Let’s go with, oh I don’t know, say the RTX 4060 as our settings performance guinea pig for this one. Using that 60fps at 1440p result, via the Ultra High preset, we can lower individual quality settings to see which are worth toning down and which you can afford to keep up.

I’ll say right now that ideally, we want to keep upscaling Skull and Bones Items' quality as high as possible – it’s not so bad at 1440p but you’ll easily see the difference between Quality and Performance at 1080p, and it ain’t pretty. Instead, then, let’s mine the rest of Skull and Bones’ graphics settings for potential FPS gains.

Skull and Bones runs on its Ultra High quality preset.

Skull and Bones runs on its Ultra High quality preset.

Skull and Bones runs on its Very High quality preset.

Skull and Bones runs on its High quality preset.

Skull and Bones running on its Medium quality preset.

Skull and Bones running on its Low quality preset.

2560x1440, Ultra High preset (including TAA Quality upscaling)

Shiver Me Timbers, Skull, and Bones is holding an open beta in February image

Shiver me timbers, Skull and Bones is holding an open beta in February

Adaptive quality: Leave this off. Besides the jarringly sudden dips in visual quality that occur whenever you fall below the target framerate, I actually averaged slightly less than the Ultra High preset’s 60fps while the adaptive target was 60fps, ending up with 58fps instead. Ignore.

Shadows: There’s a teeny framerate increase up for grabs here, the RTX 4060 averaging 62fps on Medium shadows and 63fps on Low. The quality drop is noticeable, mind, so I’d suggest making other, more fruitful changes before resorting to these.

Upscaling type/mode: As per usual, Nvidia DLSS is the best of the bunch here, with its Quality mode blasting average performance up to 77fps. Quality-mode FSR 2 is also faster than the default TAA, producing 70fps, but it’s not nearly as sharp in the details. If your GPU lacks DLSS support, TAA Balanced may be a better option than FSR – this scored 70fps as well.

You can set the mode to Native if you don’t want any upscaling at all, but DLSS and TAA can adequately recreate native resolution, so you might as well use one of them. Even if native TAA is only slightly slower than Quality, averaging 56fps.

Environment details: Here’s one you can drop. Switching from Ultra High to Medium got my RTX 4060 up to 66fps, a 10% bump all by itself, and without knackering the visuals. There’s a Low option as well, though it’s no faster than Medium.

Clutter: This doesn’t seem to affect performance one way or the other, both Medium and Low averaging 60fps. Stick to High.

Water: Considering it's such an ocean-going game, cutting water quality in Skull and Bones can be a shrewd move. Both Low and Medium improved performance from 60fps to 67fps, so obviously, go with Medium.

Screen space reflections: This is one of those rare occasions where you might want to leave extra frames on the table. While disabling SSR got my RTX 4060 up to 67fps, it – unlike Medium water quality – amounts to a major drop in visual quality, filling the screen with a weirdly blank, flat-looking sea. Keep reflections on if you can afford it.

Volumetric clouds: These, on the other hand, can be turned down freely. I only got an extra 3fps dropping from High to Medium, but the quality difference is even smaller.

Ambient occlusion: Switching this off didn’t affect performance at all, still averaging 60fps. Leave this on.

Depth of field: Likewise, still 60fps from turning this off, so, by all means, keep it enabled.

Motion blur: Just the tiniest 1fps increase came from disabling motion blur. Still, it doesn’t serve much of a purpose, so you may as well ditch it.

Ray-traced global illumination: The one and only ray tracing effect in Skull and Bones, and an unnecessary indulgence. The quality difference between this and ‘standard’ lighting is negligible, and disabling it pushed the RTX 4060 up to 68fps.

Even with a relatively short list of PC graphics options, there are still a few tweaks that can seriously put the wind into your framerates. Here’s what I’d consider the best settings for Skull and Bones:

Upscaling type/mode: DLSS Quality or TAA Balanced

Environment details: Medium

Water: Medium

Volumetric clouds: Medium

Motion blur: Off

Ray-traced global illumination: Off

Everything else: Ultra High preset equivalent

This mishmash still looks nice – definitely more like the High/Very High than Medium – but lets cheap Skull and Bones Items run far quicker than if you used the former presets as they come. The RTX 4060, for instance, averaged 109fps with them (including DLSS), almost doubling Ultra High performance and dramatically smoothing out visits to those hardware-intensive hub towns.