The Fort of Fortune in Sea of Thieves is the true new endgame raid. it’s a massive skeleton raid that makes the typical Skeleton Forts much tougher. Elite players will find this challenging, as it brings in both the basic Skeleton Lords, as well as the Ashen Lords. Here are some basic tips to help you through this terribly difficult fight.
How to find a Fort of Fortune
You’ll know when a Fort of Fortune has appeared on your server by the giant red skull in the sky. It’s very similar to the Skeleton Fort skull, expect that one is colored green. There’s also an audio cue that happens when a fort spawns that sounds like a giant horn blaring. You won’t even need to be nearby to hear it, as it spreads throughout the entire map when it sounds off.
A Fort of Fortune can appear in any of the nine skeleton fort locations in Sea of Thieves. Given that these are set spawns, they’re pretty easy to learn.
How to complete a Fort of Fortune
The Fort is a massive brawl, so come with all the ammo and healing items you can carry. There are 18 waves of skeletons the chew through as part of the encounter. There are plenty of generic simple Skeletons, but also Gold, Plant, and Shadow skeletons can spawn in each wave. The first 15 waves are just a mix of different skeleton types.
Skeleton Types
Regular skeletons will either carry a sword, pistol, blunderbuss, sniper, or be unarmed and can simply be blasted to bits with ranged weapons. You may want to save your ammo and head in for melee combat most of the time. You can make fights against gold skeletons a little easier by luring them into water, as long as it’s deep enough to get them wet. This softens their hardened metal armor and they will begin to decay. You can also toss a bucket of water at them to proc this. Once that happens, they become much easier to damage. Plant Skeletons are essentially the reverse of gold skeletons. Out of the water, they’re relatively weak and should be attacked with melee weapons. You will have to lure them out and keep them out of the water, as they regenerate inside it.
Shadow Skeletons are some of the tougher enemies in the game. They differ in terms of how they fight based on the time of day. During the daytime, they can be beaten like any other basic skeleton. During the night, they are much more lethal. They become entirely invulnerable when night falls, so bring along a lantern to light them up and weaken them. One member will basically have to be designated to run around and light Shadow skellies up and let the rest of the crew beat them up.
Skeleton Captains can also spawn, and they’re much more deadly. They are just like fighting basic bone boys, but have considerably more health and even heal themselves. This makes it much harder to take them down, especially while dealing with the more advanced variants. They sometimes drop Skeleton’s Orders, which lead to hidden treasure chests, so look out for those.
The Boss Fights
Once out of those first 15 waves, the next three waves get much harder. Waves 16 and 17 feature unique named Skeletons for you to take down.
The Mutinous Helmsman is a variety seen in Skeleton Forts before, so taking him on in wave 16 isn’t too hard if you have fought it before. He will summon additional skeletons to his aid, as well as swapping between the Pistol, Blunderbuss and Cutlass depending on the player’s range. He will also send out large AoE attacks, watch out for the windup. Sometimes, he can also pull out a potion and drink it to turn invisible. He will often trigger this when surrounded. Finally, he also heals via bananas.
The 17th wave features both the Duchess and Two-Faced Scoundrel. Both of these have the exact same attack pattern as the Mutinous Helmsman, but fighting two at the same time makes it much harder. You will likely want to try and separate them a bit to prevent their shockwaves from catching the entire crew if they were to trigger at the same time.
All of these unique Skeletons drop more Skeleton’s Orders, so keep an eye out for that.
The Ashen Lord is the final boss of the Fort. So you will have to know what you’re doing when taking them on. These are much more challenging versions of Skeleton Lords. You will see they also heal and use a vicious AoE, but they have a few more special attacks. Getting into melee range can trigger a knockback attack for starters. Then there are the boulders they can pick up and throw if you get too far away.
Their most dangerous attacks are the blinding ash cloud that they summon, as well as the incredibly deadly Fire Breath and Volcanic Eruption. The fire breath is used all the time, the Volcanic Eruption only triggers in the last phase, when the Ashen Lord is closest to death. During this attack, like under a Volcanic eruption, all the surrounding water will become superheated and fire will spew from fissures in the ground. It’s a wide-range attack, so be very careful. You might also want to think about parking your ship a bit further away before engaging as the superheated water can destroy it.
They also summon allies, but in the form of tougher Ashen Skeletons. The summoned skeletons can spawn with no weapons, a cutlass, blunderbuss or flintlock.
When defeated, pick up the Fort of Fortune Value Key and claim your prizes.
