Update 4.2 brings a host of bug fixes, addressing many of the key issues reported by the Skull and Bones community.

Should you encounter issues with the game, please continue to report or vote for them through the Bug Reporter, which allows us to identify and prioritize issues with the highest impact to the community.

Gameplay Updates

Sea Monster: Risen Mega Lestari

• Available from 4th to 25th February
  • "Undying Maw" is a new Bounty that sees players facing against Vikram's latest spawn, the deadly Risen Mega Lestari.
  • Successful captains will have a chance to earn bespoke vanity items to showcase their victory:
    • Ship Emblem - Eternal Predator
    • Hull Colour - Spectral Grace
    • Sails Colour - Flames of Darkness
    • Sails Pattern - Jaws of the Dead

Time-Limited Event: Escort for our Allies

• Available from 4th to 18th February
  • Fancy more colours for your ship, Captain? Take part in the "Escort for Our Allies" merchant convoy encounter to earn ship cosmetics! Here's how:
  • Look out for the merchant convoy decked out in the "Ogre King" set. Take down the convoy to obtain a ship cosmetics chest, with a chance to receive part of the "Ogre King" ship set!
  • Stand to obtain:
    • Pieces of Eight
    • Royal Camphor (Hull Colour)
    • Naga's Blood (Sail Colour)
    • The Ogre's Grin (Emblem)
    • The Ogre King (Sail Pattern)
    • Scales of the Naga (Hull Ornament)

Time-Limited Event: The Founding

• Available from 18th February to 11th March
• Celebrate The Founding with us, the day Scurlock, Kingpin of Sainte-Anne, established this bustling pirate den in the Red Isle years ago.
• Defeat the Legendary Pirate Lords and other elite warships to earn celebration coins known as Silver Lions.
• Players are also encouraged to use Sovereigns to exchange for Silver Lions during this event!
• You may exchange Silver Lions for items featured in previous seasons. This is your chance to acquire items, both weapons and cosmetics, which you might have missed, adding more looks for your ship or your own dashing self.
  • Week 1 highlights: Carronade, Immortal Vessel, Spiteful Spikes Station, Ship of Dragons set, and more!
  • Week 2 highlights: Dardanelles Gun, Phoenix Crest, Smoked Canisters, Doomsday Kingpin set, and more!
  • Week 3 highlights: Bane of Ten Suns, Stormwoven Symphony, Buoy Locker, Caliban ship vanity set, Mr Maroon (pet), and more!
• Keep an eye out for our dedicated DevBlog for more information on what you can expect from the Year 1 Anniversary.

Job Board Contracts Balance

• Sainte-Anne and Telok Penjarah Job Board contracts' objectives have been adjusted to overall reduce the amount of time required to complete each contract.
  • Dev Note: Job Board Contracts often take a considerable amount of time to complete and has been observed to be less rewarding as compared to other contract types in the game. As the Job Board's key purpose is to provide players with a simple and rewarding game loop for short gameplay sessions, we've reduced the quantity of items and targets required to complete these contracts across the board. With the rewards for contracts remaining unchanged, Job Board contracts should be more rewarding for players.

Improvements & Bug Fixes

Aiming

• Reduced the movement of the crosshair when players encounter strong waves during combat.
  • Dev Note: While aiming in Skull and Bones, the camera pitch angle is limited to a range which determines how far you can move the camera above and below the horizon.
    In our explanations below, we will use a range of [-10 degrees, +10 degrees] as an illustration, but the Minimum Pitch and Maximum Pitch angles vary between weapons.
  • To enhance the aiming experience, we implement a concept called Camera Damping. This allows the camera parameters to gradually align with the reference point, which in this case is the camera angle. Think of it as placing the camera on a gimbal to reduce the rocky effects of the waves.
    The damping effect enables the camera pitch angle to temporarily exceed its usual range, providing better comfort when aiming on rough waves, where ships tend to experience a higher degree of pitch and roll. However, this also means that the camera may deviate much more from its set pitch angle limits, causing the camera to clip into the ship.
  • In Y1S4.1.0, we applied a fix to reduce the damping effect to address the camera clipping into the ship. This was causing players to be unable to see their target as their view was blocked by their own ship's mesh. By reducing the damping effect,  the correction was applied faster. We inadvertently introduced a bug which made this damping reduction apply within the aiming pitch limits. It resulted in the feeling that the camera is constantly adjusted.
  • In Y1S4.1.3, fixed this issue by only taking into account the angle difference outside of the min/max pitch limit. This adjustment made minor deviations outside of the [-10, +10] range less affected by the damping effect, therefore reducing the negative impact of players' ability to aim during minor deviations within the  [-13, +13] range.
  • In this patch, we are further increasing the damping buffer range to [-19, +19]. With this change, players will not notice significant changes in aiming behaviour compared to before Y1S4.1.0 when their ship is pitched up or down by up to 9 degrees due to rough waves. This adjustment should cover a majority of cases.
  • We also note that this season, compared to previous ones, has more events that engage players in locations with rougher seas. This contributes to the increased feeling of aiming degradation while riding on taller waves. We are continuing to explore other options to improve the comfort of aiming in the coming patches.
  • We hope this detailed developer note provides deeper insight and analysis into how one of the core mechanics of our naval combat game works. Additionally, it outlines the steps we are taking to address player concerns regarding this topic.

Taunt Status Effect

• Updated Taunt Status effect to allow for faster accumulation of status effect against Elite Warships.
  • Dev Note: In Y1S4.1.3, we released a change to solve an issue where all AI ships had Taunted Capacity that was higher than intended. This caused a number of non-Elite ships to be killed without even triggering the status effect. To fix this, we reduced the Taunt Capacity of all AI ships. However, further analysis revealed that the Taunt Capacity of Elite ships remained high, causing the Taunt Status Effect to take a considerable amount of time to build up on Elite ships before being triggered. With this change, the Taunt Status Effect should build up approximately 3 times faster on Elite ships. This adjustment should make the status effect feel relevant in builds against Elite ships once again.

Contracts & Bounties

• Revised the description of a bounty objective to include information that the contract token cannot be delivered at La Bastide for the contract "Hunter and Hunted".
• Fixed an issue where players were unable to progress in the contract "The Dawn of War" due to a missing Rahma's Message item in some cases.
• Fixed an issue where players were unable to progress in the contract "Voices from the Past" due to a missing Ancient Ody item in some cases.
• Fixed an issue where the contract "Dispelling Shadows" was not progressing immediately after sinking the required number of ships.
• Fixed an issue where the item quantity required to complete the Job board contract "Tavern Feast" in the preview did not match with the actual item quantity needed.
• Fixed an issue where the Job board contract "Smuggle Fiber" required Fine Abaka instead of Abaka.
• Fixed an issue where the objective of the Job board contract "Plunder Capital" incorrectly required players to plunder Stage 2 instead of Stage 4.
• Fixed an issue where the description for the objective of the Job board contract "Board Sea People Ships" incorrectly displayed Stage 3 instead of Stage 2 for the plunder step
• Fixed an issue where the recommended Ship Rank displayed for several bounties at the Bounty Board was incorrect.
• Fixed an issue where the bounty "The Soleil Royal" cannot be completed at the Harufu settlement.

World

• Fixed an issue where there were no ships travelling on the following trade routes:
  • Fond-de-la-Baie > La Colonie
  • La Colonie > Port des Mine
• Fixed an issue where Ungwana Merchant ships were not spawning near Kusini and Wavuvi in the African region.

Achievements/Challenges

• Fixed an issue where players are unable to claim the achievements "Cursebreaker" and "Redeemer".

Items

• Fixed an issue where the Captain Ah Pak's Head item incorrectly mentions Compagnie Settlements.
• Fixed an issue where the "Ballista Furnace I" furniture could not be salvaged at the Blacksmith.
• Fixed an issue where the "Volta's Ward" armour was incorrectly classified as Epic instead of Rare.

UI

• Updated the set of Loading Screen background images.
• Fixed an issue where the "Set Sail" button appeared to not work in some cases.
  • Dev Note: After investigating the issue, we found that it occurred during periods of network instability. At the same time, there were no signs or indicators to suggest poor network conditions in these cases. We've added a UI element to show the loading state when players attempt to set sail during periods of network instability.
• Fixed an issue where the "LEAVING WORLD EVENT" notification remained on the screen after completing The Great Shadow event if players rejoined the game during the countdown period.
• Fixed an issue where damage number indicators were not displaying near the target when the Shattered status effect is applied.
• Fixed an issue where the "Matchmaking" and "Misc." journal tabs were not selectable via mouse clicks.
• Fixed an issue where an incorrect total participant count was displayed on the tooltip for the Mythic World Event, 'The Great Shadow".
• Fixed an issue where the icon for the Mythic World Event, "The Great Shadow" was not correctly displaying the correct colour.
• Fixed an issue where the remaining distance was being displayed on the tooltip instead of the time left for the World Event, "The Plague King".
• Fixed an issue where the icon for the random event "Bait and Switch" was not displayed on the event tool tip.
• Fixed an issue where the PVP flag of other players was not visible after joining a groupmate's world.
• Fixed an issue where the Telok Penjarah den map could not be navigated beyond a height.
• Fixed an issue where the key icon was not displayed in the tutorial prompt for the contract "Blood-soaked Silver" when using mouse & keyboard.
• Fixed an issue where the tutorial for upgrading cosmetics was triggering before the Cosmetic Upgrades option was available at the Shipwright.
• Fixed an issue where the Map periodically refocuses on the player's current position.
  • Dev Note: This was an issue where an option to reset the cursor positioning by pressing the Middle Mouse Button or pressing the Left Stick (on a controller) was not visible in the menu. This option is now visible on the map.
• Fixed an issue where the highlighted borders of the Recommended Activity popup did not follow the cursor's location.
• Fixed an issue where the quick chat text was not selectable by mouse after clicking.
• Fixed an issue where the name and description of the Sails pattern of the "Rajput" ship set was incorrect.
• Fixed an issue where the "Upgradable" label for upgradable vanity items overlapped with the Social UI element.
• Fixed an issue where the "Upgraded" label was not displayed on the upgraded vanity items.
• Fixed an issue where the Arabic localization was missing for the "Chorus of Havoc" event in the Seasonal Calendar.
• Fixed an issue where the 'A' and 'D' keys were not responsive in navigating the Smuggler Pass rewards previews after the mouse was used to navigate.
• Fixed an issue where the Smuggler Pass rewards were inaccurately named "Parts Bundle" instead of "Garuda Parts Bundle".
• Fixed an issue where an error message was occasionally shown when purchasing bundles at the Rotative Store if a player already owns an item that is part of the bundle.
• Fixed an issue where multiple offers in the Store did not display the time left information on their respective store offer tiles.
• Fixed an issue where the names of the "Winged Watcher" and the "Dragon of Fortune" sets were not displayed in the upgrade tabs in the Store in various localizations.
• Fixed an issue where the currency wallet would disappear from the store after accessing offers from main menu news tiles.

Graphics

• Fixed an issue with some weapon types getting stuck in a reload animation.
• Fixed an issue where the weak points of Vikram's ship were not visible when the player is close to the target and changing camera angles.
• Fixed an issue where the visual effects did not appear after the projectile fired from Agni's fury hits a tower or landmass.
• Fixed an issue where fired projectile for Agni's Fury does not sync with the visual effects as it hits the water.
• Fixed an issue where the model for the bird stand behind the community trader at the Telok Penjarah den was missing.
• Fixed an issue where equipped upgraded figureheads were not applied on ship on 'Manage Ship' screen.
• Fixed an issue where the "Lunar Snake Pants" vanity item was clipping with the body of characters.
• Fixed an issue where graphical corruption was observed when the belt of the "Legend of Livery" Set was equipped.
• Fixed an issue where the preview animations of the Firework, "Parime's Guardian" was cut by the frame when viewing the item in the "El dorado" fleet bundle in the Store.

Stability

• Fixed an issue where players were stuck in a loading screen when entering the Helm Office during the contract "Nose for Business" in some cases.
• Fixed an issue where players could be stuck on an indefinite loading screen when attempting to enter the game after being idle in some cases.
• Added account correction for players that may have sailed out of bounds while disconnecting from the game. Affected players should start at the last Den they had visited after logging back in.
• Various crash fixes and improvements to game stability.

Audio

• Fixed an issue where "Home Free" shanty was not audible.
  • Dev Note: In Y1S4.1.3, we released a fix for this issue. However, we identified additional cases where the issue could occur. The fix with this patch addresses all known remaining cases where the shanty was not audible.
• Fixed an issue where sound effects were unintentionally playing when pressing directional input buttons on the store offers screen.