Skull and Bones Season 2 is on the way after what Ubisoft called a “tremendous response” from the game’s community.
Skull and Bones launched in February on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, anbd PC (but not on Steam) after years of delays and was thought to have suffered from low player numbers. IGN’s Skull and Bones review returned a 7/10. We said: “Skull and Bones is a maritime RPG with a strong foundation, even if it feels like a live-service first draft.”
Season 1 soon followed, and now Ubisoft has confirmed what to expect from Season 2. “Let us begin by saying how amazing it has been for all of us working on Skull and Bones to witness the tremendous response from our entire community since the launch of our game,” Ubisoft said in a blog post.. "From the ways our players engage with our game and content, to the ton of screenshots, videos and livestreams shared across social media, Discord and Reddit."
“It is thanks to your incredible engagement, that we were able, throughout Season 1, to observe, listen, understand, and more importantly react to your feedback on a weekly basis," Ubisoft continued. "Our commitment continues to remain the same - to create and update our game together, with our community. This wouldn't have been possible without the passion and dedication you've shown to Skull and Bones.”
During its most recent financial report, Ubisoft failed to say how many copies Skull and Bones sold since going on sale at full price on February 16. But it did say the game saw “strong engagement”, with the second-best daily playtime for a Ubisoft game. That included an average of four hours in the first weeks following launch. Ubisoft put this down to end-game content that launched with Season 1.
“We target to further improve this retention and enlarge the player base with the upcoming launch of Season 2, Chorus of Havoc, that will continue to enrich the end-game with the addition of new bosses, world events and ship upgrades,” Ubisoft added. “Season 2 will also bring new PvE & Solo game modes.”
Ubisoft has committed to at least one full year of content for Skull and Bones, divided up into four seasons. It will be interesting to see if the game gets a second year of support.
Ubisoft further detailed Season 2 in the blog post. Here are the notes:
Skull and Bones Season 2 key features and improvements preview
With Season 2, we're bringing many improvements to our end game loop, adjustments to our seasonal formula and a ton of new content which we believe will address some key concerns from the community.
- Ship Upgrades, which will allow you to upgrade your ships to improve ship stats and gain new perks.
- Fleet Management, which will allow you to assign ships to manufactories to automatically collect pieces of eight.
- Helm Leases, which will allow you to acquire a manufactory of your choice.
- New PvE & Solo Game Modes
- Balancing the costs of our Manufactories
These changes come in addition to the new content (new boss fight, new sea monster, new ship, weapons, armors and furniture) that will be introduced and communicated to you through additional dev updates and devblogs, in the upcoming days/weeks on Discord, Reddit, Social Media and our website.
Seasonal reset
With Season 2 right around the corner, many of you have been eager to find out what exactly is going to change when Season 1 ends.
Rewarding your achievements and preparing for season 2
Our seasonal model on Skull and Bones is designed around the idea that players fight against seasonal antagonists, Sea Monsters and other Ghost Ships to protect The Helm's smuggling activities and grow both their profit and influence in the Indian Ocean.
Each new season in Skull and Bones sees the arrival of a new threat, coming to disrupt and force the Helm and its associates to adapt the way they operate and manage their trading network.
With Season 1, we deliberately took the time we needed to carefully monitor and understand your feedback and the way you engage with our game content. The learnings we gathered throughout the season helped us make the necessary adjustments and balancing to our end game economy, features, and systems. Now that Season 2 is coming, we can share more details on the full list of rewards that will be handed out to the most successful Kingpins from Season 1.
The first thing we announced during a previous livestream of The Deck was that everyone who reached the Diamond Rank on the leaderboards by the end of Season 1, would receive the cosmetic set at the beginning of Season 2.
In addition, we will also be rewarding those of you who successfully and significantly grew their empire, with some of the new items coming with our Season 2 update: World Helm Leases and Ship Upgrade Parts. These two items will become key in growing your fleet of ships, acquiring the manufactories of your choice, and get a head start in shaping your empire to your strategy.
As stated above, with the end of each season, and the arrival of a new antagonist, comes significant disruption to The Helm and their smuggling operations. As a result, all players will see their ranks on the leaderboards, their manufactories, and upgrades be reset. Not all is lost however, as your efforts have been recognised by The Helm's representative, who will trust you with new tools to re-build your empire and prove your worth as a Pirate Kingpin once again.
Last but not least, we will not be fully resetting the number of Pieces of Eight collected throughout Season 1 but applying a soft reset instead to all players who accumulated more than 300,000 Pieces of Eight. Effectively, most of you will get to keep all your Pieces of Eight in your wallet, while a few will see their balance reduced to that number.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
