Day three in Constant-istanbul-ple, and I have faffed around until my wrists hurt. By liberating templar-controlled dens, I've unlocked more available assassins to recruit. Once I have assassins to train, I stop at every available moment to send them out on missions in the greater world map. I've taken over all but one templar den in the city, and also every town available to me in the Mediterranean area, by sending out higher and higher level of assassins to do my bidding in distant regions. It requires some upkeep, but it generates money and xp, and it's just a matter of sending guys out occasionally, so it's not really difficult. I lost a den, actually, and had to spend a lot of time getting it back, THAT was quite infuriating. My templar awareness bar wasn't even full, but I should have been more urgent about getting it down when it was glowing red like that. One of my dens came under attack, and I went there to do the Assassin (tower) defense mini game, which I promptly lost. They brought riflemen who can shoot down your rooftop assassins! Not even sure what I was supposed to do about that. So, I lost the area, no second chances or 'Game Over, Try Again'. You just lose it to the templars and have to re-do the templar captain-hunt to get it back. Aggravating. You can bet I'll keep a closer eye on that awareness bar from now on. Actually, seeing as I've almost renovated everything in the city, it's probably not going to be a huge deal in the future. Also, once my apprentices have trained to become Level 15 Assassin masters (and I do a few sub-quests to promote them), the den I leave them in charge of can never revert ever again. Awesome.
I'd have happily faffed on forever, but I realized that, despite all my renovations and obscene hourly revenue, the shops still wouldn't sell me better armor. My health bar was still only five bars long, which is about one good swipe from the more dangerous city guards. That probably isn't the way the game is meant to be played. So I got back to work on the story missions. I helped some Romanis, Thieves, and Mercenaries, to get on their good side, and then decided I needed to make a friend higher up in the political echelons. As it so happened, I saved the life of a Prince of the city, grandson of the current Sultan, so he became an ally and source of new missions. Do you want to know how I did it? Yusuf got wind of an assassination attempt (not by actual Assassins, obviously it's kind of a misnomer, the group name) and we infiltrated the Prince's welcome home party as italian minstrels. Hilariously, Ezio is able to string together some notes and some half-assed rhymes to distract the attentions of the party-goers as the other Assassins (group name, not perpetrators) took out the would-be assassins (perpetrators, not group members) without causing alarm. Old Ezio's already grizzled look was not enhanced by the frippery of the italian minstrel outfit, but I did get to punch out those dudes from the last game who always came up to you with a song and a hand out. Also, at the end, Ezio snapped the head of his lute clean off and drove it through some guys heart. Huzzah.
The nice Venetian lady who is proprietor of a rare bookstore is helping me find those Masayaf keys that I originally came here for, and I slogged my way to two of them so far. The bonus objectives were terribly unreasonable. I can't go through 5 different rooms and 30 guards without detection. Once someone saw me, I threw up my hands in disgust (as I so often do) and went on a murdering rampage.
Somehow, Ezio is able to use the keys to experience Altair memories? Who knows if they will explain that one. At any rate, when I return to HQ with a key, Ezio sits down and we take a brief sojourn into the world of Altair. We haven't done much as Altair, of course. These mini-quests in AC are always "follow the directions carefully, now back to your regularly scheduled faffing about." Sequence 4 is now completed.
