap for clarity. Tranquilized him. Waited for companion to get almost to him. Swung and left mouse clicked as soon as I saw any highlight on either of them.

Maybe the issue is that it IS glitched/bugged for the captain as a target and having his companion there made the attack option work which then triggered a double-assassination evaluation picking up the captain? I don't know.

I never saw any tutorials explaining how to rope swing assassinate using the PC controls so it would have helped to at least have had that to refer to instead of guess and check if there was some weird wonky key combo needed. Couldn't find any aptly named config items in the initialization file that were specific to the rope-swing either so I wasn't able to say "that's the key combo needed" - which is why this challenge was so frustrating (especially on a larger desk monitor where the control options w/ labels are far enough away from the target focus that you can't look at both at the same time).

BONUS - To get there quickly for retries:
1) Dive off the bowsprit of the Jackdaw and swim to the cover side of the leftmost rock between the Jackdaw and the first tower.
2) Wait until the pair of guards to the left of the rock, and tower, are by the landing pile of palm leaves and berserk dart the one without the hat when they are near the palm pile and his right shoulder is exposed to the right of the guy behind him. That sends him flying up to kill the first tower guard while you can swim to the wrecked ship remains. Dart him too soon and he'll end up fighting the guys on the ground.
3) Once you get to the wrecked ship remains swim to and climb up the face/top of the left (portside) rail until crouched about half way up the wreck and tranq the guy that paces between the halfway to the big rocks to your right and the tower to your left. By big rocks to the right I mean the rock divider of the space which is about halfway between both towers. Instead of tranquilizing him you can alternatively time it to just slip behind his back and save the dart.
4) Then scramble up the bowsprit of the wrecked remains skipping off the end, no need to press jump, to the rock at it's 1'clock and from there to the boxes between the rock and the tower ladder. From the boxes I scramble to the tower ladder and up to kill the second guard with nobody looking my way after that one tranquilized/pacing guard.
5) You're ready for your next rope-swing assassination attempt.

[Mr. Moustache]

I use this guy as reference (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8A77S-gkwI&t=46s), I did it in one try his way.