How to fix ‘Use a Ship in a Bottle’ quest not working in Fortnite

When Fortnite has crossover events, they often include lots of references you may not get if you’re not super familiar with the collaboration content. This can make completing quests confusing, as is the case with the use a Ship in a Bottle task that many players think is bugged.

This quest is a key part of the Pirates of the Caribbean event, but getting it done is a lot trickier than you might expect. If you’re stuck on this task, you’re certainly not the only one, so here’s how to fix the use a Ship in a Bottle quest not working in Fortnite.

Fortnite use a Ship in a Bottle quest not working fix

The use a Ship in a Bottle quest is not bugged in Fortnite and instead can only be completed under certain conditions, which means you don’t need to wait for a fix because you can get this task done now. It’s easy to think this quest is bugged because it doesn’t give you all the information you need to complete it.

How to complete use a Ship in a Bottle quest in Fortnite

To successfully finish the use a Ship in a Bottle quest in Fortnite, you need to open three Ships in a Bottle while you’re in the water. You won’t make any progress in this task if you’re on land, so find some water and deploy this item to progress.

This is a tough task to finish since the condition you have to fulfill isn’t mentioned anywhere in the quest. Instead, this is a fairly obscure reference to a scene that unfolds in the film Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales.

In this movie, Captain Jack Sparrow and Captain Barbossa are trying to take off on the Black Pearl but can’t because it’s super small after being trapped in a bottle. Captain Barbossa eventually realizes what the issue is and proclaims “She needs the sea!” before tossing the ship into the ocean to return it to full size.

Just like Captain Barbossa, you too need to venture into water to properly use a Ship in a Bottle for this quest. I’ve seen all the films in this franchise quite a few times, so when this quest didn’t work on land, I remembered this moment and decided to try it out at sea. Once I ventured to water with this Mythic item, completing the task was super easy.

Based on my experience with this quest, any body of water seems to work for this quest, which means you can use the ocean, lakes, rivers, and anything else you can find. As long as you’re standing in water when you use the Ship in a Bottle, it will count. I did it once at Shipwreck Shallows, once out at sea near the edge of The Underworld, and once in the River Styx lake in front of Grim Gate.

The tracking for this quest seems to be very particular, though, as one Ship in a Bottle I used at Shipwreck Shallows counted but the second one didn’t since I was too close to land, so I recommend finding a deep and large body of water to be safe. If you want to do it in shallow water, make sure you’re as deep in the water as you can get when you release it and not on land.

If you plan it right, you can also knock out the destroy structures or objects with a Ship in a Bottle quest while working on this one. Successfully completing both earns you some precious Cursed Gold and gets you a couple of steps closer to grabbing the Jack’s Ship Glider.