How to play Skull and Bones PvP

Skull and Bones is in its final open beta after several years of changes and long delays and we’ve all been wondering the same thing—how to steal from other players.

Given Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag already did the solo pirate adventure phenomenally in 2013, it’s fair to hope Skull and Bones would have a larger focus on player-vs-player combat and fighting interactions. The reality, however, seems to be PvP is a bit more of an afterthought. Here’s how to play Skull and Bones player-vs-player.

How to play PvP in Skull and Bones

A select few Contracts and optional events temporarily enable PvP in Skull and Bones. During these Contracts, you’ll never be fighting for your livelihood or your treasure, but rather competing for event rewards.

There are three ways to enter a temporary PvP state, all centered around randomly occurring Contracts or world events. Those events are Cutthroat Cargo Hunt, Helm Wager, and Hostile Takeover. Don’t worry—unless you’re specifically playing the Helm Wager event, there aren’t any actual stakes here.

These PvP contracts are not something you can actively seek out and participate in. Rather they spawn every now and then on the Skull and Bones map. When one spawns, you can sail over to it and join the public event. In the mean time, you should focus on what piracy is really all about: Sailing around and gathering wood and stuff.

How Skull and Bones PvP works

So far in the Skull and Bones beta, I have encountered one PvP event after about four hours. The event was Cutthroat Cargo Hunt: The one where you and others can all seek out the same Legendary Treasure Map. A red skull map icon appeared in the middle of the ocean where the Legendary Map Spawned, and I was the first ship to reach it. Once I had the map, an outpost was marked with the same icon and I was prompted to head there before another player attacked and killed me.

This was interesting for two reasons. First off, because the event randomly spawned without notifying anyone, it didn’t seem likely anyone knew I was making off with a map. Second, the speed of ships in this game doesn’t exactly make for a high-octane chase.

Two other players joined the PVP event after me, and because I had such a large head start to the destination, there was never any chance of either of them catching me. I finished the low stress expedition to find that Legendary Treasure Maps seems to scale with your personal Infamy level: I was Infamy level three (below the suggested level five), and my reward was that same Culverin I cannon that I’ve been given as a reward for every fetch quest so far in the Skull and Bones testing beta. Not exactly “Legendary.”

Can you toggle PvP on and off in Skull and Bones?

There are no options to freely turn PVP on in Skull and Bone, and there are also no servers dedicated to PvP. After all, feeling like you’re on a daring and roguish adventure where an attack could come from anywhere at any moment wouldn’t feel very pirate-like.

Instead of including an option for a PvP toggle, PvP map-region, or PvP servers, Ubisoft has done exactly what Blackbeard would have done: Limited PvP elements to small scale, optional, and contained events. It’s a pirate’s life, after all.