This is the first half of a 2-Part blog, be sure to read Part 2 here.
Ahoy there, and welcome to Volume 2 of Behind the Scenes of Sailing!
In this blog series we take a peek behind the curtain of Old School RuneScape’s first new skill, examining all the new areas, quest lines, bosses, creatures, rewards and other features in detail.
Our refinement stage of Sailing was dedicated to addressing a key concern – how Sailing fits in as a skill. Now, we’re focused on sharing regular behind-the-scenes updates which will give you some insight into what this exciting new skill will actually look like.
Bear in mind that everything we show you in these blogs is still work in progress. It might not be as polished as the final product, and much can still change between now and launch.
Today, we’re talking about how you’ll train Sailing, with an overview of a few core activities that’ll see you racking up the XP. We’ll also share some details of our upcoming Sailing Alpha, where you’ll get to try Sailing for yourself!
Check out the new gameplay footage below, starring our friends Heboxjonge and GentleTractor.
If you can't view the video above, click here.
All skills have training methods ranging from low to high intensity, with XP and other rewards to compensate you for your efforts. For example, training Woodcutting could involve spending time lazily chopping Redwood trees, or 2-ticking Teaks!
Sailing is no exception to this rule, and today you’ll see how we’ve designed different training activities to appeal to different playstyles.
Skill Framework
Old School RuneScape skills have three core components: their purpose (why you should do it), their identity (what they feel like, their narrative) and their core gameplay loop.
For example…
Thieving
- Purpose: Obtain wealth
- Identity: Steal things that do not belong to you
- Core loop: Click an NPC or location to steal an item
As you level Thieving your character gets better at it. You start by clumsily pickpocketing ordinary citizens, but mastering the skill means you can steal almost anything!
Here's how Sailing fits into that framework.
Sailing
- Purpose: Travel to new places and interact with things at sea
- Identity: Utilise a boat as a tool
- Core loop: Click on a facility to interact with the world using your boat
Low-level sailors will still be getting to grips with their boat, so they’re likely to capsize, and they won’t be able to overcome the dangers of the open sea. On the other hand, a master sailor knows the sea well and traverses it with ease. They can use all kinds of facilities on their boat and rely on their nautical knowledge to sail anywhere they like.
Although the purpose of Sailing is to let you explore new places, the skill is about far more than just travelling around. Sailing lets you engage with the sea as a new area of the map, experiencing hitherto unknown threats and encountering new opportunities as you traverse the ocean. It’s far more than just a slow teleport!
Levelling up will also let you expand the core loop by interacting with more facilities aboard ship.
A Small Boat
You’ll get Sailing XP for interacting with facilities that affect the world. These include:
- The Tiller (or Helm) and Sails
- Salvaging Hooks
- Cannons
- Trawling Net
This is the most basic way to train Sailing. As a new Sailor you’ll be doing a lot of this, but when you level up, you’ll have Crewmates who’ll take on the less interesting tasks while you discover more exciting ways to train.
Luffing
Sails are one of the very first facilities you’ll interact with.
In real life, ‘luffing’ is what happens when you sail too close to the wind, which causes your sails to flap about and slow your boat down.
Our original luffing mechanic slowed, and eventually stopped your boat if the sails were not ‘trimmed’ in a short time. While this reflects the real-life Sailing experience, it also makes gameplay quite frustrating.
So, instead of punishing you for inattentiveness, we’ve decided to reward keen-eyed sailors for their diligence. If you spot your sails luffing, you have a short window of time to trim them and be rewarded with Sailing XP. You’ll also gain a nice speed boost!
When you upgrade your sails the time window to trim them will get wider. At the base rate, it takes 30 seconds for your sails to luff, with a 9 second window to trim them in.
If you miss your opportunity, you don’t receive any speed penalty – but you will miss out on that tasty XP.
If you can’t view the video above, click here.
The sails in the video above are placeholder graphics, which is why they’re changing colour instead of shape. In the final version, they’ll have dedicated animations. You might have seen a few of our early ideas in previous updates!
This brings us to another exciting topic – our art team have been hard at work and we’re not far off from our final boat designs. You can check out their concept art at the end of this blog!
Sails aren’t the only part of Sailing that will be contextualised visually. You can expect animations for water splashes, turning circles, interactions with individual facilities, and much more.
Once you’ve got the hang of using your onboard facilities, you’ll want to do some Sea Charting. The oceans of Gielinor are a vast, unexplored area – and as you stumble upon hidden islands and experience familiar coastlines from a new angle, you’ll earn XP for your efforts.
There’s lots to experience in Sailing. With your Current Duck companion at your side, and a Troll Meteorologist who needs your help to clear their weather stations, you’ll be well equipped to explore Gielinor’s uncharted seas. When the ocean calls you even deeper, you’ll enlist the help of mermaids, whose knowledge of the seafloor will unlock new secrets beneath the waves. All that’s thirsty work, but don’t worry – you can find crates filled with mysterious drinks. Just don’t read the expiration date.
We’ve aimed to capture the feeling we all experienced the very first time we logged into RuneScape, when the short walk from Lumbridge to Varrock felt like an arduous journey, and you never knew what surprises might be waiting just around the bend. Charting the sea turns the thrill of exploration into a bona fide mechanic, rewarding you for exploring new islands and seeking out new experiences.
Let’s take a look at some of those new areas of the sea..
Did you spot them all? What do you think might be waiting on these uncharted shores? New civilisations? Buried treasure? Or perhaps ancient dangers waiting to trap the unwary traveller?
Your Captain’s Log will help you track what you’ve discovered, much like an Achievement Diary. The interface will show you Sea Charting tasks, which can easily be filtered by the area you’re in.
We’ve already added Sea Charting to two new areas, The Unquiet Ocean, and The Kandarin Gulf. Here are just a few of the things you may find there…
Unquiet Ocean
- Cape Atoll
- Red Reef
- Barracuda HQ
- Arrow Pass
- The Kharazi Strait
- Turtle Basin
- The Storm Tempor
- The Great Conch
- Rainbow Reef
- Anglerfish's Light
Kandarin Gulf
- Bay of Sarim
- Mudskipper Sound
- The Firth of Lum
- Rimmington Strait
- Catherby Inlet
- Brimhaven Bight
- Khazard's Channel
- Bedabin Basin
To fully chart the sea, you’ll need to bring the following tools along:
- Captain's Log: To record and document sea charting. It will also tell you information about where you can chart.
- Spyglass: Observe notable areas.
- Current Duck: Track the currents of the sea.
- Crowbar: Pry open crates found at sea and choose whether you want to drink what you find inside.
- Upgraded Diving Apparatus/Helmet: Gather sea depth data by assisting mermaids out at sea so that they act as a dive guide for you. Make sure to take your diving apparatus along!
- Anti Rust Tonic: Removes rust from weather stations for the Troll Meteorologist.
For testing purposes, all these tools can be bought from a Portmaster, who can be found in any port. In the real game, however, you’ll unlock them as you level up.
Some observations won’t require any tools at all. To record what you’ve seen at sea, simply left-click your Captain’s Log.
Sea Charting Rewards
You’ll earn one-time XP drops for each successful charting activity, and additional Sailing XP when you chart everything in one area. Sea Charting also offers an exciting new reward space for your boat: Kegs!
Kegs store the drinks you’ve found while Charting the Sea, which can be purchased after you’ve found them once. The Keg provides buffs for your entire crew, whether they’re NPCs or other players. These buffs include faster salvage rates, better XP rates, and more cannon damage.
We haven’t finalised the Keg buffs yet, but they’ll all relate back to Sailing and aid in skill progression. As a general rule, higher-level, more dangerous areas will have better buffs to find and build – and we look forward to seeing you all try to guess what they are!
We showed off some Port Task gameplay in our previous update, but since then we’ve made a lot of progress.
In the Sailing Alpha, you’ll see noticeboards in ports around Gielinor. Click on them, and you’ll find various Sailing-related tasks to choose from. Complete them, and you’ll be rewarded with XP and GP.
This activity is suited to all sorts of players and gives a consistent rate of XP and GP per hour. Since you’re already Sailing all over Gielinor, you might as well pick up a couple of Port Tasks to complete along the way!
To begin with you’ll have two slots for Port Tasks, but you’ll unlock more as you level up.
Noticeboard
If you have docking access in a port, you can accept Port Tasks there.
Each port has a unique set of five repeatable Tasks for each Task category, but they’ll change every day. If you don’t like the look of them, try another Port, or come back tomorrow!
Four of the five Tasks will be the same for everyone, but the last will be based on your Sailing level – and you’ll often find that these last Tasks will be paired together across ports. So, in Port Sarim you might be asked to deliver goods to Musa Point, where you’ll find a Task to deliver goods back to Port Sarim waiting for you.
You might sometimes see Tasks that require a little levelling-up before you can complete them. If you like having small goals to work towards, this might suit you better than taking Tasks at your current level.
The system is designed to ensure that at any given moment, you’ll have at least one Task in common with other sailors. Completing a Port Task or two together is a great way to train Sailing with your friends!
You’ll be able to take up to five of each type of Task – so you could take five Courier Tasks and five Bounty Tasks from the same noticeboard, for a total of 10, if you like!
Let's look at the types of Port Tasks you can retrieve from the Notice Board.
Courier Tasks
Courier Tasks ask you to take goods from Port A to Port B using your boat’s cargo hold. Simply take the cargo from the port’s loading bay, stick it in your hold, and set sail to your destination!
Some Courier Tasks will ask you to deliver multiple boxes of cargo. As you level up, it’ll become easier to take on bigger deliveries, and you’ll also unlock upgrades like paying someone at port to load the cargo into the hold for you.
Similarly, as you level up, the requirements will become harder, you’ll need more space in your cargo hold, and you might even require special facilities to complete the Task. You’ll also be asked to sail through more dangerous territory.
Cargo holds are upgradeable, but they only store cargo – not your personal items. However, resources and other types of items that sometimes require transport, but can be used to your own ends, are whitelisted.
Future work on Courier Tasks includes balancing the XP rewards and adding ways to make these tasks more efficient. Later down the line we’ll look at gameplay flow to ensure it’s easy for players to juggle multiple tasks at once.
Bounty Tasks
If you’re looking for a bit more adventure, Bounty Tasks are for you! Inspired by the hugely popular Hunters’ Rumours system, Bounty Tasks will send you out to sea to fight deadly battles, in search of one particular bounty. This will involve ship combat, so you’d better hope your Sailing skills are up to scratch!
We’re still early in the process of implementing ship combat, so that’s the first job on our list.
Port Task Rewards
Port Tasks grant Sailing XP upon completion, raising in line with the difficulty of the Task. This is something we’re still balancing, but it will also vary based on the starting port and the type of task you take. We expect this activity to provide a reliable source of GP and XP per hour, and imagine Port Tasks will mostly be completable on the way to other Sailing activities.
Completing a Port Task will also get you some general resources, such as:
General resources are given upon completion of Port Tasks, such as:
- Gatherable resources like ores, fish, and logs, with uses both in Sailing and the wider game.
- Alchable items.
- New materials for upgrading your boat.
We’re also cooking up some unique items only obtainable from Port Tasks, so watch this space!
Out at sea, you'll stumble across Shipwrecks which can be harvested for Sailing XP. It's a super chilled out training method, much like how you’d usually train Woodcutting or Fishing.
Simply sail your boat near to a Shipwreck and then interact with your Salvaging Hook to loot the rewards. Salvage will be placed directly in your Inventory, but you can also store it within your cargo hold. No additional clicks are required – you’ll stop once the Shipwreck has depleted or if your inventory gets full.
Depletion doesn’t speed up when multiple players are salvaging together, so feel free to bring your friends along!
As this is a ‘second monitor’ activity, the XP and GP per hour is not especially high compared to other training methods.
There are different types of shipwrecks. Some are small and show on the very surface of the water and others are much larger, so they lie deep in the depths of the Ocean. The larger the shipwrecks, the better facilities you’ll need to salvage them.
| Shipwreck | Level Requirement Estimate (Not final) | Salvaging Hook |
| Small Shipwrecks | 12 | Light |
| Fisherman Shipwrecks | 25 | Light |
| Barracuda Shipwrecks | 35 | Light |
| Large Shipwrecks | 54 | Heavy |
| Pirate Shipwrecks | 64 | Heavy |
| Mercenary Shipwrecks | 73 | Heavy |
| Colossal Shipwrecks | 80 | Advanced |
| Merchant Shipwrecks | 87 | Advanced |
| Haunted Shipwrecks | 91 | Advanced |
Each Salvaging Hook can also be upgraded from Bronze all the way up to Dragon, yielding faster salvage rates and greater XP gains.
| Level Requirement Estimate | |||
| Hook Type | Light Hook | Heavy Hook | Advanced Hook |
| Bronze | 12 | 54 | 80 |
| Iron | 18 | 58 | 83 |
| Steel | 24 | 62 | 86 |
| Mithril | 29 | 65 | 89 |
| Adamant | 34 | 68 | 92 |
| Cursed Gold | 39 | 71 | 94 |
| Rune | 44 | 74 | 96 |
| Dragon | 49 | 77 | 98 |
You’ll see exactly how to add these upgrade components to your facilities at a later date, when we discuss Ship Customization.
Shipwreck Salvaging Rewards
The main rewards from Shipwreck Salvaging are not GP or XP, but materials. Salvaging will net you a mix of existing resources and brand-new ones introduced with Sailing.
For example, you’ll obtain Larch, Shayzien Pine, Cedar and Rosewood Planks, which will be essential for shipbuilding. Each plank will of course have accompanying trees that you can find and chop down, just like existing plank types.
You might also have spotted Cursed Gold on the list, which is a new metal resource from Sailing.
Introducing these materials in Sailing lets us integrate them into other skills like Woodcutting, Construction, Mining, Smithing, Fletching and Firemaking. In the future, you can expect a poll where you’ll vote on each one.
The value of your salvage scales up based on the level requirement. Resources also change based on the type of shipwreck you salvage from – a fancy merchant vessel is likely to carry different cargo to a ramshackle pirate sloop!
The last three activities have been relatively traditional training methods. Let’s kick it up a notch…
A Barracuda Trial is a leaned-in, focused and repeatable method of training Sailing. It appeals to those who enjoy pushing the limits of navigation and rewards those who take the time to fully understand ship movement.
In our last Behind The Scenes blog, we talked about how important navigation is for the overall success of Sailing. Ship movement has been developed in a way that provides consistent, predictable movement with lots of room for player skill expression. We're feeling really good about it so far, and our confidence is only increasing through our early playtesting! Navigation means we can also get started on developing the Barracuda Trials.
Trials take place in instances copied from real locations at sea, where you’ll navigate through a series of obstacles to win. Each Trial is different, but the goal remains the same – speed through it as efficiently as possible!
Barracuda Trials award a high amount of XP, but it’s by no means the most efficient way to level from 1-99. We’re encouraging aspiring captains to mix up their Sailing gameplay through meaningful unlocks across all the training methods. These include boat upgrades, which will make your Barracuda Trials smoother and speedier.
There will be three Barracuda Trials ready for you to try at launch, but we’ve got plenty of ideas in the bank and we’d love to add more if players are interested.
For now, let’s take a look at the first Barracuda Trial you’ll encounter on your Sailing journey: Karamjan Run!
Karamjan Run
Early-game Sailing will take place in the familiar waters around Port Sarim, Catherby, and Karamja. Your first Barracuda Trial takes place in the tropical waters around Musa Point, where Rum-Dashed Ralph has a cocktail of fun prepared for you.
Ralph is a real rum enthusiast, and his Barracuda Trial puts fledgling sailors to the task of producing his specialty, the Whirlpool Surprise. The recipe is simple. Obtain fresh bananas, a ‘lost’ shipment of Karamjan Rum and some fresh sugar cane, and then shake it all together by sailing through some ‘dark and stormy’ waters.
If you’re fast enough (and brave enough) you’ll be the first to deliver this fruity concoction back to Rum-Dashed Ralph, and you’ll be rewarded with some well-earned XP.
This Trial is aimed at sailors with a small boat, a salvaging hook, and space for a keg facility.
Course Obstacles
- Obstacle 1: Salvaging the Rum Shipment
- Retrieve a crate of Karamjan Rum by salvaging a shipwreck. Once obtained, it can be opened and poured into the keg.
- Obstacle 2: Gathering the Bananas
- Navigate to three different banana tree islands, leave the ship to collect three bunches of bananas, then add them to the keg.
- Obstacle 3: Collecting the Sugar Canes
- Sugar Cane crates can be found floating on the surface of the water at semi-random locations. You can obtain them by getting close and using a Fishing Net on them, and you’ll need five to add to the barrel.
- Obstacle 4: Mixing the Cocktail
- Sail straight through the turbulent waters to mix the ingredients together! You’ll need to survive for 20 seconds, building up speed without getting capsized. Every couple of seconds, you’ll be hit with waves approaching from multiple directions, which you’ll need to skilfully click (or right-tap) to avoid. Failing to do so will result in your ship being dashed by the waves – and you’ll fail the trial outright.
This is just one example of how crazy Barracuda Trials can get. Our intention is to make each one feel special and unique – so for now, we’re keeping the rest of our designs a surprise.
Barracuda Trial Rewards
You’ll get a flat XP reward for completing each Barracuda Trial, so the faster you can complete it, the more XP per hour you’ll receive. As we move further into development and consider balancing, we may also decide to award bonus XP for faster completions, adding more layers to the reward system.
Barracuda Trials will also offer untradeable rewards, such as upgrades to facilities, access to new NPC crewmates, or even new pieces of Sailing content.
If you'd like to provide feedback, or ask us any questions about this blog, help us out by filling in the Survey below! We'll be live on Twitch on Wednesday 11th December at 16:30 GMT to answer your questions, and hanging out in the Official Sailing Discord Server over the next week!
This is the first half of a 2-Part blog, be sure to read Part 2 here.
You can also discuss this update on the 2007Scape subreddit, or the Official Sailing Discord Server. For more info on the above content, check out the official Old School Wiki.
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