How to Increase Ship Speed

Increase your ship speed in Skull and Bones via furniture and food. Learn how to increase your ship speed, what the fastest ship is, and the current known max speed.

How to Increase Ship Speed

Speed Increase Checklist
Sail with the Wind at Your Back Install Speed-Increasing Furniture Eat Food to Restore Stamina Avoid Going Over Ship Carrying Capacity Activate Pirate's Bonfire in Outposts

Sail with the Wind at Your Back

You'll reach a higher speed when you sail with the wind at your back indicated by the green arrow on your speed meter pointing north.

Although the direction of the wind regularly changes in the game, you'll want to always try to have the green arrow pointing north to reach the maximum speed possible.

Sailing Against the Wind Lowers Your Speed

Sailing against the wind will lower your top speed, decelerating your ship and force you to consume more stamina.

The arrow on your speed meter will flash red to indicate that you're sailing against the wind and a visual effect of clouds obscuring the screen will also play to indicate that the wind is slowing you down.

Install Speed-Increasing Furniture

Installing Navigation Furniture with stamina and speed-increasing effects is another way to increase your boat speed.

The Rope Locker Major Furniture is a particularly useful one to install since it grants you 300% Acceleration when accelerating at full trim at the cost of 5% stamina consumption. It's even possible to consistently activate this perk by eating stamina restoring food!

Eat Food to Restore Stamina

Eating food while sailing will restore a percentage amount of stamina and these have a 15 second cooldown. Eating food as soon as the cooldown ends will allow you to maintain your ship's accelerated speed by restoring your stamina.

Apart from maintaining a consistent top speed, eating food to restore stamina is also useful for escaping naval battles you can't win.

Avoid Going Over Ship Carrying Capacity

Going over your ship's carrying capacity will inflict the encumbered state which will lower your ship's speed and maneuverability.

To avoid this, make sure to store heavy items such as commodities in your warehouse before setting sail especially if you're planning to plunder ships and settlements!

You Can Jettison Cargo While Sailing

If you find yourself encumbered in the open seas, you can can always jettison cargo by going to the storage tab. We recommend throwing out flawed materials first such as Ruined Sails or Rusty Nails and leave the more valuable cargo.

Best Food to Cook

Coconuts and Ndizi are great early game raw materials that you can farm and cook into Grilled Coconut and Grilled Banana, while Grilled Bread is a fairly common drop from Compaigne Ships.

These food items are easy to gather and stock up on unlike food items such as Grilled Crocodile that, while restoring more stamina, is also fairly hard to farm.

Tylosaurus Steak Restores 60% Stamina

Tylosaurus Steak currently offers the highest stamina restoration in the game at 60% stamina restored and requires 1 Monstrous Flesh to cook.

This food item is unlocked automatically once you reach Ship Rank 5 but you'll need to start the From the Deep side contract from the Sea People Huntmaster in Lanitra Outpost to start farming Monstrous Flesh.

Activate Pirate's Bonfire in Outposts

Finally, activating Pirate Bonfires in outposts will grant you and your group increased stamina regeneration for 20 minutes which helps you reach and maintain your ship's top speed for as long as the buff lasts!

What is the Fastest Ship in the Game?

Bombarider (Padewakang)

The Bombardier (Padewakang) is currently the fatest ship in the game's Open Beta clocking at 11 knots with a trimming speed of 14 knots.

Although smaller ships are more manueverable, this medium-sized ship is currently the only one with 4 Furniture Slots to let you install more speed-increasing furniture to further boost its top speed!

How to Get the Bombardier Padewakang Ship

Skull and Bones Related Guides

List of All Ships and Ship Types

All Ships Guides

All Available Ships