The Skull & Bones beta shows what it takes to sail dangerous seas

12.19.2023

By Julian Benson, ContributorAs my ship crests another storm wave, I pray that none of my crew gets seasick. Or, at least, if they do, I hope Skull & Bones‘ third-person view won’t show them emptying their guts all over the deck. The giant swells raise my boat high and drop it twenty feet, damaging the hull each time it slams into the water below.

There’s a small “Compagnie” merchant vessel ahead of me somewhere, but it’s hard to spot the ship between the dark and the waves—aiming my long guns at its stern seems almost impossible. At the top of the next swell, I glimpse the sloop ahead, riding low in the water, heavy with cargo. I hold a button on my gamepad to urge the crew on, burning stamina to close the distance and get into range.

My first shot misses; the cannonball disappears harmlessly into the deep ocean waves. Now alerted, the merchant fires a distress flare into the night sky, calling for help. My long guns take an age to reload, but with my next shot, I hit the ship’s weak spot, which is highlighted with a red aura. The lead shot shreds half of the enemy’s hit points. If I can close the distance before my target’s allies arrive, all while it fires its broadside of cannons at me, I can board it and steal its precious cargo. It’s the moments like this where Ubisoft’s open-world pirate ‘em up Skull & Bones comes alive.

Born from the ship-to-ship combat in Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag, Skull & Bones is a multiplayer game where every player is the captain of their own pirate ship. By completing jobs for the lords of pirate havens and the people of the islands scattered across the world, you gain infamy and rise the pirate ranks, unlocking new gear and ships to take into the seven seas.

Rough sailing

Set in the perilous seas of the Indian Ocean during the 17th century—when navies warred with each other and the pirates that filled its waters—Skull & Bones starts your journey to the top of the piratical pecking order from the very bottom.

After your captain picks an impossible fight with the English fleet, you wash up on a desert island with a damaged ship and little idea of how to get to a safe harbor. That ship is really little more than a fishing boat; instead of cannons, you take the more hands-on approach of throwing harpoons from your position at the tiller. Still, it’s seaworthy, and it lets you hop between the islands of the atoll where you awake. This allows you to load up on the resources you need to repair the boat and find a map to Sainte-Anne, your pirate-y home.

It may be a humble start, but from the deck of your small dhow, you learn the basics of Skull & Bones’ sailing and combat. Although you are the captain aboard your ship, when at sea, you control the vessel like it is your own body. You direct the boat with the left thumbstick; you move the camera with the right. Holding the left trigger aims your weapons, and pressing the right trigger fires them.

When you gain access to larger ships with different weapons fitted to different sides of your boat, you automatically switch between them as you turn your camera. So, if you look to your right, you will fire your starboard weapons, and to your left, your port weapons. It’s the same for firing your front-facing prow and rear-facing stern weapons.

Once you’ve mastered those basics, it’s time to head to a larger ocean.

Home is where me hearties is

While the French and English navies may be patrolling the Indian Ocean, the region is vast enough that whole towns can be hidden. That includes Sainte-Anne, a place bristling with buccaneers. It’s the first major settlement you call home in Skull & Bones, and once you dock your small fishing boat, you can walk its streets, soaking in the sights of this raucous hive of villainy.

Run by kingpin John Scurlock, Sainte-Anne is a hub for all pirate activity in the Red Isles region. Sainte-Anne is one of the many towns hidden around the world of Skull & Bones, and it plays home to a host of craftspeople who will help you on your ascent up the pirate society rope ladder. The carpenter can make you tools to gather resources out in the world, such as bog iron and acacia wood. When you collect enough resources and gold, you can task the shipwright to build you a new vessel, or the blacksmith to make you new weaponry.

First, however, you’ll need a blueprint. The blacksmith, shipwright, and carpenter all require a plan before they can get to their tasks. The craftspeople sell a few of these designs themselves, and you can find others by talking to the merchants at different ports around the game. Still, the cheapest way to get new blueprints (though not the safest) is to earn them as rewards for contracts.

You can find work posted on job boards or by talking to people in the towns, but for the most lucrative work, you’ll want to speak to the kingpin himself. Scurlock is trying to establish Sainte-Anne as a pirate city to rival Tortuga in the Caribbean, and completing work for him will earn you money, equipment, blueprints, and infamy. However, you can only use the most powerful blueprints by raising your infamy rank among the pirates.

Contracts in Skull & Bones include ferrying materials to different towns around the map, raiding merchant vessels for resources, or traveling across the ocean to collect a bounty on a mighty enemy.

Yo-ho-howitzer

The ship and equipment you’ve chosen come into play as soon as you dive into the game’s combat. Each vessel has several hardpoints where you can install weapons and equipment, which allows you to fit different weapon types to each of your ship’s firing angles.

The weapons you choose to equip have a dramatic impact on how you can operate your ship in combat. Take the Brigantine, a vessel designed to close the distance on an enemy and ram it for maximum damage. As such, you will spend most of your time in close quarters with your target, so it makes sense to equip your broadside gunners with demi-cannons, the 17th century’s equivalent of a sawn-off shotgun. These short-range cannons pack a punch, but lose accuracy over distance. You could fit your front-facing gunners with long guns, allowing you to start firing on your target long before you pull up alongside them.

Learning the differences between Skull & Bones’s ships will pay off in the long run. Some have larger holds for carrying cargo; others have thicker armor for withstanding enemy cannon fire; others have a higher top speed and maneuverability. The size of the ship also determines how many guns you fit to each hardpoint. One of the smaller ships, a Bedar, can only field four guns from its broadside, whereas the larger Brigantine can house 11.

As you increase your infamy, you will gain access to a broader sweep of weapons, including sail-tearing ballistae, rack-mounted rocket launchers, extreme-range bombard cannons, and even underwater torpedoes. What you can fit into your ship will depend on its size, with only the largest ships able to equip the most fearsome weapons. All the more reason to grab the wheel and head into the frothy ocean to build your legend.

The recent Skull & Bones beta offered just a glimpse of the wider game, with only one region and a few different ship types on show. However, you’ll have to wait for the full release to get the full measure of this open-world pirate game.

Skull & Bones will be available on the Epic Games Store on February 16, 2024.