Skeleton Ship

This article is about Ships manned by Skeletons. For Ghostly Ships, see Ghost Ships.

Skeleton Ship

Details
Type	Enemy
Behaviour	Varied
Location	Ocean

A Skeleton Ship is a ship operated by a crew of skeletons. They can appear as either a Galleon or a Sloop, distinguished by their blue and green lanterns, Bone Crusher Figurehead, torn sails, and fortified hull.

Behaviour[]

Skeleton Ships can either be found docile; patrolling between islands, through emergent encounters or as part of a Skeleton Fleet. A roaming skeleton ship however will become aggressive when antagonised:

A ship with a player on it sails too close.
Is struck by a Cannonball or Ship.
Is successfully boarded.

Emergent Skeleton Ships and Skeleton Fleet Ships rise out of the water alongside the player, already hostile. Unlike the player ships, Skeleton Ships often carry much larger crews dedicated to either cannons or below deck as a repair crew, naturally making them hard to sink due to their quick repairing capability. However, Skeletons do not carry buckets and thus are unable to pail water that have already pooled in the hull.

During combat They sail alongside the target, matching their speed, while firing at them with cannonballs or try and deliberately crash into them to cause damage. Despite this, Skeletons will not board but put themselves at risk from either Firebombs or from players boarding them. When at range, Skeleton Ships may sporadically load and fire a single type of Cursed Cannonball to disrupt players repairing or evading their attack; Each ship carries a specific type of cursed cannonball, and their symbol can be seen from banners flying along the aft of the ship. Both types of Skeleton Ships are unique as they have a Skeleton wielding an Eye of Reach in the Crow's Nest to try and snipe players.

Types[]

There are two types of skeleton ships:

Skeleton Sloop: A smaller boat manned by a crew of 5+ skeletons. During emergent encounters against sloops and occasionally against Brigatines, Skeleton Sloops are generally a more trivial task for a skilled crew. They may also form part of early waves in Skeleton Fleets.
Skeleton Galleon: A Galleon manned by a hefty crew consisting of 10+ skeletons. This ship is more dangerous giving their firepower and nature. They emerge to engage Brigatines and Galleons during emergent encounters or the final wave of a Skeleton Fleet.

Rewards[]

All Skeleton Ships have randomised Treasure on board, with a higher chance to find Skeleton Captain’s Skulls and Skeleton Captain’s Chests on Skeleton Galleons.

Once defeated, a Skeleton Ship will leave behind 3-12 pieces of Treasure from the list below:

The Storage Crates only have Cannonballs, Planks and occasionally Fruit in them.

Sinking Skeleton Ships as a Trading Company Emissary rewards Crews with a small amount of Emissary Grade Reputation.

SkeletonShipsCloud — A Skeleton Fleet cloud.

Skeleton Fleet[]

A Skeleton Fleet is a World Event signalled by a dark storm cloud shaped like a galleon. The cloud's size is tied to the player's proximity to the event. Skeleton Fleets spawn in the middle of the Sea of Thieves, close to the Glorious Sea Dog Tavern and remain for 30-45 minutes. Fleets have 3 waves, each wave having two ships. In each wave both ships are of the same type however the type is independent of the wave and is random.

Battle Mechanics[]

For each ship, the skeleton and cannonball types are randomised. The crews can either consist of normal, plant, gold, or shadow skeletons. The ships can also use one type of green or purple Cursed Cannonballs or Firebombs in the battle. When a Skeleton Ship becomes aggressive towards a player ship, they will immediately start shooting their cannonballs and attempt to ram the player's ship for extra damage. When in close enough proximity, the skeleton crew will also attempt to shoot at the player with their guns.

Each Skeleton Ship has a captain, a cannon crew on the top deck, a repair crew below deck and snipers on the crow's nest. Any skeletons that are killed on a skeleton ship will respawn after a while. The cannon crew constantly uses one type of cursed cannonballs in addition to regular ones, making it harder for the player ship to move or repair their damage. For example, if a Skeleton Ship has weary balls, the player may find themselves being constantly put to sleep and unable to fight back, escape or even repair, so it is of utmost importance to not stand still at a Skeleton Ship's cannon range. The repair crew will focus on patching up any holes, but they cannot bail out water so the most effective way of sinking a Skeleton Ship is to fill up their ship with water in one way or another.

Strategies[]

Because of the vast number of items in Sea of Thieves, there are many ways to sink Skeleton Ships, the most effective of which are listed below.

Basic battle method[]

For this method, one generally wants to stockpile on cannonballs, planks and food. For this strategy, players simply want to get the Skeleton Ship in cannon range and keep up the firing pressure until the Skeleton Ship sinks. For this method it is best to have at least one player on cannon and steering duty and one player on repair duty. It is important to hit the cannonballs on the lower deck until they sink to the second deck. Aim for the upper decks when their cannoneers are causing trouble or when their water is already at second deck. Cursed Cannonballs also work on Skeleton Ships and crews so these are advised to use to keep the Skeleton Ship from manoeuvring and repairing its hull. The Ballast and Peace Balls are extremely effective in sinking Skeleton Ships.

Hole guarding method[]

This method requires at least two people in the Crew. Have one person man the Cannons and shoot at least one bottom-deck hole, while the other person jumps on board the Skeleton Ship and goes down to guard the Hole from being Planked up by all the Skeletons. This requires a certain level of survival skills of the one guarding the holes, as they have to be able to take on waves of skeletons without dying. Additional Food can be found on the Food Barrel on-deck.

Gunpowder Barrel method[]

One of the more effective ways to take down these ships. This method involves a member of the players crew taking a Gunpowder Barrel onto the other ship and detonating it. Be mindful that Skeleton Ships tend to speed away from any player that is approaching their ladders, so make sure you hit them with an Anchorball or get them stuck on a rock, island or other ships, so that the keg bearer has a guaranteed chance to board. You could also Harpoon the Skeleton Ship to get closer. After this is done, it is usually best to stay and distract the repair crew from patching the holes as a powder keg is not guaranteed to sink a Skeleton Ship. This can be mixed with cannons, as well as ramming the enemy ship for devastating combos. The best place to detonate the keg would be in the bottom deck, but the keg bearer has to watch out for the repair crew as they will immediately try to kill anyone who enters below deck.

Chest of Sorrow method[]

If you have been lucky (or unlucky) enough to encounter a Chest of Sorrow on your travels and are bothered by a Skeleton Ship then you have a surefire way of sinking them. The Chest of Sorrow continuously fills up any ship with water when crying and as luck would have it, Skeleton Crews are incapable of bailing out water from a ship. Following the same advice as the Powder Keg Method, have one of your crewmates simply drop the chest anywhere on the Skeleton Ship and watch as they helplessly sink once the chest starts crying.

The Harpoon and bail method[]

As of the Anniversary Update, this has become one of the easiest and most painless ways to sink any Skeleton Ship. The idea here is to sail behind a Skeleton Ship and have one of your crewmates harpoon the back-end of their ship and keep pulling it in. Meanwhile all the other members of the crew should fill their buckets with water and start bailing overboard towards the Skeleton Ship. This will fill up the Skeleton Ship in no time, causing them to sink without many supplies lost. This is best achieved when you have one small hole in your ship, so you can get a continuous source of water for sinking the Skeleton Ship.

The Bail method can also be done solo without a ship. You could simply swim or rowboat close to a passive Skeleton Ship (note that your own ship has to be far away for them not to aggro) and keep on throwing water on their deck.

Cursed cannonball farming method[]

This method isn't actually about sinking the ship, but rather gaining lots of cursed cannonballs from them to use in later fights. One must steer their ship broadside of the other, and board immediately to kill the skeletons manning the cannons. If any cursed cannonball are found, take them. Then, hide somewhere the cannon skeletons won't find you, wait for them to respawn (Or just get lucky and have them ignore you) and let the skeleton load the cannon, kill it, and take the ball out, cursed or not. This cannot be done indefinitely because of the limited supplies you can have on your ship, but it is a good cannonball farming method. You should probably farm Sloops because of the much less intense firepower compared to that which the Galleon brings.

Ships have banners displaying the cursed cannonball they fire hanging from the elevated surface that the Wheel resides on. The banner will show what type of cursed cannonball the skeletons have, and if it's not worth the risk, back off. For example an Anchorball ship would have an anchor for their banners, while a Riggingball ship would have images of sails rolled all the way up.

Cursed Sails[]

Skeleton Ships were introduced in 2018 during the Cursed Sails event. Each week of the event had set timeframes where players were tasked to defend a certain region from a Skeleton fleet who would have a specific Cursed Cannonballs arsenal.

Trivia[]

Players can fix the holes of Skeleton Ships with Wooden Planks.
The map found on the Skeleton Ship map table uses an older, concept art version of the world map.
It is possible to unload Cannonballs and Cursed Cannonballs out of a skeleton ship's cannon.
Difficulty does not scale with ship size unlike other encounters.

Patch history[]

2.0.14 (April 22, 2020)
- Defeating an emergent threat such as a Skeleton Ship will now result in higher-value loot drops.

1.4.4 (March 6, 2019)
- Rain is no longer visible inside Skeleton Ships.

1.4.3 (February 6, 2019)
- Skeleton Ship Encounter Range - Skelly Ships will wait until you’re further away before they consider returning to the depths.

1.4.0 (November 28, 2018)
- Skeleton Ships - Players can now encounter passive and aggressive emergent Skeleton Ships anywhere in the world! Passive ships just want to go about their business but they will fight back if you attack them. Best of luck if one of the more aggressive ones surfaces near you...
- Skeleton Ships will no longer ping into the air on occasion.
- During Skeleton Ship battles there will no longer be occasional long delays between waves.

1.2.0 (July 31, 2018)
- Introduced.