Becoming the most feared pirate in Skull and Bones involves mastering a number of things, but the weapons you equip on your ships are guaranteed to play a big role in seeing you through the game’s most intense moments.
While Skull and Bones’ focus on naval combat means that you won’t get to fight other pirates in hand-to-hand combat, it does offer several weapon types for your ships, effective against specific targets and dealing different types of damage.
Skull and Bones Weapons
Each ship has a certain number of gun ports and can host specific types of weapons. You won’t be able to mount a massive ballista on the smaller available ships, so you’ll want to be careful about which one you pick and how you distribute your arsenal every time you set sail.
According to the developer, “range, damage, reload time, ammo consumption, ballistic trajectory, projectile travel time, and area of damage” count among the factors you’ll want to take into account when deciding your loadout.
The damage you deal can be of several types – blunt, explosive, piercing, fire, flood, crushing, or tearing, – some of which can also apply temporary status effects like burning.
A ship’s armor determines the types of damage it’s more resistant and vulnerable to, each kind of armor having its pros and cons. That being said, the developer notes that facing an opponent who’s fully kitted to protect against the guns you brought to the fight doesn’t automatically give you zero chances of victory.
Skull and Bones’ weapons belong to different families, each with its own playstyle and gun variations. Here are the ones shared so far by the developer and what you can expect from them.
The following guns were detailed in the dev blog linked above, while other variations can be spotted in the game’s July 2022 re-reveal, the UI also suggesting that we’re dealing with different craftable tiers.
- Cannons: Dependable, versatile, only weapon small enough to be fitted on ships' inner decks; can be mounted on small or medium ships, bow, port, starboard, or stern quadrants
- Demi-Cannon: a short-range cannon, very powerful at close range, deals flooding damage
- Long gun: long-range precision weapon, slow to fire, deals blunt or fire damage
- Carronade: quick reload speed, less damage output
- Spike Culverin
- Mortar: Long-range weapon, fires in a high trajectory, area of effect damage that gets reduced the further away you get from the center of the blast; can be mounted on medium ships, only in the auxiliary slot
- Blasting Mortar: large explosive radius, slower projectiles, deals explosive damage
- Siege Mortar: reduced blast radius, deals a very high amount of crushing damage, no damage drop-off from its blast radius
- Repair Mortar: deals no damage, fires oakum bombs that repair allied ships
- Bombard: Cannon and mortar hybrid, can be equipped on quadrants like cannons, fires projectiles in a high trajectory dealing area of effect damage like mortars; can be mounted on small or medium ships, bow, port, starboard, or stern quadrants
- Siege Bombard: shoots very dense and precise projectiles, deals an extreme amount of piercing damage in a small area, very effective against static targets
- Flaming Bombard: launches firebombs that deal high fire damage in an area
- Repair Bombard: deals no damage, projectiles repair allied ships, shorter range than its mortar counterpart
- Ballista: Large missile weapon, the longer it's charged, the more damage, range and speed its bolts gain; can be mounted on medium ships, bow quadrant only
- Multi-bolt Ballista: Fires a bundle of bolts in one shot, highly inaccurate, deals a massive amount of flooding damage
- Twin Winch Ballista: Charged shots travel further and hit harder, deals piercing damage
- Rockets: Short-range Skull and Bones weapon, launches an unguided, rocket-propelled projectile; Can be mounted on medium ships, auxiliary slot only
- Revolver Rocket: fewer shots per magazine, deals more piercing damage, fires one shot at a time
- Field Rocket: improved range and projectile speed, deals explosive damage
- Torpedoes: Fires slow water-skimming projectiles, high damage on impact, long reload time, deals flooding or explosive damage
- Quick Release: deals flooding damage
- Explosive: deals explosive damage.
- Greek Fire: highly accurate, releases a torrent of flames at extremely short ranges, deals fire damage
Before heading off into battle, you’ll need to make sure that your cargo hold has enough ammunition for all the Skull and Bones weapons you want to take with you.
More details will likely be shared over the coming months. For more help with the game, here’s what we know about GeForce Now support and a potential Steam release date.
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