This week might be introducing the mid-season patch for multiplayer pirating title Skull and Bones, but that hasn’t stopped Ubisoft Singapore from sharing the patch notes ahead of time, especially considering this patch will introduce its new team vs. team PvP mode and the promise of more focus on balance.

“With the release of Death Tides, balancing becomes an even more important topic to ensure match fairness and variety of builds,” the studio points out. “Moving forward, we will be aiming to make regular balance changes. […] This new process and balancing cadence will help us to accurately quantify the impact of our changes through extensive internal testing, and at the same time provide predictability and time for players to adjust to new builds and adapt to the meta.”

To that point, the next patch will indeed be bringing changes to certain weapons, diminishing returns on certain status effects, and a drastic reduction in stamina cost for trimming while sailing. Naturally the notes also have details on the Death Tides PvP mode, including info on power-ups, rules, and ultimate abilities that ships will have access to.

As for the rest of the patch notes, that appears to be primarily about adjustment to the wider game as well, like access to certain materials that were only available at certain times, updates to certain world difficulty tiers, adjustments to several contracts, and the addition of team voice and text chat in preparation for the big juicy PvP mode.