The Hidden Blade Assassin's Creed in Depth

Currently my only successful attempt at finding an exploit to kill an extremely high level enemy.

The video shows only the last part of the setup. This is a level forty five cultist found in a shipyard in northern Achaia. I had previously let him chase me to the docks. He'll stay put and won't return to his original location, even if you fast travel away, thanks to the game engine remembering where characters are.

In this particular dock there is a spot where you can make him get stuck (again the setup for this wasn't shown mostly due to the sheer amount of times dying). Lead the target to the tight spot on the edge of the dock. He normally won't go far enough to get stuck but can get tricked into by attacking you when you are close enough for a melee attack.

You'll need a boat for this as well. So you're thinking, why not simply knock him off the dock? Because you can't do that to skull level enemies, not even with abilities like Sparta kick. It seems you used to be able to do that based off an old video where someone knocks the same target off a roof, dealing massive amounts of damage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A08PPFYFrFU
But I've never been able to knock skull level enemies off of structures.

So now you take the boat and move it as close to the dock as you can, allowing the target to get on. I imagine very few docks have a spot where you can trap a character, so if you want to do this somewhere else you'll have to move the boat first, then try to get your target on. After that it's a simple matter of using a torch to sink the boat and whatever unfortunate NPC on is on there is a sitting duck. Normally characters will try to swim back on land, but in this case there wasn't a place for him to get back up.

Note: There is no guarantee the target will drown. First time I accomplished getting this cultist in the water I had to swing my weapon at him constantly for 15-20 minutes before all his health was whittled down.