Uncharted 4: A Thief's End: Complete Walkthrough & Boss Guide
0% complete
🗺️ Main Story Walkthrough
Tick off each step as you go — your progress saves locally, no account needed.
The game opens in media res aboard a storm-tossed ship with Nathan and Sam Drake chained together, then cuts to a childhood flashback showing the brothers in a boys' home discovering their mother's work on Henry Avery's pirate treasure. The Panama prison sequence — Chapter 2 — is a full playable level set years earlier where a younger Nathan and Sam attempt to break out of a Panamanian jail with the help of the mysterious Rafe Adler. These two chapters establish all of the game's core traversal verbs: climbing, rope-swinging, and the grappling hook are all introduced or foreshadowed here before the mechanics appear in the main campaign.
The story jumps to a domesticated Nathan Drake working a mundane salvage job alongside Elena in New Orleans. The contrast between quiet suburban life and the adventures he left behind is deliberate. Sam Drake's sudden reappearance — supposedly dead for fifteen years — and his desperate claim that he owes a debt to crime lord Hector Alcázar forces Nate back into the field against his better judgment. Chapter 4 establishes the emotional stakes of the entire game: Nate's instinct to protect his brother and his inability to walk away from one last adventure despite the cost to his marriage.
Chapter 5 sends Nate back into active fieldwork, staging a distraction at an auction house in Italy where Avery-related artifacts are being sold, while Sam and Rafe attend as buyers. Chapter 6 moves the adventure to Scotland and a ruined clifftop cross that hides the first clue in Avery's trail. The grappling hook becomes fully functional here and the game introduces rope-swinging combat — enemies can now be dispatched mid-swing. Scotland also delivers the first encounter with Nadine Ross and her Shoreline mercenary army, establishing the secondary antagonist threat that will shadow Nate throughout the second act.
The mid-game explodes in scale across Madagascar. Chapter 7's rainy auction heist in Italy gives way to a massive jeep chase through open savanna — the game's showpiece traversal sequence. Chapters 8 through 10 explore the ruins of the Twelve Towers, crumbling pirate outposts that form a navigational chain toward Libertalia, the mythical pirate colony founded by Henry Avery. The Twelve Towers section is largely open and sandbox-oriented, with optional exploration yielding treasure and journal entries that flesh out the history of Avery's crew. Complete all optional platforming diversions here to level up Nate's journal entries before Madagascar ends.
Chapter 11 drops Nate into a crowded open-air market in the fictional town of Dranken, Madagascar, requiring him to pursue a Shoreline contact through festival crowds without breaking cover. The stealth mechanics are at their most flexible here — multiple routes through the market accommodate both pure-stealth and combat approaches without penalizing either. Chapter 12 is almost entirely exploratory, a quiet boat trip through island archipelagos before Shoreline forces arrive. Chapter 13 opens with Nate shipwrecked and alone, and is the game's most atmospheric chapter, emphasizing traversal and environmental storytelling over combat.
Libertalia itself — a vast, crumbling pirate city built into an island — is revealed across these two chapters. The architecture and scale are among the most impressive in the franchise. Chapter 14 explores the outer colony while Chapter 15 pushes deeper into Libertalia's inner district, where the remnants of Avery's original pirate council reveal the dark truth behind the colony's fall. Journal entries throughout these chapters reward careful reading — they recontextualize the treasure hunt as a cautionary tale about obsession and betrayal that directly mirrors Rafe Adler's own arc.
Elena arrives in Libertalia having tracked Nate, and Chapter 17 reunites the couple in the field for the game's strongest co-op traversal sequences. New Devon — Avery's private estate — is introduced in Chapter 18, a sprawling manor filled with booby traps designed by the paranoid pirate captain himself. Chapter 19 descends into Avery's private vault system, a labyrinthine passage riddled with floor-spike traps and explosive mechanisms. Follow the muddy footprints left by earlier explorers to navigate safely through the spike-floor rooms — deviating from them triggers pressure plates that fire hidden mechanisms without warning.
Chapter 20 is a relentless downhill chase as the entire New Devon compound begins to collapse around Nate and Elena while Shoreline forces close in from every direction. The set-piece involves collapsing bridges, crumbling cliff faces, and a truck convoy assault that ranks among the most technically elaborate sequences in PlayStation 4-era gaming. Chapter 21 forces Nate to confront his brother Sam's lies and makes clear that the treasure hunt was manipulated by Rafe from the beginning. The emotional confrontation between the brothers amid the destruction gives the chapter its title and sets up the final showdown.
The final chapter places Nate and Rafe Adler alone in Avery's treasure chamber as the caves collapse around them. An improvised sword duel using weapons taken from the skeletons of Avery and Tew brings the story to its end. The epilogue fast-forwards years into the future, following a teenage Cassidy Drake — Nathan and Elena's daughter — as she discovers her parents' adventuring past and joins them for one final dive. The epilogue is entirely optional in terms of collectibles but contains a moving resolution to Elena and Nate's story arc that rewards players who spent time with the franchise's earlier entries.
⚔️ Boss Guides
Nadine Ross (Chapter 7 — Lights Out, Marseille Brawl)
Attack Patterns
The first Nadine encounter in the rooftop office in Marseille is a scripted fight that Nathan cannot win by design. Nadine is established immediately as a superior hand-to-hand combatant — she deflects every punch Nate throws and counters with strikes that leave him on the floor. The fight includes two dialogue choice prompts where the game pauses to let the player select a response, though neither choice changes the outcome. The only mechanically meaningful moment is a bookshelf-pin sequence where a Square prompt must be pressed immediately to avoid a choke hold.
Strategy
Do not expect to win and do not exhaust yourself attempting offensive combos — Nadine will deflect them all. Focus entirely on the two QTE prompts: press Square the instant the bookshelf pin icon appears, and select either dialogue option quickly to keep the scene moving. The fight ends on a story beat regardless of how many punches you land. Treat this as a cinematic character introduction rather than a combat challenge. The encounter does establish Nadine's fighting style in detail — her counter-heavy tendencies and preference for clinch throws directly inform how the later two-on-one rematch in Chapter 15 should be handled.
Nadine Ross (Chapter 15 — Thieves of Libertalia, Two-on-One)
Attack Patterns
The rematch in Libertalia's inner chamber turns into a two-on-one fight when Nadine's Shoreline backup arrives to help her flank both Drake brothers. Nadine fights identically to Chapter 7 but now has freedom of movement in a larger arena. She alternates between targeting Nate and Sam, requiring players to monitor both characters' positions. Her kick combo launches Nate backward significantly, potentially into the arena's exposed edges. The backup mercenary hits harder than standard enemies and coordinates attacks with Nadine to catch Nate in a pincer.
Strategy
Let Sam handle the Shoreline backup while focusing Nate's attacks on Nadine. Sam deals damage independently and will stagger the backup enough to keep him occupied. Against Nadine, wait for her to commit to a kick combo before dodging to the side — her full kick animation leaves a two-second recovery window for Nate to land three to four punches. Circle around pillars and debris to break sight lines when both Nadine and the backup converge simultaneously. The fight ends on a scripted story beat once enough damage has been dealt — there is no precise health bar to deplete, so consistent pressure is more important than perfecting any single combo.
Shoreline Armored Column (Chapter 20 — No Escape)
Attack Patterns
The collapsing clifftop chase in Chapter 20 pits Nate and Elena against a full Shoreline armored convoy that pursues them down a deteriorating mountain road. Armored trucks deploy infantry continuously from their rear hatches, machine-gun nests on truck beds sweep wide arcs that cover most natural cover positions, and an armored personnel carrier at the convoy's rear fires a grenade launcher at fixed intervals. The road itself collapses in scripted sections, forcing forward movement and preventing players from holding any single defensive position.
Strategy
Prioritize the machine-gun nests first — their sustained fire suppresses movement entirely and prevents reaching the RPG caches on the ledges above. Use the grapple hook to swing between cliff anchor points and approach trucks from above or laterally rather than head-on. RPG pickups are placed in obvious positions on the upper ledge sections; two direct hits disable an armored truck permanently. For the grenade launcher APC, approach from the side during one of its post-fire reload pauses and throw two grenades into the open crew compartment. The collapsing sections are fully scripted and cannot be triggered early — clear each enemy cluster before advancing to avoid fighting while the road drops.
Rafe Adler (Chapter 22 — A Thief's End, Sword Duel)
Attack Patterns
The final confrontation with Rafe Adler takes place in Avery's treasure vault as the cave system collapses. Rafe takes Captain Tew's sword from Avery's skeleton and forces Nate into an improvised duel. The fight is divided into three phases. Phase 1 is straightforward: Rafe attacks from predictable angles. Phase 2 — the hardest section — has Rafe mixing attacks from both sides without a fixed pattern, requiring players to read his shoulder and arm telegraphs in real time. Phase 3 is a shortened repeat of Phase 1 as Rafe is wounded. Throughout all phases, pressing the attack button without a proper block first results in an immediate counter-riposte that deals heavy damage.
Strategy
The core mechanic is straightforward but punishing if ignored: Triangle blocks and counters attacks coming from Nate's left side; Circle blocks attacks from his right. Watch Rafe's lead shoulder before each swing — it always shifts toward the attacking arm a beat before the sword moves. Block with the correct button, then immediately press Square when the counter prompt appears. Never press Square without first successfully blocking — an unblocked aggressive counter triggers Rafe's riposte. In Phase 2, the safest approach is to stay slightly back, let Rafe initiate, read the shoulder tell, block correctly, and counter. Do not attempt to chain multiple Square presses — one clean counter per exchange is the rhythm the game rewards. The Swordmaster trophy requires completing the duel without missing a single counter parry.