Assassin's Creed II: Bonfire of the Vanities Essential Tips

Assassin’s Creed II: Bonfire of the Vanities is a late-story Florence sequence built around Ezio’s hunt for Girolamo Savonarola and the Apple of Eden. Treat it as endgame Assassin’s Creed II content, not as a detached side episode. The sequence opens the southern side of Florence and asks you to dismantle Savonarola’s support network before the finale can move.

This is an intermediate guide because it assumes you already know how to blend, break line of sight, climb confidently, and recover from a failed stealth attempt. Bonfire is less about learning new fundamentals and more about applying your full toolkit in a city full of public speeches, restricted spaces, and rooftop escapes.

Content warning: This sequence carries mature Assassin’s Creed themes including blood, intense violence, sexual content, and strong language. The advice below stays non-graphic and focused on play.

Essential Tips

1. Enter the Sequence With a Full Late-Game Loadout

Bonfire is kinder when you start prepared. Before you settle into the lieutenant hunt, make sure medicine is topped off and that your most reliable tools are available. You want room for mistakes because several kills turn messy the moment a guard notices you or a speech target begins to run.

Think of this sequence as a test of every comfort item you built across the campaign. Throwing knives, smoke bombs, hidden-gun shots, and a healthy medicine stock all save time here. If you arrive low on supplies, the city will immediately punish the gap.

2. Choose Lieutenant Missions by Comfort, Not by Panic

The sequence opens up once Savonarola’s inner circle is exposed. You are not locked into one rigid route, so use that freedom. If a rooftop chase went poorly, switch to a crowd kill or a quieter restricted zone before retrying another high-alert target.

3. Use Crowds and Distance for Public Speech Targets

Several lieutenants preach or posture in public spaces, and those scenes are built to tempt impatient combat. Resist that. If a target is performing for a crowd, your first thought should be blending, approaching from the side, or using a clean ranged answer instead of cutting through guards head-on.

Public kills are easiest when you let Florence hide you. Walk into the audience, align the angle, and act only when the guards’ sightlines make sense.

4. Take the Roofs Whenever a Target Owns the Street

Bonfire’s more heavily guarded lieutenants are often easier from above than from eye level. Balcony speakers, elevated targets, and runners all become more manageable once you stay on the roofs and think in diagonals instead of straight lines.

High routes help you pre-position for an aerial kill, shadow a fleeing target, or cut ahead to an interception point. If street guards are dictating your pace, you are probably one layer too low.

5. Treat the Ship and Hay Missions as Patience Checks

The merchant and farmer missions work best when you stop trying to improvise them like normal assassination contracts. Both reward slow isolation. On the ship, the clean route comes from approaching the blind side, trimming patrols quietly, and boarding only after the deck stops feeling crowded. In the farm zone, hay and tight guard patterns matter more than raw aggression.

These are not missions to speedrun on first contact. Watch who turns, who pauses, and who can be removed without pulling the whole area awake.

6. Climb the Duomo Like It Is a Puzzle

The priest mission is one of the easiest places to rush yourself into failure. The climb is not mechanically difficult, but the spacing between guards means impatience is the real threat. Move one problem at a time, use ledges carefully, and keep your focus on the next safe handhold instead of the top.

The upper scaffolds are where most players lose discipline. Finish the climb, let the final guards drift out of view, and then take the kill cleanly.

7. Use Springboards to Keep Rooftop Flow Smooth

Bonfire adds springboard-style jumps to Florence’s traversal. They are worth learning because they preserve momentum across wider gaps and reduce the number of awkward rooftop resets during pursuit or repositioning.

Do not treat them as flashy extras. They are practical movement tools, especially when you want to stay above guards instead of dropping to street level and rebuilding your route.

8. Restock and Reset Before the Ninth Kill

The sequence does not simply end when the last lieutenant falls. Once Savonarola’s support network collapses, the story accelerates into a crowd confrontation, a brief scramble around the Apple, and the closing execution scene. That is not the time to realize you have no medicine and are limping through the city.

Before you commit to the final lieutenant, make sure your health and supplies look respectable.

9. Escape First, Celebrate Later

Many lieutenant kills are simple to finish and annoying to leave. Guards react, alleys tighten, and you can lose a clean assassination by lingering in the scene too long. Once the target drops, switch mentally from stalking to escaping.

That means knowing your route out before the blade lands. Spot the nearest crowd, ladder, river edge, rooftop line, or hay drop while you are still approaching.

10. Play Bonfire as the Final Skill Check Before the Ending

This sequence sits right before Assassin’s Creed II’s closing stretch in the versions that include it, so it works best as a last rehearsal. If your medicine management is sloppy, if you keep fighting on the wrong level, or if your escapes depend on luck, Bonfire will show you that immediately.

Use that to your advantage. Tighten up your habits here and the base game’s last memories feel smoother afterward.

Florence Priorities

Start with the missions that match your strongest skill. If you are comfortable blending and quick striking, clear a public speech target to settle in. If you trust your climbing more than your close-quarters reactions, pick a rooftop-oriented kill and use height to stay in control.

After that, alternate mission types on purpose. Bonfire is more manageable when you do not stack the most demanding stealth jobs back to back. A ship infiltration, a Duomo climb, and a chase mission all ask for different pacing.

Read Florence as hostile territory with pockets of safety, not as the relaxed city you knew earlier in the campaign. Travel with intention and route around overloaded streets when the roofs are cleaner.

Parkour and Stealth Habits

Bonfire is at its best when parkour and stealth support each other instead of living in separate boxes. Roofs are not only for travel; they are also scouting lanes. A few extra seconds above a mission area can reveal whether the cleaner entry is a balcony, scaffold, hay cart, blind corner, or crowd approach from the far side.

Good stealth creates better movement. When you quietly remove the one guard watching a ladder or the patrol facing the river, the whole route opens. Often you do not need to clear many enemies. You just need to delete the two that make the path unsafe.

Keep your movement compact. Bonfire usually rewards short controlled bursts: climb, wait, cross, strike, leave. When a plan breaks, default to classic Ezio rescue tools. Smoke buys space. Height buys invisibility. Water, hay, and crowds buy anonymity.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

1. Do not start Bonfire half-stocked - late-game Florence becomes harder than it needs to be when medicine and utility tools are already low.

2. Do not force one lieutenant order - use the flexible mission structure to swap to a kill type that suits your current mood and skill.

3. Do not fight through every public speech - crowds, angle control, and fast assassinations are cleaner than frontal combat.

4. Do not stay on the street when the roof is safer - height usually gives better entries, cleaner escapes, and easier interceptions.

5. Do not rush the ship approach - trim patrols and board from the blind side instead of turning the deck into an alarmed melee.

6. Do not waste the hay routes - the farmer mission is built around patience and hidden positioning.

7. Do not sprint up the Duomo without reading guard spacing - the climb punishes haste more than difficulty.

8. Do not ignore springboards - they smooth out Florence’s rooftop flow and help you avoid unnecessary drops.

9. Do not finish the ninth lieutenant while low on supplies - the sequence still has a fast closing stretch after that kill.

10. Do not linger after the assassination - know the exit before you strike so the escape stays clean.

Summary

Category	Top Tip
Loadout	Enter with medicine and utility tools already topped off
Mission Order	Pick lieutenants in the order that best fits your strongest habits
Public Kills	Use crowds and clean angles instead of starting open fights
Rooftops	Solve balcony, chase, and escape problems from above whenever possible
Ship Stealth	Approach from the blind side and reduce patrols patiently
Duomo	Treat the climb as a spacing puzzle, not a race
Movement	Learn the springboards so rooftop routes stay fast and safe
Finale	Restock before the ninth kill because the sequence still has momentum left