Ubisoft finally buffed Skull and Bones’ biggest ships – and I’m still not sold

The moment Skull and Bones’ “big ship fantasy” fell apart for me

I remember the exact moment Skull and Bones’ ship fantasy snapped in half for me. I’d just sunk an embarrassing number of hours grinding mats and infamy to unlock one of the big endgame hulls – the kind of ship the marketing loves to plaster across trailers. Massive profile, rows of cannons, the full “King of the Indian Ocean” vibe.

I launch from Sainte-Anne, proud as hell, sails billowing, music swelling… and within five minutes I’m getting kited to death by some clown in a smaller, faster ship I could’ve built twenty hours earlier. I’m trying to swing my fat, sluggish hull around while they dance circles around me, plinking away like I’m a floating piñata filled with iron ore and regret.

That was my “wait, why did I grind for this?” moment. In a pirate game, finally getting a massive warship should feel like stepping into a boss fight – not like equipping heavy armor in an RPG and realizing the devs forgot to give it actual armor values. I dropped back to medium ships and basically ignored the “ultimate” hulls for weeks. And apparently, I wasn’t alone, because here we are: the Skull and Bones large ships update, Ubisoft’s attempt to fix the endgame boats nobody really wanted to main.

What Ubisoft is trying to fix with the large ships update

The recent Skull and Bones large ships update is clearly a reaction to how the meta settled after launch. On paper, large ships were supposed to be the aspirational goal: you grind infamy, you hoard resources, you finally get this monstrous hull that towers over the seas. In practice, the “best” choice was often some medium workhorse that could actually move, dodge, and not make you feel like you were steering a shopping mall through a hurricane.

So Ubisoft’s latest pass on the big boys is aimed squarely at closing that gap. They’ve tweaked stats, rebalanced how tanky they are, and tried to make them less of a liability in both PvE events and the tiny sliver of PvP that still lives out there. You can see the intention: make large ships actually worth the grind, not just big, slow loot piñatas that look great in screenshots and useless in actual combat.

Broadly speaking, the update leans on three pillars – nothing shocking if you’ve ever seen a live-service “we swear we’re listening” patch before:

• Improving large ships’ survivability and damage so they actually feel like endgame power
• Smoothing out handling and speed so they’re not just bricks with cannons strapped on
• Rebalancing certain activities and encounters to better justify bringing a big hull

On a surface level, that all sounds fine. Reasonable, even. As someone who genuinely wanted to main a giant floating fortress, this should’ve been my perfect patch. But once you actually live with these changes, the whole thing starts to feel less like a confident course correction and more like watching a captain yank the wheel back and forth, desperately trying not to hit another iceberg.

The good: big ships finally feel like they have some teeth

I’ll give credit where it’s due: large ships do feel better after the update. Before, taking one into a world event or an outpost assault felt like handicapping yourself for the sake of cosmetic flexing. Now, you can actually lean into the fantasy of being a slow-moving, high-threat brawler and not instantly regret it the moment some smaller hull decides you’re today’s content.

In PvE especially, the changes are noticeable. Forts and elite ships don’t shred you quite as fast, and the health and armor tuning finally makes it feel like your sheer size actually means something. You’re still not invincible – nor should you be – but there’s a new breathing room to the playstyle. You can commit to trading blows instead of constantly panicking about getting caught broadside by three enemies at once.

The handling tweaks help too, even if they’re subtle. I’m a fighting game player at heart, so responsiveness matters to me. Before the update, large ships felt like they had ten frames of input lag baked into their rudder. After, the turn arcs are still chunky (as they should be), but there’s a bit more precision. You can line up broadsides and mortar angles without feeling like you’re wrestling the controls every second.

For the first time since launch, I actually took a large hull into multiple sessions in a row and didn’t instantly swap back to a medium. My friends didn’t groan when I said, “I’m bringing the big one this time.” That alone is a win.

The bad: this still feels like stat-padding, not real design

But here’s where I bounce off this update hard: at its core, it still feels like solving a design problem with a spreadsheet instead of a vision. Buff numbers here, tweak armor there, adjust speed caps and damage coefficients. It’s the most live-service way possible to deal with something that should’ve been fundamental to the game’s identity from day one.

Naval games live or die on how different hulls feel, not just how their stats scale. Sea of Thieves, for all its own issues, nails this. A galleon isn’t just “more HP and more cannons” – it’s a fundamentally different experience. It’s a social machine that needs coordination, with sails and angles and blind spots that change the way you think. In Skull and Bones, for the longest time, large ships were just bigger damage sponges with worse handling and no meaningful mechanical identity to justify the pain.

The large ships update doesn’t fully fix that. It makes them less bad, sure. It nudges them closer to where they should’ve been at launch. But where’s the truly distinctive playstyle? Where’s the mechanic that says, “this is what it means to be a massive warship in this world” beyond “I have more bars on my health UI now”?

Instead, it feels like Ubisoft pulled the most obvious levers: make them tankier so they don’t die as easily, juice their damage so people feel rewarded, ease up on the worst handling pain points. That’s all necessary, but it’s also the bare minimum. If your “large ship pass” still leaves them playing like sluggish, slightly-buffed versions of your mid-tier hulls, then all you’ve really done is move some numbers around until the community complains a bit less.

And let’s not pretend there’s no monetization angle wrapped up in this. Big ships are prime real estate for cosmetics, and Skull and Bones leans hard into the live-service wardrobe game. If players aren’t sailing the huge hulls, they’re also not buying the huge cosmetics. You don’t need insider documents to see the incentive there.

Ship fantasy vs spreadsheets: Ubisoft still doesn’t fully get it

I’ve been around long enough to remember when Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag blew people’s minds by making naval combat actually fun. It wasn’t realistic, but it sold a fantasy: fast, aggressive, dramatic. You could feel the weight of the Jackdaw, but it never felt like it was fighting you. Skull and Bones was supposed to take that spark and build a whole game around it.

Instead, it got bogged down in systems. Damage types, armor resistances, perk synergies, loot tiers, infamy ranks. None of that is bad by itself – I like deep systems when they’re in service of a clear identity. But somewhere along the line, Ubisoft forgot that “big ship fantasy” isn’t just about higher numbers; it’s about presence, intimidation, and flow.

Large ships in Skull and Bones should change the tempo of a fight. They should anchor battles around them, force smaller hulls to make tough choices: do you commit to trying to burn this monster down, or do you focus on its escorts? The game flirts with that idea, especially in big PvE events, but it still doesn’t commit to it fully. Post-update, I feel stronger, yes, but I don’t feel different enough.

Coming from fighting games, I think of ships like character archetypes. Small hulls are your rushdown – dart in, burst damage, get out. Medium hulls are your balanced shotos – flexible, adaptable, good in most situations. Large hulls should be your grapplers or heavy zoners – terrifying when they get to play their game, but vulnerable if you can outmaneuver them. Right now, they’re more like “slightly stronger shotos with slower walk speed.” Technically viable, but not exciting.

The large ships update edges them closer to the fantasy, but still feels like half-steps. The core fantasy should have been the starting point, not something patched toward months after release because the meta data looked bad.

The grind problem the update accidentally makes worse

There’s another side effect of this update that rubs me the wrong way: it quietly reinforces how miserable the grind can be. When big ships feel underwhelming, at least you can tell yourself, “eh, I’ll just stick with my comfy medium hull and not worry about it.” Once they’re buffed and pushed as the “true” endgame choice, there’s a subtle pressure to chase them whether you actually enjoy the playstyle or not.

Skull and Bones is already a game you feel more than you finish. It’s a live-service treadmill dressed up as piracy. So when Ubisoft leans hard into, “no really, these large ships are worth it now, come grind for them,” it hits that same nerve as MMO expansions that quietly obsolete your old gear and then dangle a slightly shinier carrot at the end of another 40-hour lane.

If the journey there were rich enough, I’d be more forgiving. But a lot of the content still feels like variations on “sail here, blow this up, fill these bars, repeat.” The large ships update makes the reward at the end less disappointing, sure – but it doesn’t make the road there any less repetitive. In a weird way, it almost makes the grind feel more mandatory, because now you’re skipping something actually decent instead of something obviously half-baked.

I don’t mind working for power. I do mind feeling like every major balance patch is really a nudge to re-engage with the grind machine in a slightly different flavor.

What this update really says about Skull and Bones’ future

Underneath the stat tweaks and handling changes, the Skull and Bones large ships update tells me something more important: Ubisoft is still trying to figure out what this game is actually for.

Is it a power fantasy loot grinder where bigger is always better, and balance is just about making sure the damage numbers feel fair? Then yeah, buffing the endgame hulls into obvious chase items makes sense.

Or is it supposed to be a living pirate sandbox where different ship sizes have distinct, valid roles, and a crew of medium ships can outplay a careless titan through pure skill and coordination? In that world, large ships need more unique tools and more interesting counters, not just more padding.

Right now, it feels like Skull and Bones is trying to be both, and the large ships update leans harder into the former. “You grinded, here’s your buffet of stats. Please keep playing.” It’s safer, more predictable design – and it might even work for a lot of players. But it’s also the exact kind of thinking that made the game feel like a checklist to me in the first place.

I look at the way other live-service games have evolved – from Warframe’s wild power creep to Destiny’s constant seesaw between buildcraft and frustration – and I recognize the pattern. When in doubt, make the grind payoff bigger. Make the endgame toys flashier. Hope that distracts people from the cracks in the foundation. The large ships patch feels like Skull and Bones entering that phase.

Where I draw the line as a player

Here’s where I’m at with Skull and Bones after the large ships update: I’m glad they did it. I’m genuinely happier taking a massive hull into battle now than I was a month ago. Some of the worst design sins around big ships have been sanded down. If you always wanted to feel like a floating fortress and you’re willing to live with the game’s grind, you’ll probably have more fun now.

But for me, this patch is also a reminder of everything the game still isn’t. It isn’t confident enough in its own ship archetypes to make them radically different. It isn’t bold enough to rethink its progression so that chasing these hulks feels like a story, not a spreadsheet. It isn’t willing to truly commit to either being a tight, systems-driven sandbox or a full-on loot treadmill, so it sits in a weird, expensive middle.

The large ships update should have been the moment I finally went, “Okay, now it’s time to live in this world for a while.” Instead, it feels like another cautious tweak in a game that was sold to us as “quadruple-A piracy.” The ships are bigger, the stats are better, the handling is cleaner – but the soul still feels strangely small.

I’ll keep an eye on what Ubisoft does next. If a future update finally gives these massive hulls unique mechanics, meaningful roles in group play, and content that actually demands their presence, I’ll happily dive back in for another long stretch. I want this game to find its identity. I want those towering silhouettes on the horizon to mean something beyond “someone grinded a bit longer than you.”

Until then, the large ships update is a nice bandage on a bigger wound. It makes Skull and Bones easier to enjoy in short bursts, but it doesn’t fix why I bounced off it in the first place. And that’s the real problem: if the game about living the pirate dream can’t make its biggest, baddest ships genuinely thrilling to chase and sail, no amount of stat buffs is going to save it from drifting off course.