Skull and Bones, the action-adventure pirate game that began development at Ubisoft in 2013 and finally released for PS5, Windows PCs, and Xbox Series X|S this February, is now available on Steam with Achievements and several improvements for PC players, including updated keyboard-and-mouse controls, UI improvements, and updated key binds, Ubisoft has announced. Into the Dragon’s Wake, the game’s third season, is also out today, delivering new pirate lords (i.e., Li Tian Ning and Commander Zhang), a new ship, new weapons, an all-new Smugglers Pass, themed cosmetics, and more for the game, which continues to offer a free trial.
Season 3 content includes:
- “Sea Lords – From the formidable Li Tian Ning and Commander Zhang to a ferocious dragon that descends from the heavens, players must be ready to face these new foes on the lawless seas.”
- “New Ship & Weapons – Players will be able to acquire a new ship – the Battle Junk – that excels at soaking up damage and creating openings to attack enemies. Unique new weapons including the Divine Thunder, an electrically charged long gun that can summon lightning strikes, will also be obtainable.”
- “World Events – Players will face a new merchant convoy with the Ungwana Faction, which will grant access to new equipment (Epic Furniture and Epic Armor).”
- “Time-Limited Events – The Mooncake Regatta and Requiem of the Lost Halloween Event will be two time-limited events players will discover during this new season.”
- “Smuggler Pass – As with each new season, players can take on weekly challenges to reap rewards and progress across 3 paths simultaneously on the new Smuggler Pass.”
- “Quality of Life improvements and New Features – New mouse and keyboard optimization, new 3rd person captain camera while sailing, crafting upgrades, territorial benefits, in-game achievements, an expanded Black Market, and improved onboarding have been added to the game to enhance players’ experience.”
A breakdown of the content:
New PC updates include:
- Selection States and Behaviors
- Hovering over an item will no longer select it by default. Mouse-and-keyboard players can now left-click to select the item and scroll tooltip details (without performing a mouse navigation from item grid to tooltip)
- Removed the concept of switching between inventories in the warehouse. Now, hovering over the item will contextually switch to the active inventory
- Interacting with items, such as bringing up the actions menu, can now be done by right-clicking
- Double-clicking on a hovered item will perform the first action in the actions menu (such as consume, discard, or transfer an item)
- Improved overall visuals for clarity
- Improved visual clarity for when an element is clickable or not
- Improved scroll bar visuals
- Reduced opacity of the button prompt in the objective tracker in cases where it cannot be triggered
- Ease of Use in Menus
- Ship loadouts (including Weapons, Armor, Furniture, and Cosmetics) now use horizontal tabs instead of vertical tabs, allowing mouse-and-keyboard players to switch between tabs by simply hovering over the category icon
- When an action menu is shown, clicking anywhere outside of the action menu will close it
- Key Binds
- Decoupled settlement interaction and disembarking button-remapping options – each of them can now be separately bound
- Supported [Hold] options for most [Press] keys that can be rebound
- Added a shortcut to directly access Journal [J] by default
- Rebound toaster notification keys for [F1] and [F2] by default
- Rebound cancellation of rebinding keys to [Hold][Esc] by default
- Map Navigation
- Zooming in/out on the map will now be based on the mouse cursor location, not the middle of the screen
- Zooming in/out of the map with the mouse wheel is now possible when the Journal is open
- Dragging the map with a mouse now retains the mouse cursor and follows a 1:1 ratio, allowing the screen distance moved by the map to correspond to the equal amount of screen distance moved by the mouse
- While dragging the map with a mouse, the mouse movement is clamped to the edge of the map
- Mouse and Keyboard Exclusive UI
- A new horizontal “action bar” is shown instead of the “action wheel” in the HUD when in mouse-and-keyboard control scheme
- Switch quickly between three different action bars with the mouse wheel, with a total of 12 quick action slots. Note: players using a controller can also switch the different action wheels by pressing and holding DPAD UP/DOWN buttons
A gameplay trailer for the latest season:
Ubisoft Singapore on why it decided to update mouse and keyboard:
We’re always looking to improve our PC experience as a whole. With the upcoming release of Skull and Bones on Steam, we wanted to revisit the keyboard-and-mouse user controls, as many aspects of it were initially based on the controller. Our goal here was to make the game feel more “PC” when using keyboard and mouse.
Our ongoing goal is to create a more seamless Skull and Bones experience for our PC players. With this round of improvements, playing Skull and Bones on PC with a mouse and keyboard will start feeling much more natural to the PC gamer, with more optimized controls, including double-click functionality, dragging and scrolling improvements with the mouse on the map, visually specialized widgets, and more.