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Sailing Refinement #3: Reward Space

We’re back with our next Sailing refinement topic! Now that we’ve learned how Navigation will work and what the Core Gameplay looks like, we can move on to the big question: what Rewards do you get for training it?

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Ah, rewards. Nothing matches the feeling of unlocking new equipment, areas, or training methods after a long grind, huh? Of all the content in Old School RuneScape, skills are perhaps the most ripe for rewards – and Sailing will be no exception to that rule.

Sailing’s rewards are bigger than most skills can offer. As the captain of your own ship, the main reward space will be upgrading that ship, kitting it out so that you can explore never-before-seen areas of Gielinor. So far, so normal! But on the islands you discover, you’ll also find a wealth of resources for both Sailing and other skills – and who knows, you might even make some new friends with a trick or two to teach you.

The Sailing reward space is so massive, we can’t even hope to cover everything it has to offer in this blog. Normally, we’d be showing you loads of detailed information about particular items you can earn as rewards, but Sailing is a bit more expansive than that. Its reward space doesn’t just cover a cool new armour set or some fancy jewellery, it covers everything from new training methods to islands filled with exciting resources and monsters to fight, and everything in between.

We’re also wary of overwhelming you with loads of tables and numbers for stats that are likely to change during development. We’d hate to put anyone off voting just because they don’t like the look of one specific reward!

Instead, we’re taking a more open approach. Keep reading, and you’ll see the broad reward space categories that Sailing covers, including Ship upgrades, cosmetics, and the exciting new things you might find on islands. It’s a little different from what you’re used to seeing from these design blogs, but we hope that it’ll help you see just how much Sailing has to offer.

Should Sailing pass 'lock-in', we pledge to poll each and every individual reward, so you’ll have total clarity on what you’re adding to the game. You can look forward to loads more blogs and polls as we work together to make Sailing’s reward space the best it can be – we’ve already seen some fantastic suggestions from the community, and we can’t wait to make them a reality.

Before we dive in, let’s remind ourselves what kind of rewards an effective reward system contains:

Horizontal Progression Reward fills a niche, with little impact on the meta.	Vertical Progression Reward is a direct upgrade to the existing meta. This might look like a better training method, or a more powerful weapon.
Internal Reward Reward impacts your progression within the content it belongs to, but nowhere else. In Sailing, this might look like Ship customisation options.	External Reward Reward impacts content outside the activities it belongs to. In Sailing, this might look like an island that’s home to a new Slayer creature.
Direct Reward A physical reward you can place in your Inventory, like a new weapon or armour set.	Indirect Reward A more intangible reward that’s for the player, not their character. Examples could include a fun boss fight, the thrill of completing a difficult achievement, or access to a total level world.

Although Sailing is home to all kinds of rewards, we want to focus the reward space on clear horizontal progression in terms of how Sailing interacts with other skills, combined with vertical progression for Sailing itself.

Ship Upgrades and Facilities

We’ll kick things off with the main form of vertical progression you’ll see in Sailing – direct upgrades that make your Ship better than it was before and allow you to unlock new training methods.

Ship Upgrades

In the Core Gameplay blog, we established that upgrades to your ship are unlocked by reaching higher Sailing levels. Upgrades mean that as you progress through the skill, you’ll be able to do things you couldn’t before, like take more damage before capsizing, travel across dangerous reefs, or turn faster.

Of course, this also lets your ship access parts of the sea that were too dangerous before. That’s a reward in itself, but it also lets you discover better training methods and interesting new islands, which in turn are full of other rewards.

Ship Customization

As you progress through the skill, you’ll also unlock new facilities. As we established in the Core Gameplay blog, facilities are things like cannons, sails, and other things you interact with on your ship. The higher your Sailing level, the better the facilities will get.

Let’s see an example of how this might look…

Cannons

We’ve seen how excited you are for cannons, so we’re going to use them as our example of what a facilities reward might look like.

If you cast your mind back to the Core Gameplay blog, you’ll remember that there are actually a variety of weapons you can have on board ship. Cannons have a short radius, but hit harder than other weapons.

We’ve also thought about different types of cannons dealing different types of damage. What might Magic damage from a ship look like? How about a cannon that fires magic missiles? Or spews dragonfire?

Obviously, you won’t be slapping these cataclysmic weapons on your average rowboat, so you’ll need to develop your Sailing skill first.

Here’s what that progression might look like:

Level	Name	Damage type
5	Basic Cannon	Ranged
20	Strong Cannon	Ranged
50	Arcane Cannon	Magic
65	Dragonfire Cannon	Dragonfire
72	Advanced Cannon	Ranged
88	Advanced Arcane Cannon	Magic
90	Advanced Dragonfire Cannon	Dragonfire
92	Elite Cannon	Ranged

Alongside these more esoteric types of ammunition, we’d like to allow players to smith Cannonballs from Steel all the way up to Rune, with Dragon Cannonballs available as a drop from monsters introduced through Sailing.

Crew

Of course, you can’t be a captain without a crew to boss around! As you become more experienced, you’ll gain the ability to recruit NPCs to join your crew and help operate the ship. Although crewmates will never be mandatory, they’ll help a lot, especially on larger ships with more facilities.

Not every NPC can be part of your crew. Most of them have other stuff to do, and some of them get seasick. However, there’ll be a select number of new and existing NPCs who can be recruited via Sailing and non-Sailing content, such as:

• Pubs at Ports – a natural place for people to look for work at sea!
• Quest Rewards – some NPCs might sign up to your crew after you’ve helped them during a quest. You’ll learn more about this in the Lore and Integration blog.

We’re not certain yet how in-depth we want the crew system to be. We’re considering giving crewmates the ability to level up and become better at the tasks you assign them. You’d need to choose your crew carefully, as some NPCs would have different strengths and abilities – some might be excellent fighters, but some might prefer to stay below decks and cook up tasty meals for you and the rest of your crew.

However, complex mechanics like this require extra development time. We need your help to prioritise the most important features before launch, and so we’re asking you – is an in-depth crew system something you’re interested in? Or would you prefer a more simple system that just lets you automate tasks on board ship?

You’ll have the chance to answer questions on this topic in the survey at the bottom of the blog. We look forward to hearing your thoughts!

Construction, Crafting and Smithing

Sailing’s reward space also integrates with other skills – in particular, upgrading your ship will involve Construction, Crafting and Smithing.

We’ve already covered how you’ll use Construction to add facilities to your ship. Crafting will also let you make Sails, Nets, and other new items that you’ll need to build facilities. We’d like to extend the same treatment to Smithing, which will let you build cannon barrels and new kinds of cannonballs, to name just one example.

Note that none of these skills are required to train Sailing – Sailing merely provides a reward for having put the hard work in to level them. For example, any shipwright could build facilities for you at Port, circumventing the need to level Construction – but you’ll save some GP if you’re able to build them for yourself! We see massive amounts of value in making existing skills feel useful as part of the reward space.

With that in mind, the strongest upgrades are designed to make players feel rewarded for their prowess in other skills – so you’ll still need to build them yourself. Making your ship look and feel badass with your own two hands is a thrill that money can’t buy!

Port Logic

Another cool reward from Sailing is the ability to dock your ship in different ports. Mechanically though, this is a bit complicated. What happens if you left your ship in Port Sarim, but you’re trying to sail from Port Tyras? If you teleport away from a ship at sea, is it lost forever?

As you know from our previous blogs, we’re in favour of solving logical problems like this in ways that feel natural and well-integrated into the game world. We intend to go into greater detail in the Lore and Integration blog, but we feel like the reward space is also a good place to provide solutions.

For example, a popular player suggestion is to utilise the Magic skill to create a Ship in a Bottle, which would let you shrink your ship and store it in your Inventory. Players without the required Magic level could utilise a Spell Scroll or pay an NPC at Port to do it for them.

This also opens up a ton of new gameplay opportunities! You could sell your Ships in Bottles to shops and other players, find one as part of a monster’s loot hoard, or even pickpocket one from an NPC!

This isn’t the only solution that might function as a reward. Magic levels could let you teleport yourself to your ship, or teleport the ship itself… within reason, of course. We don’t want players to be able to teleport colossal ships to themselves while fighting a boss, no matter how funny that sounds!

Cooperative Play

As you can see, owning, customising, and captaining a ship is one of the most important intrinsic rewards of the Sailing skill. It lets you fundamentally interact with the game world in a new and exciting way. Even more excitingly, we plan to let you do it with friends!

Just like you can use your Player Owned House to hold fun house parties and provide your friends with important resources (like Cups of Tea!), you can invite other players onto your ship and let them join in the Sailing fun – or just use the facilities, if they’re still getting their sea-legs.

Imagine piling onto your friends’ colossal ship and setting out to fight a boss in a far-off land! Or perhaps meeting a seafaring friend on the docks, where they sell you a piece of jewellery that will teleport you to an island you’ve never seen before. There are all kinds of possibilities, and best of all, players of all levels can explore the seas of Gielinor with their friends – only one player in the group needs the Sailing level required to have a fully kitted-out Ship.

To be clear though, hitching a ride with other players won’t negate the need to train Sailing at all. While designing this feature, we’re being careful to balance the need for players to get stuck into new content without it being locked behind skill requirements, and the need for players to actually see a benefit to training the skill. We’ll make a clear distinction between the ocean-based content you can experience without training the Sailing skill, and the content which requires you to sail there yourself. We’re eager to see what you have to say on this topic but remember that the decision doesn’t necessarily have to be made right now. We can discuss this in greater detail when we’re deciding the requirements for specific pieces of content after Sailing passes 'lock-in'.

New Resources

In the past few years, we’ve seen traditional skilling become less valued. A major cause of this shift is that PvM feels better in almost every way – it’s more efficient, more fun, and the loot is far more lucrative.

While PvM will be a huge part of Sailing, we also want to show some love to skilling by introducing new resources that will encourage players to use their skills. Consequently, the focus is on profitability, not XP value. We don’t plan to shake up the existing training meta, but we do plan to give skillers more lucrative training options.

These resources will be useful both inside and outside of the Sailing skill. Some will help you upgrade your ship, build facilities, or do other useful things at sea. Others will impact the wider game – and we expect to include some familiar resources like Planks, Logs, metals, gems, herbs, and so on.

In the Core Gameplay blog, we spoke about a super chilled-out way to obtain new resources: Shipwreck Salvaging. As you salvage a shipwreck, you’ll passively add resources to your ship’s cargo hold. To make use of these valuable goods, you’ll need to take them to a sorting station, found at all reputable docks. You’ll soon find that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, and your salvage is full of useful materials like wood, metal, precious minerals, and more!

Experienced sailors will even be able to build their own onboard sorting station facility, to make it even easier to find valuables at sea.

This is just one example of how the Sailing skill will reward players with lucrative resources. Here are some of the more familiar goodies you can find and use to improve your ship:

Resource	Category	Rarity	Tradeable?	Use	Primary source
Larch	Wood	Common	Yes	Upgrade hull and mast, build facilities.	Barracuda Trials and low-level Port Tasks.
Cedar	Wood	Uncommon	Yes	Upgrade hull and mast, build facilities.	Woodcutting on islands and port tasks (mid-level)
Rosewood	Wood	Rare	Yes	Upgrade hull and mast, build facilities.	Woodcutting on islands and Barracuda Trials (high-level)
Hemp	Fibres	Uncommon	Yes	Upgrade sails, change sail cosmetics.	Farming on islands and port tasks (mid-level)
Cotton	Fibres	Rare	Yes	Upgrade sails, change sail cosmetics.	Farming on islands and Barracuda Trials (high-level)
Lead	Metals	Uncommon	Yes	Build facilities such as cannons and weighted dredging nets.	Mineral dredging and port tasks (mid-level)
Cobalt	Metals	Rare	Yes	Build facilities such as cannons and weighted dredging nets.	Mineral dredging and Barracuda Trials (high-level)

We’re already seeing lots of new, exciting, and valuable goodies – but the ocean has much more treasure in store!

Remember, the ocean is full of strange and dangerous creatures. Defeat one, and you could gain access to a resource you’ve never seen before! What does it do? Did you just pull a rare drop and gain loads of gold? Was this the upgrade you needed to sail your ship to a place you’ve been longing to visit? We expect the early days of Sailing to be full of excitement, as players uncover strange and wonderful new items from the furthest reaches of the sea.

For example, you could pick up shiny minerals on your Sailing adventures and use them to craft and enchant new jewellery. It’s about time we had some ocean teleports!

Or perhaps you’d rather engage in a spot of Fishing? You could reel in dinner… or some sea monster bait.

How about some corals? These beautiful marine invertebrates would be the perfect addition to an Aquarium, and they make excellent armour, too!

There’s a lot of scope here for these rewards to have effects outside of Sailing. We’d love to hear your ideas about Sunfish Potions, Aquamarine Amulets, and Umbral Coral Armour… or anything else you can imagine! Remember, our aim is to make resources found at sea especially profitable, so the cooler the stuff you can make with them is, the better.

To kickstart your imagination, here’s a list of resources and their potential uses:

Resource	Category	Rarity	Tradeable?	Use	Primary source
Agate	Precious minerals	Common	Yes	Low-level jewellery	Mineral Dredging
Garnet	Precious minerals	Uncommon	Yes	Mid-level jewellery	Sea Monster Hunting
Aquamarine	Precious minerals	Rare	Yes	High-level jewellery	Bossing
Haddock	Fish	Common	Yes	Bait for common sea monsters, low-level food	Low-Level Deep-Sea Trawling
Blue Tang	Fish	Uncommon	Yes	Bait for uncommon sea monsters, mid-level food	Mid-Level Deep-Sea Trawling
Sunfish	Fish	Rare	Yes	Bait for rare sea monsters, high-level food	High-Level Deep-Sea Trawling
Elkhorn	Corals	Common	Yes	Low-level potions, plant in Aquarium	Coral Farming (sea or Aquarium)
Pillar	Corals	Uncommon	Yes	Coral-tipped bolt ammunition, plant in Aquarium	Coral Farming (sea or Aquarium)
Umbral	Corals	Rare	Yes	Armour, jewellery, plant in Aquarium	Coral Farming (sea or Aquarium)

Again, we want these resources to be even more valuable than their landlubbin’ counterparts. A great suggestion we’ve seen in the New Skill Discord is to give ocean fish a healing over time effect, or an effect which restores other stats in a unique way. We’re exploring lots of options, so keep the suggestions coming!

Islands

Islands and other points of interest are one of the most exciting Sailing rewards – new, hitherto unexplored landmasses filled with new activities to try, new resources to utilise, and new friends to meet!

As an example of how islands might work, we’d like to invite you to journey with us to an example island known as the Great Conch.

This island is hidden in one of the more dangerous areas of the sea. To get there, you’ll need to learn how to find it from one of the inhabitants.

During a special investigative Port Task, intermediate sailors will encounter something a bit strange among a lost shipment at Corsair Cove. It’s a member of the Oceanic Turtle Tribe! Her name is Floopa, and she’s been injured in a sea monster attack. Help her get back home, and you’ll gain access to the Great Conch. Unfortunately, this once-bustling town has been damaged by a terrible storm. Help the turtles rebuild their village, and they might just teach you a trick or two…

One of the most exciting things about Sailing to new lands is the ability to encounter new creatures and other sentient species. The Oceanic Turtle Tribe are one such species! Befriend them, and they can teach you a new Fletching method which focuses on tools suitable for turtle hands… er, flippers. As always, we’re cautious of impacting the meta – so you can be reassured that this new method won’t outshine existing ones… although it should make a welcome change from Bankstanding all the way to 99!

The Great Conch is also home to Woodcutting and Mining nodes, including unique new resources like Rosewood trees. Other activities could include an Agility course, and a new Slayer monster in the form of the Gryphons.

We don’t yet know how many Islands you’ll encounter out at sea – but the team has agreed that we’d like to provide you all with multiple small islands and points of interest rather than one big island with nothing else surrounding it. Our design goal is to bring Gielinor’s ocean to life, and we’ll be collaborating closely with the community to make that happen.

As an example, check out these fan-made maps by GentleTractor and NinjaPig, covering the western and eastern seas, respectively. Both maps are so close to our vision – it’s great to see that we’re in sync with what the community is looking for!

Community Example: GentleTractor's Western Sea

One reward from Sailing is a charted World Map, which you’ll get whenever you explore a new ocean area. We imagine it’ll look a lot like these fan concepts, with loads of different islands and points of interest for you to discover out at sea.

Community Example: NinjaPig's Eastern Sea

As you can see, the sky really is the limit when it comes to what you’ll find on islands. Each and every one is really a reward in itself, with unique and fascinating new content for you to discover and revisit time and time again. Of course, we’ll poll each individual addition with the community once Sailing passes the poll and we have time to map out each island.

In the meanwhile, we’d love to hear your ideas about the kind of content you’d like to see on islands – you can tell us all about it in the survey below!

Cosmetics

Of course, the greatest reward has to be the addition of new and exciting FashionScape – not just for you, but for your Ship.

Sails, for example, are prime FashionScape territory. You could unlock and combine different colours, patterns, and icons. You could even use your Clan colours and icons on the sails – imagine a whole Clan armada out at sea!

We’re keen to tie cosmetics to achievements, so that you’re flexing your in-game prowess as well as your sartorial elegance. The myriad Max Cape variants have shown us that you love showing off, so let’s create more opportunities to do so!

For example, slaying one of each type of sea monster might unlock a special kraken icon that you can display on your sails. Lots of you have also mentioned dreaming of a beachfront home for your Player Owned House. We love this suggestion. In fact, we’re in talks right now to decide whether we can expand this concept even further… how’d you like to change the scenery around your Player Owned House to a desert island?

Lastly, no discussion of cosmetic rewards would be complete without talking about the coveted Sailing Skill Cape. We’ve borrowed the popular icons made by ScreteMonge and GentleTractor and created some mock-ups of what the Cape might look like:

Since this has been such a community-led skill, we’re committed to running a player competition, where YOU can decide the final design of the skill icon and skill cape.

In fact, there are tons of community initiatives we’d like to run, including player-designed islands as well as cosmetic rewards. Keep your eyes peeled for more news after Sailing passes the poll!

Rewards by Activity

To sum things up, here’s a big list of which activities we expect to fill each reward space:

Training Method	Reward Space
Charting the Sea	Expanded World Map featuring points of interest you’ve discovered. The Player Owned House Island Kit, which turns your house into a beautiful beachfront home! Unlockable cosmetics such as a compass icon for your sails. A wearable Spyglass that might have functional and cosmetic uses. You might be able to use this as an alternative to the Crow's Nest to scout ahead in a direction!
Shipwreck Salvaging	Salvage to a Sorting Station to receive rare and valuable resources. Chance to pick up rare loot such as armour pieces, cargo deliveries that can be sold to merchants at port, gems, and other interesting bits and bobs. The legendary treasure of a sunken ship – no doubt worth a fortune!
Port Tasks	All Port Tasks reward GP as recognition for your hard work! At higher Sailing levels you'll have the chance to do a task for a dockworker who specializes in constructing storage spaces - and he'll teach you the secret to crafting larger cargo holds in return.
Barracuda Trials (formerly known as 'Ship Racing')	Beat each Barracuda Champion’s best time and you’ll get a unique resource to upgrade your ship or build a specific facility. Beat all the Barracuda Champions and you’ll get to sail against their leader, Mako. Best him, and he’ll teach you to build Mako’s Sail, which has a nifty special effect: while your sail is trimmed (not luffing), your ship will always move quickly, as if it was sailing with the wind. We also expect the Barracuda Trials to reward XP, although we haven’t yet decided exact numbers.
Ship Combat Including 'Bossing' and 'Sea Monster Hunting'	A variety of drops from pirates and sea monsters that will help you craft and upgrade your ship’s combat facilities. Pirates are more likely to drop valuable goods and facility components. Sea monsters tend to drop natural resources like hides, fangs and scales. These are especially valued by the inhabitants of various islands but can also be used to craft armour and other equipment. Some of these resources will be incredibly rare, and useful for upgrading or building facilities on your ship. We’ve seen a player suggestion to add a Cutlass weapon – it makes sense that you’d receive it from ship-based combat! Remember, firing a weapon from your ship rewards Sailing XP – so you can expect plenty of that!
Deep Sea Trawling	Trawling mainly rewards ocean fish, which you can eat or use as sea monster bait. We don’t want to overshadow existing Fishing methods, but trawling will also let you catch existing fish types. To balance this, you’ll get less Fishing XP than you would if you caught them normally.
Mineral Dredging	Dredging rewards precious minerals and metals from the seabed, including new and existing resources. There’s also the chance to find sunken treasure, including legendary jewellery! This reward space focuses on Mining, Smithing and Crafting.
Coral Farming	Coral Farming is, unsurprisingly, a Farming activity, and the Corals you grow can be used in Crafting, Herblore and Fletching. New Coral Potions could boost your Sailing level or increase the chance of finding rare loot when dredging minerals. Coral jewellery could grant teleports to ports and islands. Coral armour set bonuses could grant bonuses while on a ship. Should Sailing pass the poll, we’ll investigate whether these rewards should have impact outside of Sailing.

Upcoming Events and Survey

A new skill is an unprecedented addition to the game, and we’ll be looking for your feedback to make sure we’re heading in the right direction.

When the time comes, each individual reward and their stats or effects will be polled. Our aim with today’s blog was to give you some idea of what those rewards might look like – but we’re open to suggestions, and we’re sure that you have some great ideas brewing!

On that note, we’ve prepared a dedicated Rewards Survey so you can tell us what you think about the topics we’ve discussed today. Let us know your thoughts on the design so far!

Stay involved in our upcoming events throughout refinement, and make sure to join the Discord to stay up to date if times change:

Date	Event	Description
July 6th	Twitch Q&A	Ask us your questions about the Sailing Reward Space blog!
July 14th	Discord 'Stages' Integration and Lore	To discuss our design doc with you before a blog goes live around existing game integration and lore.
July 25th	Integration Blog and Survey	Pencilled-in date for our fourth refinement blog, which covers Integration and Lore.
August	Final Design Blog and Poll	Pencilled-in date for the final design blog and poll.