Skull and Bones PC optimization guide: Best settings for optimal performance

Skull and Bones, the highly anticipated open-world MMO from Ubisoft, is finally coming out in just a few short days. And, thanks to the recently released Skull and Bones open beta, players can get a feel of how the game will look and perform on their preferred gaming platform.

Since Skull and Bones' open beta has released so close to the game's official release date, i.e., February 16, 2024, it more or less gives you a look at the finished product. The open beta is also a great tool, especially for PC players, to test how their system would fair against Ubisoft's upcoming open-world MMO/pirate simulator.

Here's a comprehensive PC optimization guide for Skull and Bones, including the optimized settings for best performance.

---

Best and optimized settings for Skull and Bones PC

The game is built on the Anvil Next engine, the same one that has been powering many of Ubisoft's flagship titles, including Assassin's Creed Mirage, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Ghost Recon Breakpoint, etc. However, since Skull and Bones is a current-gen exclusive title, unlike previous Anvil Next games, it does come packed with some new graphical features.

One of the newest additions to the engine is the support for ray-traced global illumination, which does require quite a lot of GPU horsepower. Much like the previous Anvil Next games, the biggest hurdles against performance are Shadows and Volumetrics.

Being a current-gen open-world game, Ubisoft's upcoming MMO boasts some hefty system requirements, with 8 GB VRAM entry-level GPUs being the baseline requirement. However, the CPU and memory requirements aren't that outrageous, with a hexacore Ryzen 5 3600 being enough for 1080p60fps gameplay.

Here are the official system requirements for Skull and Bones PC:

Minimum (1080 30 fps)

• Operating system: Windows 10 (64-bit version)
• Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 1600 @ 3.2 GHz, Intel Core i7-4790 @ 3.6 GHz, or better
• RAM: 8 GB (running dual-channel mode)
• Video card: AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT (8 GB), NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 (6 GB), or better
• Hard drive: 65 GB available storage (SSD required)
• DirectX version: DirectX 12

Recommended (1080 60 fps)

• Operating system: Windows 10 (64-bit version) or Windows 11
• Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 @ 3.6 GHz, Intel Core i7-8700K @ 3.7 GHz, or better
• RAM: 16 GB (running dual-channel mode)
• Video card: AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT (8 GB), NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 (8 GB), or better
• Hard drive: 65 GB available storage (SSD required)
• DirectX version: DirectX 12

Here are the optimized settings that should give you a stable 60fps gameplay experience in Skull and Bones PC:

Display

• Window mode: Fullscreen
• Aspect ratio: Default/16:9 (Native)
• Resolution: 1920 x 1080 (Native)
• VSync: Off
• Resolution scale: 100%

General

• Graphics quality: Custom
• Adaptive quality: Off
• Shadows: Low

Upscaling

• Upscaling type: TAA
• Upscaling mode: Native

Environment

• Environment details: Medium
• Clutter: Medium
• Water: High
• Screen space reflections: On
• Volumetric clouds: Low

Postprocessing

• Ambient occlusion: On
• Depth of field: High
• Motion blur: On

Ray tracing

• Ray-traced global illumination: Off

The game also comes with support for DLSS and FSR, allowing you to leverage these upscaling solutions in order to get a boost in framerates, without compromising on the graphical fidelity. It also has a resolution scaling system, but we recommend sticking with FSR or DLSS for better framerates and a more temporally stable image.